diff options
| author | Ralph Amissah <ralph.amissah@gmail.com> | 2024-05-13 18:00:14 -0400 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Ralph Amissah <ralph.amissah@gmail.com> | 2024-05-13 18:17:06 -0400 |
| commit | 50c547f495a6ebb8a3b16d4e696b5ba03439d414 (patch) | |
| tree | 07457d884c2ae4e98127437ffe4db0e2f207eade | |
| parent | nix flake and envrc related (diff) | |
add a few non-pod markup samples
- as a simple way to start document markup
- to demonstrate similarity with sisu
- + (tangle & track default sisudoc.org homepage)
47 files changed, 87877 insertions, 44 deletions
@@ -12,12 +12,12 @@ !nixDevEnv.sh !.envrc !.envrc-local -!.envrc-local_ !.envrc-nix !.envrc-git-init !.env !.env/** !README +!README.md !COPYRIGHT !CHANGELOG !makefile @@ -59,6 +59,13 @@ !markup/pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/*.sst.po !markup/pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/*.ssm.po !markup/pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/*.ssi.po +!markup/non-pod-samples/ +!markup/non-pod-samples/*.sst +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/ +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/*.png +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/*.jpg +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/*.PNG +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/*.JPG !markup/sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/ !markup/sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/** .dub/** @@ -69,11 +76,11 @@ tmp/** *_.d *_.txt *_ +!.envrc-local_ *.swp *~ \#* *.\#* -!.envrc-local_ #!*/ #\#* #*.\#* diff --git a/markup/.gitignore b/markup/.gitignore index ef74b64..c6fb2e2 100644 --- a/markup/.gitignore +++ b/markup/.gitignore @@ -1,8 +1,14 @@ # git ls-files --others --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude +# git check-ignore -v flake.lock +# git clean -ix +# find . -name "*_" | xargs rm -rf +# find . -name "*.o" | xargs rm -rf +* * !.gitignore !COPYRIGHT !README +!README.md !shell.nix !packages.nix !version.txt @@ -60,8 +66,15 @@ !pod/*/media/text/po/*/*.ssm.po !pod/*/media/text/po/*/*.ssi.po !pod/*/media/text/po/*/index.html.in.po -!spine-bespoke-output/ -!spine-bespoke-output/** +!non-pod-samples/ +!non-pod-samples/*.sst +!non-pod-samples/image/ +!non-pod-samples/image/*.png +!non-pod-samples/image/*.jpg +!non-pod-samples/image/*.PNG +!non-pod-samples/image/*.JPG +!sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/ +!sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/** # skip .dub/** tmp/** @@ -72,20 +85,3 @@ tmp/** *~ \#* *.\#* -# * -# !.gitignore -# !pod.manifest -# !*/ -# !*/conf/ -# !*/conf/sisu_document_make -# !*/media/ -# !*/media/text/ -# !*/media/text/*/ -# !*/media/text/*/*.sst -# !*/media/text/*/*.ssm -# !*/media/text/*/*.ssi -# !*/media/image/ -# !*/media/image/*.png -# !*/media/image/*.jpg -# !*/media/image/*.PNG -# !*/media/image/*.JPG diff --git a/markup/non-pod-samples/alices_adventures_in_wonderland.lewis_carroll.non-pod-sample.sst b/markup/non-pod-samples/alices_adventures_in_wonderland.lewis_carroll.non-pod-sample.sst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..03678e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/non-pod-samples/alices_adventures_in_wonderland.lewis_carroll.non-pod-sample.sst @@ -0,0 +1,1886 @@ +# SiSU 8.0 +title: "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" + +creator: + author: "Carroll, Lewis" + +date: + published: "1865" + created: "1865" + available: "1865" + added_to_site: "2004-04-12" + +# 2005-10-30 + +rights: + copyright: "Lewis Carroll" + license: "Public Domain" + +classify: + topic_register: "SiSU markup sample:book:novel; book:novel:fiction:fantasy|children's fiction" + +links: [ + "{ Alice in Wonderland @ Wikipedia }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland", + "{ Lewis Carroll @ Wikipedia }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll" + ] + +make: + doc_type: "book" + headings: + - none + - none + - none + - CHAPTER + +# @make: +# :headings: none; none; none; CHAPTER; +# :breaks: new=3; break=4 + +:A~ @title-creator-date \\ The Millennium Fulcrum Edition 3.0 [text only] + +CHAPTER I - Down the Rabbit-Hole + +Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?' + +So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. + +There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so VERY much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually TOOK A WATCH OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT- POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. + +In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. + +The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well. + +Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labelled `ORANGE MARMALADE', but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it. + +`Well!' thought Alice to herself, `after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!' (Which was very likely true.) + +Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end! `I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. `I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think--' (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) `--yes, that's about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.) + +Presently she began again. `I wonder if I shall fall right THROUGH the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--' (she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) `--but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?' (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke--fancy CURTSEYING as you're falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) `And what an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.' + +Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again. `Dinah'll miss me very much to-night, I should think!' (Dinah was the cat.) `I hope they'll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?' And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, `Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, `Do bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it. She felt that she was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to her very earnestly, `Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat?' when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over. + +Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, `Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!' She was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof. + +There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again. + +Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice's first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted! + +Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. + +There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, (`which certainly was not here before,' said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters. + +It was all very well to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. + +However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off. + +* * * * + + * * * + +* * * * + +`What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.' + +And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; `for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, `in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing. + +After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided on going into the garden at once; but, alas for poor Alice! when she got to the door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach it: she could see it quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery; and when she had tired herself out with trying, the poor little thing sat down and cried. + +`Come, there's no use in crying like that!' said Alice to herself, rather sharply; `I advise you to leave off this minute!' She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. `But it's no use now,' thought poor Alice, `to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make ONE respectable person!' + +Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words `EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. `Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, `and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!' + +She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, `Which way? Which way?', holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way. + +So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake. + +* * * * + + * * * + +* * * * + +CHAPTER II - The Pool of Tears + +`Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); `now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!' (for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off). `Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure _{I}_ shan't be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can; --but I must be kind to them,' thought Alice, `or perhaps they won't walk the way I want to go! Let me see: I'll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.' + +And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it. `They must go by the carrier,' she thought; `and how funny it'll seem, sending presents to one's own feet! And how odd the directions will look! + +poem{ + + ALICE'S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ. + HEARTHRUG, + NEAR THE FENDER, + (WITH ALICE'S LOVE). + +}poem + +Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!' + +Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was now more than nine feet high, and she at once took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door. + +Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again. + +`You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said Alice, `a great girl like you,' (she might well say this), `to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!' But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall. + +After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, `Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won't she be savage if I've kept her waiting!' Alice felt so desperate that she was ready to ask help of any one; so, when the Rabbit came near her, she began, in a low, timid voice, `If you please, sir--' The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and the fan, and skurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go. + +Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: `Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, THAT'S the great puzzle!' And she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them. + +`I'm sure I'm not Ada,' she said, `for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a very little! Besides, SHE'S she, and I'm I, and--oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I'll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is--oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate! However, the Multiplication Table doesn't signify: let's try Geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome--no, THAT'S all wrong, I'm certain! I must have been changed for Mabel! I'll try and say "How doth the little--"' and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words did not come the same as they used to do:-- + +poem{ + + `How doth the little crocodile + Improve his shining tail, + And pour the waters of the Nile + On every golden scale! + + `How cheerfully he seems to grin, + How neatly spread his claws, + And welcome little fishes in + With gently smiling jaws!' + +}poem + +"I'm sure those are not the right words," said poor Alice, and her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, `I must be Mabel after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I've made up my mind about it; if I'm Mabel, I'll stay down here! It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying "Come up again, dear!" I shall only look up and say "Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else"--but, oh dear!' cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, "I do wish they WOULD put their heads down! I am so VERY tired of being all alone here!" + +As she said this she looked down at her hands, and was surprised to see that she had put on one of the Rabbit's little white kid gloves while she was talking. `How CAN I have done that?' she thought. `I must be growing small again.' She got up and went to the table to measure herself by it, and found that, as nearly as she could guess, she was now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: she soon found out that the cause of this was the fan she was holding, and she dropped it hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether. + +`That WAS a narrow escape!' said Alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; `and now for the garden!' and she ran with all speed back to the little door: but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before, `and things are worse than ever,' thought the poor child, `for I never was so small as this before, never! And I declare it's too bad, that it is!' + +As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, `and in that case I can go back by railway,' she said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high. + +`I wish I hadn't cried so much!' said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. `I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That WILL be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.' + +Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself. + +`Would it be of any use, now,' thought Alice, `to speak to this mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very likely it can talk: at any rate, there's no harm in trying.' So she began: `O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!' (Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but she remembered having seen in her brother's Latin Grammar, `A mouse--of a mouse--to a mouse--a mouse--O mouse!') The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing. + +`Perhaps it doesn't understand English,' thought Alice; `I daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.' (For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had happened.) So she began again: `Ou est ma chatte?' which was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. `Oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal's feelings. `I quite forgot you didn't like cats.' + +`Not like cats!' cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice. `Would YOU like cats if you were me?' + +`Well, perhaps not,' said Alice in a soothing tone: `don't be angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I think you'd take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is such a dear quiet thing,' Alice went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about in the pool, `and she sits purring so nicely by the fire, licking her paws and washing her face--and she is such a nice soft thing to nurse--and she's such a capital one for catching mice--oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Alice again, for this time the Mouse was bristling all over, and she felt certain it must be really offended. `We won't talk about her any more if you'd rather not.' + +`We indeed!' cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of his tail. `As if I would talk on such a subject! Our family always HATED cats: nasty, low, vulgar things! Don't let me hear the name again!' + +`I won't indeed!' said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject of conversation. `Are you--are you fond--of--of dogs?' The Mouse did not answer, so Alice went on eagerly: `There is such a nice little dog near our house I should like to show you! A little bright-eyed terrier, you know, with oh, such long curly brown hair! And it'll fetch things when you throw them, and it'll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts of things--I can't remember half of them--and it belongs to a farmer, you know, and he says it's so useful, it's worth a hundred pounds! He says it kills all the rats and--oh dear!' cried Alice in a sorrowful tone, `I'm afraid I've offended it again!' For the Mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went. + +So she called softly after it, `Mouse dear! Do come back again, and we won't talk about cats or dogs either, if you don't like them!' When the Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly back to her: its face was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said in a low trembling voice, `Let us get to the shore, and then I'll tell you my history, and you'll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.' + +It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it: there were a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore. + +CHAPTER III - A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale + +They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank--the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable. + +The first question of course was, how to get dry again: they had a consultation about this, and after a few minutes it seemed quite natural to Alice to find herself talking familiarly with them, as if she had known them all her life. Indeed, she had quite a long argument with the Lory, who at last turned sulky, and would only say, `I am older than you, and must know better'; and this Alice would not allow without knowing how old it was, and, as the Lory positively refused to tell its age, there was no more to be said. + +At last the Mouse, who seemed to be a person of authority among them, called out, `Sit down, all of you, and listen to me! I'LL soon make you dry enough!' They all sat down at once, in a large ring, with the Mouse in the middle. Alice kept her eyes anxiously fixed on it, for she felt sure she would catch a bad cold if she did not get dry very soon. + +`Ahem!' said the Mouse with an important air, `are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! "William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria--"' + +`Ugh!' said the Lory, with a shiver. + +`I beg your pardon!' said the Mouse, frowning, but very politely: `Did you speak?' + +`Not I!' said the Lory hastily. + +`I thought you did,' said the Mouse. `--I proceed. "Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable--"' + +`Found WHAT?' said the Duck. + +`Found IT,' the Mouse replied rather crossly: `of course you know what "it" means.' + +`I know what "it" means well enough, when I find a thing,' said the Duck: `it's generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?' + +The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on, `"--found it advisable to go with Edgar Atheling to meet William and offer him the crown. William's conduct at first was moderate. But the insolence of his Normans--" How are you getting on now, my dear?' it continued, turning to Alice as it spoke. + +`As wet as ever,' said Alice in a melancholy tone: `it doesn't seem to dry me at all.' + +`In that case,' said the Dodo solemnly, rising to its feet, `I move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies--' + +`Speak English!' said the Eaglet. `I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!' And the Eaglet bent down its head to hide a smile: some of the other birds tittered audibly. + +`What I was going to say,' said the Dodo in an offended tone, `was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race.' + +`What IS a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that SOMEBODY ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything. + +`Why,' said the Dodo, `the best way to explain it is to do it.' (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.) + +First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (`the exact shape doesn't matter,' it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no `One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out `The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, `But who has won?' + +This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, `EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.' + +`But who is to give the prizes?' quite a chorus of voices asked. + +`Why, SHE, of course,' said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one finger; and the whole party at once crowded round her, calling out in a confused way, `Prizes! Prizes!' + +Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair she put her hand in her pocket, and pulled out a box of comfits, (luckily the salt water had not got into it), and handed them round as prizes. There was exactly one a-piece all round. + +`But she must have a prize herself, you know,' said the Mouse. + +`Of course,' the Dodo replied very gravely. `What else have you got in your pocket?' he went on, turning to Alice. + +`Only a thimble,' said Alice sadly. + +`Hand it over here,' said the Dodo. + +Then they all crowded round her once more, while the Dodo solemnly presented the thimble, saying `We beg your acceptance of this elegant thimble'; and, when it had finished this short speech, they all cheered. + +Alice thought the whole thing very absurd, but they all looked so grave that she did not dare to laugh; and, as she could not think of anything to say, she simply bowed, and took the thimble, looking as solemn as she could. + +The next thing was to eat the comfits: this caused some noise and confusion, as the large birds complained that they could not taste theirs, and the small ones choked and had to be patted on the back. However, it was over at last, and they sat down again in a ring, and begged the Mouse to tell them something more. + +`You promised to tell me your history, you know,' said Alice, `and why it is you hate--C and D,' she added in a whisper, half afraid that it would be offended again. + +`Mine is a long and a sad tale!' said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing. + +`It IS a long tail, certainly,' said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse's tail; `but why do you call it sad?' And she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was something like this:-- + +poem{ + + `Fury said to a + mouse, That he + met in the + house, + "Let us + both go to + law: I will + prosecute + YOU. --Come, + I'll take no + denial; We + must have a + trial: For + really this + morning I've + nothing + to do." + Said the + mouse to the + cur, "Such + a trial, + dear Sir, + With + no jury + or judge, + would be + wasting + our + breath." + "I'll be + judge, I'll + be jury," + Said + cunning + old Fury: + "I'll + try the + whole + cause, + and + condemn + you + to + death."' + +}poem + +`You are not attending!' said the Mouse to Alice severely. `What are you thinking of?' + +`I beg your pardon,' said Alice very humbly: `you had got to the fifth bend, I think?' + +`I had NOT!' cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily. + +`A knot!' said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. `Oh, do let me help to undo it!' + +`I shall do nothing of the sort,' said the Mouse, getting up and walking away. `You insult me by talking such nonsense!' + +`I didn't mean it!' pleaded poor Alice. `But you're so easily offended, you know!' + +The Mouse only growled in reply. + +`Please come back and finish your story!' Alice called after it; and the others all joined in chorus, `Yes, please do!' but the Mouse only shook its head impatiently, and walked a little quicker. + +`What a pity it wouldn't stay!' sighed the Lory, as soon as it was quite out of sight; and an old Crab took the opportunity of saying to her daughter `Ah, my dear! Let this be a lesson to you never to lose YOUR temper!' `Hold your tongue, Ma!' said the young Crab, a little snappishly. `You're enough to try the patience of an oyster!' + +`I wish I had our Dinah here, I know I do!' said Alice aloud, addressing nobody in particular. `She'd soon fetch it back!' + +`And who is Dinah, if I might venture to ask the question?' said the Lory. + +Alice replied eagerly, for she was always ready to talk about her pet: `Dinah's our cat. And she's such a capital one for catching mice you can't think! And oh, I wish you could see her after the birds! Why, she'll eat a little bird as soon as look at it!' + +This speech caused a remarkable sensation among the party. Some of the birds hurried off at once: one old Magpie began wrapping itself up very carefully, remarking, `I really must be getting home; the night-air doesn't suit my throat!' and a Canary called out in a trembling voice to its children, `Come away, my dears! It's high time you were all in bed!' On various pretexts they all moved off, and Alice was soon left alone. + +`I wish I hadn't mentioned Dinah!' she said to herself in a melancholy tone. `Nobody seems to like her, down here, and I'm sure she's the best cat in the world! Oh, my dear Dinah! I wonder if I shall ever see you any more!' And here poor Alice began to cry again, for she felt very lonely and low-spirited. In a little while, however, she again heard a little pattering of footsteps in the distance, and she looked up eagerly, half hoping that the Mouse had changed his mind, and was coming back to finish his story. + +CHAPTER IV - The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill + +It was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly back again, and looking anxiously about as it went, as if it had lost something; and she heard it muttering to itself `The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers! She'll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets! Where CAN I have dropped them, I wonder?' Alice guessed in a moment that it was looking for the fan and the pair of white kid gloves, and she very good-naturedly began hunting about for them, but they were nowhere to be seen--everything seemed to have changed since her swim in the pool, and the great hall, with the glass table and the little door, had vanished completely. + +Very soon the Rabbit noticed Alice, as she went hunting about, and called out to her in an angry tone, `Why, Mary Ann, what ARE you doing out here? Run home this moment, and fetch me a pair of gloves and a fan! Quick, now!' And Alice was so much frightened that she ran off at once in the direction it pointed to, without trying to explain the mistake it had made. + +`He took me for his housemaid,' she said to herself as she ran. `How surprised he'll be when he finds out who I am! But I'd better take him his fan and gloves--that is, if I can find them.' As she said this, she came upon a neat little house, on the door of which was a bright brass plate with the name `W. RABBIT' engraved upon it. She went in without knocking, and hurried upstairs, in great fear lest she should meet the real Mary Ann, and be turned out of the house before she had found the fan and gloves. + +`How queer it seems,' Alice said to herself, `to be going messages for a rabbit! I suppose Dinah'll be sending me on messages next!' And she began fancying the sort of thing that would happen: `"Miss Alice! Come here directly, and get ready for your walk!" "Coming in a minute, nurse! But I've got to see that the mouse doesn't get out." Only I don't think,' Alice went on, `that they'd let Dinah stop in the house if it began ordering people about like that!' + +By this time she had found her way into a tidy little room with a table in the window, and on it (as she had hoped) a fan and two or three pairs of tiny white kid gloves: she took up the fan and a pair of the gloves, and was just going to leave the room, when her eye fell upon a little bottle that stood near the looking- glass. There was no label this time with the words `DRINK ME,' but nevertheless she uncorked it and put it to her lips. `I know SOMETHING interesting is sure to happen,' she said to herself, `whenever I eat or drink anything; so I'll just see what this bottle does. I do hope it'll make me grow large again, for really I'm quite tired of being such a tiny little thing!' + +It did so indeed, and much sooner than she had expected: before she had drunk half the bottle, she found her head pressing against the ceiling, and had to stoop to save her neck from being broken. She hastily put down the bottle, saying to herself `That's quite enough--I hope I shan't grow any more--As it is, I can't get out at the door--I do wish I hadn't drunk quite so much!' + +Alas! it was too late to wish that! She went on growing, and growing, and very soon had to kneel down on the floor: in another minute there was not even room for this, and she tried the effect of lying down with one elbow against the door, and the other arm curled round her head. Still she went on growing, and, as a last resource, she put one arm out of the window, and one foot up the chimney, and said to herself `Now I can do no more, whatever happens. What WILL become of me?' + +Luckily for Alice, the little magic bottle had now had its full effect, and she grew no larger: still it was very uncomfortable, and, as there seemed to be no sort of chance of her ever getting out of the room again, no wonder she felt unhappy. + +`It was much pleasanter at home,' thought poor Alice, `when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole--and yet--and yet--it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what CAN have happened to me! When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I'll write one--but I'm grown up now,' she added in a sorrowful tone; `at least there's no room to grow up any more HERE.' + +`But then,' thought Alice, `shall I NEVER get any older than I am now? That'll be a comfort, one way--never to be an old woman-- but then--always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn't like THAT!' + +`Oh, you foolish Alice!' she answered herself. `How can you learn lessons in here? Why, there's hardly room for YOU, and no room at all for any lesson-books!' + +And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, and making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen. + +`Mary Ann! Mary Ann!' said the voice. `Fetch me my gloves this moment!' Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting that she was now about a thousand times as large as the Rabbit, and had no reason to be afraid of it. + +Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it; but, as the door opened inwards, and Alice's elbow was pressed hard against it, that attempt proved a failure. Alice heard it say to itself `Then I'll go round and get in at the window.' + +`THAT you won't' thought Alice, and, after waiting till she fancied she heard the Rabbit just under the window, she suddenly spread out her hand, and made a snatch in the air. She did not get hold of anything, but she heard a little shriek and a fall, and a crash of broken glass, from which she concluded that it was just possible it had fallen into a cucumber-frame, or something of the sort. + +Next came an angry voice--the Rabbit's--`Pat! Pat! Where are you?' And then a voice she had never heard before, `Sure then I'm here! Digging for apples, yer honour!' + +`Digging for apples, indeed!' said the Rabbit angrily. `Here! Come and help me out of THIS!' (Sounds of more broken glass.) + +`Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window?' + +`Sure, it's an arm, yer honour!' (He pronounced it `arrum.') + +`An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one that size? Why, it fills the whole window!' + +`Sure, it does, yer honour: but it's an arm for all that.' + +`Well, it's got no business there, at any rate: go and take it away!' + +There was a long silence after this, and Alice could only hear whispers now and then; such as, `Sure, I don't like it, yer honour, at all, at all!' `Do as I tell you, you coward!' and at last she spread out her hand again, and made another snatch in the air. This time there were TWO little shrieks, and more sounds of broken glass. `What a number of cucumber-frames there must be!' thought Alice. `I wonder what they'll do next! As for pulling me out of the window, I only wish they COULD! I'm sure I don't want to stay in here any longer!' + +She waited for some time without hearing anything more: at last came a rumbling of little cartwheels, and the sound of a good many voices all talking together: she made out the words: `Where's the other ladder?--Why, I hadn't to bring but one; Bill's got the other--Bill! fetch it here, lad!--Here, put 'em up at this corner--No, tie 'em together first--they don't reach half high enough yet--Oh! they'll do well enough; don't be particular-- Here, Bill! catch hold of this rope--Will the roof bear?--Mind that loose slate--Oh, it's coming down! Heads below!' (a loud crash)--`Now, who did that?--It was Bill, I fancy--Who's to go down the chimney?--Nay, I shan't! YOU do it!--That I won't, then!--Bill's to go down--Here, Bill! the master says you're to go down the chimney!' + +`Oh! So Bill's got to come down the chimney, has he?' said Alice to herself. `Shy, they seem to put everything upon Bill! I wouldn't be in Bill's place for a good deal: this fireplace is narrow, to be sure; but I THINK I can kick a little!' + +She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and waited till she heard a little animal (she couldn't guess of what sort it was) scratching and scrambling about in the chimney close above her: then, saying to herself `This is Bill,' she gave one sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen next. + +The first thing she heard was a general chorus of `There goes Bill!' then the Rabbit's voice along--`Catch him, you by the hedge!' then silence, and then another confusion of voices--`Hold up his head--Brandy now--Don't choke him--How was it, old fellow? What happened to you? Tell us all about it!' + +Last came a little feeble, squeaking voice, (`That's Bill,' thought Alice,) `Well, I hardly know--No more, thank ye; I'm better now--but I'm a deal too flustered to tell you--all I know is, something comes at me like a Jack-in-the-box, and up I goes like a sky-rocket!' + +`So you did, old fellow!' said the others. + +`We must burn the house down!' said the Rabbit's voice; and Alice called out as loud as she could, `If you do. I'll set Dinah at you!' + +There was a dead silence instantly, and Alice thought to herself, `I wonder what they WILL do next! If they had any sense, they'd take the roof off.' After a minute or two, they began moving about again, and Alice heard the Rabbit say, `A barrowful will do, to begin with.' + +`A barrowful of WHAT?' thought Alice; but she had not long to doubt, for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came rattling in at the window, and some of them hit her in the face. `I'll put a stop to this,' she said to herself, and shouted out, `You'd better not do that again!' which produced another dead silence. + +Alice noticed with some surprise that the pebbles were all turning into little cakes as they lay on the floor, and a bright idea came into her head. `If I eat one of these cakes,' she thought, `it's sure to make SOME change in my size; and as it can't possibly make me larger, it must make me smaller, I suppose.' + +So she swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house, and found quite a crowd of little animals and birds waiting outside. The poor little Lizard, Bill, was in the middle, being held up by two guinea-pigs, who were giving it something out of a bottle. They all made a rush at Alice the moment she appeared; but she ran off as hard as she could, and soon found herself safe in a thick wood. + +`The first thing I've got to do,' said Alice to herself, as she wandered about in the wood, `is to grow to my right size again; and the second thing is to find my way into that lovely garden. I think that will be the best plan.' + +It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged; the only difficulty was, that she had not the smallest idea how to set about it; and while she was peering about anxiously among the trees, a little sharp bark just over her head made her look up in a great hurry. + +An enormous puppy was looking down at her with large round eyes, and feebly stretching out one paw, trying to touch her. `Poor little thing!' said Alice, in a coaxing tone, and she tried hard to whistle to it; but she was terribly frightened all the time at the thought that it might be hungry, in which case it would be very likely to eat her up in spite of all her coaxing. + +Hardly knowing what she did, she picked up a little bit of stick, and held it out to the puppy; whereupon the puppy jumped into the air off all its feet at once, with a yelp of delight, and rushed at the stick, and made believe to worry it; then Alice dodged behind a great thistle, to keep herself from being run over; and the moment she appeared on the other side, the puppy made another rush at the stick, and tumbled head over heels in its hurry to get hold of it; then Alice, thinking it was very like having a game of play with a cart-horse, and expecting every moment to be trampled under its feet, ran round the thistle again; then the puppy began a series of short charges at the stick, running a very little way forwards each time and a long way back, and barking hoarsely all the while, till at last it sat down a good way off, panting, with its tongue hanging out of its mouth, and its great eyes half shut. + +This seemed to Alice a good opportunity for making her escape; so she set off at once, and ran till she was quite tired and out of breath, and till the puppy's bark sounded quite faint in the distance. + +`And yet what a dear little puppy it was!' said Alice, as she leant against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself with one of the leaves: `I should have liked teaching it tricks very much, if--if I'd only been the right size to do it! Oh dear! I'd nearly forgotten that I've got to grow up again! Let me see--how IS it to be managed? I suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other; but the great question is, what?' + +The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all round her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she did not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself; and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it. + +She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else. + +CHAPTER V - Advice from a Caterpillar + +The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. + +`Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar. + +This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.' + +`What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. `Explain yourself!' + +`I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, `because I'm not myself, you see.' + +`I don't see,' said the Caterpillar. + +`I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, `for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.' + +`It isn't,' said the Caterpillar. + +`Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet,' said Alice; `but when you have to turn into a chrysalis--you will some day, you know--and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little queer, won't you?' + +`Not a bit,' said the Caterpillar. + +`Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,' said Alice; `all I know is, it would feel very queer to ME.' + +`You!' said the Caterpillar contemptuously. `Who are YOU?' + +Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar's making such VERY short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, `I think, you ought to tell me who YOU are, first.' + +`Why?' said the Caterpillar. + +Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a VERY unpleasant state of mind, she turned away. + +`Come back!' the Caterpillar called after her. `I've something important to say!' + +This sounded promising, certainly: Alice turned and came back again. + +`Keep your temper,' said the Caterpillar. + +`Is that all?' said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could. + +`No,' said the Caterpillar. + +Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hearing. For some minutes it puffed away without speaking, but at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, `So you think you're changed, do you?' + +`I'm afraid I am, sir,' said Alice; `I can't remember things as I used--and I don't keep the same size for ten minutes together!' + +`Can't remember WHAT things?' said the Caterpillar. + +`Well, I've tried to say "HOW DOTH THE LITTLE BUSY BEE," but it all came different!' Alice replied in a very melancholy voice. + +`Repeat, "YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM,"' said the Caterpillar. + +Alice folded her hands, and began:-- + +poem{ + + `You are old, Father William,' the young man said, + `And your hair has become very white; + And yet you incessantly stand on your head-- + Do you think, at your age, it is right?' + + `In my youth,' Father William replied to his son, + `I feared it might injure the brain; + But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, + Why, I do it again and again.' + + `You are old,' said the youth, `as I mentioned before, + And have grown most uncommonly fat; + Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door-- + Pray, what is the reason of that?' + + `In my youth,' said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, + `I kept all my limbs very supple + By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box-- + Allow me to sell you a couple?' + + `You are old,' said the youth, `and your jaws are too weak + For anything tougher than suet; + Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak-- + Pray how did you manage to do it?' + + `In my youth,' said his father, `I took to the law, + And argued each case with my wife; + And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw, + Has lasted the rest of my life.' + + `You are old,' said the youth, `one would hardly suppose + That your eye was as steady as ever; + Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose-- + What made you so awfully clever?' + + `I have answered three questions, and that is enough,' + Said his father; `don't give yourself airs! + Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? + Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!' + +}poem + +`That is not said right,' said the Caterpillar. + +`Not QUITE right, I'm afraid,' said Alice, timidly; `some of the words have got altered.' + +`It is wrong from beginning to end,' said the Caterpillar decidedly, and there was silence for some minutes. + +The Caterpillar was the first to speak. + +`What size do you want to be?' it asked. + +`Oh, I'm not particular as to size,' Alice hastily replied; `only one doesn't like changing so often, you know.' + +`I DON'T know,' said the Caterpillar. + +Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in her life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper. + +`Are you content now?' said the Caterpillar. + +`Well, I should like to be a LITTLE larger, sir, if you wouldn't mind,' said Alice: `three inches is such a wretched height to be.' + +`It is a very good height indeed!' said the Caterpillar angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high). + +`But I'm not used to it!' pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought of herself, `I wish the creatures wouldn't be so easily offended!' + +`You'll get used to it in time,' said the Caterpillar; and it put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking again. + +This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again. In a minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth and yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away in the grass, merely remarking as it went, `One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.' + +`One side of WHAT? The other side of WHAT?' thought Alice to herself. + +`Of the mushroom,' said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight. + +Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand. + +`And now which is which?' she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect: the next moment she felt a violent blow underneath her chin: it had struck her foot! + +She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but she felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking rapidly; so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot, that there was hardly room to open her mouth; but she did it at last, and managed to swallow a morsel of the lefthand bit. + +* * * * + + * * * + +* * * * + +`Come, my head's free at last!' said Alice in a tone of delight, which changed into alarm in another moment, when she found that her shoulders were nowhere to be found: all she could see, when she looked down, was an immense length of neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk out of a sea of green leaves that lay far below her. + +`What CAN all that green stuff be?' said Alice. `And where HAVE my shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I can't see you?' She was moving them about as she spoke, but no result seemed to follow, except a little shaking among the distant green leaves. + +As there seemed to be no chance of getting her hands up to her head, she tried to get her head down to them, and was delighted to find that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating her violently with its wings. + +`Serpent!' screamed the Pigeon. + +`I'm NOT a serpent!' said Alice indignantly. `Let me alone!' + +`Serpent, I say again!' repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued tone, and added with a kind of sob, `I've tried every way, and nothing seems to suit them!' + +`I haven't the least idea what you're talking about,' said Alice. + +`I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've tried hedges,' the Pigeon went on, without attending to her; `but those serpents! There's no pleasing them!' + +Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no use in saying anything more till the Pigeon had finished. + +`As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs,' said the Pigeon; `but I must be on the look-out for serpents night and day! Why, I haven't had a wink of sleep these three weeks!' + +`I'm very sorry you've been annoyed,' said Alice, who was beginning to see its meaning. + +`And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood,' continued the Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, `and just as I was thinking I should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!' + +`But I'm NOT a serpent, I tell you!' said Alice. `I'm a--I'm a--' + +`Well! WHAT are you?' said the Pigeon. `I can see you're trying to invent something!' + +`I--I'm a little girl,' said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day. + +`A likely story indeed!' said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest contempt. `I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never ONE with such a neck as that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's no use denying it. I suppose you'll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!' + +`I HAVE tasted eggs, certainly,' said Alice, who was a very truthful child; `but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know.' + +`I don't believe it,' said the Pigeon; `but if they do, why then they're a kind of serpent, that's all I can say.' + +This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent for a minute or two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of adding, `You're looking for eggs, I know THAT well enough; and what does it matter to me whether you're a little girl or a serpent?' + +`It matters a good deal to ME,' said Alice hastily; `but I'm not looking for eggs, as it happens; and if I was, I shouldn't want YOURS: I don't like them raw.' + +`Well, be off, then!' said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled down again into its nest. Alice crouched down among the trees as well as she could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the branches, and every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while she remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height. + +It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, that it felt quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes, and began talking to herself, as usual. `Come, there's half my plan done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another! However, I've got back to my right size: the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden--how IS that to be done, I wonder?' As she said this, she came suddenly upon an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high. `Whoever lives there,' thought Alice, `it'll never do to come upon them THIS size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!' So she began nibbling at the righthand bit again, and did not venture to go near the house till she had brought herself down to nine inches high. + +CHAPTER VI - Pig and Pepper + +For a minute or two she stood looking at the house, and wondering what to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood--(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery: otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a fish)--and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all about, and crept a little way out of the wood to listen. + +The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter, nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to the other, saying, in a solemn tone, `For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.' The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the words a little, `From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.' + +Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together. + +Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the wood for fear of their hearing her; and when she next peeped out the Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near the door, staring stupidly up into the sky. + +Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked. + +`There's no sort of use in knocking,' said the Footman, `and that for two reasons. First, because I'm on the same side of the door as you are; secondly, because they're making such a noise inside, no one could possibly hear you.' And certainly there was a most extraordinary noise going on within--a constant howling and sneezing, and every now and then a great crash, as if a dish or kettle had been broken to pieces. + +`Please, then,' said Alice, `how am I to get in?' + +`There might be some sense in your knocking,' the Footman went on without attending to her, `if we had the door between us. For instance, if you were INSIDE, you might knock, and I could let you out, you know.' He was looking up into the sky all the time he was speaking, and this Alice thought decidedly uncivil. `But perhaps he can't help it,' she said to herself; `his eyes are so VERY nearly at the top of his head. But at any rate he might answer questions.--How am I to get in?' she repeated, aloud. + +`I shall sit here,' the Footman remarked, `till tomorrow--' + +At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came skimming out, straight at the Footman's head: it just grazed his nose, and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him. + +`--or next day, maybe,' the Footman continued in the same tone, exactly as if nothing had happened. + +`How am I to get in?' asked Alice again, in a louder tone. + +`ARE you to get in at all?' said the Footman. `That's the first question, you know.' + +It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. `It's really dreadful,' she muttered to herself, `the way all the creatures argue. It's enough to drive one crazy!' + +The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for repeating his remark, with variations. `I shall sit here,' he said, `on and off, for days and days.' + +`But what am I to do?' said Alice. + +`Anything you like,' said the Footman, and began whistling. + +`Oh, there's no use in talking to him,' said Alice desperately: `he's perfectly idiotic!' And she opened the door and went in. + +The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup. + +`There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!' Alice said to herself, as well as she could for sneezing. + +There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the Duchess sneezed occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling alternately without a moment's pause. The only things in the kitchen that did not sneeze, were the cook, and a large cat which was sitting on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear. + +`Please would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, for she was not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first, `why your cat grins like that?' + +`It's a Cheshire cat,' said the Duchess, `and that's why. Pig!' + +She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed to the baby, and not to her, so she took courage, and went on again:-- + +`I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn't know that cats COULD grin.' + +`They all can,' said the Duchess; `and most of 'em do.' + +`I don't know of any that do,' Alice said very politely, feeling quite pleased to have got into a conversation. + +`You don't know much,' said the Duchess; `and that's a fact.' + +Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought it would be as well to introduce some other subject of conversation. While she was trying to fix on one, the cook took the cauldron of soup off the fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby --the fire-irons came first; then followed a shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of them even when they hit her; and the baby was howling so much already, that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not. + +`Oh, PLEASE mind what you're doing!' cried Alice, jumping up and down in an agony of terror. `Oh, there goes his PRECIOUS nose'; as an unusually large saucepan flew close by it, and very nearly carried it off. + +`If everybody minded their own business,' the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, `the world would go round a deal faster than it does.' + +`Which would NOT be an advantage,' said Alice, who felt very glad to get an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. `Just think of what work it would make with the day and night! You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis--' + +`Talking of axes,' said the Duchess, `chop off her head!' + +Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant to take the hint; but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and seemed not to be listening, so she went on again: `Twenty-four hours, I THINK; or is it twelve? I--' + +`Oh, don't bother ME,' said the Duchess; `I never could abide figures!' And with that she began nursing her child again, singing a sort of lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a violent shake at the end of every line: + +poem{ + + `Speak roughly to your little boy, + And beat him when he sneezes: + He only does it to annoy, + Because he knows it teases.' + + CHORUS. + + (In which the cook and the baby joined):-- + + `Wow! wow! wow!' + +}poem + +While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so, that Alice could hardly hear the words:-- + +poem{ + + `I speak severely to my boy, + I beat him when he sneezes; + For he can thoroughly enjoy + The pepper when he pleases!' + + CHORUS. + + `Wow! wow! wow!' + +}poem + +`Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!' the Duchess said to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. `I must go and get ready to play croquet with the Queen,' and she hurried out of the room. The cook threw a frying-pan after her as she went out, but it just missed her. + +Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-shaped little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all directions, `just like a star-fish,' thought Alice. The poor little thing was snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and kept doubling itself up and straightening itself out again, so that altogether, for the first minute or two, it was as much as she could do to hold it. + +As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it, (which was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself,) she carried it out into the open air. `IF I don't take this child away with me,' thought Alice, `they're sure to kill it in a day or two: wouldn't it be murder to leave it behind?' She said the last words out loud, and the little thing grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this time). `Don't grunt,' said Alice; `that's not at all a proper way of expressing yourself.' + +The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face to see what was the matter with it. There could be no doubt that it had a VERY turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose; also its eyes were getting extremely small for a baby: altogether Alice did not like the look of the thing at all. `But perhaps it was only sobbing,' she thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if there were any tears. + +No, there were no tears. `If you're going to turn into a pig, my dear,' said Alice, seriously, `I'll have nothing more to do with you. Mind now!' The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was impossible to say which), and they went on for some while in silence. + +Alice was just beginning to think to herself, `Now, what am I to do with this creature when I get it home?' when it grunted again, so violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time there could be NO mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it further. + +So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. `If it had grown up,' she said to herself, `it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.' And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, `if one only knew the right way to change them--' when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off. + +The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good- natured, she thought: still it had VERY long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect. + +`Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' + +`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat. + +`I don't much care where--' said Alice. + +`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. + +`--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation. + +`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.' + +Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?' + +`In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.' + +`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked. + +`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.' + +`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice. + +`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.' + +Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on `And how do you know that you're mad?' + +`To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not mad. You grant that?' + +`I suppose so,' said Alice. + +`Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.' + +`I call it purring, not growling,' said Alice. + +`Call it what you like,' said the Cat. `Do you play croquet with the Queen to-day?' + +`I should like it very much,' said Alice, `but I haven't been invited yet.' + +`You'll see me there,' said the Cat, and vanished. + +Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so used to queer things happening. While she was looking at the place where it had been, it suddenly appeared again. + +`By-the-bye, what became of the baby?' said the Cat. `I'd nearly forgotten to ask.' + +`It turned into a pig,' Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back in a natural way. + +`I thought it would,' said the Cat, and vanished again. + +Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not appear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the direction in which the March Hare was said to live. `I've seen hatters before,' she said to herself; `the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad--at least not so mad as it was in March.' As she said this, she looked up, and there was the Cat again, sitting on a branch of a tree. + +`Did you say pig, or fig?' said the Cat. + +`I said pig,' replied Alice; `and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.' + +`All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone. + +`Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice; `but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!' + +She had not gone much farther before she came in sight of the house of the March Hare: she thought it must be the right house, because the chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur. It was so large a house, that she did not like to go nearer till she had nibbled some more of the lefthand bit of mushroom, and raised herself to about two feet high: even then she walked up towards it rather timidly, saying to herself `Suppose it should be raving mad after all! I almost wish I'd gone to see the Hatter instead!' + +CHAPTER VII - A Mad Tea-Party + +There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. `Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,' thought Alice; `only, as it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind.' + +The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: `No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. `There's PLENTY of room!' said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table. + +`Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. + +Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. `I don't see any wine,' she remarked. + +`There isn't any,' said the March Hare. + +`Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' said Alice angrily. + +`It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited,' said the March Hare. + +`I didn't know it was YOUR table,' said Alice; `it's laid for a great many more than three.' + +`Your hair wants cutting,' said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech. + +`You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Alice said with some severity; `it's very rude.' + +The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he SAID was, `Why is a raven like a writing-desk?' + +`Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. `I'm glad they've begun asking riddles.--I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud. + +`Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March Hare. + +`Exactly so,' said Alice. + +`Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on. + +`I do,' Alice hastily replied; `at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know.' + +`Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. `You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!' + +`You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, `that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!' + +`You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, `that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!' + +`It IS the same thing with you,' said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much. + +The Hatter was the first to break the silence. `What day of the month is it?' he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear. + +Alice considered a little, and then said `The fourth.' + +`Two days wrong!' sighed the Hatter. `I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!' he added looking angrily at the March Hare. + +`It was the BEST butter,' the March Hare meekly replied. + +`Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,' the Hatter grumbled: `you shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife.' + +The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, `It was the BEST butter, you know.' + +Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. `What a funny watch!' she remarked. `It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is!' + +`Why should it?' muttered the Hatter. `Does YOUR watch tell you what year it is?' + +`Of course not,' Alice replied very readily: `but that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together.' + +`Which is just the case with MINE,' said the Hatter. + +Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. `I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could. + +`The Dormouse is asleep again,' said the Hatter, and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose. + +The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, `Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.' + +`Have you guessed the riddle yet?' the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. + +`No, I give it up,' Alice replied: `what's the answer?' + +`I haven't the slightest idea,' said the Hatter. + +`Nor I,' said the March Hare. + +Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.' + +`If you knew Time as well as I do,' said the Hatter, `you wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM.' + +`I don't know what you mean,' said Alice. + +`Of course you don't!' the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. `I dare say you never even spoke to Time!' + +`Perhaps not,' Alice cautiously replied: `but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.' + +`Ah! that accounts for it,' said the Hatter. `He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!' + +(`I only wish it was,' the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.) + +`That would be grand, certainly,' said Alice thoughtfully: `but then--I shouldn't be hungry for it, you know.' + +`Not at first, perhaps,' said the Hatter: `but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.' + +`Is that the way YOU manage?' Alice asked. + +The Hatter shook his head mournfully. `Not I!' he replied. `We quarrelled last March--just before HE went mad, you know--' (pointing with his tea spoon at the March Hare,) `--it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing + +poem{ + + "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! + How I wonder what you're at!" + +}poem + +You know the song, perhaps?' + +`I've heard something like it,' said Alice. + +`It goes on, you know,' the Hatter continued, `in this way:-- + +poem{ + + "Up above the world you fly, + Like a tea-tray in the sky. + Twinkle, twinkle--"' + +}poem + +Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep `Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle--' and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop. + +`Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,' said the Hatter, `when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, "He's murdering the time! Off with his head!"' + +`How dreadfully savage!' exclaimed Alice. + +`And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, `he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.' + +A bright idea came into Alice's head. `Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?' she asked. + +`Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a sigh: `it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.' + +`Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice. + +`Exactly so,' said the Hatter: `as the things get used up.' + +`But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice ventured to ask. + +`Suppose we change the subject,' the March Hare interrupted, yawning. `I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.' + +`I'm afraid I don't know one,' said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal. + +`Then the Dormouse shall!' they both cried. `Wake up, Dormouse!' And they pinched it on both sides at once. + +The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. `I wasn't asleep,' he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: `I heard every word you fellows were saying.' + +`Tell us a story!' said the March Hare. + +`Yes, please do!' pleaded Alice. + +`And be quick about it,' added the Hatter, `or you'll be asleep again before it's done.' + +`Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; `and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well--' + +`What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking. + +`They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two. + +`They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently remarked; `they'd have been ill.' + +`So they were,' said the Dormouse; `VERY ill.' + +Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: `But why did they live at the bottom of a well?' + +`Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. + +`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.' + +`You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.' + +`Nobody asked YOUR opinion,' said Alice. + +`Who's making personal remarks now?' the Hatter asked triumphantly. + +Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. `Why did they live at the bottom of a well?' + +The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, `It was a treacle-well.' + +`There's no such thing!' Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went `Sh! sh!' and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, `If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself.' + +`No, please go on!' Alice said very humbly; `I won't interrupt again. I dare say there may be ONE.' + +`One, indeed!' said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. `And so these three little sisters--they were learning to draw, you know--' + +`What did they draw?' said Alice, quite forgetting her promise. + +`Treacle,' said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time. + +`I want a clean cup,' interrupted the Hatter: `let's all move one place on.' + +He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare moved into the Dormouse's place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate. + +Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: `But I don't understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?' + +`You can draw water out of a water-well,' said the Hatter; `so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well--eh, stupid?' + +`But they were IN the well,' Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark. + +`Of course they were', said the Dormouse; `--well in.' + +This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it. + +`They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; `and they drew all manner of things--everything that begins with an M--' + +`Why with an M?' said Alice. + +`Why not?' said the March Hare. + +Alice was silent. + +The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: `--that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness-- you know you say things are "much of a muchness"--did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?' + +`Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very much confused, `I don't think--' + +`Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Hatter. + +This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. + +`At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!' + +Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. `That's very curious!' she thought. `But everything's curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.' And in she went. + +Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. `Now, I'll manage better this time,' she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and THEN--she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains. + +CHAPTER VIII - The Queen's Croquet-Ground + +A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red. Alice thought this a very curious thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them she heard one of them say, `Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing paint over me like that!' + +`I couldn't help it,' said Five, in a sulky tone; `Seven jogged my elbow.' + +On which Seven looked up and said, `That's right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!' + +`YOU'D better not talk!' said Five. `I heard the Queen say only yesterday you deserved to be beheaded!' + +`What for?' said the one who had spoken first. + +`That's none of YOUR business, Two!' said Seven. + +`Yes, it IS his business!' said Five, `and I'll tell him--it was for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions.' + +Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun `Well, of all the unjust things--' when his eye chanced to fall upon Alice, as she stood watching them, and he checked himself suddenly: the others looked round also, and all of them bowed low. + +`Would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, `why you are painting those roses?' + +Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, `Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a RED rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore she comes, to--' At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called out `The Queen! The Queen!' and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen. + +First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these were all shaped like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, with their hands and feet at the corners: next the ten courtiers; these were ornamented all over with diamonds, and walked two and two, as the soldiers did. After these came the royal children; there were ten of them, and the little dears came jumping merrily along hand in hand, in couples: they were all ornamented with hearts. Next came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and among them Alice recognised the White Rabbit: it was talking in a hurried nervous manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went by without noticing her. Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying the King's crown on a crimson velvet cushion; and, last of all this grand procession, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS. + +Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on her face like the three gardeners, but she could not remember ever having heard of such a rule at processions; `and besides, what would be the use of a procession,' thought she, `if people had all to lie down upon their faces, so that they couldn't see it?' So she stood still where she was, and waited. + +When the procession came opposite to Alice, they all stopped and looked at her, and the Queen said severely `Who is this?' She said it to the Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply. + +`Idiot!' said the Queen, tossing her head impatiently; and, turning to Alice, she went on, `What's your name, child?' + +`My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,' said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, `Why, they're only a pack of cards, after all. I needn't be afraid of them!' + +`And who are THESE?' said the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners who were lying round the rosetree; for, you see, as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers, or three of her own children. + +`How should I know?' said Alice, surprised at her own courage. `It's no business of MINE.' + +The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, screamed `Off with her head! Off--' + +`Nonsense!' said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent. + +The King laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said `Consider, my dear: she is only a child!' + +The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said to the Knave `Turn them over!' + +The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot. + +`Get up!' said the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the three gardeners instantly jumped up, and began bowing to the King, the Queen, the royal children, and everybody else. + +`Leave off that!' screamed the Queen. `You make me giddy.' And then, turning to the rose-tree, she went on, `What HAVE you been doing here?' + +`May it please your Majesty,' said Two, in a very humble tone, going down on one knee as he spoke, `we were trying--' + +`I see!' said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the roses. `Off with their heads!' and the procession moved on, three of the soldiers remaining behind to execute the unfortunate gardeners, who ran to Alice for protection. + +`You shan't be beheaded!' said Alice, and she put them into a large flower-pot that stood near. The three soldiers wandered about for a minute or two, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the others. + +`Are their heads off?' shouted the Queen. + +`Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty!' the soldiers shouted in reply. + +`That's right!' shouted the Queen. `Can you play croquet?' + +The soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice, as the question was evidently meant for her. + +`Yes!' shouted Alice. + +`Come on, then!' roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession, wondering very much what would happen next. + +`It's--it's a very fine day!' said a timid voice at her side. She was walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping anxiously into her face. + +`Very,' said Alice: `--where's the Duchess?' + +`Hush! Hush!' said the Rabbit in a low, hurried tone. He looked anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke, and then raised himself upon tiptoe, put his mouth close to her ear, and whispered `She's under sentence of execution.' + +`What for?' said Alice. + +`Did you say "What a pity!"?' the Rabbit asked. + +`No, I didn't,' said Alice: `I don't think it's at all a pity. I said "What for?"' + +`She boxed the Queen's ears--' the Rabbit began. Alice gave a little scream of laughter. `Oh, hush!' the Rabbit whispered in a frightened tone. `The Queen will hear you! You see, she came rather late, and the Queen said--' + +`Get to your places!' shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began. Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches. + +The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it WOULD twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed. + +The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!' or `Off with her head!' about once in a minute. + +Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, `and then,' thought she, `what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there's any one left alive!' + +She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself `It's the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.' + +`How are you getting on?' said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with. + +Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. `It's no use speaking to it,' she thought, `till its ears have come, or at least one of them.' In another minute the whole head appeared, and then Alice put down her flamingo, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared. + +`I don't think they play at all fairly,' Alice began, in rather a complaining tone, `and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak--and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them--and you've no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there's the arch I've got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground--and I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine coming!' + +`How do you like the Queen?' said the Cat in a low voice. + +`Not at all,' said Alice: `she's so extremely--' Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on, `--likely to win, that it's hardly worth while finishing the game.' + +The Queen smiled and passed on. + +`Who ARE you talking to?' said the King, going up to Alice, and looking at the Cat's head with great curiosity. + +`It's a friend of mine--a Cheshire Cat,' said Alice: `allow me to introduce it.' + +`I don't like the look of it at all,' said the King: `however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.' + +`I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked. + +`Don't be impertinent,' said the King, `and don't look at me like that!' He got behind Alice as he spoke. + +`A cat may look at a king,' said Alice. `I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where.' + +`Well, it must be removed,' said the King very decidedly, and he called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, `My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!' + +The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. `Off with his head!' she said, without even looking round. + +`I'll fetch the executioner myself,' said the King eagerly, and he hurried off. + +Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game was going on, as she heard the Queen's voice in the distance, screaming with passion. She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her hedgehog. + +The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree. + +By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: `but it doesn't matter much,' thought Alice, `as all the arches are gone from this side of the ground.' So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend. + +When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable. + +The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said. + +The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn't going to begin at HIS time of life. + +The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense. + +The Queen's argument was, that if something wasn't done about it in less than no time she'd have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.) + +Alice could think of nothing else to say but `It belongs to the Duchess: you'd better ask HER about it.' + +`She's in prison,' the Queen said to the executioner: `fetch her here.' And the executioner went off like an arrow. + +The Cat's head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game. + +CHAPTER IX - The Mock Turtle's Story + +`You can't think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old thing!' said the Duchess, as she tucked her arm affectionately into Alice's, and they walked off together. + +Alice was very glad to find her in such a pleasant temper, and thought to herself that perhaps it was only the pepper that had made her so savage when they met in the kitchen. + +`When I'M a Duchess,' she said to herself, (not in a very hopeful tone though), `I won't have any pepper in my kitchen AT ALL. Soup does very well without--Maybe it's always pepper that makes people hot-tempered,' she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new kind of rule, `and vinegar that makes them sour--and camomile that makes them bitter--and--and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn't be so stingy about it, you know--' + +She had quite forgotten the Duchess by this time, and was a little startled when she heard her voice close to her ear. `You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.' + +`Perhaps it hasn't one,' Alice ventured to remark. + +`Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess. `Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.' And she squeezed herself up closer to Alice's side as she spoke. + +Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the Duchess was VERY ugly; and secondly, because she was exactly the right height to rest her chin upon Alice's shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin. However, she did not like to be rude, so she bore it as well as she could. + +`The game's going on rather better now,' she said, by way of keeping up the conversation a little. + +`'Tis so,' said the Duchess: `and the moral of that is--"Oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go round!"' + +`Somebody said,' Alice whispered, `that it's done by everybody minding their own business!' + +`Ah, well! It means much the same thing,' said the Duchess, digging her sharp little chin into Alice's shoulder as she added, `and the moral of THAT is--"Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves."' + +`How fond she is of finding morals in things!' Alice thought to herself. + +`I dare say you're wondering why I don't put my arm round your waist,' the Duchess said after a pause: `the reason is, that I'm doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?' + +`HE might bite,' Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious to have the experiment tried. + +`Very true,' said the Duchess: `flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is--"Birds of a feather flock together."' + +`Only mustard isn't a bird,' Alice remarked. + +`Right, as usual,' said the Duchess: `what a clear way you have of putting things!' + +`It's a mineral, I THINK,' said Alice. + +`Of course it is,' said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said; `there's a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is--"The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours."' + +`Oh, I know!' exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last remark, `it's a vegetable. It doesn't look like one, but it is.' + +`I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess; `and the moral of that is--"Be what you would seem to be"--or if you'd like it put more simply--"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."' + +`I think I should understand that better,' Alice said very politely, `if I had it written down: but I can't quite follow it as you say it.' + +`That's nothing to what I could say if I chose,' the Duchess replied, in a pleased tone. + +`Pray don't trouble yourself to say it any longer than that,' said Alice. + +`Oh, don't talk about trouble!' said the Duchess. `I make you a present of everything I've said as yet.' + +`A cheap sort of present!' thought Alice. `I'm glad they don't give birthday presents like that!' But she did not venture to say it out loud. + +`Thinking again?' the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin. + +`I've a right to think,' said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried. + +`Just about as much right,' said the Duchess, `as pigs have to fly; and the m--' + +But here, to Alice's great surprise, the Duchess's voice died away, even in the middle of her favourite word `moral,' and the arm that was linked into hers began to tremble. Alice looked up, and there stood the Queen in front of them, with her arms folded, frowning like a thunderstorm. + +`A fine day, your Majesty!' the Duchess began in a low, weak voice. + +`Now, I give you fair warning,' shouted the Queen, stamping on the ground as she spoke; `either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time! Take your choice!' + +The Duchess took her choice, and was gone in a moment. + +`Let's go on with the game,' the Queen said to Alice; and Alice was too much frightened to say a word, but slowly followed her back to the croquet-ground. + +The other guests had taken advantage of the Queen's absence, and were resting in the shade: however, the moment they saw her, they hurried back to the game, the Queen merely remarking that a moment's delay would cost them their lives. + +All the time they were playing the Queen never left off quarrelling with the other players, and shouting `Off with his head!' or `Off with her head!' Those whom she sentenced were taken into custody by the soldiers, who of course had to leave off being arches to do this, so that by the end of half an hour or so there were no arches left, and all the players, except the King, the Queen, and Alice, were in custody and under sentence of execution. + +Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to Alice, `Have you seen the Mock Turtle yet?' + +`No,' said Alice. `I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is.' + +`It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from,' said the Queen. + +`I never saw one, or heard of one,' said Alice. + +`Come on, then,' said the Queen, `and he shall tell you his history,' + +As they walked off together, Alice heard the King say in a low voice, to the company generally, `You are all pardoned.' `Come, THAT'S a good thing!' she said to herself, for she had felt quite unhappy at the number of executions the Queen had ordered. + +They very soon came upon a Gryphon, lying fast asleep in the sun. (IF you don't know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture.) `Up, lazy thing!' said the Queen, `and take this young lady to see the Mock Turtle, and to hear his history. I must go back and see after some executions I have ordered'; and she walked off, leaving Alice alone with the Gryphon. Alice did not quite like the look of the creature, but on the whole she thought it would be quite as safe to stay with it as to go after that savage Queen: so she waited. + +The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes: then it watched the Queen till she was out of sight: then it chuckled. `What fun!' said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice. + +`What IS the fun?' said Alice. + +`Why, SHE,' said the Gryphon. `It's all her fancy, that: they never executes nobody, you know. Come on!' + +`Everybody says "come on!" here,' thought Alice, as she went slowly after it: `I never was so ordered about in all my life, never!' + +They had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and, as they came nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart would break. She pitied him deeply. `What is his sorrow?' she asked the Gryphon, and the Gryphon answered, very nearly in the same words as before, `It's all his fancy, that: he hasn't got no sorrow, you know. Come on!' + +So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them with large eyes full of tears, but said nothing. + +`This here young lady,' said the Gryphon, `she wants for to know your history, she do.' + +`I'll tell it her,' said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone: `sit down, both of you, and don't speak a word till I've finished.' + +So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice thought to herself, `I don't see how he can EVEN finish, if he doesn't begin.' But she waited patiently. + +`Once,' said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, `I was a real Turtle.' + +These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by an occasional exclamation of `Hjckrrh!' from the Gryphon, and the constant heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle. Alice was very nearly getting up and saying, `Thank you, sir, for your interesting story,' but she could not help thinking there MUST be more to come, so she sat still and said nothing. + +`When we were little,' the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, `we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--' + +`Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked. + +`We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily: `really you are very dull!' + +`You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, `Drive on, old fellow! Don't be all day about it!' and he went on in these words: + +`Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe it--' + +`I never said I didn't!' interrupted Alice. + +`You did,' said the Mock Turtle. + +`Hold your tongue!' added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again. The Mock Turtle went on. + +`We had the best of educations--in fact, we went to school every day--' + +`I'VE been to a day-school, too,' said Alice; `you needn't be so proud as all that.' + +`With extras?' asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously. + +`Yes,' said Alice, `we learned French and music.' + +`And washing?' said the Mock Turtle. + +`Certainly not!' said Alice indignantly. + +`Ah! then yours wasn't a really good school,' said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. `Now at OURS they had at the end of the bill, "French, music, AND WASHING--extra."' + +`You couldn't have wanted it much,' said Alice; `living at the bottom of the sea.' + +`I couldn't afford to learn it.' said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. `I only took the regular course.' + +`What was that?' inquired Alice. + +`Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied; `and then the different branches of Arithmetic-- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.' + +`I never heard of "Uglification,"' Alice ventured to say. `What is it?' + +The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. `What! Never heard of uglifying!' it exclaimed. `You know what to beautify is, I suppose?' + +`Yes,' said Alice doubtfully: `it means--to--make--anything--prettier.' + +`Well, then,' the Gryphon went on, `if you don't know what to uglify is, you ARE a simpleton.' + +Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said `What else had you to learn?' + +`Well, there was Mystery,' the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, `--Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling--the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: HE taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.' + +`What was THAT like?' said Alice. + +`Well, I can't show it you myself,' the Mock Turtle said: `I'm too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.' + +`Hadn't time,' said the Gryphon: `I went to the Classics master, though. He was an old crab, HE was.' + +`I never went to him,' the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: `he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.' + +`So he did, so he did,' said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws. + +`And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. + +`Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: `nine the next, and so on.' + +`What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice. + +`That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.' + +This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. `Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?' + +`Of course it was,' said the Mock Turtle. + +`And how did you manage on the twelfth?' Alice went on eagerly. + +`That's enough about lessons,' the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: `tell her something about the games now.' + +CHAPTER X - The Lobster Quadrille + +The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and drew the back of one flapper across his eyes. He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for a minute or two sobs choked his voice. `Same as if he had a bone in his throat,' said the Gryphon: and it set to work shaking him and punching him in the back. At last the Mock Turtle recovered his voice, and, with tears running down his cheeks, he went on again:-- + +`You may not have lived much under the sea--' (`I haven't,' said Alice)-- `and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster--' (Alice began to say `I once tasted--' but checked herself hastily, and said `No, never') `--so you can have no idea what a delightful thing a Lobster Quadrille is!' + +`No, indeed,' said Alice. `What sort of a dance is it?' + +`Why,' said the Gryphon, `you first form into a line along the sea-shore--' + +`Two lines!' cried the Mock Turtle. `Seals, turtles, salmon, and so on; then, when you've cleared all the jelly-fish out of the way--' + +`THAT generally takes some time,' interrupted the Gryphon. + +`--you advance twice--' + +`Each with a lobster as a partner!' cried the Gryphon. + +`Of course,' the Mock Turtle said: `advance twice, set to partners--' + +`--change lobsters, and retire in same order,' continued the Gryphon. + +`Then, you know,' the Mock Turtle went on, `you throw the--' + +`The lobsters!' shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air. + +`--as far out to sea as you can--' + +`Swim after them!' screamed the Gryphon. + +`Turn a somersault in the sea!' cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly about. + +`Change lobsters again!' yelled the Gryphon at the top of its voice. + +`Back to land again, and that's all the first figure,' said the Mock Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice; and the two creatures, who had been jumping about like mad things all this time, sat down again very sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice. + +`It must be a very pretty dance,' said Alice timidly. + +`Would you like to see a little of it?' said the Mock Turtle. + +`Very much indeed,' said Alice. + +`Come, let's try the first figure!' said the Mock Turtle to the Gryphon. `We can do without lobsters, you know. Which shall sing?' + +`Oh, YOU sing,' said the Gryphon. `I've forgotten the words.' + +So they began solemnly dancing round and round Alice, every now and then treading on her toes when they passed too close, and waving their forepaws to mark the time, while the Mock Turtle sang this, very slowly and sadly:-- + +poem{ + +`"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail. +"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my + tail. +See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! +They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the +dance? + +Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the +dance? +Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the +dance? + +"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be +When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to + sea!" +But the snail replied "Too far, too far!" and gave a look + askance-- +Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the + dance. + Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join + the dance. + Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join + the dance. + +`"What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied. +"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. +The further off from England the nearer is to France-- +Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance. + + Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the + dance? + Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the + dance?"' + +}poem + +`Thank you, it's a very interesting dance to watch,' said Alice, feeling very glad that it was over at last: `and I do so like that curious song about the whiting!' + +`Oh, as to the whiting,' said the Mock Turtle, `they--you've seen them, of course?' + +`Yes,' said Alice, `I've often seen them at dinn--' she checked herself hastily. + +`I don't know where Dinn may be,' said the Mock Turtle, `but if you've seen them so often, of course you know what they're like.' + +`I believe so,' Alice replied thoughtfully. `They have their tails in their mouths--and they're all over crumbs.' + +`You're wrong about the crumbs,' said the Mock Turtle: `crumbs would all wash off in the sea. But they HAVE their tails in their mouths; and the reason is--' here the Mock Turtle yawned and shut his eyes.--`Tell her about the reason and all that,' he said to the Gryphon. + +`The reason is,' said the Gryphon, `that they WOULD go with the lobsters to the dance. So they got thrown out to sea. So they had to fall a long way. So they got their tails fast in their mouths. So they couldn't get them out again. That's all.' + +`Thank you,' said Alice, `it's very interesting. I never knew so much about a whiting before.' + +`I can tell you more than that, if you like,' said the Gryphon. `Do you know why it's called a whiting?' + +`I never thought about it,' said Alice. `Why?' + +`IT DOES THE BOOTS AND SHOES.' the Gryphon replied very solemnly. + +Alice was thoroughly puzzled. `Does the boots and shoes!' she repeated in a wondering tone. + +`Why, what are YOUR shoes done with?' said the Gryphon. `I mean, what makes them so shiny?' + +Alice looked down at them, and considered a little before she gave her answer. `They're done with blacking, I believe.' + +`Boots and shoes under the sea,' the Gryphon went on in a deep voice, `are done with a whiting. Now you know.' + +`And what are they made of?' Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity. + +`Soles and eels, of course,' the Gryphon replied rather impatiently: `any shrimp could have told you that.' + +`If I'd been the whiting,' said Alice, whose thoughts were still running on the song, `I'd have said to the porpoise, "Keep back, please: we don't want YOU with us!"' + +`They were obliged to have him with them,' the Mock Turtle said: `no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.' + +`Wouldn't it really?' said Alice in a tone of great surprise. + +`Of course not,' said the Mock Turtle: `why, if a fish came to ME, and told me he was going a journey, I should say "With what porpoise?"' + +`Don't you mean "purpose"?' said Alice. + +`I mean what I say,' the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone. And the Gryphon added `Come, let's hear some of YOUR adventures.' + +`I could tell you my adventures--beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly: `but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.' + +`Explain all that,' said the Mock Turtle. + +`No, no! The adventures first,' said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: `explanations take such a dreadful time.' + +So Alice began telling them her adventures from the time when she first saw the White Rabbit. She was a little nervous about it just at first, the two creatures got so close to her, one on each side, and opened their eyes and mouths so VERY wide, but she gained courage as she went on. Her listeners were perfectly quiet till she got to the part about her repeating `YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM,' to the Caterpillar, and the words all coming different, and then the Mock Turtle drew a long breath, and said `That's very curious.' + +`It's all about as curious as it can be,' said the Gryphon. + +`It all came different!' the Mock Turtle repeated thoughtfully. `I should like to hear her try and repeat something now. Tell her to begin.' He looked at the Gryphon as if he thought it had some kind of authority over Alice. + +`Stand up and repeat "'TIS THE VOICE OF THE SLUGGARD,"' said the Gryphon. + +`How the creatures order one about, and make one repeat lessons!' thought Alice; `I might as well be at school at once.' However, she got up, and began to repeat it, but her head was so full of the Lobster Quadrille, that she hardly knew what she was saying, and the words came very queer indeed:-- + +poem{ + + `'Tis the voice of the Lobster; I heard him declare, + "You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair." + As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose + Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.' + + [later editions continued as follows + When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, + And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark, + But, when the tide rises and sharks are around, + His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.] + +}poem + +`That's different from what I used to say when I was a child,' said the Gryphon. + +`Well, I never heard it before,' said the Mock Turtle; `but it sounds uncommon nonsense.' + +Alice said nothing; she had sat down with her face in her hands, wondering if anything would EVER happen in a natural way again. + +`I should like to have it explained,' said the Mock Turtle. + +`She can't explain it,' said the Gryphon hastily. `Go on with the next verse.' + +`But about his toes?' the Mock Turtle persisted. `How COULD he turn them out with his nose, you know?' + +`It's the first position in dancing.' Alice said; but was dreadfully puzzled by the whole thing, and longed to change the subject. + +`Go on with the next verse,' the Gryphon repeated impatiently: `it begins "I passed by his garden."' + +Alice did not dare to disobey, though she felt sure it would all come wrong, and she went on in a trembling voice:-- + +poem{ + + `I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye, + How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie--' + + [later editions continued as follows + The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat, + While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat. + When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon, + Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon: + While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl, + And concluded the banquet--] + +}poem + +`What IS the use of repeating all that stuff,' the Mock Turtle interrupted, `if you don't explain it as you go on? It's by far the most confusing thing I ever heard!' + +`Yes, I think you'd better leave off,' said the Gryphon: and Alice was only too glad to do so. + +`Shall we try another figure of the Lobster Quadrille?' the Gryphon went on. `Or would you like the Mock Turtle to sing you a song?' + +`Oh, a song, please, if the Mock Turtle would be so kind,' Alice replied, so eagerly that the Gryphon said, in a rather offended tone, `Hm! No accounting for tastes! Sing her "Turtle Soup," will you, old fellow?' + +The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choked with sobs, to sing this:-- + +poem{ + + `Beautiful Soup, so rich and green, + Waiting in a hot tureen! + Who for such dainties would not stoop? + Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup! + Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup! + Beau--ootiful Soo--oop! + Beau--ootiful Soo--oop! + Soo--oop of the e--e--evening, + Beautiful, beautiful Soup! + + `Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish, + Game, or any other dish? + Who would not give all else for two + Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup? + Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup? + Beau--ootiful Soo--oop! + Beau--ootiful Soo--oop! + Soo--oop of the e--e--evening, + Beautiful, beauti--FUL SOUP!' + +}poem + +`Chorus again!' cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle had just begun to repeat it, when a cry of `The trial's beginning!' was heard in the distance. + +`Come on!' cried the Gryphon, and, taking Alice by the hand, it hurried off, without waiting for the end of the song. + +`What trial is it?' Alice panted as she ran; but the Gryphon only answered `Come on!' and ran the faster, while more and more faintly came, carried on the breeze that followed them, the melancholy words:-- + +poem{ + + `Soo--oop of the e--e--evening, + Beautiful, beautiful Soup!' + +}poem + +CHAPTER XI - Who Stole the Tarts? + +The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them--all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it: they looked so good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look at them--`I wish they'd get the trial done,' she thought, `and hand round the refreshments!' But there seemed to be no chance of this, so she began looking at everything about her, to pass away the time. + +Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read about them in books, and she was quite pleased to find that she knew the name of nearly everything there. `That's the judge,' she said to herself, `because of his great wig.' + +The judge, by the way, was the King; and as he wore his crown over the wig, (look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it,) he did not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming. + +`And that's the jury-box,' thought Alice, `and those twelve creatures,' (she was obliged to say `creatures,' you see, because some of them were animals, and some were birds,) `I suppose they are the jurors.' She said this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it: for she thought, and rightly too, that very few little girls of her age knew the meaning of it at all. However, `jury-men' would have done just as well. + +The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. `What are they doing?' Alice whispered to the Gryphon. `They can't have anything to put down yet, before the trial's begun.' + +`They're putting down their names,' the Gryphon whispered in reply, `for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.' + +`Stupid things!' Alice began in a loud, indignant voice, but she stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out, `Silence in the court!' and the King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round, to make out who was talking. + +Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their shoulders, that all the jurors were writing down `stupid things!' on their slates, and she could even make out that one of them didn't know how to spell `stupid,' and that he had to ask his neighbour to tell him. `A nice muddle their slates'll be in before the trial's over!' thought Alice. + +One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This of course, Alice could not stand, and she went round the court and got behind him, and very soon found an opportunity of taking it away. She did it so quickly that the poor little juror (it was Bill, the Lizard) could not make out at all what had become of it; so, after hunting all about for it, he was obliged to write with one finger for the rest of the day; and this was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate. + +`Herald, read the accusation!' said the King. + +On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows:-- + +poem{ + + `The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, + All on a summer day: + The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, + And took them quite away!' + +}poem + +`Consider your verdict,' the King said to the jury. + +`Not yet, not yet!' the Rabbit hastily interrupted. `There's a great deal to come before that!' + +`Call the first witness,' said the King; and the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and called out, `First witness!' + +The first witness was the Hatter. He came in with a teacup in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other. `I beg pardon, your Majesty,' he began, `for bringing these in: but I hadn't quite finished my tea when I was sent for.' + +`You ought to have finished,' said the King. `When did you begin?' + +The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into the court, arm-in-arm with the Dormouse. `Fourteenth of March, I think it was,' he said. + +`Fifteenth,' said the March Hare. + +`Sixteenth,' added the Dormouse. + +`Write that down,' the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence. + +`Take off your hat,' the King said to the Hatter. + +`It isn't mine,' said the Hatter. + +`Stolen!' the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made a memorandum of the fact. + +`I keep them to sell,' the Hatter added as an explanation; `I've none of my own. I'm a hatter.' + +Here the Queen put on her spectacles, and began staring at the Hatter, who turned pale and fidgeted. + +`Give your evidence,' said the King; `and don't be nervous, or I'll have you executed on the spot.' + +This did not seem to encourage the witness at all: he kept shifting from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the Queen, and in his confusion he bit a large piece out of his teacup instead of the bread-and-butter. + +Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation, which puzzled her a good deal until she made out what it was: she was beginning to grow larger again, and she thought at first she would get up and leave the court; but on second thoughts she decided to remain where she was as long as there was room for her. + +`I wish you wouldn't squeeze so.' said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. `I can hardly breathe.' + +`I can't help it,' said Alice very meekly: `I'm growing.' + +`You've no right to grow here,' said the Dormouse. + +`Don't talk nonsense,' said Alice more boldly: `you know you're growing too.' + +`Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace,' said the Dormouse: `not in that ridiculous fashion.' And he got up very sulkily and crossed over to the other side of the court. + +All this time the Queen had never left off staring at the Hatter, and, just as the Dormouse crossed the court, she said to one of the officers of the court, `Bring me the list of the singers in the last concert!' on which the wretched Hatter trembled so, that he shook both his shoes off. + +`Give your evidence,' the King repeated angrily, `or I'll have you executed, whether you're nervous or not.' + +`I'm a poor man, your Majesty,' the Hatter began, in a trembling voice, `--and I hadn't begun my tea--not above a week or so--and what with the bread-and-butter getting so thin--and the twinkling of the tea--' + +`The twinkling of the what?' said the King. + +`It began with the tea,' the Hatter replied. + +`Of course twinkling begins with a T!' said the King sharply. `Do you take me for a dunce? Go on!' + +`I'm a poor man,' the Hatter went on, `and most things twinkled after that--only the March Hare said--' + +`I didn't!' the March Hare interrupted in a great hurry. + +`You did!' said the Hatter. + +`I deny it!' said the March Hare. + +`He denies it,' said the King: `leave out that part.' + +`Well, at any rate, the Dormouse said--' the Hatter went on, looking anxiously round to see if he would deny it too: but the Dormouse denied nothing, being fast asleep. + +`After that,' continued the Hatter, `I cut some more bread- and-butter--' + +`But what did the Dormouse say?' one of the jury asked. + +`That I can't remember,' said the Hatter. + +`You MUST remember,' remarked the King, `or I'll have you executed.' + +The miserable Hatter dropped his teacup and bread-and-butter, and went down on one knee. `I'm a poor man, your Majesty,' he began. + +`You're a very poor speaker,' said the King. + +Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court. (As that is rather a hard word, I will just explain to you how it was done. They had a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth with strings: into this they slipped the guinea-pig, head first, and then sat upon it.) + +`I'm glad I've seen that done,' thought Alice. `I've so often read in the newspapers, at the end of trials, "There was some attempts at applause, which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court," and I never understood what it meant till now.' + +`If that's all you know about it, you may stand down,' continued the King. + +`I can't go no lower,' said the Hatter: `I'm on the floor, as it is.' + +`Then you may SIT down,' the King replied. + +Here the other guinea-pig cheered, and was suppressed. + +`Come, that finished the guinea-pigs!' thought Alice. `Now we shall get on better.' + +`I'd rather finish my tea,' said the Hatter, with an anxious look at the Queen, who was reading the list of singers. + +`You may go,' said the King, and the Hatter hurriedly left the court, without even waiting to put his shoes on. + +`--and just take his head off outside,' the Queen added to one of the officers: but the Hatter was out of sight before the officer could get to the door. + +`Call the next witness!' said the King. + +The next witness was the Duchess's cook. She carried the pepper-box in her hand, and Alice guessed who it was, even before she got into the court, by the way the people near the door began sneezing all at once. + +`Give your evidence,' said the King. + +`Shan't,' said the cook. + +The King looked anxiously at the White Rabbit, who said in a low voice, `Your Majesty must cross-examine THIS witness.' + +`Well, if I must, I must,' the King said, with a melancholy air, and, after folding his arms and frowning at the cook till his eyes were nearly out of sight, he said in a deep voice, `What are tarts made of?' + +`Pepper, mostly,' said the cook. + +`Treacle,' said a sleepy voice behind her. + +`Collar that Dormouse,' the Queen shrieked out. `Behead that Dormouse! Turn that Dormouse out of court! Suppress him! Pinch him! Off with his whiskers!' + +For some minutes the whole court was in confusion, getting the Dormouse turned out, and, by the time they had settled down again, the cook had disappeared. + +`Never mind!' said the King, with an air of great relief. `Call the next witness.' And he added in an undertone to the Queen, `Really, my dear, YOU must cross-examine the next witness. It quite makes my forehead ache!' + +Alice watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled over the list, feeling very curious to see what the next witness would be like, `--for they haven't got much evidence YET,' she said to herself. Imagine her surprise, when the White Rabbit read out, at the top of his shrill little voice, the name `Alice!' + +CHAPTER XII - Alice's Evidence + +`Here!' cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of goldfish she had accidentally upset the week before. + +`Oh, I BEG your pardon!' she exclaimed in a tone of great dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for the accident of the goldfish kept running in her head, and she had a vague sort of idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the jury-box, or they would die. + +`The trial cannot proceed,' said the King in a very grave voice, `until all the jurymen are back in their proper places-- ALL,' he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as he said do. + +Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move. She soon got it out again, and put it right; `not that it signifies much,' she said to herself; `I should think it would be QUITE as much use in the trial one way up as the other.' + +As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of being upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and handed back to them, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the accident, all except the Lizard, who seemed too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth open, gazing up into the roof of the court. + +`What do you know about this business?' the King said to Alice. + +`Nothing,' said Alice. + +`Nothing WHATEVER?' persisted the King. + +`Nothing whatever,' said Alice. + +`That's very important,' the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: `UNimportant, your Majesty means, of course,' he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke. + +`UNimportant, of course, I meant,' the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, `important--unimportant-- unimportant--important--' as if he were trying which word sounded best. + +Some of the jury wrote it down `important,' and some `unimportant.' Alice could see this, as she was near enough to look over their slates; `but it doesn't matter a bit,' she thought to herself. + +At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, cackled out `Silence!' and read out from his book, `Rule Forty-two. ALL PERSONS MORE THAN A MILE HIGH TO LEAVE THE COURT.' + +Everybody looked at Alice. + +`I'M not a mile high,' said Alice. + +`You are,' said the King. + +`Nearly two miles high,' added the Queen. + +`Well, I shan't go, at any rate,' said Alice: `besides, that's not a regular rule: you invented it just now.' + +`It's the oldest rule in the book,' said the King. + +`Then it ought to be Number One,' said Alice. + +The King turned pale, and shut his note-book hastily. `Consider your verdict,' he said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice. + +`There's more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,' said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry; `this paper has just been picked up.' + +`What's in it?' said the Queen. + +`I haven't opened it yet,' said the White Rabbit, `but it seems to be a letter, written by the prisoner to--to somebody.' + +`It must have been that,' said the King, `unless it was written to nobody, which isn't usual, you know.' + +`Who is it directed to?' said one of the jurymen. + +`It isn't directed at all,' said the White Rabbit; `in fact, there's nothing written on the OUTSIDE.' He unfolded the paper as he spoke, and added `It isn't a letter, after all: it's a set of verses.' + +`Are they in the prisoner's handwriting?' asked another of the jurymen. + +`No, they're not,' said the White Rabbit, `and that's the queerest thing about it.' (The jury all looked puzzled.) + +`He must have imitated somebody else's hand,' said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.) + +`Please your Majesty,' said the Knave, `I didn't write it, and they can't prove I did: there's no name signed at the end.' + +`If you didn't sign it,' said the King, `that only makes the matter worse. You MUST have meant some mischief, or else you'd have signed your name like an honest man.' + +There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing the King had said that day. + +`That PROVES his guilt,' said the Queen. + +`It proves nothing of the sort!' said Alice. `Why, you don't even know what they're about!' + +`Read them,' said the King. + +The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. `Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked. + +`Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, `and go on till you come to the end: then stop.' + +These were the verses the White Rabbit read:-- + +poem{ + + `They told me you had been to her, + And mentioned me to him: + She gave me a good character, + But said I could not swim. + + He sent them word I had not gone + (We know it to be true): + If she should push the matter on, + What would become of you? + + I gave her one, they gave him two, + You gave us three or more; + They all returned from him to you, + Though they were mine before. + + If I or she should chance to be + Involved in this affair, + He trusts to you to set them free, + Exactly as we were. + + My notion was that you had been + (Before she had this fit) + An obstacle that came between + Him, and ourselves, and it. + + Don't let him know she liked them best, + For this must ever be + A secret, kept from all the rest, + Between yourself and me.' + +}poem + +`That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet,' said the King, rubbing his hands; `so now let the jury--' + +`If any one of them can explain it,' said Alice, (she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn't a bit afraid of interrupting him,) `I'll give him sixpence. _{I}_ don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.' + +The jury all wrote down on their slates, `SHE doesn't believe there's an atom of meaning in it,' but none of them attempted to explain the paper. + +`If there's no meaning in it,' said the King, `that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't know,' he went on, spreading out the verses on his knee, and looking at them with one eye; `I seem to see some meaning in them, after all. "--SAID I COULD NOT SWIM--" you can't swim, can you?' he added, turning to the Knave. + +The Knave shook his head sadly. `Do I look like it?' he said. (Which he certainly did NOT, being made entirely of cardboard.) + +`All right, so far,' said the King, and he went on muttering over the verses to himself: `"WE KNOW IT TO BE TRUE--" that's the jury, of course-- "I GAVE HER ONE, THEY GAVE HIM TWO--" why, that must be what he did with the tarts, you know--' + +`But, it goes on "THEY ALL RETURNED FROM HIM TO YOU,"' said Alice. + +`Why, there they are!' said the King triumphantly, pointing to the tarts on the table. `Nothing can be clearer than THAT. Then again--"BEFORE SHE HAD THIS FIT--" you never had fits, my dear, I think?' he said to the Queen. + +`Never!' said the Queen furiously, throwing an inkstand at the Lizard as she spoke. (The unfortunate little Bill had left off writing on his slate with one finger, as he found it made no mark; but he now hastily began again, using the ink, that was trickling down his face, as long as it lasted.) + +`Then the words don't FIT you,' said the King, looking round the court with a smile. There was a dead silence. + +`It's a pun!' the King added in an offended tone, and everybody laughed, `Let the jury consider their verdict,' the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. + +`No, no!' said the Queen. `Sentence first--verdict afterwards.' + +`Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. `The idea of having the sentence first!' + +`Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple. + +`I won't!' said Alice. + +`Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved. + +`Who cares for you?' said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) `You're nothing but a pack of cards!' + +At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her: she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face. + +`Wake up, Alice dear!' said her sister; `Why, what a long sleep you've had!' + +`Oh, I've had such a curious dream!' said Alice, and she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange Adventures of hers that you have just been reading about; and when she had finished, her sister kissed her, and said, `It WAS a curious dream, dear, certainly: but now run in to your tea; it's getting late.' So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been. + +But her sister sat still just as she left her, leaning her head on her hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all her wonderful Adventures, till she too began dreaming after a fashion, and this was her dream:-- + +First, she dreamed of little Alice herself, and once again the tiny hands were clasped upon her knee, and the bright eager eyes were looking up into hers--she could hear the very tones of her voice, and see that queer little toss of her head to keep back the wandering hair that WOULD always get into her eyes--and still as she listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive the strange creatures of her little sister's dream. + +The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by--the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool--she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution--once more the pig-baby was sneezing on the Duchess's knee, while plates and dishes crashed around it--once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard's slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs of the miserable Mock Turtle. + +So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality--the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds--the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy--and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard--while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle's heavy sobs. + +Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make THEIR eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days. + +THE END diff --git a/markup/non-pod-samples/democratizing_innovation.eric_von_hippel.non-pod-sample.sst b/markup/non-pod-samples/democratizing_innovation.eric_von_hippel.non-pod-sample.sst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..14dccfd --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/non-pod-samples/democratizing_innovation.eric_von_hippel.non-pod-sample.sst @@ -0,0 +1,5266 @@ +# SiSU 8.0 + +title: + main: "Democratizing Innovation" + language: "US" + +creator: + author: "von Hippel, Eric" + +date: + published: "2005" + created: "2005" + issued: "2005" + available: "2005" + modified: "2005" + valid: "2005" + +rights: + copyright: "2005 Eric von Hippel. Exclusive rights to publish and sell this book in print form in English are licensed to The MIT Press. All other rights are reserved by the author. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license." + license= " Creative Commons US Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license 2.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/legalcode Some Rights Reserved. You are free to copy, distribute, display and perform the work, under the following conditions: Attribution, you must give the original author credit; you may not use this work for commercial purposes; No Derivative Works, you may not alter, transform, or build-upon this work. For reuse or distribution you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above." + +classify: + topic_register: "SiSU markup sample:book:discourse;book:discourse:innovation|democracy|open source software;innovation;technological innovations:economic aspects;diffusion of innovations;democracy;open source software:innovation" + +identifier: + isbn: "9780262720472" + oclc: "56880369" + +# HC79.T4H558 2005 +# 338'.064-dc22 2004061060 + +links: [ + "{ Democratizing Innovation }http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm", + "{ Eric von Hippel }http://evhippel.mit.edu/", + "{ @ Wikipedia }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratizing_Innovation", + "{ Democratizing Innovation @ Amazon.com }http://www.amazon.com/Democratizing-Innovation-Eric-Von-Hippel/dp/0262720477", + "{ Democratizing Innovation @ Barnes & Noble }http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=9780262720472" + ] + +make: + breaks: "new=:B,C; break=1" + texpdf_font: "Liberation Sans" + home_button_image: "{di_evh.png }http://evhippel.mit.edu/" + footer: "{Eric von Hippel}http://evhippel.mit.edu/" + +:A~ @title-author-date + +--~# + +1~attribution Attribution + +Dedicated to all who are building the information commons. + +% Contents +% Acknowledgements ix +% 1 Introduction and Overview 1 +% 2 Development of Products by Lead Users 19 +% 3 Why Many Users Want Custom Products 33 +% 4 Users' Innovate-or-Buy Decisions 45 +% 5 Users' Low-Cost Innovation Niches 63 +% 6 Why Users Often Freely Reveal Their Innovations 77 +% 7 Innovation Communities 93 +% 8 Adapting Policy to User Innovation 107 +% 9 Democratizing Innovation 121 +% 10 Application: Searching for Lead User Innovations 133 +% 11 Application: Toolkits for User Innovation and Custom Design 147 +% 12 Linking User Innovation to Other Phenomena and Fields 165 +% Notes 179 +% Bibliography 183 +% Index 197 + +1~acknowledgements Acknowledgements + +Early in my research on the democratization of innovation I was very fortunate to gain five major academic mentors and friends. Nathan Rosenberg, Richard Nelson, Zvi Griliches, Edwin Mansfield, and Ann Carter all provided crucial support as I adopted economics as the organizing framework and toolset for my work. Later, I collaborated with a number of wonderful co-authors, all of whom are friends as well: Stan Finkelstein, Nikolaus Franke, Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel, Cornelius Herstatt, Ralph Katz, Georg von Krogh, Karim Lakhani, Gary Lilien, Christian Luthje, Pamela Morrison, William Riggs, John Roberts, Stephan Schrader, Mary Sonnack, Stefan Thomke, Marcie Tyre, and Glen Urban. Other excellent research collaborators and friends of long standing include Carliss Baldwin, Sonali Shah, Sarah Slaughter, and Lars Jeppesen. + +At some point as interest in a topic grows, there is a transition from dyadic academic relationships to a real research community. In my case, the essential person in enabling that transition was my close friend and colleague Dietmar Harhoff. He began to send wonderful Assistant Professors (Habilitanden) over from his university, Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Munich, to do collaborative research with me as MIT Visiting Scholars. They worked on issues related to the democratization of innovation while at MIT and then carried on when they returned to Europe. Now they are training others in their turn. + +I have also greatly benefited from close contacts with colleagues in industry. As Director of the MIT Innovation Lab, I work together with senior innovation managers in just a few companies to develop and try out innovation tools in actual company settings. Close intellectual colleagues and friends of many years standing in this sphere include Jim Euchner from Pitney-Bowes, Mary Sonnack and Roger Lacey from 3M, John Wright from IFF, Dave Richards from Nortel Networks, John Martin from Verizon, Ben Hyde from the Apache Foundation, Brian Behlendorf from the Apache Foundation and CollabNet, and Joan Churchill and Susan Hiestand from Lead User Concepts. Thank you so much for the huge (and often humbling) insights that your and our field experimentation has provided! + +I am also eager to acknowledge and thank my family for the joy and learning they experience and share with me. My wife Jessie is a professional editor and edited my first book in a wonderful way. For this book, however, time devoted to bringing up the children made a renewed editorial collaboration impossible. I hope the reader will not suffer unduly as a consequence! My children Christiana Dagmar and Eric James have watched me work on the book---indeed they could not avoid it as I often write at home. I hope they have been drawing the lesson that academic research can be really fun. Certainly, that is the lesson I drew from my father, Arthur von Hippel. He wrote his books in his study upstairs when I was a child and would often come down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. In transit, he would throw up his hands and say, to no one in particular, "/{Why}/ do I choose to work on such difficult problems?" And then he would look deeply happy. Dad, I noticed the smile! + +Finally my warmest thanks to my MIT colleagues and students and also to MIT as an institution. MIT is a really inspiring place to work and learn from others. We all understand the requirements for good research and learning, and we all strive to contribute to a very supportive academic environment. And, of course, new people are always showing up with new and interesting ideas, so fun and learning are always being renewed! + +--+# + +:B~ Democratizing Innovation + +1~ 1 Introduction and Overview + +When I say that innovation is being democratized, I mean that users of products and services---both firms and individual consumers---are increasingly able to innovate for themselves. User-centered innovation processes offer great advantages over the manufacturer-centric innovation development systems that have been the mainstay of commerce for hundreds of years. Users that innovate can develop exactly what they want, rather than relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very imperfect) agents. Moreover, individual users do not have to develop everything they need on their own: they can benefit from innovations developed and freely shared by others. +={ Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users : + by users +43 ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and +11 ; + Users : + See also Lead users | expectations of economic benefit by +33 | innovation and +33 +} + +The trend toward democratization of innovation applies to information products such as software and also to physical products. As a quick illustration of the latter, consider the development of high-performance windsurfing techniques and equipment in Hawaii by an informal user group. High-performance windsurfing involves acrobatics such as jumps and flips and turns in mid-air. Larry Stanley, a pioneer in high-performance windsurfing, described the development of a major innovation in technique and equipment to Sonali Shah: +={ Stanley, L. ; + Shah, S. ; + Information commons : + See also Information communities | See also Innovation communities ; + windsurfing +} + +In 1978 Jürgen Honscheid came over from West Germany for the first Hawaiian World Cup and discovered jumping, which was new to him, although Mike Horgan and I were jumping in 1974 and 1975. There was a new enthusiasm for jumping and we were all trying to outdo each other by jumping higher and higher. The problem was that . . . the riders flew off in mid-air because there was no way to keep the board with you---and as a result you hurt your feet, your legs, and the board. +={ Honscheid, J. ; + Horgan, M. +} + +Then I remembered the "Chip," a small experimental board we had built with footstraps, and thought "it's dumb not to use this for jumping." That's when I first started jumping with footstraps and discovering controlled flight. I could go so much faster than I ever thought and when you hit a wave it was like a motorcycle rider hitting a ramp; you just flew into the air. All of a sudden not only could you fly into the air, but you could land the thing, and not only that, but you could change direction in the air! + +The whole sport of high-performance windsurfing really started from that. As soon as I did it, there were about ten of us who sailed all the time together and within one or two days there were various boards out there that had footstraps of various kinds on them, and we were all going fast and jumping waves and stuff. It just kind of snowballed from there. (Shah 2000) +={ Shah, S. ; + windsurfing +1 +} + +By 1998, more than a million people were engaged in windsurfing, and a large fraction of the boards sold incorporated the user-developed innovations for the high-performance sport. + +The user-centered innovation process just illustrated is in sharp contrast to the traditional model, in which products and services are developed by manufacturers in a closed way, the manufacturers using patents, copyrights, and other protections to prevent imitators from free riding on their innovation investments. In this traditional model, a user's only role is to have needs, which manufacturers then identify and fill by designing and producing new products. The manufacturer-centric model does fit some fields and conditions. However, a growing body of empirical work shows that users are the first to develop many and perhaps most new industrial and consumer products. Further, the contribution of users is growing steadily larger as a result of continuing advances in computer and communications capabilities. +={ Intellectual property rights : + See also Private-collective innovation | copyrights and | innovation and +2 ; + Copyrights : + See Intellectual property rights ; + Manufacturers : + government policy and +2 ; + Product development +2 ; + Users : + government policy and ; + Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users : + by manufacturers +5 ; + Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users : + by manufacturers +12 ; + Government policy : + manufacturer innovation and +2 ; + Manufacturers : + expectations of economic benefit by +26 + } + +In this book I explain in detail how the emerging process of user-centric, democratized innovation works. I also explain how innovation by users provides a very necessary complement to and feedstock for manufacturer innovation. + +The ongoing shift of innovation to users has some very attractive qualities. It is becoming progressively easier for many users to get precisely what they want by designing it for themselves. And innovation by users appears to increase social welfare. At the same time, the ongoing shift of product-development activities from manufacturers to users is painful and difficult for many manufacturers. Open, distributed innovation is "attacking" a major structure of the social division of labor. Many firms and industries must make fundamental changes to long-held business models in order to adapt. Further, governmental policy and legislation sometimes preferentially supports innovation by manufacturers. Considerations of social welfare suggest that this must change. The workings of the intellectual property system are of special concern. But despite the difficulties, a democratized and user-centric system of innovation appears well worth striving for. +={ Government policy : + See also Digital Millennium Copyright Act | and social welfare | user innovation and ; + Social welfare : + government policy and | innovation and +3 | user innovation and +3 } + +% check government policy + +Users, as the term will be used in this book, are firms or individual consumers that expect to benefit from /{using}/ a product or a service. In contrast, manufacturers expect to benefit from /{selling}/ a product or a service. A firm or an individual can have different relationships to different products or innovations. For example, Boeing is a manufacturer of airplanes, but it is also a user of machine tools. If we were examining innovations developed by Boeing for the airplanes it sells, we would consider Boeing a manufacturer-innovator in those cases. But if we were considering innovations in metal-forming machinery developed by Boeing for in-house use in building airplanes, we would categorize those as user-developed innovations and would categorize Boeing as a user-innovator in those cases. +={ Users : characteristics of +2 ; + Manufacturers : characteristics of +2 +} + +Innovation user and innovation manufacturer are the two general "functional" relationships between innovator and innovation. Users are unique in that they alone benefit /{directly}/ from innovations. All others (here lumped under the term "manufacturers") must sell innovation-related products or services to users, indirectly or directly, in order to profit from innovations. Thus, in order to profit, inventors must sell or license knowledge related to innovations, and manufacturers must sell products or services incorporating innovations. Similarly, suppliers of innovation-related materials or services---unless they have direct use for the innovations---must sell the materials or services in order to profit from the innovations. +={ Innovation : + See also Innovation communities | functional sources of ; + Suppliers +} + +The user and manufacturer categorization of relationships between innovator and innovation can be extended to specific functions, attributes, or features of products and services. When this is done, it may turn out that different parties are associated with different attributes of a particular product or service. For example, householders are the users of the switching attribute of a household electric light switch---they use it to turn lights on and off. However, switches also have other attributes, such as "easy wiring" qualities, that may be used only by the electricians who install them. Therefore, if an electrician were to develop an improvement to the installation attributes of a switch, it would be considered a user-developed innovation. + +A brief overview of the contents of the book follows. + +!_ Development of Products by Lead Users (Chapter 2) +={ Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users +6 ; + Lead users +6 : + characteristics of +6 | commercial attractiveness of +6 | economic benefit, expectations of +6 | identification of +6 | innovation and +50 | library information search system and +6 +} + +Empirical studies show that many users---from 10 percent to nearly 40 percent---engage in developing or modifying products. About half of these studies do not determine representative innovation frequencies; they were designed for other purposes. Nonetheless, when taken together, the findings make it very clear that users are doing a /{lot}/ of product modification and product development in many fields. +={ innovation : + attractiveness of +8 +} + +Studies of innovating users (both individuals and firms) show them to have the characteristics of "lead users." That is, they are ahead of the majority of users in their populations with respect to an important market trend, and they expect to gain relatively high benefits from a solution to the needs they have encountered there. The correlations found between innovation by users and lead user status are highly significant, and the effects are very large. + +Since lead users are at the leading edge of the market with respect to important market trends, one can guess that many of the novel products they develop for their own use will appeal to other users too and so might provide the basis for products manufacturers would wish to commercialize. This turns out to be the case. A number of studies have shown that many of the innovations reported by lead users are judged to be commercially attractive and/or have actually been commercialized by manufacturers. +={ Manufacturers : + lead users and +1 +} + +Research provides a firm grounding for these empirical findings. The two defining characteristics of lead users and the likelihood that they will develop new or modified products have been found to be highly correlated (Morrison et al. 2004). In addition, it has been found that the higher the intensity of lead user characteristics displayed by an innovator, the greater the commercial attractiveness of the innovation that the lead user develops (Franke and von Hippel 2003a). In figure 1.1, the increased concentration of innovations toward the right indicates that the likelihood of innovating is higher for users having higher lead user index values. The rise in average innovation attractiveness as one moves from left to right indicates that innovations developed by lead users tend to be more commercially attractive. (Innovation attractiveness is the sum of the novelty of the innovation and the expected future generality of market demand.) +={ Morrison, Pamela ; + Franke, N. +5 ; + von Hippel, E. +5 +} + +%% Figure 1.1 +% 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 +% 10 +% 5 +% 0 +% Attractiveness +% of +% innovations +% Innovation +% Estimated OLS curve +% "Lead-user?ness" of users + +{di_evh_f1-1.png}image + +!_ Figure 1.1 +User-innovators with stronger "lead user" characteristics develop innovations having higher appeal in the general marketplace. Estimated OLS function: Y = 2.06 + 0.57x, where Y represents attractiveness of innovation and x represents lead-user-ness of respondent. Adjusted R^{2}^ = 0.281; p = 0.002; n = 30. Source of data: Franke and von Hippel 2003. + +!_ Why Many Users Want Custom Products (Chapter 3) +={ Custom products : + heterogeneity of user needs and +2 ; + User need +2 ; + Users : + innovate-or-buy decisions by +8 | needs of +2 +} + +Why do so many users develop or modify products for their own use? Users may innovate if and as they want something that is not available on the market and are able and willing to pay for its development. It is likely that many users do not find what they want on the market. Meta-analysis of market-segmentation studies suggests that users' needs for products are highly heterogeneous in many fields (Franke and Reisinger 2003). +={ Reisinger, H. } + +Mass manufacturers tend to follow a strategy of developing products that are designed to meet the needs of a large market segment well enough to induce purchase from and capture significant profits from a large number of customers. When users' needs are heterogeneous, this strategy of "a few sizes fit all" will leave many users somewhat dissatisfied with the commercial products on offer and probably will leave some users seriously dissatisfied. In a study of a sample of users of the security features of Apache web server software, Franke and von Hippel (2003b) found that users had a very high heterogeneity of need, and that many had a high willingness to pay to get precisely what they wanted. Nineteen percent of the users sampled actually innovated to tailor Apache more closely to their needs. Those who did were found to be significantly more satisfied. +={ Apache web server software ; + Manufacturers : + lead users and +} + +!_ Users' Innovate-or-Buy Decisions (Chapter 4) +={ Custom products : + heterogeneity of user needs and +3 | manufacturers and +3 | agency costs and +2 ; + User need +3 ; + Users : needs of +3 ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and +9 | innovate-or-buy decisions and +4 ; + Users : agency costs and +2 +} + +Even if many users want "exactly right products" and are willing and able to pay for their development, why do users often do this for themselves rather than hire a custom manufacturer to develop a special just-right product for them? After all, custom manufacturers specialize in developing products for one or a few users. Since these firms are specialists, it is possible that they could design and build custom products for individual users or user firms faster, better, or cheaper than users could do this for themselves. Despite this possibility, several factors can drive users to innovate rather than buy. Both in the case of user firms and in the case of individual user-innovators, agency costs play a major role. In the case of individual user-innovators, enjoyment of the innovation process can also be important. +={ Agency costs +1 ; + Manufacturers : + custom products and +2 ; + Custom products : users and +3 ; + Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users : + by manufacturers +13 +} + +With respect to agency costs, consider that when a user develops its own custom product that user can be trusted to act in its own best interests. When a user hires a manufacturer to develop a custom product, the situation is more complex. The user is then a principal that has hired the custom manufacturer to act as its agent. If the interests of the principal and the agent are not the same, there will be agency costs. In general terms, agency costs are (1) costs incurred to monitor the agent to ensure that it (or he or she) follows the interests of the principal, (2) the cost incurred by the agent to commit itself not to act against the principal's interest (the "bonding cost"), and (3) costs associated with an outcome that does not fully serve the interests of the principal (Jensen and Meckling 1976). In the specific instance of product and service development, a major divergence of interests between user and custom manufacturer does exist: the user wants to get precisely what it needs, to the extent that it can afford to do so. In contrast, the custom manufacturer wants to lower its development costs by incorporating solution elements it already has or that it predicts others will want in the future---even if by doing so it does not serve its present client's needs as well as it could. +={ Jensen, M. ; + Meckling, W. +} + +A user wants to preserve its need specification because that specification is chosen to make /{that user's}/ overall solution quality as high as possible at the desired price. For example, an individual user may specify a mountain-climbing boot that will precisely fit his unique climbing technique and allow him to climb Everest more easily. Any deviations in boot design will require compensating modifications in the climber's carefully practiced and deeply ingrained climbing technique---a much more costly solution from the user's point of view. A custom boot manufacturer, in contrast, will have a strong incentive to incorporate the materials and processes it has in stock and expects to use in future even if this produces a boot that is not precisely right for the present customer. For example, the manufacturer will not want to learn a new way to bond boot components together even if that would produce the best custom result for one client. The net result is that when one or a few users want something special they will often get the best result by innovating for themselves. +={ Innovation communities : + See also Information communities +1 +} + +A small model of the innovate-or-buy decision follows. This model shows in a quantitative way that user firms with unique needs will always be better off developing new products for themselves. It also shows that development by manufacturers can be the most economical option when n or more user firms want the same thing. However, when the number of user firms wanting the same thing falls between 1 and n, manufacturers may not find it profitable to develop a new product for just a few users. In that case, more than one user may invest in developing the same thing independently, owing to market failure. This results in a waste of resources from the point of view of social welfare. The problem can be addressed by new institutional forms, such as the user innovation communities that will be studied later in this book. +={ Innovation communities : + social welfare, and ; + Manufacturers : + social welfare and +21 ; + Social welfare : + manufacturer innovation and +21 | user innovation and +21 +} + +Chapter 4 concludes by pointing out that an additional incentive can drive individual user-innovators to innovate rather than buy: they may value the /{process}/ of innovating because of the enjoyment or learning that it brings them. It might seem strange that user-innovators can enjoy product development enough to want to do it themselves---after all, manufacturers pay their product developers to do such work! On the other hand, it is also clear that enjoyment of problem solving is a motivator for many individual problem solvers in at least some fields. Consider for example the millions of crossword-puzzle aficionados. Clearly, for these individuals enjoyment of the problem-solving process rather than the solution is the goal. One can easily test this by attempting to offer a puzzle solver a completed puzzle---the very output he or she is working so hard to create. One will very likely be rejected with the rebuke that one should not spoil the fun! Pleasure as a motivator can apply to the development of commercially useful innovations as well. Studies of the motivations of volunteer contributors of code to widely used software products have shown that these individuals too are often strongly motivated to innovate by the joy and learning they find in this work (Hertel et al. 2003; Lakhani and Wolf 2005). +={ Hertel, G. ; + Lakhani, K. ; + Wolf, B. ; + Innovation process ; + Users : + innovation process and +7 ; + Free software : See also Open source software ; + Hackers ; + Herrmann, S. +} + +!_ Users' Low-Cost Innovation Niches (Chapter 5) +={ Users : + low-cost innovation niches of +3 +} + +An exploration of the basic processes of product and service development show that users and manufacturers tend to develop different /{types}/ of innovations. This is due in part to information asymmetries: users and manufacturers tend to know different things. Product developers need two types of information in order to succeed at their work: need and context-of-use information (generated by users) and generic solution information (often initially generated by manufacturers specializing in a particular type of solution). Bringing these two types of information together is not easy. Both need information and solution information are often very "sticky"---that is, costly to move from the site where the information was generated to other sites. As a result, users generally have a more accurate and more detailed model of their needs than manufacturers have, while manufacturers have a better model of the solution approach in which they specialize than the user has. +={ Innovation process ; + Users : innovation process and ; + Information asymmetries +3 ; + Manufacturers : information asymmetries of +2 ; + Sticky information +2 : innovation and +2 ; + Users : information asymmetries of +2 ; + Local information +2 +} + +When information is sticky, innovators tend to rely largely on information they already have in stock. One consequence of the information asymmetry between users and manufacturers is that users tend to develop innovations that are functionally novel, requiring a great deal of user-need information and use-context information for their development. In contrast, manufacturers tend to develop innovations that are improvements on well-known needs and that require a rich understanding of solution information for their development. For example, firms that use inventory-management systems, such as retailers, tend to be the developers of new approaches to inventory management. In contrast, manufacturers of inventory-management systems and equipment tend to develop improvements to the equipment used to implement these user-devised approaches (Ogawa 1998). +={ Ogawa, S. ; + Innovation : + functional sources of +} + +If we extend the information-asymmetry argument one step further, we see that information stickiness implies that information on hand will also differ among /{individual}/ users and manufacturers. The information assets of some particular user (or some particular manufacturer) will be closest to what is required to develop a particular innovation, and so the cost of developing that innovation will be relatively low for that user or manufacturer. The net result is that user innovation activities will be distributed across many users according to their information endowments. With respect to innovation, one user is by no means a perfect substitute for another. + +!_ Why Users Often Freely Reveal Their Innovations (Chapter 6) +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + case for +5 | evidence of +5 | in information communities +5 | intellectual property rights and +5 | users and +5 ; + Users : + free revealing by +5 +} + +The social efficiency of a system in which individual innovations are developed by individual users is increased if users somehow diffuse what they have developed to others. Manufacturer-innovators /{partially}/ achieve this when they sell a product or a service on the open market (partially because they diffuse the product incorporating the innovation, but often not all the information that others would need to fully understand and replicate it). If user-innovators do not somehow also diffuse what they have done, multiple users with very similar needs will have to independently develop very similar innovations---a poor use of resources from the viewpoint of social welfare. Empirical research shows that users often do achieve widespread diffusion by an unexpected means: they often "freely reveal" what they have developed. When we say that an innovator freely reveals information about a product or service it has developed, we mean that all intellectual property rights to that information are voluntarily given up by the innovator, and all interested parties are given access to it---the information becomes a public good. +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + manufacturers and +2 ; + Innovation : + distributed process of +4 ; + Intellectual property rights : + free revealing and ; + Manufacturers : + free revealing and +2 +} + +The empirical finding that users often freely reveal their innovations has been a major surprise to innovation researchers. On the face of it, if a user-innovator's proprietary information has value to others, one would think that the user would strive to prevent free diffusion rather than help others to free ride on what it has developed at private cost. Nonetheless, it is now very clear that individual users and user firms---and sometimes manufacturers---often freely reveal detailed information about their innovations. + +The practices visible in "open source" software development were important in bringing this phenomenon to general awareness. In these projects it was clear /{policy}/ that project contributors would routinely and systematically freely reveal code they had developed at private expense (Raymond 1999). However, free revealing of product innovations has a history that began long before the advent of open source software. Allen, in his 1983 study of the eighteenth-century iron industry, was probably the first to consider the phenomon systematically. Later, Nuvolari (2004) discussed free revealing in the early history of mine pumping engines. Contemporary free revealing by users has been documented by von Hippel and Finkelstein (1979) for medical equipment, by Lim (2000) for semiconductor process equipment, by Morrison, Roberts, and von Hippel (2000) for library information systems, and by Franke and Shah (2003) for sporting equipment. Henkel (2003) has documented free revealing among manufacturers in the case of embedded Linux software. +={ Allen, R. ; + Finkelstein, S. ; + Franke, N. ; + Henkel, J. ; + Lim, K. ; + Linux ; + Morrison, Pamela ; + Nuvolari, A. ; + Raymond, E. ; + Roberts, J. ; + Shah, S. ; + von Hippel, E. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + open source software and +7 ; + Intellectual property rights : + open source software and +1 ; + Open source software : + See also Free software communities and | free revealing and +7 | intellectual property rights and +2 ; + Library information search system +} + +Innovators often freely reveal because it is often the best or the only practical option available to them. Hiding an innovation as a trade secret is unlikely to be successful for long: too many generally know similar things, and some holders of the "secret" information stand to lose little or nothing by freely revealing what they know. Studies find that innovators in many fields view patents as having only limited value. Copyright protection and copyright licensing are applicable only to "writings," such as books, graphic images, and computer software. +={ Intellectual property rights : + copyrights and | trade secrets and | free revealing and | licensing of | patents and ; + Government policy : + trade secrets and +} + +Active efforts by innovators to freely reveal---as opposed to sullen acceptance---are explicable because free revealing can provide innovators with significant private benefits as well as losses or risks of loss. Users who freely reveal what they have done often find that others then improve or suggest improvements to the innovation, to mutual benefit (Raymond 1999). Freely revealing users also may benefit from enhancement of reputation, from positive network effects due to increased diffusion of their innovation, and from other factors. Being the first to freely reveal a particular innovation can also enhance the benefits received, and so there can actually be a rush to reveal, much as scientists rush to publish in order to gain the benefits associated with being the first to have made a particular advancement. +={ Raymond, E. } + +!_ Innovation Communities (Chapter 7) +={ Innovation communities +3 } + +Innovation by users tends to be widely distributed rather than concentrated among just a very few very innovative users. As a result, it is important for user-innovators to find ways to combine and leverage their efforts. Users achieve this by engaging in many forms of cooperation. Direct, informal user-to-user cooperation (assisting others to innovate, answering questions, and so on) is common. Organized cooperation is also common, with users joining together in networks and communities that provide useful structures and tools for their interactions and for the distribution of innovations. Innovation communities can increase the speed and effectiveness with which users and also manufacturers can develop and test and diffuse their innovations. They also can greatly increase the ease with which innovators can build larger systems from interlinkable modules created by community participants. +={ Users : + innovation communities and +2 +} + +Free and open source software projects are a relatively well-developed and very successful form of Internet-based innovation community. However, innovation communities are by no means restricted to software or even to information products, and they can play a major role in the development of physical products. Franke and Shah (2003) have documented the value that user innovation communities can provide to user-innovators developing physical products in the field of sporting equipment. The analogy to open source innovation communities is clear. +={ Franke, N. ; + Shah, S. ; + Free software ; + Innovation communities : + open source software and | physical products and | sporting equipment and ; + Open source software : + innovation communities and +} + +The collective or community effort to provide a public good---which is what freely revealed innovations are---has traditionally been explored in the literature on "collective action." However, behaviors seen in extant innovation communities fail to correspond to that literature at major points. In essence, innovation communities appear to be more robust with respect to recruiting and rewarding members than the literature would predict. Georg von Krogh and I attribute this to innovation contributors' obtaining some private rewards that are not shared equally by free riders (those who take without contributing). For example, a product that a user-innovator develops and freely reveals might be perfectly suited to that user-innovator's requirements but less well suited to the requirements of free riders. Innovation communities thus illustrate a "private-collective" model of innovation incentive (von Hippel and von Krogh 2003). +={ von Hippel, E. ; + von Krogh, G. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + collective action model for | private-collective model for ; + Innovation communities : + and sources of innovation ; + Private-collective model ; + Social welfare : + private-collective model and +2 ; + Users : + social welfare and +6 +} + +!_ Adapting Policy to User Innovation (Chapter 8) +={ Government policy : + social welfare and +5 | user innovation and +5 ; + Social welfare : + and government policy +5 +} + +Is innovation by users a "good thing?" Welfare economists answer such a question by studying how a phenomenon or a change affects social welfare. Henkel and von Hippel (2005) explored the social welfare implications of user innovation. They found that, relative to a world in which only manufacturers innovate, social welfare is very probably increased by the presence of innovations freely revealed by users. This finding implies that policy making should support user innovation, or at least should ensure that legislation and regulations do not favor manufacturers at the expense of user-innovators. +={ Henkel, J. ; + von Hippel, E. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + manufacturers and +} + +The transitions required of policy making to achieve neutrality with respect to user innovation vs. manufacturer innovation are significant. Consider the impact on open and distributed innovation of past and current policy decisions. Research done in the past 30 years has convinced many academics that intellectual property law is sometimes or often not having its intended effect. Intellectual property law was intended to increase the amount of innovation investment. Instead, it now appears that there are economies of scope in both patenting and copyright that allow firms to use these forms of intellectual property law in ways that are directly opposed to the intent of policy makers and to the public welfare. Major firms can invest to develop large portfolios of patents. They can then use these to create "patent thickets"---dense networks of patent claims that give them plausible grounds for threatening to sue across a wide range of intellectual property. They may do this to prevent others from introducing a superior innovation and/or to demand licenses from weaker competitors on favorable terms (Shapiro 2001). Movie, publishing, and software firms can use large collections of copyrighted work to a similar purpose (Benkler 2002). In view of the distributed nature of innovation by users, with each tending to create a relatively small amount of intellectual property, users are likely to be disadvantaged by such strategies. +={ Benkler, Y. ; + Shapiro, C. ; + Intellectual property rights : + copyrights and +1 ; + Government policy : + copyrights and +1 | patents and | patent thickets and ; + Intellectual property rights : + patents and | patent thickets and | licensing of +} + +It is also important to note that users (and manufacturers) tend to build prototypes of their innovations economically by modifying products already available on the market to serve a new purpose. Laws such as the (US) Digital Millennium Copyright Act, intended to prevent consumers from illegally copying protected works, also can have the unintended side effect of preventing users from modifying products that they purchase (Varian 2002). Both fairness and social welfare considerations suggest that innovation-related policies should be made neutral with respect to the sources of innovation. +={ Digital Millennium Copyright Act ; + Varian, H. +} + +It may be that current impediments to user innovation will be solved by legislation or by policy making. However, beneficiaries of existing law and policy will predictably resist change. Fortunately, a way to get around some of these problems is in the hands of innovators themselves. Suppose many innovators in a particular field decide to freely reveal what they have developed, as they often have reason to do. In that case, users can collectively create an information commons (a collection of information freely available to all) containing substitutes for some or a great deal of information now held as private intellectual property. Then user-innovators can work around the strictures of intellectual property law by simply using these freely revealed substitutes (Lessig 2001). This is essentially what is happening in the field of software. For many problems, user-innovators in that field now have a choice between proprietary, closed software provided by Microsoft and other firms and open source software that they can legally download from the Internet and legally modify to serve their own specific needs. +={ Lessig, L. ; + Microsoft ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + collective action model for | in information communities | intellectual property rights and | users and +1 ; + Information commons ; + Intellectual property rights : + free revealing and | information communities and ; + Microsoft ; + User need ; + Users : + free revealing by +} + +Policy making that levels the playing field between users and manufacturers will force more rapid change onto manufacturers but will by no means destroy them. Experience in fields where open and distributed innovation processes are far advanced show how manufacturers can and do adapt. Some, for example, learn to supply proprietary platform products that offer user-innovators a framework upon which to develop and use their improvements. +={ Manufacturers : + innovation and +7 +} + +!_ Democratizing Innovation (Chapter 9) + +Users' ability to innovate is improving /{radically}/ and /{rapidly}/ as a result of the steadily improving quality of computer software and hardware, improved access to easy-to-use tools and components for innovation, and access to a steadily richer innovation commons. Today, user firms and even individual hobbyists have access to sophisticated programming tools for software and sophisticated CAD design tools for hardware and electronics. These information-based tools can be run on a personal computer, and they are rapidly coming down in price. As a consequence, innovation by users will continue to grow even if the degree of heterogeneity of need and willingness to invest in obtaining a precisely right product remains constant. +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + users and ; + Task partitioning +5 : + See also Toolkits ; + Toolkits : + manufacturers and +5 | task partitioning +5 | user-friendly tools for | users and +5 ; + User need ; + Users : + innovation and +5 +} + +Equivalents of the innovation resources described above have long been available within corporations to a few. Senior designers at firms have long been supplied with engineers and designers under their direct control, and with the resources needed to quickly construct and test prototype designs. The same is true in other fields, including automotive design and clothing design: just think of the staffs of engineers and modelmakers supplied so that top auto designers can quickly realize and test their designs. + +But if, as we have seen, the information needed to innovate in important ways is widely distributed, the traditional pattern of concentrating innovation-support resources on a few individuals is hugely inefficient. High-cost resources for innovation support cannot efficiently be allocated to "the right people with the right information:" it is very difficult to know who these people may be before they develop an innovation that turns out to have general value. When the cost of high-quality resources for design and prototyping becomes very low (the trend we have described), these resources can be diffused very widely, and the allocation problem diminishes in significance. The net result is and will be to democratize the opportunity to create. +={ Manufacturers : + innovation and +9 ; + Users : + innovation and +9 +} + +On a level playing field, users will be an increasingly important source of innovation and will increasingly substitute for or complement manufacturers' innovation-related activities. In the case of information products, users have the possibility of largely or completely doing without the services of manufacturers. Open source software projects are object lessons that teach us that users can create, produce, diffuse, provide user field support for, update, and use complex products by and for themselves in the context of user innovation communities. In physical product fields, product development by users can evolve to the point of largely or totally supplanting product development---but not product manufacturing---by manufacturers. (The economies of scale associated with manufacturing and distributing physical products give manufacturers an advantage over "do-it-yourself" users in those activities.) +={ Custom products : + manufacturers and +2 | users and +2 ; + Innovation communities +1 : + open source software and | physical products and ; + Manufacturers : + custom products and +2 ; + Users : + custom products and +2 +} + +The evolving pattern of the locus of product development in kitesurfing illustrates how users can displace manufacturers from the role of product developer. In that industry, the collective product-design and testing work of a user innovation community has clearly become superior in both quality and quantity relative to the levels of in-house development effort that manufacturers of kitesurfing equipment can justify. Accordingly, manufacturers of such equipment are increasingly shifting away from product design and focusing on producing product designs first developed and tested by user innovation communities. +={ Innovation communities : + kitesurfing and ; + Kitesurfing +} + +How can or should manufacturers adapt to users' encroachment on elements of their traditional business activities? There are three general possibilities: (1) Produce user-developed innovations for general commercial sale and/or offer custom manufacturing to specific users. (2) Sell kits of product-design tools and/or "product platforms" to ease users' innovation-related tasks. (3) Sell products or services that are complementary to user-developed innovations. Firms in fields where users are already very active in product design are experimenting with all these possibilities. +={ Custom products : + product platforms and | toolkits and ; + Toolkits : + platform products and +} + +!_ Application: Searching for Lead User Innovations (Chapter 10) +={ Custom products : + manufacturers and +2 ; + Manufacturers : + custom products and +2 ; + Users : + custom products and +2 ; + Lead users +59 : + idea generation and +2 | identification of +2 | innovation and +2 +} + +Manufacturers design their innovation processes around the way they think the process works. The vast majority of manufacturers still think that product development and service development are always done by manufacturers, and that their job is always to find a need and fill it rather than to sometimes find and commercialize an innovation that lead users have already developed. Accordingly, manufacturers have set up market-research departments to explore the needs of users in the target market, product-development groups to think up suitable products to address those needs, and so forth. The needs and prototype solutions of lead users---if encountered at all---are typically rejected as outliers of no interest. Indeed, when lead users' innovations do enter a firm's product line---and they have been shown to be the actual source of many major innovations for many firms--- they typically arrive with a lag and by an unconventional and unsystematic route. For example, a manufacturer may "discover" a lead user innovation only when the innovating user firm contacts the manufacturer with a proposal to produce its design in volume to supply its own in-house needs. Or sales or service people employed by a manufacturer may spot a promising prototype during a visit to a customer's site. +={ Marketing research +1 } + +Modification of firms' innovation processes to /{systematically}/ search for and further develop innovations created by lead users can provide manufacturers with a better interface to the innovation process as it actually works, and so provide better performance. A natural experiment conducted at 3M illustrates this possibility. Annual sales of lead user product ideas generated by the average lead user project at 3M were conservatively forecast by management to be more than 8 times the sales forecast for new products developed in the traditional manner---$146 million versus $18 million per year. In addition, lead user projects were found to generate ideas for new product lines, while traditional market-research methods were found to produce ideas for incremental improvements to existing product lines. As a consequence, 3M divisions funding lead user project ideas experienced their highest rate of major product line generation in the past 50 years (Lilien et al. 2002). +={ Lilien, G. ; + Lead users : + 3M and ; + 3M Corporation +} + +!_ Application: Toolkits for User Innovation and Custom Design (Chapter 11) +={ Toolkits +2 } + +Firms that understand the distributed innovation process and users' roles in it can /{change}/ factors affecting lead user innovation and so affect its rate and direction in ways they value. Toolkits for user innovation custom design offer one way of doing this. This approach involves partitioning product-development and service-development projects into solution-information-intensive subtasks and need-information-intensive subtasks. Need-intensive subtasks are then assigned to users along with a kit of tools that enable them to effectively execute the tasks assigned to them. The resulting co-location of sticky information and problem-solving activity makes innovation within the solution space offered by a particular toolkit cheaper for users. It accordingly attracts them to the toolkit and so influences what they develop and how they develop it. The custom semiconductor industry was an early adopter of toolkits. In 2003, more than $15 billion worth of semiconductors were produced that had been designed using this approach. +={ Toolkits : + platform products and +2 ; + Lead users : + innovation and ; + Sticky information : + innovation and +} + +Manufacturers that adopt the toolkit approach to supporting and channeling user innovation typically face major changes in their business models, and important changes in industry structure may also follow. For example, as a result of the introduction of toolkits to the field of semiconductor manufacture, custom semiconductor manufacturers---formerly providers of both design and manufacturing services to customers---lost much of the work of custom product design to customers. Many of these manufacturers then became specialist silicon foundries, supplying production services primarily. Manufacturers may or may not wish to make such changes. However, experience in fields where toolkits have been deployed shows that customers tend to prefer designing their own custom products with the aid of a toolkit over traditional manufacturer-centric development practices. As a consequence, the only real choice for manufacturers in a field appropriate to the deployment of toolkits may be whether to lead or to follow in the transition to toolkits. + +!_ Linking User Innovation to Other Phenomena and Fields (Chapter 12) + +In chapter 12 I discuss links between user innovation and some related phenomena and literatures. With respect to phenomena, I point out the relationship of user innovation to /{information}/ communities, of which user innovation communities are a subset. One open information community is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org). Other such communities include the many specialized Internet sites where individuals with both common and rare medical conditions can find one another and can find specialists in those conditions. Many of the advantages associated with user innovation communities also apply to open information networks and communities. Analyses appropriate to information communities follow the same overall pattern as the analyses provided in this book for innovation communities. However, they are also simpler, because in open information communities there may be little or no proprietary information being transacted and thus little or no risk of related losses for participants. +={ Wikipedia ; + Information commons ; + Information communities : + See also Innovation communities ; + Innovation communities +2 : + and sources of innovation +2 ; + Intellectual property rights : + information communities and +2 | innovation and +2 +} + +Next I discuss links between user-centric innovation phenomena and the literature on the economics of knowledge that have been forged by Foray (2004) and Weber (2004). I also discuss how Porter's 1991 work on the competitive advantage of nations can be extended to incorporate findings on nations' lead users as product developers. Finally, I point out how findings explained in this book link to and complement research on the Social Construction of Technology (Pinch and Bijker 1987). +={ Bijker, W. ; + Foray, D. ; + Pinch, T. ; + Weber, S. ; + Porter, M. ; + Knowledge, production and distribution of +} + +I conclude this introductory chapter by reemphasizing that user innovation, free revealing, and user innovation communities will flourish under many but not all conditions. What we know about manufacturer-centered innovation is still valid; however, lead-user-centered innovation patterns are increasingly important, and they present major new opportunities and challenges for us all. +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + free revealing and ; + Users : + free revealing by +} + +1~ 2 Development of Products by Lead Users + +The idea that novel products and services are developed by manufacturers is deeply ingrained in both traditional expectations and scholarship. When we as users of products complain about the shortcomings of an existing product or wish for a new one, we commonly think that "they" should develop it---not us. Even the conventional term for an individual end user, "consumer," implicitly suggests that users are not active in product and service development. Nonetheless, there is now very strong empirical evidence that product development and modification by both user firms and users as individual consumers is frequent, pervasive, and important. +={ Consumers +5 } + +I begin this chapter by reviewing the evidence that many users indeed do develop and modify products for their own use in many fields. I then show that innovation is concentrated among /{lead}/ users, and that lead users' innovations often become commercial products. + +!_ Many Users Innovate + +The evidence on user innovation frequency and pervasiveness is summarized in table 2.1. We see here that the frequency with which user firms and individual consumers develop or modify products for their own use range from 10 percent to nearly 40 percent in fields studied to date. The matter has been studied across a wide range of industrial product types where innovating users are user firms, and also in various types of sporting equipment, where innovating users are individual consumers. +={ Lead users : + sporting equipment and +1 ; + Sporting equipment : + lead users and +1 +} + +The studies cited in table 2.1 clearly show that a lot of product development and modification by users is going on. However, these findings should not be taken to reflect innovation rates in overall populations of users. All of the studies probably were affected by a response bias. (That is, if someone sends a questionnaire about whether you innovated or not, you might be more inclined to respond if your answer is "Yes."). Also, each of the studies looked at innovation rates affecting a particular product type among users who care a great deal about that product type. Thus, university surgeons (study 4 in table 2.1) care a great deal about having just-right surgical equipment, just as serious mountain bikers (study 8) care a great deal about having just-right equipment for their sport. As the intensity of interest goes down, it is likely that rates of user innovation drop too. This is probably what is going on in the case of the study of purchasers of outdoor consumer products (study 6). All we are told about that sample of users of outdoor consumer products is that they are recipients of one or more mail order catalogs from suppliers of relatively general outdoor items---winter jackets, sleeping bags, and so on. Despite the fact that these users were asked if they have developed or modified any item in this broad category of goods (rather than a very specific one such as a mountain bike), just 10 percent answered in the affirmative. Of course, 10 percent or even 5 percent of a user population numbering in the tens of millions worldwide is still a very large number---so we again realize that many users are developing and modifying products. +={ Lead users : + outdoor consumer products and ; + Outdoor products +} + +!_ Table 2.1 +Many respondents reported developing or modifying products for their own use in the eight product areas listed here. +={ Lüthje, C. +1 ; + Urban, G. +1 ; + Franke, N. +1 ; + Herstatt, C. +1 ; + Morrison, Pamela +1 ; + von Hippel, E. +1 ; + Lead users : + Apache web server software and +1r | library information search system and +1 | mountain biking and +1 | outdoor consumer products and +1 | pipe hanger hardware and +1 | printed circuit CAD software and +1 | surgical equipment and +3 ; + Library information search system +1 ; + Mountain biking +1 ; + Outdoor products +1 ; + Pipe hanger hardware +1 ; + Printed circuit CAD software +1 ; + Surgical equipment +1 +} + +table(h; c4: 20, 45, 15, 20){ + +~ +Number and type of Users Sampled +Percentage developing and building product for own use +Source + +Industrial products +~ +~ +~ + +1. Printed circuit CAD software +136 user firm attendees at PC-CAD conference +24.3% +Urban and von Hippel 1988 + +2. Pipe hanger hardware +Employees in 74 pipe hanger installation firms +36% +Herstatt and von Hippel 1992 + +3. Library information systems +Employees in 102 Australian libraries using computerized OPAC library information systems +26% +Morrison et al. 2000 + +4. Surgical equipment +261 surgeons working in university clinics in Germany +22% +Lüthje 2003 + +5. Apache OS server software security features +131 technically sophisticated Apache features users (webmasters) +19.1% +Franke and von Hippel 2003 + +Consumer products +~ +~ +~ + +6. Outdoor consumer products +153 recipients of mail order catalogs for outdoor activity products for consumers +9.8% +Lüthje 2004 + +7. "Extreme" sporting equipment +197 members of 4 specialized sporting clubs in 4 "extreme" sports +37.8% +Franke and Shah 2003 + +8. Mountain biking equipment +291 mountain bikers in a geographic region +19.2% +Lüthje et al. + +}table + +The cited studies also do not set an upper or a lower bound on the commercial or technical importance of user-developed products and product modifications that they report, and it is likely that most are of minor significance. However, most innovations from any source are minor, so user-innovators are no exception in this regard. Further, to say an innovation is minor is not the same as saying it is trivial: minor innovations are cumulatively responsible for much or most technical progress. Hollander (1965) found that about 80 percent of unit cost reductions in Rayon manufacture were the cumulative result of minor technical changes. Knight (1963, VII, pp. 2--3) measured performance advances in general-purpose digital computers and found, similarly, that "these advances occur as the result of equipment designers using their knowledge of electronics technology to produce a multitude of small improvements that together produce significant performance advances." +={ Hollander, S. ; + Knight, K. ; + Users : + process improvements by +1 +} + +Although most products and product modifications that users or others develop will be minor, users are by no means restricted to developing minor or incremental innovations. Qualitative observations have long indicated that important process improvements are developed:rubyd gsub!(//, "") by users. Smith (1776, pp. 11--13) pointed out the importance of "the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labor, and enable one man to do the work of many." He also noted that "a great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which labor is most subdivided, were originally the invention of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it." Rosenberg (1976) studied the history of the US machine tool industry and found that important and basic machine types like lathes and milling machines were first developed and built by user firms having a strong need for them. Textile manufacturing firms, gun manufacturers and sewing machine manufacturers were important early user-developers of machine tools. Other studies show quantitatively that some of the most important and novel products and processes have been developed by user firms and by individual users. Enos (1962) reported that nearly all the most important innovations in oil refining were developed by user firms. Freeman (1968) found that the most widely licensed chemical production processes were developed by user firms. Von Hippel (1988) found that users were the developers of about 80 percent of the most important scientific instrument innovations, and also the developers of most of the major innovations in semiconductor processing. Pavitt (1984) found that a considerable fraction of invention by British firms was for in-house use. Shah (2000) found that the most commercially important equipment innovations in four sporting fields tended to be developed by individual users. +={ Enos, J. ; + Freeman, C. ; + Pavitt, K. ; + Rosenberg, N. ; + Shah, S. ; + Smith, A. ; + von Hippel, E. +23 ; + Sporting equipment : + lead users and +} + +!_ Lead User Theory +={ Lead users : + theory of +3 +} + +A second major finding of empirical research into innovation by users is that most user-developed products and product modifications (and the most commercially attractive ones) are developed by users with "lead user" characteristics. Recall from chapter 1 that lead users are defined as members of a user population having two distinguishing characteristics: (1) They are at the leading edge of an important market trend(s), and so are currently experiencing needs that will later be experienced by many users in that market. (2) They anticipate relatively high benefits from obtaining a solution to their needs, and so may innovate. +={ Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users +1 ; + Lead users : + economic benefit, expectations of +1 +} + +The theory that led to defining "lead users" in terms of these two characteristics was derived as follows (von Hippel 1986). First, the "ahead on an important market trend" variable was included because of its assumed effect on the commercial attractiveness of innovations developed by users residing at a leading-edge position in a market. Market needs are not static---they evolve, and often they are driven by important underlying trends. If people are distributed with respect to such trends as diffusion theory indicates, then people at the leading edges of important trends will be experiencing needs today (or this year) that the bulk of the market will experience tomorrow (or next year). And, if users develop and modify products to satisfy their own needs, then the innovations that lead users develop should later be attractive to many. The expected benefits variable and its link to innovation likelihood was derived from studies of industrial product and process innovations. These showed that the greater the benefit an entity expects to obtain from a needed innovation, the greater will be that entity's investment in obtaining a solution, where a solution is an innovation either developed or purchased (Schmookler 1966; Mansfield 1968). +={ Mansfield, E. ; + Schmookler, J. +} + +Empirical studies to date have confirmed lead user theory. Morrison, Roberts, and Midgely (2004) studied the characteristics of innovating and non-innovating users of computerized library information systems in a sample of Australian libraries. They found that the two lead user characteristics were distributed in a continuous, unimodal manner in that sample. They also found that the two characteristics of lead users and the actual development of innovations by users were highly correlated. Franke and von Hippel (2003b) confirmed these findings in a study of innovating and non-innovating users of Apache web server software. They also found that the commercial attractiveness of innovations developed by users increased along with the strength of those users' lead user characteristics. +={ Franke, N. ; + Midgely, David ; + Morrison, Pamela +19 ; + Roberts, J. ; + Apache web server software ; + Lead users : + Apache web server software and | library information search system and ; + Library information search system +} + +!_ Evidence of Innovation by Lead Users + +Several studies have found that user innovation is largely the province of users that have lead user characteristics, and that products lead users develop often form the basis for commercial products. These general findings appear robust: the studies have used a variety of techniques and have addressed a variety of markets and innovator types. Brief reviews of four studies will convey the essence of what has been found. + +!_ Innovation in Industrial Product User Firms + +In the first empirical study of lead users' role in innovation, Urban and von Hippel (1988) studied user innovation activity related to a type of software used to design printed circuit boards. A major market trend to which printed circuit computer-aided design software (PC-CAD) must respond is the steady movement toward packing electronic circuitry more densely onto circuit boards. Higher density means one that can shrink boards in overall size and that enables the circuits they contain to operate faster---both strongly desired attributes. Designing a board at the leading edge of what is technically attainable in density at any particular time is a very demanding task. It involves some combination of learning to make the printed circuit wires narrower, learning how to add more layers of circuitry to a board, and using smaller electronic components. +={ Urban, G. +1 ; + Lead users : + printed circuit CAD software and +3 ; + Lead users : + printed circuit CAD software and +3 ; + Printed circuit CAD software +3 +} + +To explore the link between user innovation and needs at the leading edge of the density trend, Urban and von Hippel collected a sample of 138 user-firm employees who had attended a trade show on the topic of PC-CAD. To learn the position of each firm on the density trend, they asked questions about the density of the boards that each PC-CAD user firm was currently producing. To learn about each user's likely expected benefits from improvements to PC-CAD, they asked questions about how satisfied each respondent was with their firm's present PC-CAD capabilities. To learn about users' innovation activities, they asked questions about whether each firm had modified or built its own PC-CAD software for its own in-house use. + +Users' responses were cluster analyzed, and clear lead user (n = 38) and non-lead-user (n = 98) clusters were found. Users in the lead user cluster were those that made the densest boards on average and that also were dissatisfied with their PC-CAD capabilities. In other words, they were at the leading edge of an important market trend, and they had a high incentive to innovate to improve their capabilities. Strikingly, 87 percent of users in the lead user cluster reported either developing or modifying the PC-CAD software that they used. In contrast, only 1 percent of non-lead users reported this type of innovation. Clearly, in this case user innovation was very strongly concentrated in the lead user segment of the user population. A discriminant analysis on indicated that "build own system" was the most important indicator of membership in the lead user cluster. The discriminant analysis had 95.6 percent correct classification of cluster membership. + +The commercial attractiveness of PC-CAD solutions developed by lead users was high. This was tested by determining whether lead users and more ordinary users preferred a new PC-CAD system concept containing features developed by lead users over the best commercial PC-CAD system available at the time of the study (as determined by a large PC-CAD system manufacturer's competitive analysis) and two additional concepts. The concept containing lead user features was significantly preferred at even twice the price (p < 0.01). +={ Lead users : + commercial attractiveness of +} + +!_ Innovation in Libraries +={ Lead users : + library information search system and +11 ; + Library information search system +11 +} + +Morrison, Roberts, and von Hippel (2000) explored user modifications made by Australian libraries to computerized information search systems called Online Public Access systems ("OPACs"). Libraries might not seem the most likely spot for technological innovators to lurk. However, computer technologies and the Internet have had a major effect on how libraries are run, and many libraries now have in-house programming expertise. Computerized search methods for libraries were initially developed by advanced and technically sophisticated user institutions. Development began in the United States in the 1970s with work by major universities and the Library of Congress, with support provided by grants from the federal government (Tedd 1994). Until roughly 1978, the only such systems extant were those that had been developed by libraries for their own use. In the late 1970s, the first commercial providers of computerized search systems for libraries appeared in the United States, and by 1985 there were at least 48 OPAC vendors in the United States alone (Matthews 1985). In Australia (site of the study sample), OPAC adoption began about 8 years later than in the United States (Tedd 1994). +={ Tedd, L. ; + Roberts, J. +3 +} + +Morrison, Roberts, and I obtained responses from 102 Australian libraries that were users of OPACs. We found that 26 percent of these had in fact modified their OPAC hardware or software far beyond the user-adjustment capabilities provided by the system manufacturers. The types of innovations that the libraries developed varied widely according to local needs. For example, the library that modified its OPAC to "add book retrieval instructions for staff and patrons" (table 2.2) did so because its collection of books was distributed in a complex way across a number of buildings--- making it difficult for staff and patrons to find books without precise directions. There was little duplication of innovations except in the case of adding Internet search capabilities to OPACs. In that unusual case, nine libraries went ahead and did the programming needed to add this important feature in advance of its being offered by the manufacturers of their systems. + +!_ Table 2.2 +OPAC modifications created by users served a wide variety of functions. + +table(h; c2: 50, 50){ + +Improved library management +Improved information-search capabilities + +Add library patron summary statistics +Integrate images in records (2) + +Add library identifiers +Combined menu/command searches + +Add location records for physical audit +Add title sorting and short title listing + +Add book retrieval instructions for staff and patrons +Add fast access key commands + +Add CD ROM System backup +Add multilingual search formats \\ key word searches (2) + +Add book access control based on copyright +Add topic linking and subject access + +Patrons can check their status via OPAC +Add prior search recall feature + +Patrons can reserve books via OPAC (2) +Add search "navigation aids" + +Remote access to OPAC by different systems +Add different hierarchical searches + +Add graduated system access via password +Access to other libraries' catalogs (2) + +Add interfaces to other in-house IT systems +Add or customize web interface (9) + + Word processing and correspondence (2) + Hot links for topics + + Umbrella for local information collection (2) + Extended searches + + Local systems adaptation + Hot links for source material + +}table + +Source of data: Morrison et al. 2000, table 1. Number of users (if more than one) developing functionally similar innovations is shown in parentheses after description of innovation. + +The libraries in the sample were asked to rank themselves on a number of characteristics, including "leading edge status" (LES). (Leading edge status, a construct developed by Morrison, is related to and highly correlated with the lead user construct (in this sample, ρ ,{(LES, CLU)}, = 0.904, /{p}/ = 0.000). ~{ LES contains four types of measures. Three ("benefits recognized early," "high benefits expected," and "direct elicitation of the construct") contain the core components of the lead user construct. The fourth ("applications generation") is a measure of a number of innovation-related activities in which users might engage: they "suggest new applications," they "pioneer those applications," and (because they have needs or problems earlier than their peers) they may be "used as a test site" (Morrison, Midgely, and Roberts 2004). }~ Self-evaluation bias was checked for by asking respondents to name other libraries they regarded as having the characteristics of lead users. Self-evaluations and evaluations by others did not differ significantly. +={ Midgely, David ; + Morrison, Pamela ; + Roberts, J. +} + +Libraries that had modified their OPAC systems were found to have significantly higher LES---that is, to be lead users. They were also found to have significantly higher incentives to make modifications than non-innovators, better in-house technical skills, and fewer "external resources" (for example, they found it difficult to find outside vendors to develop the modifications they wanted for them). Application of these four variables in a logit model classified libraries into innovator and non-innovator categories with an accuracy of 88 percent (table 2.3). + +!_ Table 2.3 +Factors associated with innovating in librararies (logit model). χ^{2}^/,{4}, = 33.85; ρ^{2}^ = 0.40; classification rate = 87.78%. + +table(h; c3: 40, 30, 30){ + +~ +Coefficient +Standard error + +Leading-edge status +1.862 +0.601 + +Lack of incentive to modify +--0.845 +0.436 + +Lack of in-house technology skills +--1.069 +0.412 + +Lack of external resources +0.695 +0.456 + +Constant +--2.593 +0.556 + +}table + +Source: Morrison et al. 2000, table 6. + +The commercial value of user-developed innovations in the library OPAC sample was assessed in a relatively informal way. Two development mangers employed by the Australian branches of two large OPAC manufacturers were asked to evaluate the commercial value of each user innovation in the sample. They were asked two questions about each: (1) "How important commercially to your firm is the functionality added to OPACs by this user-developed modification?" (2) "How novel was the information contained in the user innovation to your firm at the time that innovation was developed?" Responses from both managers indicated that about 70 percent (25 out of 39) of the user modifications provided functionality improvements of at least "medium" commercial importance to OPACs---and in fact many of the functions were eventually incorporated in the OPACs the manufacturers sold. However, the managers also felt that their firms generally already knew about the lead users' needs when the users developed their solutions, and that the innovations the users developed provided novel information to their company only in 10--20 percent of the cases. (Even when manufacturers learn about lead users' needs early, they may not think it profitable to develop their own solution for an "emerging" need until years later. I will develop this point in chapter 4.) +={ Lead users : + commercial attractiveness of ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and | lead users and +} + +!_ "Consumer" Innovation in Sports Communities +={ Franke, N. +11 ; + Shah, S. +11 ; + Innovation : + and sporting equipment +11 ; + Lead users : + manufacturers and +11 ; + Sporting equipment : + lead users and +11 +} + +% check manufacturers ref, see previous paragraph + +Franke and Shah (2003) studied user innovation in four communities of sports enthusiasts. The communities, all located in Germany, were focused on four very different sports. +={ Manufacturers : + innovation and | lead users and +} + +One community was devoted to canyoning, a new sport popular in the Alps. Canyoning combines mountain climbing, abseiling (rappelling), and swimming in canyons. Members do things like rappel down the middle of an active waterfall into a canyon below. Canyoning requires significant skill and involves physical risk. It is also a sport in rapid evolution as participants try new challenges and explore the edges of what is both achievable and fun. + +The second community studied was devoted to sailplaning. Sailplaning or gliding, a more mature sport than canyoning, involves flying in a closed, engineless glider carrying one or two people. A powered plane tows the glider to a desired altitude by means of a rope; then the rope is dropped and the engineless glider flies on its own, using thermal updrafts in the atmosphere to gain altitude as possible. The sailplaning community studied by Franke and Shah consisted of students of technical universities in Germany who shared an interest in sailplaning and in building their own sailplanes. + +Boardercross was the focus of the third community. In this sport, six snowboarders compete simultaneously in a downhill race. Racetracks vary, but each is likely to incorporate tunnels, steep curves, water holes, and jumps. The informal community studied consisted of semi-professional athletes from all over the world who met in as many as ten competitions a year in Europe, in North America, and in Japan. + +The fourth community studied was a group of semi-professional cyclists with various significant handicaps, such as cerebral palsy or an amputated limb. Such individuals must often design or make improvements to their equipment to accommodate their particular disabilities. These athletes knew each other well from national and international competitions, training sessions, and seminars sponsored by the Deutscher Sportbund (German National Sports Council). + +A total of 197 respondents (a response rate of 37.8 percent) answered a questionnaire about innovation activities in their communities. Thirty-two percent reported that they had developed or modified equipment they used for their sport. The rate of innovation varied among the sports, the high being 41 percent of the sailplane enthusiasts reporting innovating and the low being 18 percent of the boardercross snowboarders reporting. (The complexity of the equipment used in the various sports probably had something to do with this variation: a sailplane has many more components than a snowboard.) + +The innovations developed varied a great deal. In the sailplane community, users developed innovations ranging from a rocket-assisted emergency ejection system to improvements in cockpit ventilation. Snowboarders invented such things as improved boots and bindings. Canyoners' inventions included very specialized solutions, such as a way to cut loose a trapped rope by using a chemical etchant. With respect to commercial potential, +={ Lead users : + commercial attractiveness of +} + +Franke and Shah found that 23 percent of the user-developed innovations reported were or soon would be produced for sale by a manufacturer. Franke and Shah found that users who innovated were significantly higher on measures of the two lead user characteristics than users who did not innovate (table 2.4). They also found that the innovators spent more time in sporting and community-related activities and felt they had a more central role in the community. + +!_ Table 2.4 +Factors associated with innovation in sports communities. + +table(h; c4: 55, 15, 15, 15){ + +~ +Innovators^{a}^ +Non-innovators^{b}^ +Significance of difference^{c}^ + +Time in community +~ +~ +~ + +Years as a community member +4.46 +3.17 +p < 0.01 + +Days per year spent with community members +43.07 +32.73 +p < 0.05 + +Days per year spent participating in the sport +72.48 +68.71 +not significant + +Role in community^{d}^ +~ +~ +~ + +"I am a very active member of the community." +2.85 +3.82 +p < 0.01 + + +"I get together with members of the community for activities that are not related to the sport (movies, dinner parties, etc.)." +3.39 +4.14 +p < 0.05 + +"The community takes my opinion into account when making decisions" +2.89 +3.61 +p < 0.05 + +Lead user characteristic 1: being ahead of the trend^{d}^ +~ +~ +~ + +"I usually find out about new products and solutions earlier than others." +2.71 +4.03 +p < 0.001 + +"I have benefited significantly by the early adoption and use of new products." +3.58 +4.34 +p < 0.01 + +"I have tested prototype versions of new products for manufacturers." +4.94 +5.65 +p < 0.05 + +"In my sport I am regarded as being on the "cutting edge." +4.56 +5.38 +p < 0.01 + + +"I improved and developed new techniques in boardercrossing." +4.29 +5.84 +p < 0.001 + +Lead user characteristic 2: high benefit from innovation^{d}^ +~ +~ +~ + +"I have new needs which are not satisfied by existing products." +3.27 +4.38 +p < 0.001 + + +"I am dissatisfied with the existing equipment." +3.90 +5.13 +p < 0.001 + +}table + +Source: Franke and Shah 2003, table 3. \\ +a. All values are means; n = 60. \\ +b. All values are means; n = 129. \\ +c. Two-tailed t-tests for independent samples. \\ +d. Rated on seven-point scale, with 1 = very accurate and 7 = not accurate at all. Two-tailed t-tests for independent samples. + +!_ Innovation among Hospital Surgeons +={ Surgical equipment +4 ; + Lead users : + surgical equipment and +4 +} + +Lüthje (2003) explored innovations developed by surgeons working at university clinics in Germany. Ten such clinics were chosen randomly, and 262 surgeons responded to Lüthje's questionnaire---a response rate of 32.6 percent. Of the university surgeons responding, 22 percent reported developing or improving some item(s) of medical equipment for use in their own practices. Using a logit model to determine the influence of user characteristics on innovation activity, Lüthje found that innovating surgeons tended to be lead users (p < 0.01). He also found that solutions to problems encountered in their own surgical practices were the primary benefit that the innovating surgeons expected to obtain from the solutions they developed (p < 0.01). In addition, he found that the level of technical knowledge the surgeon held was significantly correlated with innovation (p < 0.05). Also, perhaps as one might expect in the field of medicine, the "contextual barrier" of concerns about legal problems and liability risks was found to have a strongly significant negative correlation with the likelihood of user invention by surgeons (p < 0.01). +={ Lüthje, C. +1 ; + Sticky information : + toolkits and +} + +With respect to the commercial value of the innovations the lead user surgeons had developed, Lüthje reported that 48 percent of the innovations developed by his lead user respondents were or soon would be marketed by manufacturers of medical equipment. + +!_ Discussion + +The studies reviewed in this chapter all found that user innovations in general and commercially attractive ones in particular tended to be developed by lead users. These studies were set in a range of fields, but all were focused on hardware innovations or on information innovations such as new software. It is therefore important to point out that, in many fields, innovation in techniques is at least as important as equipment innovation. For example, many novel surgical operations are performed with standard equipment (such as scalpels), and many novel innovations in snowboarding are based on existing, unmodified equipment. Technique-only innovations are also likely to be the work of lead users, and indeed many of the equipment innovations documented in the studies reviewed here involved innovations in technique as well as innovations in equipment. +={ Lead users : + commercial attractiveness of +1 ; + Users : + innovation process and +1 +} + +Despite the strength of the findings, many interesting puzzles remain that can be addressed by the further development of lead user theory. For example, empirical studies of innovation by lead users are unlikely to have sampled the world's foremost lead users. Thus, in effect, the studies reviewed here determined lead users to be those highest on lead user characteristics that were within their samples. Perhaps other samples could have been obtained in each of the fields studied containing users that were even more "leading edge" with respect to relevant market trends. If so, why were the samples of moderately leading-edge users showing user innovation if user innovation is concentrated among "extreme" lead users? There are at least three possible explanations. First, most of the studies of user innovation probably included users reasonably close to the global leading edge in their samples. Had the "top" users been included, perhaps the result would have been that still more attractive user innovations would have been found. Second, it may be that the needs of local user communities differ, and so local lead users really may be the world's lead users with respect to their particular needs. Third, even if a sample contains lead users that are not near the global top with respect to lead users' characteristics, local lead users might still have reasons to (re)develop innovations locally. For example, it might be cheaper, faster, more interesting, or more enjoyable to innovate than to search for a similar innovation that a "global top" lead user might already have developed. +={ Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users ; + Innovation process ; + Lead users : + economic benefit, expectations of ; + Local information ; + Users : + low-cost innovation niches of +} + +1~ 3 Why Many Users Want Custom Products +={ Custom products : + heterogeneity of user needs and +42 | users and +42 ; + User need +42 ; + Users : + custom products and +42 | innovation and +42 | needs of +} + +The high rates of user innovation documented in chapter 2 suggest that many users may want custom products. Why should this be so? I will argue that it is because many users have needs that differ in detail, and many also have both sufficient willingness to pay and sufficient resources to obtain a custom product that is just right for their individual needs. In this chapter, I first present the case for heterogeneity of user needs. I then review a study that explores users' heterogeneity of need and willingness to pay for product customization. + +!_ Heterogeneity of User Needs + +If many individual users or user firms want something different in a product type, it is said that heterogeneity of user need for that product type is high. If users' needs are highly heterogeneous, only small numbers of users will tend to want exactly the same thing. In such a case it is unlikely that mass-produced products will precisely suit the needs of many users. Mass manufacturers tend to want to build products that will appeal to more users rather than fewer, so as to spread their fixed costs of development and production. If many users want something different, and if they have adequate interest and resources to get exactly the product they need, they will be driven either to develop it for themselves or to pay a custom manufacturer to develop it for them. +={ Manufacturers : + custom products and | expectations of economic benefit by | innovation and +} + +Are users' needs for new products (and services) often highly heterogeneous? A test of reason suggests that they are. An individual's or a firm's need for a many products depends on detailed considerations regarding the user's initial state and resources, on the pathway the user must traverse to get from the initial state to the preferred state, and on detailed considerations regarding their preferred end state as well. These are likely to be different for each individual user and for each user firm at some level of detail. This, in turn, suggests that needs for many new products and services that are precisely right for each user will differ: that needs for those products will be highly heterogeneous. + +Suppose, for example, that you decide you need a new item of household furnishing. Your house is already furnished with hundreds of items, big and small, and the new item must "fit in" properly. In addition, your precise needs for the new item are likely to be affected by your living situation, your resources, and your preferences. For example: "We need a new couch that Uncle Bill will like, that the kids can jump on, that matches the wallpaper I adore, that reflects my love of coral reefs and overall good taste, and that we can afford." Many of these specific constraints are not results of current whim and are not easy to change. Perhaps you can change the wallpaper, but you are less likely to change Uncle Bill, your kids, your established tastes with respect to a living environment, or your resource constraints. + +The net result is that the most desired product characteristics might be specific to each individual or firm. Of course, many will be willing to satisfice---make compromises---on many items because of limits on the money or time they have available to get exactly what they want. Thus, a serious mountain biker may be willing to simply buy almost any couch on sale even if he or she is not fully happy with it. On the other hand, that same biker may be totally unwilling to compromise about getting mountain biking equipment that is precisely right for his or her specific needs. In terms of industrial products, NASA may insist on getting precisely right components for the Space Shuttle if they affect mission safety, but may be willing to satisfice on other items. + +!_ Evidence from Studies of User Innovation + +Two studies of innovation by users provide indirect information on the heterogeneity of user need. They provide descriptions of the functions of the innovations developed by users in their samples. Inspection of these descriptions shows a great deal of variation and few near-duplicates. Different functionality, of course, implies that the developers of the products had different needs. In the 2000 study of user modifications of library IT systems by Morrison, Roberts, and von Hippel, discussed earlier, only 14 of 39 innovations are functionally similar to any other innovations in the sample. If one type of functionality that was repeatedly developed ("web interface") is excluded, the overlap is even lower (see table 2.2). Other responses by study participants add to this impression of high heterogeneity of need among users. Thirty percent of the respondents reported that their library IT system had been highly customized by the manufacturer during installation to meet their specific needs. In addition, 54 percent of study respondents agreed with the statement "We would like to make additional improvements to our IT system functionality that can't be made by simply adjusting the standard, customer-accessible parameters provided by the supplier." +={ Morrison, Pamela ; + Roberts, J. ; + von Hippel, E. +34 ; + Lead users : + library information search system and ; + Library information search system +} + +Similar moderate overlap in the characteristics of user innovations can be seen in innovation descriptions provided in the study of mountain biking by Lüthje, Herstatt, and von Hippel (2002). In that study sample, I estimate that at most 10 of 43 innovations had functionality similar to that of another sample member. This diversity makes sense: mountain biking, which outsiders might assume is a single type of athletic activity, in fact has many subspecialties. +={ Herstatt, C. +7 ; + Lüthje, C. +7 ; + Mountain biking +7 +} + +As can be seen in table 3.1, the specializations of mountain bikers in the our study sample involved very different mountain biking terrains, and important variations in riding conditions and riding specializations. The innovations users developed were appropriate to their own heterogeneous riding activities and so were quite heterogeneous in function. Consider three examples drawn from our study: + +_* I ride on elevated, skinny planks and ladders, do jumps, steep technical downhills, obstacles and big drops. Solution devised: I needed sophisticated cycling armor and protective clothing. So I designed arm and leg armor, chest protection, shorts, pants and a jacket that enable me to try harder things with less fear of injury. + +_* I do back-country touring and needed a way to easily lift and carry a fully loaded mountain bike on the sides of steep hills and mountains and dangle it over cliffs as I climbed. Solution devised: I modified the top tube and the top of my seat post to provide secure attachment points for a carrying strap, then I modified a very plush and durable mountaineering sling to serve as the over-shoulder strap. Because the strap sits up high, I only need to bend my knees a little bit to lift the bike onto my shoulders, yet it is just high enough to keep the front wheel from hitting when I am climbing a steep hill. Eventually, I came up with a quick-release lateral strap to keep the main strap from sliding off my shoulder, but it will easily break away if I fall or land in a fast river and need to ditch my bike. + +_* When riding on ice, my bike has no traction and I slip and fall. Solution devised: I increased the traction of my tires by getting some metal studs used by the auto industry for winter tires. Then I selected some mountain biking tires with large blocks of rubber in the tread pattern, drilled a hole in the center of each block and inserted a stud in each hole. + +!_ Table 3.1 +Activity specializations of innovating mountain bikers. + +table(h; c6: 20, 13, 20, 13, 20, 14){ + +Preferred terrain +Number of bikers +Outside conditions +Number of bikers +Focus on particular riding abilities +Number of bikers + +Fast downhill tracks (steep, drops, fast) +44 (39.6%) +Darkness, night riding +45 (40.5%) +Jumps, drops, stunts, obstacles +34 (30.6%) + +Technical single tracks (up and down, rocky, jumps) +68 (61.3%) +Snow, ice, cold +60 (54.1%) +Technical ability/balance +22 (19.8%) + +Smooth single tracks (hilly, rolling, speed, sand, hardpack) +13 (11.7%) +Rain, mud +53 (47.7%) +Fast descents / downhill +34 (30.6%) + +Urban and streets +9 (8.1%) +Heat +15 (13.5%) +Endurance +9 (8.1%) + +No special terrain preferred +5 (4.5%) +High altitude +10 (9.0%) +Climbing +17 (13%) + +~ +~ +No extreme outside conditions +29 (26.1%) +Sprint +3 (2.7%) + +~ +~ +~ +~ +No focus on specific riding ability +36 (32.4%) + +}table + +Source: Lüthje,Herstatt, and vonHippel 2002. This table includes the 111 users in the study sample who had ideas for improvements to mountain biking equipment. (Of these, 61 had actually gone on to build the equipment they envisioned.) Many of these users reported experience in more than one category of activity, so the sum in each column is higher than 111. + +!_ Evidence from Studies of Market Segmentation + +Empirical data on heterogeneity of demand for specific products and services are sparse. Those most interested in studying the matter are generally mass manufacturers of products and services for consumers---and they do not make a practice of prospecting for heterogeneity. Instead, they are interested in finding areas where users' needs are similar enough to represent profitable markets for standard products produced in large volumes. Manufacturers customarily seek such areas via market-segmentation studies that partition markets into a very few segments---perhaps only three, four, or five. Each segment identified consists of customers with relatively similar needs for a particular product (Punj and Stewart 1983; Wind 1978). For example, toothpaste manufacturers may divide their markets into segments such as boys and girls, adults interested in tooth whitening, and so on. +={ Punj, G. ; + Stewart, D. ; + Wind, Y. ; + Custom products : + market segmentation and +3 ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and ; + Marketing research +1 +} + +Since the 1970s, nearly all market-segmentation studies have been carried out by means of cluster analysis (Green 1971; Green and Schaffer 1998). After cluster analysis places each participant in the segment of the market most closely matching his needs, a measure of within-segment need variation is determined. This is the proportion of total variation that is within each cluster, and it shows how much users' needs deviate from the averages in "their" respective segments. If within-segment variation is low, users within the segment will have fairly homogeneous needs, and so may be reasonably satisfied with a standard product designed to serve all customers in their segment. If it high, many users are likely to be dissatisfied---some seriously so. +={ Green, P. ; + Schaffer, C. +} + +Within-segment variation is seldom reported in published studies, but a survey of market-segmentation studies published in top-tier journals did find 15 studies reporting that statistic. These studies specified 5.5 clusters on average, and had an average remaining within-cluster variance of 46 percent (Franke and Reisinger 2003). Franke and von Hippel (2003b) found similar results in an independent sample. In that study, an average of 3.7 market segments were specified and 54 percent of total variance was left as within-segment variation after the completion of cluster analysis. These data suggest that heterogeneity of need might be very substantial among users in many product categories. ~{ Cluster analysis does not specify the "right" number of clusters---it simply segments a sample into smaller and smaller clusters until the analyst calls a halt. Determining an appropriate number of clusters within a sample can be done in different ways. Of course, it always possible to say that "I only want to deal with three market segments, so I will stop my analysis when my sample has been segmented into three clusters." More commonly, analysts will examine the increase of squared error sums of each step, and generally will view the optimal number of clusters as having been reached when the plot shows a sudden "elbow" (Myers 1996). Since this technique does not incorporate information on remaining within-cluster heterogeneity, it can lead to solutions with a large amount of within-cluster variance. The "cubic clustering criterion" (CCC) partially addresses this concern by measuring the within-cluster homogeneity relative to the between-cluster heterogeneity. It suggests choosing the number of clusters where this value peaks (Milligan and Cooper 1985). However, this method appears to be rarely used: Ketchen and Shook (1996) found it used in only 5 of 45 segmentation studies they examined. }~ +={ Franke, N. +20 ; + Reisinger, H. +} + +!_ A Study of Heterogeneity and Willingness To Pay + +A need for a novel product not on the market must be accompanied by adequate willingness to pay (and resources) if it is to be associated with the actual development or purchase of a custom product. What is needed to reliably establish the relationship among heterogeneity of demand, willingness to pay, and custom product development or purchase is studies that address all three factors in the same sample. My colleague Nikolaus Franke and I conducted one such study in a population of users of web server software, a product used primarily by industrial firms (Franke and von Hippel 2003b). + +Franke and I looked in detail at users' needs for security features in Apache web server software, and at users' willingness to pay for solutions that precisely fit their needs. Apache web server software is open source software that is explicitly designed to allow modification by anyone having appropriate skills. Anyone may download open source software from the Internet and use it without charge. Users are also explicitly granted the legal right to study the software's source code, to modify the software, and to distribute modified or unmodified versions to others. (See chapter 7 for a full discussion of open source software.) +={ Apache web server software +16 ; + Custom products : + Apache web server software and +16 ; + Lead users : + Apache web server software and +16 ; + Users : + and paying for innovations +} + +Apache web server software is used on web server computers connected to the Internet. A web server's function is to respond to requests from Internet browsers for particular documents or content. A typical server waits for clients' requests, locates the requested resource, applies the requested method to the resource, and sends the response back to the client. Web server software began by offering relatively simple functionality. Over time, however, Apache and other web server software programs have evolved into the complicated front end for many of the technically demanding applications that now run on the Internet. For example, web server software is now used to handle security and authentication of users, to provide e-commerce shopping carts, and gateways to databases. In the face of strong competition from commercial competitors (including Microsoft and Sun/Netscape), the Apache web server has become the most popular web server software on the Internet, used by 67 percent of the many millions of World Wide Web sites extant in early 2004. It has also received many industry awards for excellence. + +Franke and I created a preliminary list of server security functions from published and web-based sources. The preliminary list was evaluated and corrected by experts in web server security and Apache web server software. We eventually ended up with a list of 45 security functions that some or many users might need. Solutions to some were already incorporated in the standard Apache code downloadable by users, others were available in additional modules, and a few were not yet addressed by any security module generally available to the Apache community. (Security threats can emerge quickly and become matters of great concern before a successful response is developed and offered to the general community. A recent example is site flooding, a form of attack in which vandals attempt to cause a website to fail by flooding it with a very large number of simultaneous requests for a response.) + +Users of the security functions of web server software are the webmasters employed by firms to make sure that their software is up to date and functions properly. A major portion of a webmaster's job is to ensure that the software used is secure from attacks launched by those who wish illicit access or simply want to cause the software to fail in some way. We collected responses to our study questions from two samples of Apache webmasters: webmasters who posted a question or an answer on a question at the Apache Usenet Forum ~{ http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix }~ and webmasters who subscribed to a specialized online Apache newsgroup. ~{ http://modules.apache.org/ }~ This stratified sample gave us an adequate representation of webmasters who both did and did not have the technical skills needed to modify Apache security software to better fit their needs: subscribers to apache-modules.org tend to have a higher level of technical skills on average than those posting to the Apache Usenet Forum. Data were obtained by means of an Internet-based questionnaire. + +!_ The Heterogeneity of Users' Needs + +Franke and I found the security module needs of Apache users were very heterogeneous indeed both among those that had the in-house capability to write code to modify Apache and those that did not. The calibrated coefficient of heterogeneity, H,{c},, was 0.98, indicating that there was essentially no tendency of the users to cluster beyond chance. (We defined the "heterogeneity of need" in a group as the degree to which the needs of i individuals can be satisfied with j standard products which optimally meet their needs. This means that heterogeneity of need is high when many standard products are necessary to satisfy the needs of i individuals and low when the needs can be satisfied by a few standard products. The higher the coefficient the more heterogeneous are the needs of users in a sample. If the calibrated heterogeneity coefficient H,{c}, equals 1, there is no systematic tendency of the users to cluster. If it is lower than 1, there is some tendency of the individuals to cluster. A coefficient of 0 means that the needs of all individuals are exactly the same. ~{ To measure heterogeneity, Franke and I analyzed the extent to which j standards, varying from [1; i], meet the needs of the i individuals in our sample. Conceptually, we first locate a product in multi-dimensional need space (dimensions = 45 in the case of our present study) that minimizes the distances to each individual's needs. (This step is analogous to the Ward's method in cluster analysis that also minimizes within cluster variation; see Punj and Stewart 1983.) The "error" is then measured as the sum of squared Euclidean distances. We then repeated these steps to determine the error for two optimally positioned products, three products, and so on up to a number equaling I -- 1. The sum of squared errors for all cases is then a simple coefficient that measures how much the needs of i individuals can be satisfied with j standard products. The "coefficient of heterogeneity" just specified is sensitive both to the (average) /{distance}/ between the needs and for the /{configuration}/ of the needs: when the needs tend to form clusters the heterogeneity coefficient is lower than if they are evenly spread. To make the coefficient comparable across different populations, we calibrate it using a bootstrapping technique (Efron 1979) involving dividing the coefficient by the expected value (this value is generated by averaging the heterogeneity of many random distributions of heterogeneity of the same kind). The average random heterogeneity coefficient is then an appropriate value for calibration purposes: it assumes that there is no systematic relationship between the needs of the individuals or between the need dimensions. }~ ) +={ Franke, N. ; + Punj, G. ; + Stewart, D. +} + +Even this understates the heterogeneity. Responding Apache webmasters went far beyond the 45 security-related functions of web server software that we offered for their evaluation. In our questionnaire we offered an open question asking users to list up to four additional needs they experienced that were not covered by the standard list. Nearly 50 percent used the opportunity to add additional functions. When duplicates were eliminated, we found that 92 distinct additional security-related needs had been noted by one or more webmaster users.~{ Conceptually, it can be possible to generate "one perfect product" for everyone--- in which case heterogeneity of demand is zero---by simply creating all the features wanted by anyone (45 + 92 features in the case of this study), and incorporating them in the "one perfect product." Users could then select the features they want from a menu contained in the one perfect product to tailor it to their own tastes. Doing this is at least conceptually possible in the case of software, but less so in the case of a physical product for two reasons: (1) delivering all possible physical options to everyone who buys the product would be expensive for physical goods (while costing nothing extra in the case of information products); (2) some options are mutually exclusive (an automobile cannot be both red and green at the same time). }~ + +High heterogeneity of need in our sample suggests that there should be a high interest in obtaining modifications to Apache---and indeed, overall satisfaction with the existing version was only moderate. + +!_ Willingness to Pay for Improvements + +It is not enough to want a better-fitting custom product. One must also be willing and able to pay to get what one wants. Those in the Apache sample who did innovate were presumably willing to pay the price to do so. But how much were the users in our sample---the innovators and the non-innovators--- willing to pay /{now}/ for improvements? Estimating a user's willingness to pay (WTP) is known to be a difficult task. Franke and I used the contingent valuation method, in which respondents are directly asked how much they are willing to pay for a product or service (Mitchell and Carson 1989). Results obtained by that method often overestimate WTP significantly. Empirical studies that compare expressed WTP with actual cash payments on average showed actual spending behavior to be somewhat smaller than expressed WTP in the case of private purchases (such as in our case). In contrast, they generally find willingness to pay to be greatly overstated in the case of public goods such as the removal of a road from a wilderness area. ~{ The difference between actual willingness to pay and expressed willingness to pay is much lower for private goods (our case) than for public goods. In the case of private goods, Loomis et al. (1996) found the expressed willingness to pay for art prints to be twice the actual WTP. Willis and Powe (1998) found that among visitors to a castle the expressed WTP was 60 percent lower than the actual WTP. In the case of public goods, Brown et al. (1996), in a study of willingness to pay for removal of a road from a wilderness area, found the expressed WTP to be 4--6 times the actual WTP. Lindsey and Knaap (1999), in a study of WTP for a public urban greenway, found the expressed WTP to be 2-10 times the actual WPT. Neil et al. (1994) found the expressed WTP for conserving an original painting in the desert to be 9 times the actual WTP. Seip and Strand (1992) found that less than 10 percent of those who expressed interest in paying to join an environmental organization actually joined. }~ +={ Carson, R. ; + Mitchell, R. +} + +To compensate for the likely overstatement of expressed relative to actual WTP in our study, Franke and I conservatively deflated respondents' indicated willingness to pay by 80 percent. (Although the product in question was intended for private use, webmasters were talking about their willingness to spend company money, not their own money.) We asked each user who had indicated that he was not really satisfied with a function (i.e., whose satisfaction with the respective function was 4 or less on a 7-point scale, where 1 = not satisfied at all, and 7 = very satisfied) to estimate how much he would be willing to pay to get a very satisfactory solution regarding this function. After deflation, our sample of 137 webmasters said they were willing to pay $700,000 in aggregate to modify web server software to a point that fully satisfied them with respect to their security function needs. This amounts to an average of $5,232 total willingness to pay per respondent. This is a striking number because the price of commercial web server software similar to Apache's for one server was about $1,100 at the time of our study (source: www.sun.com, November 2001). If we assume that each webmaster was in charge of ten servers on average, this means that each webmaster was willing to pay half the price of a total server software package to get his heterogeneous needs for security features better satisfied. + +!_ Increased Satisfaction from Customization of Apache + +Recall that it takes some technical skill to modify Apache web server software by writing new code. In table 3.2, Franke and I examined only the technically skilled users in our sample who claimed the capability of making modifications to Apache web server software. For these technically skilled users, we found significantly higher satisfaction levels among those that actually did customize their software---but even the users that made modifications were not fully satisfied. + +!_ Table 3.2 +Skilled users who customized their software were more satisfied than those who did not customize. + +table(h; c4: 45, 18, 18, 18){ + +~ +Users who customized (n=18) +Users who did not customize (n=44) +Difference (one-tailed t-test) + +Satisfaction with basic web server functionality +5.5 +4.3 +0.100 + +Satisfaction with authentication of client +3.0 +1.0 +0.001 + +Satisfaction with e-commerce-related functions +1.3 +0.0 +0.023 + +Satisfaction with within-site user access control +8.5 +6.9 +0.170 + +Satisfaction with other security functions +3.9 +3.9 +0.699 + +Overall satisfaction +4.3 +2.6 +0.010 + +}table + +Source: Franke and von Hippel 2003, table 8. In this table, 45 individual functions are grouped into five general categories. The satisfaction index ranges from -21 to +21. + +One might wonder why users with the ability to modify Apache closer to their liking were not totally satisfied. The answer can be found in respondents' judgments regarding how much effort it would require to modify Apache still more to their liking. We asked all respondents who indicated dissatisfaction of level 4 or lower with a specific function of Apache how much working time it would cost them to improve the function to the point where they would judge it to be very satisfactory (to be at a satisfaction level of 7). For the whole sample and all dissatisfactions, we obtained a working time of 8,938 person-days necessary to get a very satisfactory solution. This equals $78 of incremental benefit per incremental programmer working day ($716,758 divided by 8,938 days). This is clearly below the regular wages a skilled programmer gets. Franke and I concluded from this that skilled users do not improve their respective Apache versions to the point where they are perfectly satisfied because the costs of doing so would exceed the benefits. + +!_ Discussion + +Heterogeneity of user need is likely to be high for many types of products. Data are still scanty, but high heterogeneity of need is a very straightforward explanation for why there is so much customization by users: many users have "custom" needs for products and services. + +Those interested can easily enhance their intuitions about heterogenity of user need and related innovation by users. User innovation appears to be common enough so that one can find examples for oneself in a reasonably small, casual sample. Readers therefore may find it possible (and enjoyable) to do their own informal tests of the matter. My own version of such a test is to ask the students in one of my MIT classes (typically about 50 students) to think about a particular product that many use, such as a backpack. I first ask them how satisfied they are with their backpack. Initially, most will say "It's OK." But after some discussion and thinking, a few complaints will slowly begin to surface (slowly, I think, because we all take some dissatisfaction with our products as the unremarkable norm). "It doesn't fit comfortably" in this or that particular way. "When my lunch bag or thermos leaks the books and papers I am carrying get wet---there should be a water proof partition." "I carry large drawings to school rolled up in my backpack with the ends sticking out. They are ruined if it rains and I have not taken the precaution of wrapping them in plastic." Next, I ask whether any students have modified their backpacks to better meet their needs. Interestingly enough, one or two typically have. Since backpacks are not products of very high professional or hobby interest to most users, the presence of even some user innovation to adapt to individual users' unmet needs in such small, casual samples is an interesting intuition builder with respect to the findings discussed in this chapter. + +1~ 4 Users' Innovate-or-Buy Decisions +={ Users : + innovation and +4 | innovate-or-buy decisions by +74 +} + +Why does a user wanting a custom product sometimes innovate for itself rather than buying from a manufacturer of custom products? There is, after all, a choice---at least it would seem so. However, if a user with the resources and willingness to pay does decide to buy, it may be surprised to discover that it is not so easy to find a manufacturer willing to make exactly what an individual user wants. Of course, we all know that mass manufacturers with businesses built around providing standard products in large numbers will be reluctant to accommodate special requests. Consumers know this too, and few will be so foolish as to contact a major soup producer like Campbell's with a request for a special, "just-right" can of soup. But what about manufacturers that specialize in custom products? Isn't it their business to respond to special requests? To understand which way the innovate-or-buy choice will go, one must consider both transaction costs and information asymmetries specific to users and manufacturers. I will talk mainly about transaction costs in this chapter and mainly about information asymmetries in chapter 5. +={ Custom products : + users and +3 ; + Innovation process +3 ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and +3 ; + Transaction costs +3 ; + Users : + innovation process and +3 | and paying for innovations +} + +I begin this chapter by discussing four specific and significant transaction costs that affect users' innovate-or-buy decisions. Next I review a case study that illustrates these. Then, I use a simple quantitative model to further explore when user firms will find it more cost-effective to develop a solution---a new product or service---for themselves rather than hiring a manufacturer to solve the problem for them. Finally, I point out that /{individual}/ users can sometimes be more inclined to innovate than one might expect because they sometimes value the /{process}/ of innovating as well as the novel product or service that is created. + +!_ Users' vs. Manufacturers' Views of Innovation Opportunities +={ Agency costs +15 ; + Manufacturers : + agency costs and +15 ; + Transaction costs : + See also Agency costs ; + Users : + agency costs and +15 | transaction costs and +15 +} + +Three specific contributors to transaction costs---in addition to the "usual suspects," such as opportunism---often have important effects on users' decisions whether to buy a custom product or to develop it for themselves. These are (1) differences between users' and manufacturers' views regarding what constitutes a desirable solution, (2) differences in innovation quality signaling requirements between user and manufacturer innovators, and (3) differences in legal requirements placed on user and manufacturer innovators. The first two of these factors involve considerations of agency costs. When a user hires a manufacturer to develop a custom product, the user is a principal that has hired the custom manufacturer as to act as its agent. When the interests of the principal and the agent are not the same, agency costs will result. Recall from chapter 1 that agency costs are (1) costs incurred to monitor the agent to ensure that it follows the interests of the principal, (2) the cost incurred by the agent to commit itself not to act against the principal's interest (the "bonding cost"), and (3) costs associated with an outcome that does not fully serve the interests of the principal (Jensen and Meckling 1976). In the specific instance of product and service development, agency considerations enter because a user's and a manufacturer's interests with respect to the development of a custom product often differ significantly. +={ Jensen, M. ; + Meckling, W. +} + +!_ Preferences Regarding Solutions + +Individual products and services are components of larger user solutions. A user therefore wants a product that will make the best overall tradeoff between solution quality and price. Sometimes the best overall tradeoff will result in a willingness to pay a surprisingly large amount to get a solution component precisely right. For example, an individual user may specify tennis racket functionality that will fit her specific technique and relative strengths and will be willing to pay a great deal for exactly that racket. Deviations in racket functionality would require compensating modifications in her carefully practiced and deeply ingrained hitting technique---a much more costly overall solution from the user's point of view. In contrast, a user will be much less concerned with precisely /{how}/ the desired functionality is attained. For example, tennis players will typically be unconcerned about whether a tennis racket is made from metal, carbon fiber, plastic or wood---or, for that matter, from mud---if it performs precisely as desired. And, indeed, users have quickly shifted to new types of rackets over the years as new materials promise a better fit to their particular functional requirements. + +Of course, the same thing is true in the case of products for industrial users. For example, a firm with a need for a process machine may be willing to pay a great deal for one that is precisely appropriate to the characteristics of the input materials being processed, and to the skills of employees who will operate the machine. Deviations in either matter would require compensating modifications in material supply and employee training---likely to be a much more costly overall solution from the user's point of view. In contrast, the user firm will be much less concerned with precisely how the desired functionality is achieved by the process machine, and will care only that it performs precisely as specified. + +Manufacturers faced with custom development requests from users make similar calculations, but theirs revolve around attempting to conserve the applicability of a low-cost (to them) solution. Manufacturers tend to specialize in and gain competitive advantage from their capabilities in one or a few specific solution types. They then seek to find as many profitable applications for those solutions types as possible. For example, a specialist in fabricating custom products from carbon fiber might find it profitable to make any kind of product---from airplane wings to tennis rackets---as long as they are made from carbon fiber. In contrast, that same manufacturer would have no competitive advantage in---and so no profit from making--- any of these same products from metal or wood. + +Specializations in solution types can be very narrow indeed. For example, thousands of manufacturers specialize in adhesive-based fastening solutions, while other thousands specialize in mechanical fastening solutions involving such things as metal screws and nails. Importantly, companies that produce products and solution types that have close functional equivalence from the user's point of view can look very different from the point of view of a solution supplier. For example, a manufacturer of standard or custom adhesives needs chemists on staff with an expertise in chemical formulation. It also needs chemistry labs and production equipment designed to mix specialized batches of chemicals on a small scale, and it needs the equipment, expertise and regulatory approvals to package that kind of product in a way that is convenient to the customer and also in line with regulatory safeguards. In contrast, manufacturers specializing in standard or custom metal fastening solutions need none of these things. What they need instead are mechanical design engineers, a machine shop to build product prototypes and production tooling, specialized metal-forming production equipment such as screw machines, and so on. + +Users, having an investment only in a need specification and not in a solution type, want the best functional solution to their problem, independent of solution type used. Manufacturers, in contrast, want to supply custom solutions to users that utilize their existing expertise and production capabilities. Thus, in the case of the two fastening technology alternatives just described, users will prefer whatever solution approach works best. In contrast, adhesives manufacturers will find it tremendously more attractive to create a solution involving adhesive-based fastening, and manufacturers specializing in mechanical fastening will similarly strongly prefer to offer to develop solutions involving mechanical fastening. + +The difference between users' incentives to get the best functional solution to their need and specialist manufacturers' incentives to embed a specific solution type in the product to be developed are a major source of agency costs in custom product development, because there is typically an information asymmetry between user and manufacturer with respect to what will be the best solution. Manufacturers tend to know more than users about this and to have a strong incentive to provide biased information to users in order to convince them that the solution type in which they specialize is the best one to use. Such biases will be difficult for users to detect because, again, they are less expert than the suppliers in the various solution technologies that are candidates. +={ Information asymmetries ; + Users : + information asymmetries of +} + +Theoretically, this agency cost would disappear if it were possible to fully specify a contract (Aghion and Tirole 1994; Bessen 2004). But in product development, contracting can be problematic. Information regarding characteristics of solutions and needs is inescapably incomplete at the time of contracting---users cannot fully specify what they want in advance of trying out prototype solutions, and manufacturers are not fully sure how planned solution approaches will work out before investing in customer-specific development. +={ Aghion, P. ; + Bessen, J. ; + Contracting ; + Tirole, J. +} + +!_ Users' Expectations + +When users buy a product from manufacturers, they tend to expect a package of other services to come along with the product they receive. However, when users develop a product for themselves, some of these are not demanded or can be supplied in a less formal, less expensive way by users for themselves. This set of implicit expectations can raise the cost to a user of a custom solution bought from a manufacturer relative to a home-developed solution. +={ Manufacturers : + innovation and +11 ; + Users : + innovation and +11 +} + +Users typically expect a solution they have purchased to work correctly and reliably "right out of the box." In effect, a sharp line is drawn between product development at the manufacturer's site and routine, trouble-free usage at the purchaser's site. When the user builds a product for itself, however, both the development and the use functions are in the same organization and may explicitly be overlapped. Repeated tests and repeated repairs and improvements during early use are then more likely to be understood and tolerated as an acceptable part of the development process. + +A related difference in expectations has to do with field support for a product that has been purchased rather than developed in house. In the case of a purchased custom product, users expect that manufacturers will provide replacement parts and service if needed. Responding to this expectation is costly for a custom manufacturer. It must keep a record of what it has built for each particular user, and of any special parts incorporated in that user's products so that they can be built or purchased again if needed. In contrast, if a user has developed a product for itself, it has people on site who know details of its design. These employees will be capable of rebuilding or repairing or redesigning the product /{ad hoc}/ if and as the need arises. (Of course, if these knowledgeable employees leave the user firm while the product they designed is still in use, such informality can prove costly.) + +Manufacturers also must invest in indirect quality signals that may not have an effect on actual quality, but instead are designed to assure both the specific user being served and the market in general that the product being supplied is of high quality. These represent another element of agency costs that user-innovators do not incur. When users develop an innovation for themselves, they end up intimately knowing the actual quality of the solution they have developed, and knowing why and how it is appropriate to their task. As an example, an engineer building a million-dollar process machine for in-house use might feel it perfectly acceptable to install a precisely right and very cheap computer controller made and prominently labeled by Lego, a manufacturer of children's toys. (Lego provides computer controllers for some of its children's building kit products.) But if that same engineer saw a Lego controller in a million-dollar process machine his firm was purchasing from a specialist high-end manufacturer, he might not know enough about the design details to know that the Lego controller was precisely right for the application. In that case, the engineer and his managers might well regard the seemingly inappropriate brand name as an indirect signal of bad quality. + +Manufacturers are often so concerned about a reputation for quality that they refuse to take shortcuts that a customer specifically requests and that might make sense for a particular customer, lest others get wind of what was done and take it as a negative signal about the general quality of the firm's products. For example, you may say to a maker of luxury custom cars: "I want to have a custom car of your brand in my driveway---my friends will admire it. But I only plan to drive it to the grocery store once in a while, so I only want a cheap little engine. A luxury exterior combined with cheap parts is the best solution for me in this application---just slap something together and keep the price low." The maker is likely to respond: "We understand your need, but we cannot be associated with any product of low quality. Someone else may look under the hood some day, and that would damage our reputation as a maker of fine cars. You must look elsewhere, or decide you are willing to pay the price to keep one of our fine machines idle on your driveway." + +!_ Differing Legal and Regulatory Requirements + +Users that innovate do not generally face legal risk if the product they develop fails and causes costs to themselves but not to others. In contrast, manufacturers that develop and sell new products are regarded under US law as also providing an implied warranty of "fitness for the intended use." If a product does not meet this criterion, and if a different, written warranty is not in place, manufacturers can be found liable for negligence with respect to providing a defective design and failure to warn buyers (Barnes and Ulin 1984). This simple difference can cause a large difference in exposure to liability by innovators and so can drive up the costs of manufacturer-provided solutions relative to user-provided ones. +={ Barnes, B. ; + Ulin, D. ; + Transaction costs +51 ; + Users : + transaction costs and +23 +} + +For example, a user firm that builds a novel process controller to improve its plant operations must pay its own actual costs if the self-built controller fails and ruins expensive materials being processed. On the other hand, if a controller manufacturer designed the novel controller product and sold it to customers, and a failure then occurred and could be traced back to a fault in the design, the controller manufacturer is potentially liable for actual user costs and punitive damages. It may also incur significant reputational losses if the unhappy user broadcasts its complaints. The logical response of a controller manufacturer to this higher risk is to charge more and/or to be much more careful with respect to running exhaustive, expensive, and lengthy tests before releasing a new product. The resulting increase in cost and delay for obtaining a manufacturer-developed product can tend to tip users toward building their own, in-house solutions. +={ Custom products : + manufacturers and +2 ; + Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users : + by manufacturers +4 | by users +7 ; + Manufacturers : + expectations of economic benefit by +4 +} + +!_ Net Result + +A net result of the foregoing considerations is that manufacturers often find that developing a custom product for only one or a few users will be unprofitable. In such cases, the transaction costs involved can make it cheaper for users with appropriate capabilities to develop the product for themselves. In larger markets, in contrast, fixed transaction costs will be spread over many customers, and the economies of scale obtainable by producing for the whole market may be substantial. In that case, it will likely be cheaper for users to buy than to innovate. As a result, manufacturers, when contacted by a user with a very specific request, will be keenly interested in how many others are likely to want this solution or elements of it. If the answer is "few," a custom manufacturer will be unlikely to accept the project. + +Of course, manufacturers have an incentive to /{make}/ markets attractive from their point of view. This can be done by deviating from precisely serving the needs of a specific custom client in order to create a solution that will be "good enough" for that client but at the same time of more interest to others. Manufacturers may do this openly by arranging meetings among custom buyers with similar needs, and then urging the group to come up with a common solution that all will find acceptable. "After all," as the representative will say, "it is clear that we cannot make a special product to suit each user, so all of you must be prepared to make really difficult compromises!" More covertly, manufacturers may simply ignore some of the specific requests of the specific user client and make something that they expect to be a more general solution instead. + +The contrasting incentives of users and manufacturers with respect to generality of need being served---and also with respect to the solution choice issue discussed earlier---can result in a very frustrating and cloudy interaction in which each party hides its best information and attempts to manipulate others to its own advantage. With respect to generality of need, sophisticated users understand custom suppliers' preference for a larger market and attempt to argue convincingly that "everyone will want precisely what I am asking you for." Manufacturers, in turn, know users have this incentive and so will generally prefer to develop custom products for which they themselves have a reasonable understanding of demand. Users are also aware of manufacturers' strong preference for only producing products that embody their existing solution expertise. To guard against the possibility that this incentive will produce biased advice, they may attempt to shop around among a number of suppliers offering different solution types and/or develop internal expertise on solution possibilities and/or attempt to write better contracts. All these attempts to induce and guard against bias involve agency costs. +={ Custom products : + manufacturers and +} + +!_ An Illustrative Case + +A case study by Sarah Slaughter (1993) illustrates the impact of some of the transaction costs discussed above related to users' innovate-or-buy decisions. Slaughter studied patterns of innovation in stressed-skin panels, which are used in some housing construction. The aspects of the panels studied were related to installation, and so the users of these features were home builders rather than home owners. When Slaughter contrasted users' costs of innovating versus buying, she found that it was always much cheaper for the builder to develop a solution for itself at a construction site than to ask a panel manufacturer to do so. +={ Slaughter, S. +16 ; + Stressed-skin panels +16 +} + +A stressed-skin panel can be visualized as a large 4-by-8-foot sandwich consisting of two panels made of plywood with a layer of plastic foam glued in between. The foam, about 4 inches thick, strongly bonds the two panels together and also acts as a layer of thermal insulation. In 1989, manufacturing of stressed-skin panels was a relatively concentrated industry; the four largest manufacturers collectively having a 77 percent share of the market. The user industry was much less concentrated: the four largest constructors of panelized housing together had only 1 percent of the market for such housing in 1989. + +In housing construction, stressed-skin panels are generally attached to strong timber frames to form the outer shell of a house and to resist shear loads (such as the force of the wind). To use the panels in this way, a number of subsidiary inventions are required. For example, one must find a practical, long-lasting way to attach panels to each other and to the floors, the roof, and the frame. Also, one has to find a new way to run pipes and wires from place to place because there are no empty spaces in the walls to put them---panel interiors are filled with foam. + +Stressed-skin panels were introduced into housing construction after World War II. From then till 1989, the time of Slaughter's study, 34 innovations were made in 12 functionally important areas to create a complete building system for this type of construction. Slaughter studied the history of each of these innovations and found that 82 percent had been developed by users of the stressed-skin panels---residential builders---and only 18 percent by manufacturers of stressed-skin panels. Sometimes more than one user developed and implemented different approaches to the same functional problem (table 4.1). Builders freely revealed their innovations rather than protecting them for proprietary advantage. They were passed from builder to builder by word of mouth, published in trade magazines, and diffused widely. All were replicated at building sites for years before any commercial panel manufacturer developed and sold a solution to accomplish the same function. + +Histories of the user-developed improvements to stressed-skin panel construction showed that the user-innovator construction firms did not engage in planned R&D projects. Instead, each innovation was an immediate response to a problem encountered in the course of a construction project. Once a problem was encountered, the innovating builder typically developed and fabricated a solution at great speed, using skills, materials, and equipment on hand at the construction site. Builders reported that the average time from discovery of the problem to installation of the completed solution on the site was only half a day. The total cost of each innovation, including time, equipment, and materials, averaged $153. + +!_ Example: Installing Wiring in a Stressed-Skin Panel + +A builder was faced with the immediate problem of how to route wires through the foam interior of panels to wall switches located in the middle of the panels. He did not want cut grooves or channels through the surfaces of the panels to these locations---that would dangerously reduce the panels' structural strength. His inventive solution was to mount an electrically heated wire on the tip of a long pole and simply push the heated tip through the center insulation layer of the panel. As he pushed, the electrically heated tip quickly melted a channel through the foam plastic insulation from the edge of the panel to the desired spot. Wires were then pulled through this channel. + +!_ Table 4.1 +Users would have found it much more costly to get custom solutions from manufacturers. The costs of user-developed innovations in stressed-skin panels were very low. + +table(h; c5: 40, 17, 17, 6, 20){ + +Function +Average user development time (days) +Average user development cost +N +Minimimum cost of waiting for manufacturer to deliver + +Framing of openings in panels +0.1 +$20 +1 +$1,400 + +Structural connection between panels +0.1 +30 +2 +$1,400 + +Ventilation of panels on roof +0.1 +32 +2 +$28,000 + +Insulated connection between panels +0.1 +41 +3 +$2,800 + +Corner connection between panels +0.2 +60 +1 +$2,800 + +Installation of HVAC in panels +0.2 +60 +2 +$2,800 + +Installation of wiring in panels +0.2 +79 +7 +$2,800 + +Connection of panels to roof +0.2 +80 +1 +$2,800 + +Add insect repellency to panels +0.4 +123 +3 +$70,000 + +Connect panels to foundation +0.5 +160 +1 +$1,400 + +Connect panels to frames +1.2 +377 +3 +$2,800 + +Development of curved panels +5.0 +1,500 +1 +$28,000 + +Average for all innovations +0.5 +$153 +~ +$12,367 + +}table + +N represents number of innovations developed by /{users}/ to carry out each listed function. Source: Slaughter 1993, tables 4 and 5. Costs and times shown are averaged for all user-developed innovations in each functional category. (The six /{manufacturer}/-developed innovations in Slaughter's sample are not included in this table.) + +The builder-innovator reported that the total time to develop the innovation was only an hour, and that the total cost for time and materials equaled $40. How could it cost so little and take so little time? The builder explained that using hot wires to slice sheets of plastic foam insulation into pieces of a required length is a technique known to builders. His idea as to how to modify the slicing technique to melt channels instead came to him quickly. To test the idea, he immediately sent a worker to an electrical supply house to get some nichrome wire (a type of high-resistance wire often used as an electrical heating element), attached the wire to a tip of a pole, and tried the solution on a panel at the building site---and it worked! + +This solution was described in detail in an article in a builder's magazine and was widely imitated. A panel manufacturer's eventual response (after the user solution had spread for a number of years) was to manufacture a panel with a channel for wires pre-molded into the plastic foam interior of the panel. This solution is only sometimes satisfactory. Builders often do not want to locate switch boxes at the height of the premolded channel. Also, sometimes construction workers will install some panels upside down in error, and the preformed channels will then not be continuous between one panel and the next. In such cases, the original, user-developed solution is again resorted to. + +!_ Example: Creating a Curved Panel +={ Manufacturers : + transaction costs and +8 +} + +A builder was constructing a custom house with large, curved windows. Curved stressed-skin panels were needed to fill in the space above and below these windows, but panel manufacturers only sold flat panels at that time. The builder facing the problem could not simply buy standard flat panels and bend them into curved ones at the construction site---completed panels are rigid by design. So he bought plywood and plastic foam at a local building supply house and slowly bent each panel component separately over a curved frame quickly built at the construction site. He then bonded all three elements together with glue to create strong curved panels that would maintain their shape over time. + +To determine whether users' decisions to innovate rather than buy made economic sense for them, Slaughter calculated, in a very conservative way, what it would have cost users to buy a manufacturer-developed solution embodied in a manufactured panel rather than build a solution for themselves. Her estimates included only the cost of the delay a user-builder would incur while waiting for delivery of a panel incorporating a manufacturer's solution. Delay in obtaining a solution to a problem encountered at a construction site is costly for a builder, because the schedule of deliveries, subcontractors, and other activities must then be altered. For example, if installation of a panel is delayed, one must also reschedule the arrival of the subcontractor hired to run wires through it, the contractor hired to paint it, and so on. Slaughter estimated the cost of delay to a builder at $280 per crew per day of delay (Means 1989). To compute delay times, she assumed that a manufacturer would always be willing to supply the special item a user requested. She also assumed that no time elapsed while the manufacturer learned about the need, contracted to do the job, designed a solution, and obtained needed regulatory approvals. She then asked panel manufacturers to estimate how long it would take them to simply construct a panel with the solution needed and deliver it to the construction site. Delay times computed in this manner ranged from 5 days for some innovations to 250 days for the longest-term one and averaged 44 days. +={ Means, R. ; + Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users : + by manufacturers +2 | by users +2 ; + Manufacturers : + expectations of economic benefit by +2 | innovation and +5 +} + +The conservative nature of this calculation is very clear. For example, Slaughter points out that the regulatory requirements for building components, not included, are in fact much more stringent for manufacturers than for user-builders in the field of residential construction. Manufacturers delivering products can be required to provide test data demonstrating compliance with local building codes for each locality served. Testing new products for compliance in a locality can take from a month to several years, and explicit code approval often takes several additional years. In contrast, a builder that innovates need only convince the local building inspector that what he has done meets code or performance requirements--- often a much easier task (Ehrenkrantz Group 1979; Duke 1988). +={ Duke, R. ; + Ehrenkrantz Group +} + +Despite her very conservative method of calculation, Slaughter found the costs to users of obtaining a builder solution to be at least 100 times the actual costs of developing a solution for themselves (table 4.1). Clearly, users' decisions to innovate rather than buy made economic sense in this case. + +!_ Modeling Users' Innovate-or-Buy Decisions + +In this section I summarize the core of the argument discussed in this chapter via a simple quantitative model developed with Carliss Baldwin. Our goal is to offer additional clarity by trading off the richness of the qualitative argument for simplicity. +={ Baldwin, C. +24 } + +Whether a user firm should innovate or buy is a variant of a well-known problem: where one should place an activity in a supply chain. In any real-world case many complexities enter. In the model that follows, Baldwin and I ignore most of these and consider a simple base case focused on the impact of transaction costs on users' innovate-or-buy considerations. The model deals with manufacturing firms and user firms rather than individual users. We assume that user firms and manufacturer firms both will hire designers from the same homogeneous pool if they elect to solve a user problem. We also assume that both user firms and manufacturer firms will incur the same costs to solve a specific user problem. For example, they will have the same costs to monitor the performance of the designer employees they hire. In this way we simplify our innovate-or-buy problem to one of transaction costs only. + +If there are no transaction costs (for example, no costs to write and enforce a contract), then by Coase's theorem a user will be indifferent between making or buying a solution to its problem. But in the real world there are transaction costs, and so a user will generally prefer to either make or buy. Which, from the point of view of minimizing overall costs of obtaining a problem solution, is the better choice under any given circumstances? +={ Coase, R. } + +Let V,{ij}, be the value of a solution to problem j for user i. Let N,{j}, be the number of users having problem j. Let Wh,{j}, be the cost of solving problem j, where W = hourly wage and h,{j}, = hours required to solve it. Let P,{j}, be the price charged by a manufacturer for a solution to problem j. Let T be fixed or "setup" transaction costs, such as writing a general contract for buyers of a solution to problem j. Let t be variable or "frictional" transaction costs, such as tailoring the general contract to a specific customer. + +To explore this problem we make two assumptions. First, we assume that a user firm knows its own problems and the value of a solution to itself, V,{ij},. Second, we assume that a manufacturer knows the number of users having each problem, N,{j},, and the value of solutions for each problem for all users, V,{ij},. + +These assumptions are in line with real-world incentives of users and manufacturers, although information stickiness generally prevents firms from getting full information. That is, users have a high incentive to know their own problems and the value to them of a solution. Manufacturers, in turn, have an incentive to invest in understanding the nature of problems faced by users in the target market, the number of users affected, and the value that the users would attach to getting a solution in order to determine the potential profitability of markets from their point of view. +={ Sticky information : + innovation and +} + +We first consider the user's payoff for solving a problem for itself. A user has no transaction costs in dealing with itself, so a user's payoff for solving problem j will be V,{ij}, - Wh,{j},. Therefore, a user will buy a solution from an upstream manufacturer rather than develop one for itself if and only if P ≤ Wh,{j},. + +Next we consider payoffs to a manufacturer for solving problem j. In this case, transaction costs such as those discussed in earlier sections will be encountered. With respect to transaction costs assume first that t = 0 but T > 0. Then, the manufacturer's payoff for solving problem j will be V,{ij}, - Wh,{j},, which needs to be positive in order for the manufacturer to find innovation attractive: + +N,{j}, P,{j}, - Wh,{j}, - T > 0. + +But, as we saw, P,{j}, ≤ Wh,{j}, if the user is to buy, so we may substitute Wh,{j}, for P,{j}, in our inequality. Thus we obtain the following inequality as a condition for the user to buy: + +N,{j}, (Wh,{j},) - Wh,{j}, - T > 0, + +or + +N,{j}, > (T / Wh,{j},) + 1. + +In other words, Baldwin and I find that the absolute lower bound on N is greater than 1. This means that a single user will always prefer to solve a unique problem j for itself (except in Coase's world, where T = 0, and the user will be indifferent). If every problem is unique to a single user, users will never choose to call on upstream manufacturers for solutions. +={ Coase, R. } + +Now assume that T = 0 but t > 0. Then the condition for the user to buy rather than to innovate for itself becomes + +N,{j}, (Wh,{j}, - t) - Wh,{j}, > 0, + +or equivalently (provided Wh,{j}, > t) + +N,{j}, > Wh,{j}, / (Wh,{j}, - t) > 1. + +Again, users will not call on upstream manufacturers to solve problems unique to one user. + +The findings from the simplified model, then, are the following: Problems unique to one user will always be solved efficiently by users hiring designers to work for them in house. In contrast, problems affecting more than a moderate number of users, n, which is a function of the transaction costs, will be efficiently solved by the manufacturer hiring designers to develop the needed new product or service and then selling that solution to all users affected by the problem. However, given sufficient levels of T and/or of t, problems affecting more than one but fewer than n users will not be solved by a manufacturer, and so there will be a market failure: Assuming an institutional framework consisting only of independent users and manufacturers, multiple users will have to solve the same problem independently. + +As illustration, suppose that t = 0.25Wh,{j}, and T = 10Wh,{j},. Then, combining the two expressions and solving for n yields + +n = (11Wh,{j}, /0.75Wh,{j},) = 14.66. + +The condition for the user to buy the innovation rather than innovate itself becomes N,{j}, ≥ 15. For a number of users less than 15 but greater than 1, there will be a wasteful multiplication of user effort: several users will invest in developing the same innovation independently. + +In a world that consists entirely of manufacturers and of users that do not share the innovations they develop, the type of wasteful duplicative innovation investment by users just described probably will occur often. As was discussed earlier in this chapter, and as was illustrated by Slaughter's study, substantial transaction costs might well be the norm. In addition, low numbers of users having the same need---situations where N,{j}, is low---might also be the norm in the case of functionally novel innovations. Functionally novel innovations, as I will show later, tend to be developed by lead users, and lead users are by definition at the leading (low-N,{j},) edge of markets. +={ Slaughter, S. ; + Stressed-skin panels +} + +When the type of market failure discussed above does occur, users will have an incentive to search for institutional forms with a lower T and/or a lower t than is associated with assignment of the problem to an upstream manufacturer. One such institutional form involves interdependent innovation development among multiple users (for example, the institutional form used successfully in open source software projects that I will discuss in chapter 7). Baldwin and Clark (2003) show how this form can work to solve the problem of wasteful user innovation investments that were identified in our model. They show that, given modularity in the software's architecture, it will pay for users participating in open source software projects to generate and freely reveal some components of the needed innovation, benefiting from the fact that other users are likely to develop and reveal other components of that innovation. At the limit, the wasteful duplication of users' innovative efforts noted above will be eliminated; each innovation component will have been developed by only one user, but will be shared by many. +={ Clark, K. } + +!_ Benefiting from the Innovation Process +={ Innovation process +4 ; + Users : + innovation process and +4 +} + +Some individual users (not user firms) may decide to innovate for themselves rather than buy even if a traditional accounting evaluation would show that they had made a major investment in time and materials for an apparently minor reward in product functionality. The reason is that individual users may gain major rewards from the process of innovating, in addition to rewards from the product being developed. Make-or-buy evaluations typically include factors such as the time and materials that must be invested to develop a solution. These costs are then compared with the likely benefits produced by the project's "output"---the new product or service created---to determine whether the project is worth doing. This was the type of comparison made by Slaughter, for example, in assessing whether it would be better for the users to make or to buy the stressed-skin panel innovations in her sample. However, in the case of individual user-innovators, this type of assessment can provide too narrow a perspective on what actually constitutes valuable project output. Specifically, there is evidence that individuals sometimes greatly prize benefits derived from their participation in the process of innovation. The process, they say, can produce learning and enjoyment that is of high value to them. +={ Slaughter, S. ; + Stressed-skin panels +} + +In the introductory chapter, I pointed out that some recreational activities, such as solving crossword puzzles, are clearly engaged in for process rewards only: very few individuals value the end "product" of a completed puzzle. But process rewards have also been found to be important for innovators that are producing outputs that they and others do value (Hertel, Niedner, and Herrmann 2003; Lakhani and Wolf 2005). Lakhani and Wolf studied a sample of individuals (n = 684, response rate = 34 percent) who had written new software code and contributed it to an open source project. They asked the programmers to list their three most important reasons for doing this. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said that an important motivation for writing their code was that they had a work need (33 percent), or a non-work need (30 percent) or both (5 percent) for the code itself. That is, they valued the project's "output" as this is traditionally viewed. However, 45 percent said that one of their top three reasons for writing code was intellectual stimulation, and 41 percent said one of their top three reasons was to improve their own programming skills (Lakhani and Wolf 2005, table 6). Elaborating on these responses, 61 percent of respondents said that their participation in the open source project was their most creative experience or was as creative as their most creative experience. Also, more than 60 percent said that "if there were one more hour in the day" they would always or often dedicate it to programming. +={ Herrmann, S. ; + Hertel, G. ; + Lakhani, K. ; + Niedner, S. ; + Wolf, B. +} + +Csikszentmihalyi (1975, 1990, 1996) systematically studied the characteristics of tasks that individuals find intrinsically rewarding, such as rock climbing. He found that a level of challenge somewhere between boredom and fear is important, and also that the experience of "flow" gained when one is fully engaged in a task is intrinsically rewarding. Amabile (1996) proposes that intrinsic motivation is a key determining factor in creativity. She defines a creative task as one that is heuristic in nature (with no predetermined path to solution), and defines a creative outcome as a novel and appropriate (useful) response to such a task. Both conditions certainly can apply to the task of developing a product or a service. +={ Amiable, T. ; + Csikszentmihalyi, M. +} + +In sum, to the extent that individual user-innovators benefit from the process of developing or modifying a product as well as from the product actually developed, they are likely to innovate even when the benefits expected from the product itself are relatively low. (Employees of a firm may wish to experience this type of intrinsic reward in their work as well, but managers and commercial constraints may give them less of an opportunity to do so. Indeed, "control over my own work" is cited by many programmers as a reason that they enjoy creating code as volunteers on open source projects more than they enjoy coding for their employers for pay.) + +1~ 5 Users' Low-Cost Innovation Niches +={ Users : + innovation and +50 | low-cost innovation niches of +50 +} + +!_ The Problem-Solving Process +={ Trial-and-error problem solving +11 } + +Product and service development is at its core a problem-solving process. Research into the nature of problem solving shows it to consist of trial and error, directed by some amount of insight as to the direction in which a solution might lie (Baron 1988). Trial and error has also been found to be prominent in the problem-solving work of product and process development (Marples 1961; Allen 1966; von Hippel and Tyre 1995; Thomke 1998, 2003). +={ Allen, T. ; + Baron, J. ; + Marples, D. ; + Thomke, S. ; + Tyre, M. ; + von Hippel, E. +} + +Trial-and-error problem solving can be envisioned as a four-phase cycle that is typically repeated many times during the development of a new product or service. Problem solvers first conceive of a problem and a related solution based on their best knowledge and insight. Next, they build a physical or virtual prototype of both the possible solution they have envisioned and the intended use environment. Third, they run the experiment---that is, they operate their prototyped solution and see what happens. Fourth and finally, they analyze the result to understand what happened in the trial and to assess the "error information" that they gained. (In the trial-and-error formulation of the learning process, error is the new information or learning derived from an experiment by an experimenter: it is the aspect(s) of the outcome that the experimenter did not predict.) Developers then use the new learning to modify and improve the solution under development before building and running a new trial (figure 5.1). + +Trial-and-error experimentation can be informal or formal; the underlying principles are the same. As an example on the informal side, consider a user experiencing a need and then developing what eventually turns out to be a new product: the skateboard. In phase 1 of the cycle, the user combines need and solution information into a product idea: "I am bored with roller skating. How can I get down this hill in a more exciting way? Maybe it would be fun to put my skates' wheels under a board and ride down on that." In phase 2, the user builds a prototype by taking his skates apart and hammering the wheels onto the underside of a board. In phase 3, he runs the experiment by climbing onto the board and heading down the hill. In phase 4, he picks himself up from an inaugural crash and thinks about the error information he has gained: "It is harder to stay on this thing than I thought. What went wrong, and how can I improve things before my next run down the hill?" + +% (2) BUILD +% (3) RUN +% (4) ANALYZE +% (1) DESIGN +% DONE +% DESIGN REQUIREMENTS +% DESIGN ACTIVITY +% Changes in +% exogenous +% information +% Use learning from previous +% cycle(s) to conceive and design +% an improved solution. +% . +% Develop models and/or build +% prototypes to be used in +% running experiments. +% . +% Test model/prototype in real +% or simulated use environment. +% . +% Analyze findings from +% previous step and learn. +% . +% Figure 5.1 +% The trial-and-error cycle of product development. + +{di_evh_f5-1.png}image + +!_ Figure 5.1 +The trial-and-error cycle of product development. + +As an example of more formal experimentation, consider a product-development engineer working in a laboratory to improve the performance of an automobile engine. In phase 1, need and solution information are again combined into a design idea: "I need to improve engine fuel efficiency. I think that a more even expansion of the flame in the cylinders is a possible solution direction, and I think that changing the shape of the spark plug electrodes will improve this." In phase 2, the engineer builds a spark plug incorporating her new idea. In phase 3, she inserts the new spark plug into a lab test engine equipped with the elaborate instrumentation needed to measure the very rapid propagation of a flame in the cylinders of an auto engine and runs the test. In phase 4, she feeds the data into a computer and analyzes the results. She asks: "Did the change in spark plug design change the flame front as expected? Did it change fuel efficiency? How can I use what I have learned from this trial to improve things for the next one?" + +In addition to the difference in formality, there is another important difference between these two examples. In the first example, the skateboard user was conducting trial and error with a full prototype of the intended product in a real use environment---his own. In the second example, the experimental spark plug might have been a full prototype of a real product, but it probably consisted only of that portion of a real spark plug that actually extends into a combustion chamber. Also, only /{aspects}/ of the use environment were involved in the lab experiment. That is, the test engine was not a real auto engine, and it was not being operated in a real car traveling over real roads. + +Experimentation is often carried out using simplified versions---models--- of the product being designed and its intended use environment. These models can be physical (as in the example just given), or they can be virtual (as in the case of thought experiments or computer simulations). In a computer simulation, both the product and the environment are represented in digital form, and their interaction is tested entirely within a computer. For example, one might make a digital model of an automobile and a crash barrier. One could then use a computer to simulate the crash of the model car into the model barrier. One would analyze the results by calculating the effects of that crash on the structure of the car. + +The value of using models rather than the real thing in experimentation is twofold. First, it can reduce the cost of an experiment---it can be much cheaper to crash a simulated BMW than a real one. Second, it can make experimental results clearer by making them simpler or otherwise different than real life. If one is trying to test the effect of a small change on car safety, for example, it can be helpful to remove everything not related to that change from the experiment. For example, if one is testing the way a particular wheel suspension structure deforms in a crash, one does not have to know (or spend time computing) how a taillight lens will react in the crash. Also, in a real crash things happen only once and happen very fast. In a virtual crash executed by computer, on the other hand, one can repeat the crash sequence over and over, and can stretch time out or compress it exactly as one likes to better understand what is happening (Thomke 2003). +={ Thomke, S. +2 } + +Users and others experimenting with real prototypes in real use environments can also modify things to make tests simpler and clearer. A restaurant chef, for example, can make slight variations in just a small part of a recipe each time a customer calls for it, in order to better understand what is happening and make improvements. Similarly, a process machine user can experiment with only a small portion of machine functioning over and over to test changes and detect errors. + +Sometimes designers will test a real experimental object in a real experimental context only after experimenting with several generations of models that isolate different aspects of the real and/or encompass increasing amounts of the complexity of the real. Developers of pharmaceuticals, for example, might begin by testing a candidate drug molecule against just the purified enzyme or receptor it is intended to affect, then test it again and again against successively more complex models of the human organism (tissue cultures, animal models, etc.) before finally seeking to test its effect on real human patients during clinical trials (Thomke, von Hippel, and Franke 1998). +={ Franke, N. ; + von Hippel, E. +} + +!_ Sticky Information +={ Sticky information +11 : + innovation and +11 +} + +Any experiment is only as accurate as the information that is used as inputs. If inputs are not accurate, outcomes will not be accurate: "garbage in, garbage out." + +The goal of product development and service development is to create a solution that will satisfy needs of real users within real contexts of use. The more complete and accurate the information on these factors, the higher the fidelity of the models being tested. If information could be transferred costlessly from place to place, the quality of the information available to problem solvers would or could be independent of location. But if information is costly to transfer, things are different. User-innovators, for example, will then have better information about their needs and their use context than will manufacturers. After all, they create and live in that type of information in full fidelity! Manufacturer-innovators, on the other hand, must transfer that information to themselves at some cost, and are unlikely to be able to obtain it in full fidelity at any cost. However, manufacturers might well have a higher-fidelity model of the solution types in which they specialize than users have. +={ Information asymmetries +31 ; + Local information +35 ; + Users : + information asymmetries of +31 +} + +It turns out that much information needed by product and service designers is "sticky." In any particular instance, the stickiness of a unit of information is defined as the incremental expenditure required to transfer that unit of information to a specified location in a form usable by a specified information seeker. When this expenditure is low, information stickiness is low; when it is high, stickiness is high (von Hippel 1994). That information is often sticky has been shown by studying the costs of transferring information regarding fully developed process technology from one location to another with full cooperation on both sides. Even under these favorable conditions, costs have been found to be high---leading one to conclude that the costs of transferring information during product and service development are likely to be at least as high. Teece (1977), for example, studied 26 international technology-transfer projects and found that the costs of information transfer ranged from 2 percent to 59 percent of total project costs and averaged 19 percent---a considerable fraction. Mansfield et al. (1982) also studied a number of projects involving technology transfer to overseas plants, and also found technology-transfer costs averaging about 20 percent of total project costs. Winter and Suzlanski (2001) explored replication of well-known organizational routines at new sites and found the process difficult and costly. +={ Mansfield, E. ; + Suzlanski, G. ; + Teece, D. ; + Winter, S. ; + von Hippel, E. +63 +} + +Why is information transfer so costly? The term "stickiness" refers only to a consequence, not to a cause. Information stickiness can result from causes ranging from attributes of the information itself to access fees charged by an information owner. Consider tacitness---a lack of explicit encoding. Polanyi (1958, pp. 49--53) noted that many human skills are tacit because "the aim of a skilful performance is achieved by the observance of a set of rules which are not known as such to the person following them." For example, swimmers are probably not aware of the rules they employ to keep afloat (e.g., in exhaling, they do not completely empty their lungs), nor are medical experts generally aware of the rules they follow in order to reach a diagnosis of a disease. "Indeed," Polanyi says, "even in modern industries the indefinable knowledge is still an essential part of technology." Information that is tacit is also sticky because it cannot be transferred at low cost. As Polanyi points out, "an art which cannot be specified in detail cannot be transmitted by prescription, since no prescription for it exists. It can be passed on only by example from master to apprentice. . . ." Apprenticeship is a relatively costly mode of transfer. +={ Polanyi, M. } + +Another cause of information stickiness is related to absorptive capacity. A firm's or an individual's capacity to absorb new, outside technical information is largely a function of prior related knowledge (Cohen and Levinthal 1990). Thus, a firm knowing nothing about circuit design but seeking to apply an advanced technique for circuit engineering may be unable to apply it without first learning more basic information. The stickiness of the information about the advanced technique for the firm in question is therefore higher than it would be for a firm that already knows that basic information. (Recall that the stickiness of a unit of information is defined as the incremental expenditure required to transfer a unit of information to a specified site in a form usable by a /{specific}/ information seeker.) +={ Cohen, W. ; + Levinthal, D. +} + +Total information stickiness associated with solving a specific problem is also determined by the amount of information required by a problem solver. Sometimes a great deal is required, for two reasons. First, as Rosenberg (1976, 1982) and Nelson (1982, 1990) point out, much technological knowledge deals with the specific and the particular. Second, one does not know in advance of problem solving which particular items will be important. +={ Nelson, R. ; + Rosenberg, N. +} + +An example from a study by von Hippel and Tyre (1995) illustrates both points nicely. Tyre and I studied how and why novel production machines failed when they were first introduced into factory use. One of the machines studied was an automated machine used by a computer manufacturing firm to place large integrated circuits onto computer circuit boards. The user firm had asked an outside group to develop what was needed, and that group had developed and delivered a robot arm coupled to a machine-vision system. The arm, guided by the vision system, was designed to pick up integrated circuits and place them on a circuit board at precise locations. +={ Tyre, M. +4 } + +Upon being installed in the factory, the new component-placing machine failed many times as a result of its developers' lack of some bit of information about the need or use environment. For example, one day machine operators reported that the machine was malfunctioning---again---and they did not know why. Investigation traced the problem to the machine-vision system. This system used a small TV camera to locate specific metalized patterns on the surface of each circuit board being processed. To function, the system needed to "see" these metalized patterns clearly against the background color of the board's surface. The vision system developed by the machine-development group had functioned properly in their lab when tested with sample boards from the user factory. However, the field investigation showed that in the factory it failed when boards that were light yellow in color were being processed. + +The fact that some of the boards being processed were sometimes light yellow was a surprise to the machine developers. The factory personnel who had set the specifications for the machine knew that the boards they processed varied in color; however, they had not volunteered the information, because they did not know that the developers would be interested. Early in the machine-development process, they had simply provided samples of boards used in the factory to the machine-development group. And, as it happened, these samples were green. On the basis of the samples, developers had then (implicitly) assumed that all boards processed in the field were green. It had not occurred to them to ask users "How much variation in board color do you generally experience?" Thus, they had designed the vision system to work successfully with boards that were green. + +In the case of this field failure, the item of information needed to understand or predict this problem was known to the users and could easily have been provided to the machine developers---had the developers thought to ask and/or had users thought to volunteer it. But in the actual evolution of events this was not done. The important point is that this omission was not due to poor practice; it was due to the huge amount of information about the need and the use environment that was /{potentially}/ relevant to problem solvers. Note that the use environment and the novel machine contain many highly specific attributes that could potentially interact to cause field problems. Note also that the property of the board causing this particular type of failure was very narrow and specific. That is, the problem was not that the board had physical properties, nor that it had a color. The problem was precisely that some boards were yellow, and a particular shade of yellow at that. Since a circuit board, like most other components, has many attributes in addition to color (shape, size, weight, chemical composition, resonant frequency, dielectric constant, flexibility, and so on), it is likely that problem solvers seeking to learn everything they might need to know about the use and the use environment would have to collect a very large (perhaps unfeasibly large) number of very specific items of information. + +Next, consider that the information items the problem solver will actually need (of the many that exist) are contingent on the solution path taken by the engineer designing the product. In the example, the problem caused by the yellow color of the circuit board was contingent on the design solution to the component-placing problem selected by the engineer during the development process. That is, the color of the circuit boards in the user factory became an item the problem solvers needed to know only when engineers, in the course of their development of the component placer, decided to use a vision system in the component-placing machine they were designing, and the fact that the boards were yellow became relevant only when the engineers chose a video camera and lighting that could not distinguish the metalized patterns on the board against a yellow background. Clearly, it can be costly to transfer the many items of information that a product or service developer might require---even if each individual item has low stickiness---from one site to another. + +!_ How Information Asymmetries Affect User Innovation vs. Manufacturer Innovation +={ Manufacturers : + information asymmetries of +11 | innovation and +25 +} + +An important consequence of information stickiness is that it results in information asymmetries that cannot be erased easily or cheaply. Different users and manufacturers will have different stocks of information, and may find it costly to acquire information they need but do not have. As a result, each innovator will tend to develop innovations that draw on the sticky information it already has, because that is the cheapest course of action (Arora and Gambardella 1994; von Hippel 1994). In the specific case of product development, this means that users as a class will tend to develop innovations that draw heavily on their own information about need and context of use. Similarly, manufacturers as a class will tend to develop innovations that draw heavily on the types of solution information in which they specialize. +={ Arora, A. ; + Gambardella, A. +} + +This effect is visible in studies of innovation. Riggs and von Hippel (1994) studied the types of innovations made by users and manufacturers that improved the functioning of two major types of scientific instruments. +={ Riggs, W. ; + Scientific instruments +9 ; + Sticky information : + and scientific instruments +1 +} + +They found that users tended to develop innovations that enabled the instruments to do qualitatively new types of things for the first time. In contrast, manufacturers tended to develop innovations that enabled users to do the same things they had been doing, but to do them more conveniently or reliably (table 5.1). For example, users were the first to modify the instruments to enable them to image and analyze magnetic domains at sub-microscopic dimensions. In contrast, manufacturers were the first to computerize instrument adjustments to improve ease of operation. Sensitivity, resolution, and accuracy improvements fall somewhere in the middle, as the data show. These types of improvements can be driven by users seeking to do specific new things, or by manufacturers applying their technical expertise to improve the products along known dimensions of merit, such as accuracy. + +!_ Table 5.1 +Users tend to develop innovations that deliver novel functions. + +% Innovation developed by + +table(h; c4: 60, 15, 15, 10){ + +Type of improvement provided by innovation +User +Manufacturer +n + +New functional capability +82% +18% +17 + +Sensitivity, resolution, or accuracy improvement +48% +52% +23 + +Convenience or reliability improvement +13% +87% +24 + +Total sample size +~ +~ +64 + +}table + +Source: Riggs and von Hippel 1994, table 3. + +The variation in locus of innovation for different types of innovations, seen in table 5.1 does fit our expectations from the point of view of sticky information considerations. But these findings are not controlled for profitability, and so it might be that profits for new functional capabilities are systematically smaller than profits obtainable from improvements made to existing functionality. If so, this could also explain the patterns seen. + +Ogawa (1998) took the next necessary step and conducted an empirical study that did control for profitability of innovation opportunities. He too found the sticky-information effect---this time visible in the division of labor /{within}/ product-development projects. He studied patterns in the development of a sample of 24 inventory-management innovations. All were jointly developed by a Japanese equipment manufacturer, NEC, and by a user firm, Seven-Eleven Japan (SEJ). SEJ, the leading convenience-store company in Japan, is known for its inventory management. Using innovative methods and equipment, it is able to turn over its inventory as many as 30 times a year, versus 12 times a year for competitors (Kotabe 1995). An example of such an innovation jointly developed by SEJ and NEC is just-in-time reordering, for which SEJ created the procedures and NEC the hand-held equipment to aid store clerks in carrying out their newly designed tasks. Equipment sales to SEJ are important to NEC: SEJ has thousands of stores in Japan. +={ Kotabe, M. ; + Ogawa, S. +1 +} + +The 24 innovations studied by Ogawa varied in the amount of sticky need information each required from users (having to do with store inventory- management practices) and the amount of sticky solution information required from manufacturers (having to do with new equipment technologies). Each also varied in terms of the profit expectations of both user and manufacturer. Ogawa determined how much of the design for each was done by the user firm and how much by the manufacturer firm. Controlling for profit expectations, he found that increases in the stickiness of user information were associated with a significant increase in the amount of need-related design undertaken by the user (Kendall correlation coefficient = 0.5784, P < 0.01). Conversely he found that increased stickiness of technology-related information was associated in a significant reduction in the amount of technology design done by the user (Kendall correlation coefficients = 0.4789, P < 0.05). In other words, need-intensive tasks within product-development projects will tend to be done by users, while solution-intensive ones will tend to be done by manufacturers. + +!_ Low-Cost Innovation Niches + +Just as there are information asymmetries between users and manufacturers as classes, there are also information asymmetries among individual user firms and individuals, and among individual manufacturers as well. A study of mountain biking by Lüthje, Herstatt, and von Hippel (2002) shows that information held locally by individual user-innovators strongly affects the type of innovations they develop. Mountain biking involves bicycling on rough terrain such as mountain trails. It may also involve various other extreme conditions, such as bicycling on snow and ice and in the dark (van der Plas and Kelly 1998). +={ Kelly, C. ; + Lüthje, C. ; + Van der Plas, R. ; + Herstatt, C. +12 ; + Lüthje, C. +12 ; + Mountain biking +12 ; + Users : + innovate-or-buy decisions by +12 +} + +Mountain biking began in the early 1970s when some young cyclists started to use their bicycles off-road. Existing commercial bikes were not suited to this type of rough use, so early users put together their own bikes. They used strong bike frames, balloon tires, and powerful drum brakes designed for motorcycles. They called their creations "clunkers" (Penning 1998; Buenstorf 2002). +={ Buenstorf, G. ; + Penning, C. +} + +Commercial manufacture of mountain bikes began about 1975, when some of the early users of mountain bikes began to also build bikes for others. A tiny cottage industry developed, and by 1976 a half-dozen small assemblers existed in Marin County, California. In 1982, a small firm named Specialized, an importer of bikes and bike parts that supplied parts to the Marin County mountain bike assemblers, took the next step and brought the first mass-produced mountain bike to market. Major bike manufacturers then followed and started to produce mountain bikes and sell them at regular bike shops across the United States. By the mid 1980s the mountain bike was fully integrated in the mainstream bike market, and it has since grown to significant size. In 2000, about $58 billion (65 percent) of total retail sales in the US bicycle market were generated in the mountain bike category (National Sporting Goods Association 2002). + +Mountain biking enthusiasts did not stop their innovation activities after the introduction of commercially manufactured mountain bikes. They kept pushing mountain biking into more extreme environmental conditions, and they continued to develop new sports techniques involving mountain bikes (/{Mountain Bike}/ 1996). Thus, some began jumping their bikes from house roofs and water towers and developing other forms of acrobatics. As they did so, they steadily discovered needs for improvements to their equipment. Many responded by developing and building the improvements they needed for themselves. + +Our sample of mountain bikers came from the area that bikers call the North Shore of the Americas, ranging from British Columbia to Washington State. Expert mountain bikers told us that this was a current "hot spot" where new riding styles were being developed and where the sport was being pushed toward new limits. We used a questionnaire to collect data from members of North Shore mountain biking clubs and from contributors to the mailing lists of two North Shore online mountain biking forums. Information was obtained from 291 mountain bikers. Nineteen percent of bikers responding to the questionnaire reported developing and building a new or modified item of mountain biking equipment for their own use. The innovations users developed were appropriate to the needs associated with their own riding specialties and were heterogeneous in function. +={ Custom products : + heterogeneity of user needs and +6 ; + User need +6 ; + Users : + needs of +6 +} + +We asked mountain bikers who had innovated about the sources of the need and solution information they had used in their problem solving. In 84.5 percent of the cases respondents strongly agreed with the statement that their need information came from /{personal needs they had frequently experienced}/ rather than from information about the needs of others. With respect to solution information, most strongly agreed with the statement that /{they used solution information they already had}/, rather than learning new solution information in order to develop their biking equipment innovation (table 5.2). + +!_ Table 5.2 +Innovators tended to use solution information they already had "in stock" to develop their ideas. Tabulated here are innovators' answers to the question "How did you obtain the information needed to develop your solution?" +={ Lüthje, C. } + +table(h; c4: 55, 15, 15, 15){ + +. +Mean +Median +Very high or high agreement + +"I had it due to my professional background." +4.22 +4 +47.5% + +"I had it from mountain biking or another hobby." +4.56 +5 +52.4% + +"I learned it to develop this idea." +2.11 +2 +16% + +}table + +Source: Lüthje et al. 2003. N = 61. Responses were rated on a seven-point scale, with 1 = not at all true and 7 = very true. + +!_ Discussion + +To the extent that users have heterogeneous and sticky need and solution information, they will have heterogeneous low-cost innovation niches. Users can be sophisticated developers within those niches, despite their reliance on their own need information and solution information that they already have in stock. On the need side, recall that user-innovators generally are lead users and generally are expert in the field or activity giving rise to their needs. With respect to solution information, user firms have specialties that may be at a world-class level. Individual users can also have high levels of solution expertise. After all, they are students or employees during the day, with training and jobs ranging from aerospace engineering to orthopedic surgery. Thus, mountain bikers might not want to /{learn}/ orthopedic surgery to improve their biking equipment, but if they already /{are}/ expert in that field they could easily draw on what they know for relevant solution information. Consider the following example drawn from the study of mountain biking discussed earlier: + +I'm a human movement scientist working in ergonomics and biomechanics. I used my medical experience for my design. I calculated a frame design suitable for different riding conditions (downhill, climb). I did a CAD frame design on Catia and conceived a spring or air coil that can be set to two different heights. I plan to build the bike next year. + +Users' low-cost innovation niches can be narrow because their development "labs" for such experimentation often consist largely of their individual use environment and customary activities. Consider, for example, the low-cost innovation niches of individual mountain bikers. Serious mountain bikers generally specialize in a particular type of mountain biking activity. Repeated specialized play and practice leads to improvement in related specialized skills. This, in turn, may lead to a discovery of a problem in existing mountain biking equipment and a responsive innovation. Thus, an innovating user in our mountain biking study reported the following: "When doing tricks that require me to take my feet off the bike pedals in mid-air, the pedals often spin, making it hard to put my feet back onto them accurately before landing." Such a problem is encountered only when a user has gained a high level of skill in the very specific specialty of jumping and performing tricks in mid-air. Once the problem has been encountered and recognized, however, the skilled specialist user can re-evoke the same problematic conditions at will during ordinary practice. The result is the creation of a low-cost laboratory for testing and comparing different solutions to that problem. The user is benefiting from enjoyment of his chosen activity and is developing something new via learning by doing at the same time. + +In sharp contrast, if that same user decides to stray outside his chosen activity in order to develop innovations of interest to others with needs that are different from his own, the cost properly assignable to innovation will rise. To gain an equivalent-quality context for innovation, such a user must invest in developing personal skill related to the new innovation topic. Only in this way will he gain an equivalently deep understanding of the problems relevant to practitioners of that skill, and acquire a "field laboratory" appropriate to developing and testing possible solutions to those new problems. + +Of course, these same considerations apply to user firms as well as to individual users. A firm that is in the business of polishing marble floors is a user of marble polishing equipment and techniques. It will have a low-cost learning laboratory with respect to improvements in these because it can conduct trial-and-error learning in that "lab" during the course of its customary business activities. Innovation costs can be very low because innovation activities are paid for in part by rewards unrelated to the novel equipment or technique being developed. The firm is polishing while innovating---and is getting paid for that work (Foray 2004). The low cost innovation niche of the marble polishing firm may be narrow. For example, it is unlikely to have any special advantage with respect to innovations in the polishing of wood floors, which requires different equipment and techniques. +={ Foray, D. } + +1~ 6 Why Users Often Freely Reveal Their Innovations +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + evidence of +10 | users and +50 ; + Information commons +13 ; + Intellectual property rights : + free revealing and +50 ; + Users : + free revealing by +50 +} + +Products, services, and processes developed by users become more valuable to society if they are somehow diffused to others that can also benefit from them. If user innovations are not diffused, multiple users with very similar needs will have to invest to (re)develop very similar innovations, which would be a poor use of resources from the social welfare point of view. Empirical research shows that new and modified products developed by users often do diffuse widely---and they do this by an unexpected means: user-innovators themselves often voluntarily publicly reveal what they have developed for all to examine, imitate, or modify without any payment to the innovator. + +In this chapter, I first review evidence that free revealing is frequent. Next, I discuss the case for free revealing from an innovators' perspective, and argue that it often can be the best /{practical}/ route for users to increase profit from their innovations. Finally, I discuss the implications of free revealing for innovation theory. + +!_ Evidence of Free Revealing +={ Free revealing of innovation information } + +When my colleagues and I say that an innovator "freely reveals" proprietary information, we mean that all intellectual property rights to that information are voluntarily given up by that innovator and all parties are given equal access to it---the information becomes a public good (Harhoff, Henkel, and von Hippel 2003). For example, placement of non-patented information in a publicly accessible site such as a journal or public website would be free revealing as we define it. Free revealing as so defined does not mean that recipients necessarily acquire and utilize the revealed information at no cost to themselves. Recipients may, for example, have to pay for a subscription to a journal or for a field trip to an innovation site to acquire the information being freely revealed. Also, some may have to obtain complementary information or other assets in order to fully understand that information or put it to use. However, if the possessor of the information does not profit from any such expenditures made by its adopters, the information itself is still freely revealed, according to our definition. This definition of free revealing is rather extreme in that revealing with some small constraints, as is sometimes done, would achieve largely the same economic effect. Still, it is useful to discover that innovations are often freely revealed even in terms of this stringent definition. +={ Harhoff, D. ; + Henkel, J. +} + +Routine and intentional free revealing among profit-seeking firms was first described by Allen (1983). He noticed the phenomenon, which he called collective invention, in historical records from the nineteenth-century English iron industry. In that industry, ore was processed into iron by means of large furnaces heated to very high temperatures. Two attributes of the furnaces used had been steadily improved during the period 1850--1875: chimney height had been increased and the temperature of the combustion air pumped into the furnace during operation had been raised. These two technical changes significantly and progressively improved the energy efficiency of iron production---a very important matter for producers. Allen noted the surprising fact that employees of competing firms publicly revealed information on their furnace design improvements and related performance data in meetings of professional societies and in published material. +={ Allen, R. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + collective invention and +} + +After Allen's initial observation, a number of other authors searched for free revealing among profit-seeking firms and frequently found it. Nuvolari (2004) studied a topic and time similar to that studied by Allen and found a similar pattern of free revealing in the case of improvements made to steam engines used to pump out mines in the 1800s. At that time, mining activities were severely hampered by water that tended to flood into mines of any depth, and so an early and important application of steam engines was for the removal of water from mines. Nuvolari explored the technical history of steam engines used to drain copper and tin mines in England's Cornwall District. Here, patented steam engines developed by James Watt were widely deployed in the 1700s. After the expiration of the Watt patent, an engineer named Richard Trevithick developed a new type of high-pressure engine in 1812. Instead of patenting his invention, he made his design available to all for use without charge. The engine soon became the basic design used in Cornwall. Many mine engineers improved Trevithick's design further and published what they had done in a monthly journal, /{Leans Engine Reporter}/. This journal had been founded by a group of mine managers with the explicit intention of aiding the rapid diffusion of best practices among these competing firms. +={ Nuvolari, A. ; + Trevithick, R. ; + Watt, J. +} + +Free revealing has also been documented in the case of more recent industrial equipment innovations developed by users. Lim (2000) reports that IBM was first to develop a process to manufacture semiconductors that incorporated copper interconnections among circuit elements instead of the traditionally used aluminum ones. After some delay, IBM revealed increasing amounts of proprietary process information to rival users and to equipment suppliers. Widespread free revealing was also found in the case of automated clinical chemistry analyzers developed by the Technicon Corporation for use in medical diagnosis. After commercial introduction of the basic analyzer, many users developed major improvements to both the analyzer and to the clinical tests processed on that equipment. These users, generally medical personnel, freely revealed their improvements via publication, and at company-sponsored seminars (von Hippel and Finkelstein 1979). Mishina (1989) found free, or at least selective no-cost revealing in the lithographic equipment industry. He reported that innovating equipment users would sometimes reveal what they had done to machine manufacturers. Morrison, Roberts, and I, in our study of library IT search software (discussed in chapter 2 above), found that innovating users freely revealed 56 percent of the software modifications they had developed. Reasons given for not revealing the remainder had nothing to do with considerations of intellectual property protection. Rather, users who did not share said they had no convenient users' group forum for doing so, and/or they thought their innovation was too specialized to be of interest to others. +={ IBM ; + Finkelstein, S. ; + Lim, K. ; + Mishina, K. ; + Morrison, Pamela ; + Roberts, J. ; + Technicon Corporation ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + and library information search system ; + Lead users : + library information search system and ; + Library information search system +} + +Innovating users of sports equipment also have been found to freely reveal their new products and product modifications. Franke and Shah (2003), in their study of four communities of serious sports enthusiasts described in chapter 2, found that innovating users uniformly agreed with the statement that they shared their innovation with their entire community free of charge---and strongly disagreed with the statement that they sold their innovations (p < 0.001, t-test for dependent samples). Interestingly, two of the four communities they studied engaged in activities involving significant competition among community members. Innovators in these two communities reported high but significantly less willingness to share, as one might expect in view of the potentially higher level of competitive loss free revealing would entail. +={ Franke, N. ; + Shah, S. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + and sports equipment ; + Sporting equipment : + free revealing and +} + +Contributors to the many open source software projects extant (more than 83,000 were listed on SourceForge.net in 2004) also routinely make the new code they have written public. Well-known open source software products include the Linux operating system software and the Apache web server computer software. Some conditions are attached to open source code licensing to ensure that the code remains available to all as an information commons. Because of these added protections, open source code does not quite fit the definition of free revealing given earlier in this chapter. (The licensing of open source software will be discussed in detail in chapter 7.) +={ Linux +1 ; + Apache web server software ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + and open source software +1 ; + Open source software : + free revealing and +1 +} + +Henkel (2003) showed that free revealing is sometimes practiced by directly competing manufacturers. He studied manufacturers that were competitors and that had all built improvements and extensions to a type of software known as embedded Linux. (Such software is "embedded in" and used to operate equipment ranging from cameras to chemical plants.) He found that these manufacturers freely revealed improvements to the common software platform that they all shared and, with a lag, also revealed much of the equipment-specific code they had written. +={ Henkel, J. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + manufacturers and ; + Manufacturers : + free revealing and +} + +!_ The Practical Case for Free Revealing +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + case for +2 +} + +The "private investment model" of innovation assumes that innovation will be supported by private investment if and as innovators can make attractive profits from doing so. In this model, any free revealing or uncompensated "spillover" of proprietary knowledge developed by private investment will reduce the innovator's profits. It is therefore assumed that innovators will strive to avoid spillovers of innovation-related information. From the perspective of this model, then, free revealing is a major surprise: it seems to make no sense that innovators would intentionally give away information for free that they had invested money to develop. + +In this subsection I offer an explanation for the puzzle by pointing out that free revealing is often the best /{practical}/ option available to user innovators. Harhoff, Henkel, and von Hippel (2003) found that it is in practice very difficult for most innovators to protect their innovations from direct or approximate imitation. This means that the practical choice is typically /{not}/ the one posited by the private investment model: should innovators voluntarily freely reveal their innovations, or should they protect them? Instead, the real choice facing user innovators often is whether to voluntarily freely reveal or to arrive at the same end state, perhaps with a bit of a lag, via involuntary spillovers. The practical case for voluntary free revealing is further strengthened because it can be accomplished at low cost, and often yields private benefits to the innovators. When benefits from free revealing exceed the benefits that are /{practically}/ obtainable from holding an innovation secret or licensing it, free revealing should be the preferred course of action for a profit-seeking firm or individual. +={ Harhoff, D. ; + Henkel, J. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + and information diffusion +9 +} + +!_ Others Often Know Something Close to "Your" Secret + +Innovators seeking to protect innovations they have developed as their intellectual property must establish some kind of monopoly control over the innovation-related information. In practice, this can be done either by effectively hiding the information as a trade secret, or by getting effective legal protection by patents or copyrights. (Trademarks also fall under the heading of intellectual property, but we do not consider those here.) In addition, however, it must be the case that /{others}/ do not know substitute information that skirts these protections and that they /{are}/ willing to reveal. If multiple individuals or firms have substitutable information, they are likely to vary with respect to the competitive circumstances they face. A specific innovator's ability to protect "its" innovation as proprietary property will then be determined for all holders of such information by the decision of the one having the least to lose by free revealing. If one or more information holders expect no loss or even a gain from a decision to freely reveal, then the secret will probably be revealed despite other innovators' best efforts to avoid this fate. +={ Intellectual property rights : + copyrights and | patents and | trade secrets and +} + +Commonly, firms and individuals have information that would be valuable to those seeking to imitate a particular innovation. This is because innovators and imitators seldom need access to a specific version of an innovation. Indeed, engineers seldom even want to see a solution exactly as their competitors have designed it: specific circumstances differ even among close competitors, and solutions must in any case be adapted to each adopter's precise circumstances. What an engineer does want to extract from the work of others is the principles and the general outline of a possible improvement, rather than the easily redevelopable details. This information is likely to be available from many sources. + +For example, suppose you are a system developer at a bank and you are tasked with improving in-house software for checking customers' credit online. On the face of it, it might seem that you would gain most by studying the details of the systems that competing banks have developed to handle that same task. It is certainly true that competing banks may face market conditions very similar to your bank, and they may well not want to reveal the valuable innovations they have developed to a competitor. However, the situation is still by no means bleak for an imitator. There are also many non-bank users of online credit checking systems in the world---probably millions. Some will have innovated and be willing to reveal what they have done, and some of these will have the information you need. The likelihood that the information you seek will be freely revealed by some individual or firm is further enhanced by the fact that your search for novel basic improvements may profitably extend far beyond the specific application of online credit checking. Other fields will also have information on components of the solution you need. For example, many applications in addition to online credit checking use software components designed to determine whether persons seeking information are authorized to receive it. Any can potentially be a provider of information for this element of your improved system. + +A finding by Lakhani and von Hippel (2003) illustrates the possibility that many firms and individuals may have similar information. Lakhani and von Hippel studied Apache help-line websites. These sites enable users having problems with Apache software to post questions, and others to respond with answers. The authors asked those who provided answers how many other help-line participants they thought also knew a solution to specific and often obscure problems they had answered on the Apache online forum. Information providers generally were of the opinion that some or many other help-line participants also knew a solution, and could have provided an answer if they themselves had not done so (table 6.1). +={ Lakhani, K ; + Apache web server software +2 +} + +!_ Table 6.1 +Even very specialized information is often widely known. Tabulated here are answers to a question asked of help-line information providers: "How many others do you think knew the answer to the question you answered?" +={ Lakhani, K } + +table(h; c3: 40, 30, 30){ + +~ +Frequent providers (n = 21) +Other providers (n = 67) + +Many +38% +61% + +A few with good Apache knowledge +38% +18% + +A few with specific problem experience +24% +21% + +}table + +Source: Lakhani and von Hippel 2003, table 10. + +Even in the unlikely event that a secret is held by one individual, that information holder will not find it easy to keep a secret for long. Mansfield (1985) studied 100 American firms and found that "information concerning development decisions is generally in the hands of rivals within about 12 to 18 months, on the average, and information concerning the detailed nature and operation of a new product or process generally leaks out within about a year." This observation is supported by Allen's previously mentioned study of free revealing in the nineteenth-century English iron industry. Allen (1983, p. 17) notes that developers of improved blast furnace designs were unlikely to be able to keep their valuable innovations secret because "in the case of blast furnaces and steelworks, the construction would have been done by contractors who would know the design." Also, "the designs themselves were often created by consulting engineers who shifted from firm to firm." +={ Allen, R. ; + Mansfield, E. +4 ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + evidence of +} + +!_ Low Ability to Profit from Patenting +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + patent protection and +12 ; + Intellectual property rights : + patents and +12 +} + +Next, suppose that a single user-innovator is the only holder of a particular unit of innovation-related information, and that for some reason there are no easy substitutes. That user actually does have a real choice with respect to disposing of its intellectual property: it can keep the innovation secret and profit from in-house use only, it can license it, or it can choose to freely reveal the innovation. We have just seen that the practical likelihood of keeping a secret is low, especially when there are multiple potential providers of very similar secrets. But if one legally protects an innovation by means of a patent or a copyright, one need not keep an innovation secret in order to control it. Thus, a firm or an individual that freely reveals is forgoing any chance to get a profit via licensing of intellectual property for a fee. What, in practical terms, is the likelihood of succeeding at this and so of forgoing profit by choosing to freely reveal? +={ Intellectual property rights : + copyrights and +1 | patents and +4 +} + +In most subject matters, the relevant form of legal protection for intellectual property is the patent, generally the "utility" patent. (The notable exception is the software industry, where material to be licensed is often protected by copyright.) In the United States, utility patents may be granted for inventions related to composition of matter and/or a method and/or a use. They may not be granted for ideas per se, mathematical formulas, laws of nature, and anything repugnant to morals and public policy. Within subject matters potentially protectable by patent, protection will be granted only when the intellectual property claimed meets additional criteria of usefulness, novelty, and non-obviousness to those skilled in the relevant art. (The tests for whether these criteria have been met are based on judgement. When a low threshold is used, patents are easier to get, and vice-versa (Hall and Harhoff 2004).) +={ Hall, B. ; + Harhoff, D. +} + +The real-world value of patent protection has been studied for more than 40 years. Various researchers have found that, with a few exceptions, innovators do /{not}/ think that patents are very useful either for excluding imitators or for capturing royalties in most industries. (Fields generally cited as exceptions are pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and chemical processes, where patents do enable markets for technical information (Arora et al. 2001).) Most respondents also say that the availability of patent protection does not induce them to invest more in research and development than they would if patent protection did not exist. Taylor and Silberston (1973) reported that 24 of 32 firms said that only 5 percent or less of their R&D expenditures were dependent on the availability of patent protection. Levin et al. (1987) surveyed 650 R&D executives in 130 different industries and found that all except respondents from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries judged patents to be "relatively ineffective." Similar findings have been reported by Mansfield (1968, 1985), by Cohen et al. (2000, 2002), by Arundel (2001), and by Sattler (2003). +={ Arora, A. ; + Arundel, A. ; + Cohen, W. ; + Gambardella, A. ; + Levin, R. ; + Sattler, H. ; + Silberston, Z. ; + Taylor, C. +} + +% Slaughter, S., 83--85 + +% ={Fosfuri, A.;Goto, A.} + +Despite recent governmental efforts to strengthen patent enforcement, a comparison of survey results indicates only a modest increase between 1983 and 1994 in large firms' evaluations of patents' effectiveness in protecting innovations or promoting innovation investments. Of course, there are notable exceptions: some firms, including IBM and TI, report significant income from the licensing of their patented technologies. + +% ={IBM} + +Obtaining a patent typically costs thousands of dollars, and it can take years (Harhoff, Henkel, and von Hippel 2003). This makes patents especially impractical for many individual user-innovators, and also for small and medium-size firms of limited means. As a stark example, it is hard to imagine that an individual user who has developed an innovation in sports equipment would find it appealing to invest in a patent and in follow-on efforts to find a licensee and enforce payment. The few that do attempt this, as Shah (2000) has shown, seldom gain any return from licensees as payment for their time and expenditures. +={ Harhoff, D. ; + Henkel, J. ; + Shah, S. ; + Intellectual property rights : + licensing of +1 +} + +Copyright is a low-cost and immediate form of legal protection that applies to original writings and images ranging from software code to movies. Authors do not have to apply for copyright protection; it "follows the author's pen across the page." Licensing of copyrighted works is common, and it is widely practiced by commercial software firms. When one buys a copy of a non-custom software product, one is typically buying only a license to use the software, not buying the intellectual property itself. However, copyright protection is also limited in an important way. Only the specific original writing itself is protected, not the underlying invention or ideas. As a consequence, copyright protections can be circumvented. For example, those who wish to imitate the function of a copyrighted software program can do so by writing new software code to implement that function. +={ Intellectual property rights : + copyrights and ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + copyright protection and +} + +Given the above, we may conclude that in practice little profit is being sacrificed by many user-innovator firms or individuals that choose to forgo the possibility of legally protecting their innovations in favor of free revealing. + +!_ Positive Incentives for Free Revealing +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + incentives for +7 ; + Information commons +7 +} + +As was noted earlier, when we say that an innovator "freely reveals" proprietary information we mean that all existing and potential intellectual property rights to that information are voluntarily given up by that innovator and that all interested parties are given access to it---the information becomes a public good. These conditions can often be met at a very low cost. For example, an innovator can simply post information about the innovation on a website without publicity, so those potentially interested must discover it. Or a firm that has developed a novel process machine can agree to give a factory tour to any firm or individual that thinks to ask for one, without attempting to publicize the invention or the availability of such tours in any way. However, it is clear that many innovators go beyond basic, low-cost forms of free revealing. They spend significant money and time to ensure that their innovations are seen in a favorable light, and that information about them is effectively and widely diffused. Writers of computer code may work hard to eliminate all bugs and to document their code in a way that is very easy for potential adopters to understand before freely revealing it. Plant owners may repaint their plant, announce the availability of tours at a general industry meeting, and then provide a free lunch for their visitors. + +Innovators' /{active}/ efforts to diffuse information about their innovations suggest that there are positive, private rewards to be obtained from free revealing. A number of authors have considered what these might be. Allen (1983) proposed that reputation gained for a firm or for its managers might offset a reduction in profits for the firm caused by free revealing. Raymond (1999) and Lerner and Tirole (2002) elaborated on this idea when explaining free revealing by contributors to open source software development projects. Free revealing of high-quality code, they noted, can increase a programmer's reputation with his peers. This benefit can lead to other benefits, such as an increase in the programmer's value on the job market. Allen has argued that free revealing might have effects that actually increase a firm's profits if the revealed innovation is to some degree specific to assets owned by the innovator (see also Hirschleifer 1971). +={ Allen, R. +1 ; + Hirschleifer, J. ; + Lerner, J. ; + Raymond, E. ; + Tirole, J. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + and open source software ; + Open source software : + free revealing and +} + +Free revealing may also increase an innovator's profit in other ways. When an innovating user freely reveals an innovation, the direct result is to increase the diffusion of that innovation relative to what it would be if the innovation were either licensed at a fee or held secret. The innovating user may then benefit from the increase in diffusion via a number of effects. Among these are network effects. (The classic illustration of a network effect is that the value of each telephone goes up as more are sold, because the value of a phone is strongly affected by the number of others who can be contacted in the network.) In addition, and very importantly, an innovation that is freely revealed and adopted by others can become an informal standard that may preempt the development and/or commercialization of other versions of the innovation. If, as Allen suggested, the innovation that is revealed is designed in a way that is especially appropriate to conditions unique to the innovator, this can result in creating a permanent source of advantage for that innovator. + +Being first to reveal a certain type of innovation increases a user firm's chances of having its innovation widely adopted, other things being equal. This may induce innovators to race to reveal first. Firms engaged in a patent race may disclose information voluntarily if the profits from success do not go only to the winner of the race. If being second quickly is preferable to being first relatively late, there will be an incentive for voluntary revealing in order to accelerate the race (de Fraja 1993). +={ de Fraja, G. } + +Incentives to freely reveal have been most deeply explored in the specific case of open source software projects. Students of the open source software development process report that innovating users have a number of motives for freely revealing their code to open source project managers and open source code users in general. If they freely reveal, others can debug and improve upon the modules they have contributed, to everyone's benefit. They are also motivated to have their improvement incorporated into the standard version of the open source software that is generally distributed by the volunteer open source user organization, because it will then be updated and maintained without further effort on the innovator's part. This volunteer organization is the functional equivalent of a manufacturer with respect to inducing manufacturer improvements, because a user-developed improvement will be assured of inclusion in new "official" software releases only if it is approved and adopted by the coordinating user group. Innovating users also report being motivated to freely reveal their code under a free or open source license by a number of additional factors. These include giving support to open code and "giving back" to those whose freely revealed code has been of value to them (Lakhani and Wolf 2005). +={ Lakhani, K. ; + Lakhani, K. ; + Wolf, B. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + and open source software +4 ; + Open source software : + free revealing and +4 +} + +By freely revealing information about an innovative product or process, a user makes it possible for manufacturers to learn about that innovation. Manufacturers may then improve upon it and/or offer it at a price lower than users' in-house production costs (Harhoff et al. 2003). When the improved version is offered for sale to the general market, the original user-innovator (and other users) can buy it and gain from in-house use of the improvements. For example, consider that manufacturers often convert user-developed innovations ("home-builts") into a much more robust and reliable form when preparing them for sale on the commercial market. Also, manufacturers offer related services, such as field maintenance and repair programs, that innovating users must otherwise provide for themselves. +={ iHarhoff, D. +1 } + +A variation of this argument applies to the free revealing among competing manufacturers documented by Henkel (2003). Competing developers of embedded Linux systems were creating software that was specifically designed to run the hardware products of their specific clients. Each manufacturer could freely reveal this equipment-specific code without fear of direct competitive repercussions: it was applicable mainly to specific products made by a manufacturer's client, and it was less valuable to others. At the same time, all would jointly benefit from free revealing of improvements to the underlying embedded Linux code base, upon which they all build their proprietary products. After all, the competitive advantages of all their products depended on this code base's being equal to or better than the proprietary software code used by other manufacturers of similar products. Additionally, Linux software was a complement to hardware that many of the manufacturers in Henkel's sample also sold. Improved Linux software would likely increase sales of their complementary hardware products. (Complement suppliers' incentives to innovate have been modeled by Harhoff (1996).) +={ Linux ; + Henkel, J. +} + +!_ Free Revealing and Reuse +={ Free revealing of innovation information +2 } + +Of course, free revealing is of value only if others (re)use what has been revealed. It can be difficult to track what visitors to an information commons take away and reuse, and there is as yet very little empirical information on this important matter. Valuable forms of reuse range from the gaining of general ideas of development paths to pursue or avoid to the adoption of specific designs. For example, those who download software code from an open source project repository can use it to learn about approaches to solving a particular software problem and/or they may reuse portions of the downloaded code by inserting it directly into a software program of their own. Von Krogh et al. (2004) studied the latter type of code reuse in open source software and found it very extensive. Indeed, they report that /{most}/ of the lines of software code in the projects they studied were taken from the commons of other open source software projects and software libraries and reused. +={ von Krogh, G. +10 } + +% Spaeth, S., 88,? + +In the case of academic publications, we see evidence that free revealing does increase reuse---a matter of great importance to academics. A citation is an indicator that information contained in an article has been reused: the article has been read by the citing author and found useful enough to draw to readers' attention. Recent empirical studies are finding that articles to which readers have open access---articles available for free download from an author's website, for example---are cited significantly more often than are equivalent articles that are available only from libraries or from publishers' fee-based websites. Antelman (2004) finds an increase in citations ranging from 45 percent in philosophy to 91 percent in mathematics. She notes that "scholars in diverse disciplines are adopting open-access practices at a surprisingly high rate and are being rewarded for it, as reflected in [citations]." +={ Antelman, K. } + +!_ Implications for Theory + +We have seen that in practice free revealing may often be the best practical course of action for innovators. How can we tie these observations back to theory, and perhaps improve theory as a result? At present there are two major models that characterize how innovation gets rewarded. The private investment model is based on the assumption that innovation will be supported by private investors expecting to make a profit. To encourage private investment in innovation, society grants innovators some limited rights to the innovations they generate via patents, copyrights, and trade secrecy laws. These rights are intended to assist innovators in getting private returns from their innovation-related investments. At the same time, the monopoly control that society grants to innovators and the private profits they reap create a loss to society relative to the free and unfettered use by all of the knowledge that the innovators have created. Society elects to suffer this social loss in order to increase innovators' incentives to invest in the creation of new knowledge (Arrow 1962; Dam 1995). +={ Arrow, K. ; + Dam, K. ; + Intellectual property rights : + copyrights and | trade secrets and ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + copyright protection and | patents and | trade secrecy and +} + +The second major model for inducing innovation is termed the collective action model. It applies to the provision of public goods, where a public good is defined by its non-excludability and non-rivalry: if any user consumes it, it cannot be feasibly withheld from other users, and all consume it on the same terms (Olson 1967). The collective action model assumes that innovators are /{required}/ to relinquish control of knowledge or other assets they have developed to a project and so make them a public good. This requirement enables collective action projects to avoid the social loss associated with the restricted access to knowledge of the private investment model. At the same time, it creates problems with respect to recruiting and motivating potential contributors. Since contributions to a collective action project are a public good, users of that good have the option of waiting for others to contribute and then free riding on what they have done (Olson 1967). +={ Olson, M. +1 ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + collective action model for +6 ; + Social welfare : + free revealing and +} + +The literature on collective action deals with the problem of recruiting contributors to a task in a number of ways. Oliver and Marwell (1988) and Taylor and Singleton (1993) predict that the description of a project's goals and the nature of recruiting efforts should matter a great deal. Other researchers argue that the creation and deployment of selective incentives for contributors is essential to the success of collective action projects. For example, projects may grant special credentials to especially productive project members (Friedman and McAdam 1992; Oliver 1980). The importance of selective incentives suggests that small groups will be most successful at executing collective action projects. In small groups, selective incentives can be carefully tailored for each group member and individual contributions can be more effectively monitored (Olson 1967; Ostrom 1998). +={ Friedman, D. ; + Marwell, G. ; + McAdam, D. ; + Oliver, P. ; + Ostrom, E. ; + Singleton, S. ; + Taylor, M. +} + +Interestingly, successful open source software projects do not appear to follow any of the guidelines for successful collective action projects just described. With respect to project recruitment, goal statements provided by successful open source software projects vary from technical and narrow to ideological and broad, and from precise to vague and emergent (for examples, see goal statements posted by projects hosted on Sourceforge.net).~{ As a specific example of a project with an emergent goal, consider the beginnings of the Linux open source software project. In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a student in Finland, wanted a Unix operating system that could be run on his PC, which was equipped with a 386 processor. Minix was the only software available at that time but it was commercial, closed source, and it traded at US$150. Torvalds found this too expensive, and started development of a Posix-compatible operating system, later known as Linux. Torvalds did not immediately publicize a very broad and ambitious goal, nor did he attempt to recruit contributors. He simply expressed his private motivation in a message he posted on July 3, 1991, to the USENET newsgroup comp.os.minix (Wayner 2000): /{Hello netlanders, Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix standard definition.}/ [Posix is a standard for UNIX designers. A software using POSIX is compatible with other UNIX-based software.] /{Could somebody please point me to a (preferably) machine-readable format of the latest posix-rules? Ftp-sites would be nice.}/ In response, Torvalds got several return messages with Posix rules and people expressing a general interest in the project. By the early 1992, several skilled programmers contributed to Linux and the number of users increased by the day. Today, Linux is the largest open source development project extant in terms of number of developers. }~ Further, such projects may engage in no active recruiting beyond simply posting their intended goals and access address on a general public website customarily used for this purpose (for examples, see the Freshmeat.net website). Also, projects have shown by example that they can be successful even if large groups---perhaps thousands---of contributors are involved. Finally, open source software projects seem to expend no effort to discourage free riding. Anyone is free to download code or seek help from project websites, and no apparent form of moral pressure is applied to make a compensating contribution (e.g., "If you benefit from this code, please also contribute . . ."). +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + open source software and +} + +What can explain these deviations from expected practice? What, in other words, can explain free revealing of privately funded innovations and enthusiastic participation in projects to produce a public good? From the theoretical perspective, Georg von Krogh and I think the answer involves revisiting and easing some of the basic assumptions and constraints conventionally applied to the private investment and collective action models of innovation. Both, in an effort to offer "clean" and simple models for research, have excluded from consideration a very rich and fertile middle ground where incentives for private investment and collective action can coexist, and where a "private-collective" innovation model can flourish. More specifically, a private-collective model of innovation occupies the middle ground between the private investment model and the collective action model by: +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + private-collective model for +3 ; + Private-collective model +3 ; + Social welfare : + private-collective model and +3 +} + +_* Eliminating the assumption in private investment models that free revealing of innovations developed with private funds will represent a loss of private profit for the innovator and so will not be engaged in voluntarily. Instead the private-collective model proposes that under common conditions free revealing of proprietary innovations may increase rather than decrease innovators' private profit. + +_* Eliminating the assumption in collective action models that a free rider obtains benefits from the completed public good that are equal to those a contributor obtains. Instead, the private-collective model proposes that contributors to a public good can /{inherently}/ obtain greater private benefits than free riders. These provide incentives for participation in collective action projects that need not be managed by project personnel (von Hippel and von Krogh 2003). +={ von Hippel, E. } + +In summation: Innovations developed at private cost are often revealed freely, and this behavior makes economic sense for participants under commonly encountered conditions. A private-collective model of innovation incentives can explain why and when knowledge created by private funding may be offered freely to all. When the conditions are met, society appears to have the best of both worlds---new knowledge is created by private funding and then freely revealed to all. + +1~ 7 Innovation Communities +={ Innovation communities +56 : + innovation and +56 +} + +It is now clear that users often innovate, and that they often freely reveal their innovations. But what about informal cooperation among users? What about /{organized}/ cooperation in development of innovations and other matters? The answer is that both flourish among user-innovators. Informal user-to-user cooperation, such as assisting others to innovate, is common. Organized cooperation in which users interact within communities, is also common. Innovation communities are often stocked with useful tools and infrastructure that increase the speed and effectiveness with which users can develop and test and diffuse their innovations. + +In this chapter, I first show that user innovation is a widely distributed process and so can be usefully drawn together by innovation communities. I next explore the valuable functions such communities can provide. I illustrate with a discussion of free and open source software projects, a very successful form of innovation community in the field of software development. Finally, I point out that innovation communities are by no means restricted to the development of information products such as software, and illustrate with the case of a user innovation community specializing in the development of techniques and equipment used in the sport of kitesurfing. +={ Free software ; + Kitesurfing ; + Open source software : + innovation communities and +} + +!_ User Innovation Is Widely Distributed +={ Users : + innovation and +8 ; + Innovation : + distributed process of +8 +} + +When users' needs are heterogeneous and when the information drawn on by innovators is sticky, it is likely that product-development activities will be widely distributed among users, rather than produced by just a few prolific user-innovators. It should also be the case that different users will tend to develop different innovations. As was shown in chapter 5, individual users and user firms tend to develop innovations that serve their particular needs, and that fall within their individual "low-cost innovation niches." For example, a mountain biker who specializes in jumping from high platforms and who is also an orthopedic surgeon will tend to develop innovations that draw on both of these types of information: he might create a seat suspension that reduces shock to bikers' spines upon landing from a jump. Another mountain biker specializing in the same activity but with a different background---say aeronautical engineering---is likely to draw on this different information to come up with a different innovation. From the perspective of Fleming (2001), who has studied innovations as consisting of novel combinations of pre-existing elements, such innovators are using their membership in two distinct communities to combine previously disparate elements. Baldwin and Clark (2003) and Henkel (2004a) explore this type of situation in theoretical terms. +={ Baldwin, C. ; + Clark, K. ; + Fleming, L. ; + Henkel, J. ; + User need ; + Custom products : + heterogeneity of user needs and +3 ; + Sticky information : + innovation and +3 ; + Users : + low-cost innovation niches of +3 ; + Scientific instruments ; + Sporting equipment : + innovation communities and ; + Mountain biking ; + Local information +1 ; + Users : + innovate-or-buy decisions by +} + +The underlying logic echoes that offered by Eric Raymond regarding "Linus's Law" in software debugging. In software, discovering and repairing subtle code errors or bugs can be very costly (Brooks 1979). However, Raymond argued, the same task can be greatly reduced in cost and also made faster and more effective when it is opened up to a large community of software users that each may have the information needed to identify and fix some bugs. Under these conditions, Raymond says, "given a large enough beta tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone. Or, less formally, `given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."' He explains: "More users find more bugs because adding more users adds more ways of stressing the program. . . . Each [user] approaches the task of bug characterization with a slightly different perceptual set and analytical toolkit, a different angle on the problem. So adding more beta-testers . . . increases the probability that someone's toolkit will be matched to the problem in such a way that the bug is shallow to /{that person}/." (1999, pp. 41--44) +={ Brooks, F. ; + Raymond, E. ; + Free software ; + Open source software : + innovation communities and ; + Innovation communities : + and sources of innovation +2 +} + +The analogy to distributed user innovation is, of course, that each user has a different set of innovation-related needs and other assets in place which makes a particular type of innovation low-cost ("shallow") to /{that user}/. The assets of /{some}/ user will then generally be found to be a just-right fit to many innovation development problems. (Note that this argument does not mean that /{all}/ innovations will be cheaply done by users, or even done by users at all. In essence, users will find it cheaper to innovate when manufacturers' economies of scale with respect to product development are more than offset by the greater scope of innovation assets held by the collectivity of individual users.) + +Available data support these expectations. In chapter 2 we saw evidence that users tended to develop very different innovations. To test whether commercially important innovations are developed by just a few users or by many, I turn to studies documenting the functional sources of important innovations later commercialized. As is evident in table 7.1, most of the important innovations attributed to users in these studies were done by /{different}/ users. In other words, user innovation does tend to be widely distributed in a world characterized by users with heterogeneous needs and heterogeneous stocks of sticky information. +={ Innovation : + functional sources of +} + +!_ Table 7.1 +User innovation is widely distributed, with few users developing more than one major innovation. NA: data not available. +={ Riggs, W. ; + Shah, S. ; + von Hippel, E. ; + Scientific instruments ; + Sporting equipment : + innovation communities and +} + +Number of users developing this number of major innovations + +table(h; c7: 30, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 20){ + +~ +1 +2 +3 +6 +NA +Sample (n) + +Scientific Instruments^{a}^ +28 +0 +1 +0 +1 +32 + +Scientific Instruments^{b}^ +20 +1 +0 +1 +0 +28 + +Process equipment^{c}^ +19 +1 +0 +0 +8 +29 + +Sports equipment^{d}^ +7 +0 +0 +0 +0 +7 + +}table + +a. Source: von Hippel 1988, appendix: GC, TEM, NMR Innovations. \\ +b. Source: Riggs and von Hippel, Esca and AES. \\ +c. Source: von Hippel 1988, appendix: Semiconductor and pultrusion process equipment innovations. \\ +d. Source: Shah 2000, appendix A: skateboarding, snowboarding, and windsurfing innovations. + +!_ Innovation Communities +={ Innovation communities : + and sources of innovation +} + +User-innovators may be generally willing to freely reveal their information. However, as we have seen, they may be widely distributed and each may have only one or a few innovations to offer. The practical value of the "freely revealed innovation commons" these users collectively offer will be increased if their information is somehow made conveniently accessible. This is one of the important functions of "innovation communities." +={ Information commons +3 } + +I define "innovation communities" as meaning nodes consisting of individuals or firms interconnected by information transfer links which may involve face-to-face, electronic, or other communication. These can, but need not, exist within the boundaries of a membership group. They often do, but need not, incorporate the qualities of communities for participants, where "communities" is defined as meaning"networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity" (Wellman et al. 2002, p. 4).~{ When they do not incorporate these qualities, they would be more properly referred to as networks---but communities is the term commonly used, and I follow that practice here. }~ +={ Wellman, B. } + +Innovation communities can have users and/or manufacturers as members and contributors. They can flourish when at least some innovate and voluntarily reveal their innovations, and when others find the information revealed to be of interest. In previous chapters, we saw that these conditions do commonly exist with respect to user-developed innovations: users innovate in many fields, users often freely reveal, and the information revealed is often used by manufacturers to create commercial products---a clear indication many users, too, find this information of interest. + +Innovation communities are often specialized, serving as collection points and repositories for information related to narrow categories of innovations. They may consist only of information repositories or directories in the form of physical or virtual publications. For example, userinnovation.mit.edu is a specialized website where researchers can post articles on their findings and ideas related to innovation by users. Contributors and non-contributors can freely access and browse the site as a convenient way to find such information. + +Innovation communities also can offer additional important functions to participants. Chat rooms and email lists with public postings can be provided so that contributors can exchange ideas and provide mutual assistance. Tools to help users develop, evaluate, and integrate their work can also be provided to community members---and such tools are often developed by community members themselves. + +All the community functionality just mentioned and more is visible in communities that develop free and open source software programs. The emergence of this particular type of innovation community has also done a great deal to bring the general phenomenon to academic and public notice, and so I will describe them in some detail. I first discuss the history and nature of free and open source software itself (the product). Next I outline key characteristics of the free and open source software development projects typically used to create and maintain such software (the community-based development process). +={ Free software +10 ; + Innovation communities : + open source software and +22 ; + Open source software : + innovation communities and +22 +} + +!_ Open Source Software +={ Open source software : + innovation and +21 +} + +In the early days of computer programming, commercial "packaged" software was a rarity---if you wanted a particular program for a particular purpose, you typically wrote the code yourself or hired someone to write it for you. Much of the software of the 1960s and the 1970s was developed in academic and corporate laboratories by scientists and engineers. These individuals found it a normal part of their research culture to freely give and exchange software they had written, to modify and build on one another's software, and to freely share their modifications. This communal behavior became a central feature of "hacker culture." (In communities of open source programmers, "hacker" is a positive term that is applied to talented and dedicated programmers.~{ !{hacker}! n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating !{hack value}!. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. . . . 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence /{password hacker}/, /{network hacker}/. The correct term for this sense is !{cracker}! (Raymond 1996). }~ ) +={ Hackers +4 ; + Raymond, E. +} + +In 1969, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a part of the US Department of Defense, established the ARPANET, the first transcontinental high-speed computer network. This network eventually grew to link hundreds of universities, defense contractors, and research laboratories. Later succeeded by the Internet, it also allowed hackers to exchange software code and other information widely, easily, and cheaply---and also enabled them to spread hacker norms of behavior. + +The communal hacker culture was very strongly present among a group of programmers---software hackers---housed at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1960s and the 1970s (Levy 1984). In the 1980s this group received a major jolt when MIT licensed some of the code created by its hacker employees to a commercial firm. This firm, in accordance with normal commercial practice, then promptly restricted access to the "source code"~{ Source code is a sequence of instructions to be executed by a computer to accomplish a program's purpose. Programmers write computer software in the form of source code, and also document that source code with brief written explanations of the purpose and design of each section of their program. To convert a program into a form that can actually operate a computer, source code is translated into machine code using a software tool called a compiler. The compiling process removes program documentation and creates a binary version of the program---a sequence of computer instructions consisting only of strings of ones and zeros. Binary code is very difficult for programmers to read and interpret. Therefore, programmers or firms that wish to prevent others from understanding and modifying their code will release only binary versions of the software. In contrast, programmers or firms that wish to enable others to understand and update and modify their software will provide them with its source code. (Moerke 2000, Simon 1996). }~ of that software, and so prevented non-company personnel---including the MIT hackers who had been instrumental in developing it---from continuing to use it as a platform for further learning and development. +={ Levy, S. ; + MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory +1 ; + Innovation communities : + open source software and ; + Open source software : + innovation communities and +} + +Richard Stallman, a brilliant programmer in MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, was especially distressed by the loss of access to communally developed source code. He also was offended by a general trend in the software world toward development of proprietary software packages and the release of software in forms that could not be studied or modified by others. Stallman viewed these practices as morally wrong impingements on the rights of software users to freely learn and create. In 1985, in response, he founded the Free Software Foundation and set about to develop and diffuse a legal mechanism that could preserve free access for all to the software developed by software hackers. Stallman's pioneering idea was to use the existing mechanism of copyright law to this end. Software authors interested in preserving the status of their software as "free" software could use their own copyright to grant licenses on terms that would guarantee a number of rights to all future users. They could do this by simply affixing a standard license to their software that conveyed these rights. The basic license developed by Stallman to implement this seminal idea was the General Public License or GPL (sometimes referred to as copyleft, in a play on the word "copyright"). Basic rights transferred to those possessing a copy of free software include the right to use it at no cost, the right to study its source code, the right to modify it, and the right to distribute modified or unmodified versions to others at no cost. Licenses conveying similar rights were developed by others, and a number of such licenses are currently used in the open source field. Free and open source software licenses do not grant users the full rights associated with free revealing as that term was defined earlier. Those who obtain the software under a license such as the GPL are restricted from certain practices. For example, they cannot incorporate GPL software into proprietary software that they then sell.~{ See www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL }~ Indeed, contributors of code to open source software projects are very concerned with enforcing such restrictions in order to ensure that their code remains accessible to all (O'Mahony 2003). +={ Stallman, R. +2 ; + Intellectual property rights : + copyrights and | licensing of +1 +} + +The idea of free software did not immediately become mainstream, and industry was especially suspicious of it. In 1998, Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond agreed that a significant part of the problem resided in Stallman's term "free" software, which might understandably have an ominous ring to the ears of businesspeople. Accordingly, they, along with other prominent hackers, founded the open source software movement (Perens 1999). Open source software uses the licensing practices pioneered by the free software movement. It differs from that movement primarily on philosophical grounds, preferring to emphasize the practical benefits of its licensing practices over issues regarding the moral importance of granting users the freedoms offered by both free and open source software. The term "open source" is now generally used by both practitioners and scholars to refer to free or open source software, and that is the term I use in this book. +={ Perens, B. ; + Raymond, E. +} + +Open source software has emerged as a major cultural and economic phenomenon. The number of open source software projects has been growing rapidly. In mid 2004, a single major infrastructure provider and repository for open source software projects, Sourceforge.net,~{ http://www.sourceforge.net }~ hosted 83,000 projects and had more than 870,000 registered users. A significant amount of software developed by commercial firms is also being released under open source licenses. + +!_ Open Source Software Development Projects + +Software can be termed "open source" independent of how or by whom it has been developed: the term denotes only the type of license under which it is made available. However, the fact that open source software is freely accessible to all has created some typical open source software development practices that differ greatly from commercial software development models---and that look very much like the "hacker culture" behaviors described above. +={ Hackers +1 } + +Because commercial software vendors typically wish to sell the code they develop, they sharply restrict access to the source code of their software products to firm employees and contractors. The consequence of this restriction is that only insiders have the information required to modify and improve that proprietary code further (Meyer and Lopez 1995; Young, Smith, and Grimm 1996; Conner and Prahalad 1996). In sharp contrast, all are offered free access to the source code of open source software if that code is distributed by its authors. In early hacker days, this freedom to learn and use and modify software was exercised by informal sharing and co-development of code---often by the physical sharing and exchange of computer tapes and disks on which the code was recorded. In current Internet days, rapid technological advances in computer hardware and software and networking technologies have made it much easier to create and sustain a communal development style on ever-larger scales. Also, implementing new projects is becoming progressively easier as effective project design becomes better understood, and as prepackaged infrastructural support for such projects becomes available on the Web. +={ Conner, K. ; + Grimm, C. ; + Meyer, M. ; + Lopez, L. ; + Prahalad, C. ; + Smith, G. ; + Young, G. +} + +Today, an open source software development project is typically initiated by an individual or a small group seeking a solution to an individual's or a firm's need. Raymond (1999, p. 32) suggests that "every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch" and that "too often software developers spend their days grinding away for pay at programs they neither need nor love. But not in the (open source) world. . . ." A project's initiators also generally become the project's "owners" or "maintainers" who take on responsibility for project management.~{ "The owner(s) [or `maintainers'] of an open source software project are those who have the exclusive right, recognized by the community at large, to redistribute modified versions. . . . According to standard open source licenses, all parties are equal in the evolutionary game. But in practice there is a very well-recognized distinction between `official' patches [changes to the software], approved and integrated into the evolving software by the publicly recognized maintainers, and `rogue' patches by third parties. Rogue patches are unusual and generally not trusted." (Raymond 1999, p. 89) }~ Early on, this individual or group generally develops a first, rough version of the code that outlines the functionality envisioned. The source code for this initial version is then made freely available to all via downloading from an Internet website established by the project. The project founders also set up infrastructure for the project that those interested in using or further developing the code can use to seek help, provide information or provide new open source code for others to discuss and test. In the case of projects that are successful in attracting interest, others do download and use and "play with" the code---and some of these do go on to create new and modified code. Most then post what they have done on the project website for use and critique by any who are interested. New and modified code that is deemed to be of sufficient quality and of general interest by the project maintainers is then added to the authorized version of the code. In many projects the privilege of adding to the authorized code is restricted to only a few trusted developers. These few then serve as gatekeepers for code written by contributors who do not have such access (von Krogh and Spaeth 2002). +={ Spaeth, S. ; + von Krogh, G. ; + Raymond, E. +} + +Critical tools and infrastructure available to open source software project participants includes email lists for specialized purposes that are open to all. Thus, there is a list where code users can report software failures ("bugs") that they encounter during field use of the software. There is also a list where those developing the code can share ideas about what would be good next steps for the project, good features to add, etc. All of these lists are open to all and are also publicly archived, so anyone can go back and learn what opinions were and are on a particular topic. Also, programmers contributing to open source software projects tend to have essential tools, such as specific software languages, in common. These are generally not specific to a single project, but are available on the web. Basic toolkits held in common by all contributors tends to greatly ease interactions. Also, open source software projects have version-control software that allows contributors to insert new code contributions into the existing project code base and test them to see if the new code causes malfunctions in existing code. If so, the tool allows easy reversion to the status quo ante. This makes "try it and see" testing much more practical, because much less is at risk if a new contribution inadvertently breaks the code. Toolkits used in open source projects have been evolved through practice and are steadily being improved by user-innovators. Individual projects can now start up using standard infrastructure sets offered by sites such as Sourceforge.net. +={ Toolkits : + open source software and +} + +Two brief case histories will help to further convey the flavor of open source software development. + +!_ Apache Web Server Software +={ Apache web server software +3 ; + Innovation communities : + Apache web server software and +3 +} + +Apache web server software is used on web server computers that host web pages and provide appropriate content as requested by Internet browsers. Such 7 computers are a key element of the Internet-based World Wide Web infrastructure. + +The web server software that evolved into Apache was developed by University of Illinois undergraduate Rob McCool for, and while working at, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). The source code as developed and periodically modified by McCool was posted on the web so that users at other sites could download it, use it, modify it, and develop it further. When McCool departed NCSA in mid 1994, a small group of webmasters who had adopted his web server software for their own sites decided to take on the task of continued development. A core group of eight users gathered all documentation and bug fixes and issued a consolidated patch. This "patchy" web server software evolved over time into Apache. Extensive user feedback and modification yielded Apache 1.0, released on December 1, 1995. +={ McCool, Rob } + +In 4 years, after many modifications and improvements contributed by many users, Apache became the most popular web server software on the Internet, garnering many industry awards for excellence. Despite strong competition from commercial software developers such as Microsoft and Netscape, it is currently used by over 60 percent of the world's millions of websites. Modification and updating of Apache by users and others continues, with the release of new versions being coordinated by a central group of 22 volunteers. +={ Microsoft } + +!_ Fetchmail---An Internet Email Utility Program +={ Fetchmail +4 ; + Innovation communities : + fetchmail and +4 +} + +Fetchmail is an Internet email utility program that "fetches" email from central servers to a local computer. The open source project to develop, maintain, and improve this program was led by Eric Raymond (1999). +={ Raymond, E. +3 } + +Raymond first began to puzzle about the email delivery problem in 1993 because he was personally dissatisfied with then-existing solutions. "What I wanted," Raymond recalled (1999, p. 31), "was for my mail to be delivered on snark, my home system, so that I would be notified when it arrived and could handle it using all my local tools." Raymond decided to try and develop a better solution. He began by searching databases in the open source world for an existing, well-coded utility that he could use as a development base. He knew it would be efficient to build on others' related work if possible, and in the world of open source software (then generally called free software) this practice is understood and valued. Raymond explored several candidate open source programs, and settled on one in small-scale use called "popclient." He developed a number of improvements to the program and proposed them to the then maintainer of popclient. It turned out that this individual had lost interest in working further on the program, and so his response to Raymond's suggestions was to offer his role to Raymond so that he could evolve the popclient further as he chose. + +Raymond accepted the role of popclient's maintainer, and over the next months he improved the program significantly in conjunction with advice and suggestions from other users. He carefully cultivated his more active beta list of popclient users by regularly communicating with them via messages posted on an public electronic bulletin board set up for that purpose. Many responded by volunteering information on bugs they had found and perhaps fixed, and by offering improvements they had developed for their own use. The quality of these suggestions was often high because "contributions are received not from a random sample, but from people who are interested enough to use the software, learn about how it works, attempt to find solutions to the problems they encounter, and actually produce an apparently reasonable fix. Anyone who passes all these filters is highly likely to have something useful to contribute." (ibid., p. 42) + +Eventually, Raymond arrived at an innovative design that he knew worked well because he and his beta list of co-developers had used it, tested it and improved it every day. Popclient (now renamed fetchmail) became standard software used by millions users. Raymond continues to lead the group of volunteers that maintain and improve the software as new user needs and conditions dictate. + +!_ Development of Physical Products by Innovation Communities +={ Innovation communities : + physical products and +14 +} + +User innovation communities are by no means restricted to the development of information products like software. They also are active in the development of physical products, and in very similar ways. Just as in the case of communities devoted to information product, communities devoted to physical products can range from simple information exchange sites to sites well furnished with tools and infrastructure. Within sports, Franke and Shah's study illustrates relatively simple community infrastructure. Thus, the boardercross community they studied consisted of semi-professional athletes from all over the world who meet in up to 10 competitions a year in Europe, North America, and Japan. Franke and Shah report that community members knew one another well, and spent a considerable amount of time together. They also assisted one another in developing and modifying equipment for their sport. However, the community had no specialized sets of tools to support joint innovation development. +={ Franke, N. ; + Shah, S. ; + Innovation communities : + sporting equipment and +2 +} + +More complex communities devoted to the development of physical products often look similar to open source software development communities in terms of tools and infrastructure. As an example, consider the recent formation of a community dedicated to the development and diffusion of information regarding novel kitesurfing equipment. Kitesurfing is a water sport in which the user stands on a special board, somewhat like a surfboard, and is pulled along by holding onto a large, steerable kite. Equipment and technique have evolved to the point that kites can be guided both with and against the wind by a skilled kitesurfer, and can lift rider and board many meters into the air for tens of seconds at a time. +={ Innovation communities : + kitesurfing and +1 ; + Kitesurfing +1 +} + +Designing kites for kitesurfing is a sophisticated undertaking, involving low-speed aerodynamical considerations that are not yet well understood. Early kites for kitesurfing were developed and built by user-enthusiasts who were inventing both kitesurfing techniques and kitesurfing equipment interdependently. In about 2001, Saul Griffith, an MIT PhD student with a long-time interest in kitesurfing and kite development, decided that kite-surfing would benefit from better online community interaction. Accordingly, he created a site for the worldwide community of user-innovators in kitesurfing (www.zeroprestige.com). Griffith began by posting patterns for kites he had designed on the site and added helpful hints and tools for kite construction and use. Others were invited to download this information for free and to contribute their own if they wished. Soon other innovators started to post their own kite designs, improved construction advice for novices, and sophisticated design tools such as aerodynamics modeling software and rapid prototyping software. Some kitesurfers contributing innovations to the site had top-level technical skills; at least one was a skilled aerodynamicist employed by an aerospace firm. +={ Griffith, S. ; + Zeroprestige.com +} + +Note that physical products are information products during the design stage. In earlier days, information about an evolving design was encoded on large sheets of paper, called blueprints, that could be copied and shared. The information on blueprints could be understood and assessed by fellow designers, and could also be used by machinists to create the actual physical products represented. Today, designs for new products are commonly encoded in computer-aided design (CAD) files. These files can be created and seen as two-dimensional and three-dimensional renderings by designers. The designs they contain can also be subjected to automated analysis by various engineering tools to determine, for example, whether they can stand up to stresses to which they will be subjected. CAD files can then be downloaded to computer-controlled fabrication machinery that will actually build the component parts of the design. + +The example of the kitesurfing group's methods of sharing design information illustrates the close relationship between information and physical products. Initially, users in the group exchanged design ideas by means of simple sketches transferred over the Internet. Then group members learned that computerized cutters used by sail lofts to cut sails from large pieces of cloth are suited to cutting cloth for surfing kites. They also learned that sail lofts were interested in their business. Accordingly, innovation group members began to exchange designs in the form of CAD files compatible with sail lofts' cutting equipment. When a user was satisfied with a design, he would transmit the CAD file to a local sail loft for cutting. The pieces were then sewn together by the user or sent to a sewing facility for assembly. The total time required to convert an information product into a physical one was less than a week, and the total cost of a finished kite made in this way was a few hundred dollars---much less than the price of a commercial kite. +={ Innovation communities : + kitesurfing and ; + Kitesurfing +} + +!_ User-to-User Assistance +={ Innovation communities : + user-to-user assistance and +9 ; + Users : + innovation communities and +9 +} + +Clearly, user innovation communities can offer sophisticated support to individual innovators in the form of tools. Users in these innovation communities also tend to behave in a collaborative manner. That is, users not only distribute and evaluate completed innovations; they also volunteer other important services, such as assisting one another in developing and applying innovations. + +Franke and Shah (2003) studied the frequency with which users in four sporting communities assisted one another with innovations, and found that such assistance was very common (table 7.2). They also found that those who assisted were significantly more likely to be innovators themselves (table 7.3). The level of satisfaction reported by those assisted was very high. Seventy-nine percent agreed strongly with the statement "If I had a similar problem I would ask the same people again." Jeppesen (2005) similarly found extensive user-to-user help being volunteered in the field of computer gaming. +={ Franke, N. ; + Jeppesen, L. ; + Shah, S. ; + Innovation communities : + sporting equipment and ; + Sporting equipment : + innovation communities and +7 | user-to-user assistance and +7 +} + +!_ Table 7.2 +Number of people from whom innovators received assistance. +={ Franke, N. ; + Shah, S. +} + +table(h; c3: 34, 33, 33){ + +Number of people +Number of cases +Percentage + +0 +0 +0 + +1 +3 +6 + +2 +14 +26 + +3--5 +25 +47 + +6--10 +8 +15 + +> 10 +3 +6 + +Total +53 +100 + +}table + +Source: Franke and Shah 2003, table 4. + +!_ Table 7.3 +Innovators tended to be the ones assisting others with their innovations (p < 0.0001). +={ Franke, N. ; + Shah, S. +} + +table(h; c4: 40, 20, 20, 20){ + +~ +Innovators +Non-innovators +Total + +Gave assistance +28 +13 +41 + +Did not give assistance +32 +115 +147 + +Total +60 +128 +~ + +}table + +Source: Franke and Shah 2003, table 7. + +Such helping activity is clearly important to the value contributed by innovation communities to community participants. Why people might voluntarily offer assistance is a subject of analysis. The answers are not fully in, but the mysteries lessen as the research progresses. An answer that appears to be emerging is that there are private benefits to assistance providers, just as there are for those who freely reveal innovations (Lakhani and von Hippel 2003). In other words, provision of free assistance may be explicable in terms of the private-collective model of innovation-related incentives discussed earlier. +={ Lakhani, K. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + in information communities | private-collective model for ; + Private-collective model ; + Social welfare : + private-collective model and +} + +1~ 8 Adapting Policy to User Innovation +={ Government policy +44 : + user innovation and +19 ; + Innovation : + and government policy +44 ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and +44 ; + Users : + government policy and +44 | innovation and +44 +} + +Government policy makers generally wish to encourage activities that increase social welfare, and to discourage activities that reduce it. Therefore, it is important to ask about the social welfare effects of innovation by users. Henkel and von Hippel (2005) explored this matter and concluded that social welfare is likely to be higher in a world in which both users and manufacturers innovate than in a world in which only manufacturers innovate. +={ Henkel, J. ; + Government policy : + manufacturer innovation and +1 ; + Manufacturers : + government policy and +1 ; + Government policy : + social welfare and +21 ; + Social welfare : + government policy +4 ; + Users : + social welfare and +4 +} + +In this chapter, I first explain that innovation by users complements manufacturer innovation and can also be a source of success-enhancing new product ideas for manufacturers. Next, I note that innovation by users does not exhibit several welfare-reducing effects associated with innovation by manufacturers. Finally, I evaluate the effects of public policies on user innovation, and suggest modifications to those that---typically unintentionally---discriminate against innovation by users. + +!_ Social Welfare Effects of User Innovation + +Social welfare functions are used in welfare economics to provide a measure of the material welfare of society, using economic variables as inputs. A social welfare function can be designed to express many social goals, ranging from population life expectancies to income distributions. Much of the literature on product diversity, innovation, and social welfare evaluates the impact of economic phenomena and policy on social welfare from the perspective of total income of a society without regard to how that income is distributed. We will take that viewpoint here. + +!_ User Innovation Improves Manufacturers' Success Rates +={ Government policy : + manufacturer innovation and +5 ; + Manufacturers : + government policy and +5 +} + +It is striking that most new products developed and introduced to the market by manufacturers are commercial failures. Mansfield and Wagner (1975) found the overall probability of success for new industrial products to be only 27 percent. Elrod and Kelman (1987) found an overall probability of success of 26 percent for consumer products. Balachandra and Friar (1997), Poolton and Barclay (1998), and Redmond (1995) found similarly high failure rates in new products commercialized. Although there clearly is some recycling of knowledge from failed projects to successful ones, much of the investment in product development is highly specific. This high failure rate therefore represents a huge inefficiency in the conversion of R&D investment to useful output, and a corresponding reduction in social welfare. +={ Balachandra, R ; + Barclay, I. ; + Elrod, T. ; + Kelman, A. ; + Friar, J. ; + Mansfield, E. +1 ; + Poolton, J. ; + Redmond, W. ; + Wagner, S. +1 +} + +% Robertson, A., 108 + +Research indicates that the major reason for the commercial failure of manufacturer-developed products is poor understanding of users' needs by manufacturer-innovators. The landmark SAPPHO study showed this in a very clear and convincing way. This study was based on a sample of 31 product pairs. Members of each pair were selected to address the same function and market. (For example, one pair consisted of two "roundness meters," each developed by a separate company.) One member of each pair was a commercial success (which showed that there was a market for the product type); the other was a commercial failure. The development process for each successful and failing product was then studied in detail. The primary factor found to distinguish success from failure was that a deeper understanding of the market and the need was associated with successful projects (Achilladelis et al. 1971; Rothwell et al. 1974). A study by Mansfield and Wagner (1975) came to the same conclusion. More recent studies of information stickiness and the resulting asymmetries of information held by users and manufacturers, discussed in chapter 3, support the reasonableness of this general finding. Users are the generators of information regarding their needs. The decline in accuracy and completeness of need information after transfer from user to manufacturer is likely to be substantial because important elements of this information are likely to be sticky (von Hippel 1994; Ogawa 1998). +={ Achilladelis, B. ; + Ogawa, S. ; + Rothwell, R. ; + Project SAPPHO ; + SAPPHO study ; + Sticky information : + innovation and +} + +Innovations developed by users can improve manufacturers' information on users' needs and so improve their new product introduction success rates. Recall from previous chapters that innovation by users is concentrated among lead users. These lead users tend, as we have seen, to develop functionally novel products and product modifications addressing their own needs at the leading edge of markets where potential sales are both small and uncertain. Manufacturers, in contrast, have poorer information on users' needs and use contexts, and will prefer to manufacture innovations for larger, more certain markets. In the short term, therefore, user innovations will tend to /{complement}/ rather than substitute for products developed by manufacturers. In the longer term, the market as a whole catches up to the needs that motivated the lead user developments, and manufacturers will begin to find production of similar innovations to be commercially attractive. At that point, innovations by lead users can provide very useful information to manufacturers that they would not otherwise have. + +As lead users develop and test their solutions in their own use environments, they learn more about the real nature of their needs. They then often freely reveal information about their innovations. Other users then may adopt the innovations, comment on them, modify and improve them, and freely reveal what they have done in turn. All of this freely revealed activity by lead users offers manufacturers a great deal of useful information about both needs embodied in solutions and about markets. Given access to a user-developed prototype, manufacturers no longer need to understand users' needs very accurately and richly. Instead they have the much easier task of replicating the function of user prototypes that users have already demonstrated are responsive to their needs. For example, a manufacturer seeking to commercialize a new type of surgical equipment and coming upon prototype equipment developed by surgeons need not understand precisely why the innovators want this product or even precisely how it is used; the manufacturer need only understand that many surgeons appear willing to pay for it and then reproduce the important features of the user-developed prototypes in a commercial product. +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + lead users and +35 | users and ; + Surgical equipment +} + +Observation of innovation by lead users and adoption by follow-on users also can give manufacturers a better understanding of the size of the potential market. Projections of product sales have been shown to be much more accurate when they are based on actual customer behavior than when they are based on potential buyers' pre-use expectations. Monitoring of field use of user-built prototypes and of their adoption by other users can give manufacturers rich data on precisely these matters and so should improve manufacturer's commercial success. In net, user innovation helps to reduce information asymmetries between users and manufacturers and so increases the efficiency of the innovation process. +={ Information asymmetries ; + Users : + information asymmetries of +} + +!_ User Innovation and Provisioning Biases + +The economic literature on the impact of innovation on social welfare generally seeks to understand effects that might induce society to create too many product variations (overprovisioning) or too few (underprovisioning) from the viewpoint of net social economic income (Chamberlin 1950). Greater variety of products available for purchase is assumed to be desirable, in that it enables consumers to get more precisely what they want and/or to own a more diverse array of products. However, increased product diversity comes at a cost: smaller quantities of each product will be produced on average. This in turn means that development-related and production-related economies of scale are likely to be less. The basic tradeoff between variety and cost is what creates the possibility of overprovisioning or underprovisioning product variety. Innovations such as flexible manufacturing may reduce fixed costs associated with increased diversity and so shift the optimal degree of diversity upward. Nonetheless, the conflict still persists. +={ Chamberlin, E. ; + Social welfare : + innovation and +11 +} + +Henkel and I studied the welfare impact of adding users as a source of innovation to existing analyses of product diversity, innovation, and social welfare. Existing models uniformly contained the assumption that new products and services were supplied to the economy by manufacturers only. We found that the addition of innovation by users to these analyses largely avoids the welfare-reducing biases that had been identified. For example, consider "business stealing" (Spence 1976). This term refers to the fact that commercial manufacturers benefit by diverting business from their competitors. Since they do not take this negative externality into account, their private gain from introducing new products exceeds society's total gain, tilting the balance toward overprovision of variety. In contrast, a freely revealed user innovation may also reduce incumbents' business, but not to the innovator's benefit. Hence, innovation incentives are not socially excessive. +={ Henkel, J. ; + Spence, M. ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + intellectual property rights and +11 | social welfare and +5 ; + Government policy : + free revealing and +10 ; + Government policy : + provisioning biases and ; + Intellectual property rights : + free revealing and +11 ; + Users : + social welfare and +5 +} + +Freely revealed innovations by users are also likely to reduce deadweight loss caused by pricing of products above their marginal costs. (Deadweight loss is a reduction in social welfare that occurs when goods are sold at a price above their marginal cost of production.) When users make information about their innovations available for free, and if the marginal cost of revealing that information is zero, an imitator only has to bear the cost of adoption. This is statically efficient. The availability of free user innovations can also induce sellers of competing commercial offerings to reduce their prices, thus indirectly leading to another reduction in dead-weight loss. + +Reducing prices toward marginal costs can also reduce incentives to over-provision variety (Tirole 1988). +={ Tirole, J. } + +Henkel and I also explored a few special situations where social welfare might be /{reduced}/ by the availability of freely revealed user innovations. One of these was the effect of reduced pricing power on manufacturers that create "platform" products. Often, a manufacturer of such a product will want to sell the platform---a razor, an ink-jet printer, a video-game player---at a low margin or a loss, and then price necessary add-ons (razor blades, ink cartridges, video games) at a much higher margin. If the possibility of freely revealed add-ons developed by users makes development of a platform unprofitable for a manufacturer, social welfare can thereby be reduced. However, it is only the razor-vs.-blade pricing scheme that may become unprofitable. Indeed, if the manufacturer makes positive margins on the platform, then the availability of user-developed add-ons can have a positive effect: it can increase the value of the platform to users, and so allow manufacturers to charge higher margins on it and/or sell more units. Jeppesen (2004) finds that this is in fact the outcome when users introduce free game modifications (called mods) operating on proprietary game software platform products (called engines) sold by game manufacturers. Even though the game manufacturers also sell mods commercially that compete with free user mods, many provide active support for the development and diffusion of user mods built on their proprietary game engines, because they find that the net result is increased sales and profits. +={ Henkel, J. ; + Jeppesen, L. ; + Government policy : + intellectual property rights and | trade secrets and ; + Intellectual property rights : + trade secrets and +} + +!_ Public Policy Choices + +If innovation by users is welfare enhancing and is also significant in amount and value, then it makes sense to consider the effects of public policy on user innovation. An important first step would be to collect better data. Currently, much innovation by users---which may in aggregate turn out to be a very large fraction of total economic investment in innovation--- goes uncounted or undercounted. Thus, innovation effort that is volunteered by users, as is the case with many contributions to open source software, is currently not recorded by governmental statistical offices. This is also the case for user innovation that is integrated with product and service production. For example, much process innovation by manufacturers occurs on the factory floor as they produce goods and simultaneously learn how to improve their production processes. Similarly, many important innovations developed by surgeons are woven into learning by doing as they deliver services to patients. +={ Open source software : + innovation communities and +} + +Next, it will be important to review innovation-related public policies to identify and correct biases with respect to sources of innovation. On a level playing field, users will become a steadily more important source of innovation, and will increasingly substitute for or complement manufacturers' innovation-related activities. Transitions required of policy making to support this ongoing evolution are important but far from painless. To illustrate, we next review issues related to the protection intellectual property, related to policies restricting product modifications, related to source-biased subsidies for R&D, and related to control over innovation diffusion channels. +={ Government policy : + provisioning biases and | intellectual property rights and +16 | patents and +8 ; + Intellectual property rights : + patents and +8 +} + +!_ Intellectual Property + +Earlier, when we explored why users might freely reveal their innovations, we concluded that it was often their best /{practical}/ choice in view of how intellectual property law actually functions (or, often, does not function) to protect innovations today. For example, recall from chapter 6 that most innovators do not judge patents to be very effective, and that the availability of patent grant protection does not appear to increase innovation investments in most fields. Recall also that patent protection is costly to obtain, and thus of little value to developers of minor innovations---with most innovations being minor. We also saw that in practice it was often difficult for innovators to protect their innovations via trade secrecy: it is hard to keep a secret when many others know similar things, and when some of these information holders will lose little or nothing from freely revealing what they know. +={ Intellectual property rights : + trade secrets and ; + Government policy : + trade secrets and ; + Intellectual property rights : + trade secrets and +} + +These findings show that the characteristics of present-day intellectual property regimes as actually experienced by innovators are far from the expectations of theorists and policy makers. The fundamental reason that societies elect to grant intellectual property rights to innovators is to increase private investment in innovation. At the same time, economists have long known that there will be social welfare losses associated with these grants: owners of intellectual property will generally restrict the use of their legally protected information in order to increase private profits. In other words, intellectual property rights are thought to be good for innovation and bad for competition. The consensus view has long been that the good outweighs the bad, but Foray (2004) explains that this consensus is now breaking down. Some---not all---are beginning to think that intellectual property rights are bad for innovation too in many cases. +={ oray, D. ; + Government policy : + intellectual commons and +13 +} + +The need to grant private intellectual property rights to achieve socially desirable levels of innovation is being questioned in the light of apparent counterexamples. Thus, as we saw earlier, open source software communities do not allow contributing innovators to use their intellectual property rights to control the use of their code. Instead, contributors use their authors' copyright to assign their code to a common pool to which all--- contributors and non-contributors alike---are granted equal access. Despite this regime, innovation seems to be flourishing. Why? As we saw in our earlier discussions of why innovators might freely reveal their innovations, researchers now understand that significant private rewards to innovation can exist independent of intellectual property rights grants. As a general principle, intellectual property rights grants should not be offered if and when developers would seek protection but would innovate without it. +={ Intellectual property rights : + copyrights and ; + Open source software : + innovation communities and +1 ; + Innovation : + open source software and +1 +} + +The debate rages. Gallini and Scotchmer (2002) assert that "intellectual property is the foundation of the modern information economy" and that "it fuels the software, lifesciences and computer industries, and pervades most other products we consume." They also conclude that the positive or negative effect of intellectual property rights on innovation depends centrally on "the ease with which innovators can enter into agreements for rearranging and exercising those rights." This is precisely the rub from the point of view of those who urge that present intellectual property regimes be reconsidered: it is becoming increasingly clear that in practice rearranging and exercising intellectual property rights is often difficult rather than easy. It is also becoming clear that the protections afforded by existing intellectual property law can be strategically deployed to achieve private advantage at the expense of general innovative progress (Foray 2004). +={ oray, D. ; + Gallini, N. ; + Scotchmer, S. +} + +Consider an effect first pointed out by Merges and Nelson (1990) and further explored as the "tragedy of the anticommons" by Heller (1998) and Heller and Eisenberg (1998). A resource such as innovation-related information is prone to underuse---a tragedy of the anticommons---when multiple owners each have a right to exclude others and no one has an effective privilege of use. The nature of the patent grant can lead to precisely this type of situation. Patent law is so arranged that an owner of a patent is not granted the right to practice its invention---it is only granted the right to exclude others from practicing it. For example, suppose you invent and patent the chair. I then follow by inventing and patenting the rocking chair---implemented by building rockers onto a chair covered by your patent. In this situation I cannot manufacture a rocking chair without getting a license from you for the use of your chair patent, and you cannot build rocking chairs either without a license to my rocker patent. If we cannot agree on licensing terms, no one will have the right to build rocking chairs. +={ Eisenberg, R. +1 ; + Heller, M. +1 ; + Merges, Robert ; + Nelson, R. ; + Government policy : + user innovation and +19 +} + +In theory and in a world of costless transactions, people could avoid tragedies of the anticommons by licensing or trading their intellectual property rights. In practice the situation can be very different. Heller and Eisenberg point specifically to the field of biomedical research, and argue that conditions for anticommons effects do exist there. In that field, patents are routinely allowed on small but important elements of larger research problems, and upstream research is increasingly likely to be private. "Each upstream patent," Heller and Eisenberg note, "allows its owner to set up another tollbooth on the road to product development, adding to the cost and slowing the pace of downstream biomedical innovation." +={ Transaction costs } + +A second type of strategic behavior based on patent rights involves investing in large portfolios of patents to create "patent thickets"---dense networks of patent claims across a wide field (Merges and Nelson 1990; Hall and Ham Ziedonis 2001; Shapiro 2001; Bessen 2003). Patent thickets create plausible grounds for patent infringement suits across a wide field. Owners of patent thickets can use the threat of such suits to discourage others from investing research dollars in areas of technical advance relevant to their products. Note that this use of patents is precisely opposite to policy mak' intentions to stimulate innovation by providing ways for innovators to assert intellectual property rights. Indeed, Bessen and Hunt (2004) have found in the field of software that, on average, as firm's investments in patent protection go up, their investments in research and development actually go down. If this relationship proves causal, there is a reasonable explanation from the viewpoint of private profit: corporations that can use a patent thicket to deter others' research in a field might well decide that there is less need to do research of their own. +={ Bessen, J. ; + Hall, B. ; + Hunt, R. ; + Merges, Robert ; + Nelson, R. ; + Shapiro, C. ; + Ziedonis, R. ; + Government policy : + patent thickets and ; + Intellectual property rights : + patent thickets and +} + +Similar innovation-retarding strategies can be applied by owners of large collections of copyrighted work in the movie, publishing, and software fields. Copyright owners can prevent others from building new works on characters (e.g. Mickey Mouse) that are already familiar to customers. The result is that owners of large portfolios of copyrighted work can gain an advantage over those with no or small portfolios in the creation of derivative works. Indeed, Benkler (2002) argues that institutional changes strengthening intellectual property protection tend to foster concentration of information production in general. Lessig (2001) and Boldrin and Levine (2002) arrive at a similarly negative valuation of overly strong and lengthy copyright protection. +={ Benkler, Y. ; + Boldrin, M. ; + Levine, D. ; + Lessig, L. ; + Intellectual property rights : + copyrights and ; + Government policy : + copyrights and +} + +These types of innovation-discouraging effects can affect innovation by users especially strongly. The distributed innovation system we have documented consists of users each of whom might have only a few innovations and a small amount of intellectual property. Such innovators are clearly hurt differentially by a system that gives advantage to the owners of large shares of the intellectual property in a field. + +What can be done? A solution approach open to policy makers is to change intellectual property law so as to level the playing field. But owners of large amounts of intellectual property protected under the present system are often politically powerful, so this type of solution will be difficult to achieve. + +Fortunately, an alternative solution approach may be available to innovators themselves. Suppose that many elect to contribute the intellectual property they individually develop to a commons in a particular field. If the commons then grows to contain reasonable substitutes for much of the proprietary intellectual property relevant to the field, the relative advantage accruing to large holders of this information will diminish and perhaps even disappear. At the same time and for the same reason, the barriers that privately held stocks of intellectual property currently may raise to further intellectual advance will also diminish. Lessig supports this possibility with his creation and publication of standard "Creative Commons" licenses on the website creativecommons.org. Authors interested in contributing their work to the commons, perhaps with some restrictions, can easily find and adopt an appropriate license at that site. +={ Lessig, L. ; + Intellectual commons +13 ; + Intellectual property rights : + intellectual commons and +13 ; + Open source software : + intellectual commons and +13 | intellectual property rights and +13 ; + Intellectual property rights : + licensing of +} + +Reaching agreement on conditions for the formation of an intellectual commons can be difficult. Maurer (2005) makes this clear in his cautionary tale of the struggle and eventual failure to create a commons for data on human mutations. However, success is possible. For example, an extensive intellectual commons of software code is contained and maintained in the many open source software projects that now exist. +={ Maurer, S. ; + Innovation communities +2 +} + +Interesting examples also exist regarding on the impact a commons can have on the value of intellectual property innovators seek to hold apart from it. Weber (2004) recounts the following anecdote: In 1988, Linux developers were building new graphical interfaces for their open source software. One of the most promising of these, KDE, was offered under the General Public License. However, Matthias Ettrich, its developer, had built KDE using a proprietary graphical library called Qt. He felt at the time that this could be an acceptable solution because Qt was of good quality and Troll Tech, owner of Qt, licensed Qt at no charge under some circumstances. However, Troll Tech did require a developer's fee be paid under other circumstances, and some Linux developers were concerned about having code not licensed under the GPL as part of their code. They tried to convince Troll Tech to change the Qt license so that it would be under the GPL when used in free software. But Troll Tech, as was fully within its rights, refused to do this. Linux developers then, as was fully within their rights, began to develop open source alternatives to Qt that could be licensed under the GPL. As those projects moved toward success, Troll Tech recognized that Qt might be surpassed and effectively shut out of the Linux market. In 2000 the company therefore decided to license Qt under the GPL. +={ Ettrich, M. ; + Linux ; + Weber, S. ; + Intellectual property rights : + licensing of +1 +} + +Similar actions can keep conditions for free access to materials held within a commons from degrading and being lost over time. Chris Hanson, a Principal Research Scientist at MIT, illustrates this with an anecdote regarding an open source software component called ipfilter. The author of ipfilter attempted to "lock" the program by changing licensing terms of his program to disallow the distribution of modified versions. His reasoning was that Ipfilter, a network-security filter, must be as bug-free as possible, and that this could best be ensured by his controlling access. His actions ignited a flame war in which the author was generally argued to be selfish and overreaching. His program, then an essential piece of BSD operating systems, was replaced by newly written code in some systems within the year. The author, Hanson notes, has since changed his licensing terms back to a standard BSD-style (unrestricted) license. +={ Hanson, C. } + +We will learn over time whether and how widely the practice of creating and defending intellectual commons diffuses across fields. There obviously can be cases where it will continue to make sense for innovators, and for society as well, to protect innovations as private intellectual property. However, it is likely that many user innovations are kept private not so much out of rational motives as because of a general, not-thought-through attitude that "we do not give away our intellectual property," or because the administrative cost of revealing is assumed to be higher than the benefits. Firms and society can benefit by rethinking the benefits of free revealing and (re)developing policies regarding what is best kept private and what is best freely revealed. +={ Government policy : + social welfare and +9 | trade secrets and +3 ; + Intellectual property rights : + trade secrets and +3 +} + +!_ Constraints on Product Modification +={ Custom products : + manufacturers and +2 ; + Government policy : + manufacturer innovation and +8 ; + Manufacturers : + government policy and +8 +} + +Users often develop prototypes of new products by buying existing commercial products and modifying them. Current efforts by manufacturers to build technologies into the products they sell that restrict the way these products are used can undercut users' traditional freedom to modify what they purchase. This in turn can raise the costs of innovation development by users and so lessen the amount of user innovation that is done. For example, makers of ink-jet printers often follow a razor-and-blade strategy, selling printers at low margins and the ink cartridges used in them at high margins. To preserve this strategy, printer manufacturers want to prevent users from refilling ink cartridges with low-cost ink and using them again. Accordingly, they may add technical modifications to their cartridges to prevent them from functioning if users have refilled them. This manufacturer strategy can potentially cut off both refilling by the economically minded and modifications by user-innovators that might involve refilling (Varian 2002). Some users, for example, have refilled cartridges with special inks not sold by printer manufacturers in order to adapt ink-jet printing to the printing of very high-quality photographs. Others have refilled cartridges with food colorings instead of inks in order to develop techniques for printing images on cakes. Each of these applications might have been retarded or prevented by technical measures against cartridge refilling. +={ Varian, H. } + +The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a legislative initiative intended to prevent product copying, may negatively affect users' abilities to change and improve the products they own. Specifically, the DMCA makes it a crime to circumvent anti-piracy measures built into most commercial software. It also outlaws the manufacture, sale, or distribution of code-cracking devices used to illegally copy software. Unfortunately, code cracking is also a needed step for modification of commercial software products by user-innovators. Policy makers should be aware of "collateral damage" that may be inflicted on user innovation by legislation aimed at other targets, as is likely in this case. +={ Digital Millennium Copyright Act } + +!_ Control over Distribution Channels +={ Government policy : + distribution channels and +1 +} + +Users that innovate and wish to freely diffuse innovation-related information are able to do so cheaply in large part because of steady advances in Internet distribution capabilities. Controls placed on such infrastructural factors can threaten and maybe even totally disable distributed innovation systems such as the user innovation systems documented in this book. For example, information products developed by users are commonly distributed over the Internet by peer-to-peer sharing networks. A firm that owns both a channel and content (e.g., a cable network) may have a strong incentive to shut out or discriminate against content developed by users or others in favor of its own content. The transition from the chaotic, fertile early days of radio in the United States when many voices were heard, to an era in which the spectrum was dominated by a few major networks---a transition pushed by major firms and enforced by governmental policy making--- provides a sobering example of what could happen (Lessig 2001). It will be important for policy makers to be aware of this kind of incentive problem and address it---in this case perhaps by mandating that ownership of content and ownership of channel be separated, as has long been the case for other types of common carriers. +={ Lessig, L. } + +!_ R&D Subsidies and Tax Credits +={ Government policy : + R&D subsidies and +3 +} + +In many countries, manufacturing firms are rewarded for their innovative activity by R&D subsidies and tax credits. Such measures can make economic sense if average social returns to innovation are significantly higher than average private returns, as has been found by Mansfield et al. (1977) and others. However, important innovative activities carried out by users are often not similarly rewarded, because they tend to not be documentable as formal R&D activities. As we have seen, users tend to develop innovations in the course of "doing" in their normal use environments. Bresnahan and Greenstein (1996a) make a similar point. They investigate the role of "co-invention" in the move by users from mainframe to client-server architecture.~{ See also Bresnahan and Greenstein 1996b; Bresnahan and Saloner 1997; Saloner and Steinmueller 1996. }~ By "co-invention" Bresnahan and Greenstein mean organizational changes and innovations developed and implemented by users that are required to take full advantage of a new invention. They point out the high importance that co-invention has for realizing social returns from innovation. They consider the federal government's support for creating "national information infrastructures" insufficient or misallocated, since they view co-invention is the bottleneck for social returns and likely the highest value locus for invention. +={ Bresnahan, T. ; + Greenstein, S. ; + Mansfield, E. ; + Users : + co-invention and +} + +Efforts to level the playing field for user innovation and manufacturer innovation could, of course, also go in the direction of lessening R&D subsidies or tax credits for all rather than attempting to increase user-innovators' access to subsidies. However, if directing subsidies to user-innovators seems desirable, social welfare will be best served if policy makers link them to free revealing by user-innovators as well as or instead of tying them to users' private investments in the development of products for exclusive in-house use. Otherwise, duplication of effort by users interested in the same innovation will reduce potential welfare gains. +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + government policy and +1 | social welfare and +1 +} + +In sum, the welfare-enhancing effects found for freely revealed user innovations suggest that policy makers should consider conditions required for user innovation when creating policy and legislation. Leveling the playing field for user-innovators and manufacturer-innovators will doubtless force more rapid change onto manufacturers. However, as will be seen in the next chapter, manufacturers can adapt to a world in which user innovation is at center stage. + +1~ 9 Democratizing Innovation +={ Social welfare : + innovation and +45 ; + von Hippel, E. +45 +} + +We have learned that lead users sometimes develop and modify products for themselves and often freely reveal what they have done. We have also seen that many users can be interested in adopting the solutions that lead users have developed. Taken together, these findings offer the basis for user-centered innovation systems that can entirely supplant manufacturer-based innovation systems under some conditions and complement them under most. User-centered innovation is steadily increasing in importance as computing and communication technologies improve. +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + lead users and ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and +44 ; + Custom products : + users and ; + Innovation : + lead users and ; + Lead users : + innovation and ; + User need +3 ; + Users : + innovation and +4 +} + +I begin this chapter with a discussion of the ongoing democratization of innovation. I then describe some of the patterns in user-centered innovation that are emerging. Finally, I discuss how manufacturers can find ways to profitably participate in emerging, user-centered innovation processes. + +!_ The Trend toward Democratization + +Users' abilities to develop high-quality new products and services for themselves are improving radically and rapidly. Steady improvements in computer software and hardware are making it possible to develop increasingly capable and steadily cheaper tools for innovation that require less and less skill and training to use. In addition, improving tools for communication are making it easier for user innovators to gain access to the rich libraries of modifiable innovations and innovation components that have been placed into the public domain. The net result is that rates of user innovation will increase even if users' heterogeneity of need and willingness to pay for "exactly right" products remain constant. +={ Custom products : + users and +1 ; + Users : + paying for innovations and +} + +The radical nature of the change that is occurring in design capabilities available to even individual users is perhaps difficult for those without personal innovation experience to appreciate. An anecdote from my own experience may help as illustration. When I was a child and designed new products that I wanted to build and use, the ratio of not-too-pleasurable (for me) effort required to actually build a prototype relative to the very pleasurable effort of inventing it and use-testing it was huge. (That is, in terms of the design, build, test, evaluate cycle illustrated in figure 5.1, the effort devoted to the "build" element of the cycle was very large and the rate of iteration and learning via trial and error was very low.) + +In my case it was especially frustrating to try to build anything sophisticated from mechanical parts. I did not have a machine shop in which I could make good parts from scratch, and it often was difficult to find or buy the components I needed. As a consequence, I had to try to assemble an approximation of my ideas out of vacuum cleaner parts and other bits of metal and plastic and rubber that I could buy or that were lying around. Sometimes I failed at this and had to drop an exciting project. For example, I found no way to make the combustion chamber I needed to build a large pulse-jet engine for my bicycle (in retrospect, perhaps a lucky thing!). Even when I succeeded, the result was typically "unaesthetic": the gap between the elegant design in my mind and the crude prototype that I could realize was discouragingly large. + +Today, in sharp contrast, user firms and increasingly even individual hobbyists have access to sophisticated design tools for fields ranging from software to electronics to musical composition. All these information-based tools can be run on a personal computer and are rapidly coming down in price. With relatively little training and practice, they enable users to design new products and services---and music and art---at a satisfyingly sophisticated level. Then, if what has been created is an information product, such as software or music, the design is the actual product---software you can use or music you can play. + +If one is designing a physical product, it is possible to create a design and even conduct some performance testing by computer simulation. After that, constructing a real physical prototype is still not easy. However, today users do have ready access to kits that offer basic electronic and mechanical building blocks at an affordable price, and physical product prototyping is becoming steadily easier as computer-driven 3-D parts printers continue to go up in sophistication while dropping in price. Very excitingly, even today home-built prototypes need not be poorly fashioned items that will fall apart with a touch in the wrong place---the solution components now available to users are often as good as those available to professional designers. + +Functional equivalents of the resources for innovation just described have long been available within corporations to a lucky few. Senior designers at firms have long been supported by engineers and designers under their direct control, and also with other resources needed to quickly construct and test prototype designs. When I took a job as R&D manager at a start-up firm after college, I was astounded at the difference professional-quality resources made to both the speed and the joy of innovation. Product development under these conditions meant that the proportion of one's effort that could be focused on the design and test portions of the innovation cycle rather than on prototype building was much higher, and the rate of progress was much faster. +={ Innovation process +3 } + +The same story can be told in fields from machine design to clothing design: just think of the staffs of seamstresses and models supplied by clothing manufacturers to their "top designers" so that these few can quickly realize and test many variations on their designs. In contrast, think of the time and effort that equally talented designers without such staff assistance must engage in to stitch together even a single high-quality garment prototype on their own. + +But, as we learned in chapter 7, the capability and the information needed to innovate in important ways are in fact widely distributed. Given this finding, we can see that the traditional pattern of concentrating innovation-support resources on just a few pre-selected potential innovators is hugely inefficient. High-cost resources for innovation support cannot be allocated to "the right people," because one does not know who they are until they develop an important innovation. When the cost of high-quality resources for design and prototyping becomes very low---which is the trend we have described---these resources can be diffused widely, and the allocation problem then diminishes in significance. The net result is and will be to democratize the opportunity to create. + +Democratization of the opportunity to create is important beyond giving more users the ability to make exactly right products for themselves. As we saw in a previous chapter, the joy and the learning associated with creativity and membership in creative communities are also important, and these experiences too are made more widely available as innovation is democratized. The aforementioned Chris Hanson, a Principal Research Scientist at MIT and a maintainer in the Debian Linux community, speaks eloquently of this in his description of the joy and value he finds from his participation in an open source software community: +={ Hanson, C. ; + Linux ; + Users : + innovate-or-buy decisions by +3 | innovation process and +3 ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + innovation and +3 ; + Innovation communities : + open source software and ; + Linux ; + Open source software : + innovation communities and +3 +} + +_1 Creation is unbelievably addictive. And programming, at least for skilled programmers, is highly creative. So good programmers are compelled to program to feed the addiction. (Just ask my wife!) Creative programming takes time, and careful attention to the details. Programming is all about expressing intent, and in any large program there are many areas in which the programmer's intent is unclear. Clarification requires insight, and acquiring insight is the primary creative act in programming. But insight takes time and often requires extensive conversation with one's peers. + +_1 Free-software programmers are relatively unconstrained by time. Community standards encourage deep understanding, because programmers know that understanding is essential to proper function. They are also programming for themselves, and naturally they want the resulting programs to be as good as they can be. For many, a free software project is the only context in which they can write a program that expresses their own vision, rather than implementing someone else's design, or hacking together something that the marketing department insists on. No wonder programmers are willing to do this in their spare time. This is a place where creativity thrives. + +_1 Creativity also plays a role in the programming community: programming, like architecture, has both an expressive and a functional component. Unlike architecture, though, the expressive component of a program is inaccessible to non-programmers. A close analogy is to appreciate the artistic expression of a novel when you don't know the language in which it is written, or even if you know the language but are not fluent. This means that creative programmers want to associate with one another: only their peers are able to truly appreciate their art. Part of this is that programmers want to earn respect by showing others their talents. But it's also important that people want to share the beauty of what they have found. This sharing is another act that helps build community and friendship. + +!_ Adapting to User-Centered Innovation---Like It or Not +={ Innovation process +5 ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + innovation and +5 +} + +User-centered innovation systems involving free revealing can sometimes supplant product development carried out by manufacturers. This outcome seems reasonable when manufacturers can obtain field-tested user designs at no cost. As an illustration, consider kitesurfing (previously discussed in chapter 7). The recent evolution of this field nicely shows how manufacturer-based product design may not be able to survive when challenged by a user innovation community that freely reveals leading-edge designs developed by users. In such a case, manufacturers may be obliged to retreat to manufacturing only, specializing in modifying user-developed designs for producibility and manufacturing these in volume. +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + users and ; + Kitesurfing +4 +} + +Recall that equipment for kitesurfing was initially developed and built by user-enthusiasts who were inventing both kitesurfing techniques and kitesurfing equipment interdependently. Around 1999, the first of several small manufacturers began to design and sell kitesurfing equipment commercially. The market for kitesurfing equipment then began to grow very rapidly. In 2001 about 5,000 kite-and-board sets were sold worldwide. In 2002 the number was about 30,000, and in 2003 it was about 70,000. With a basic kite-and-board set selling for about $1,500, total sales in 2003 exceeded $100 million. (Many additional kites, home-made by users, are not included in this calculation.) As of 2003, about 40 percent of the commercial market was held by a US firm called Robbie Naish (Naishkites.com). + +Recall also that in 2001 Saul Griffith, an MIT graduate student, established an Internet site called Zeroprestige.com as a home for a community of kitesurfing users and user-innovators. In 2003, the general consensus of both site participants and manufacturers was that the kite designs developed by users and freely revealed on Zeroprestige.com were at least as advanced as those developed by the leading manufacturers. There was also a consensus that the level of engineering design tools and aggregate rate of experimentation by kite users participating on the Zeroprestige.com site was superior to that within any kite manufacturer. Indeed, this collective user effort was probably superior in quality and quantity to the product-development work carried out by all manufacturers in the industry taken together. +={ Griffith, S. ; + Zeroprestige.com +1 +} + +In late 2003, a perhaps predictable event occurred: a kite manufacturer began downloading users' designs from Zeroprestige.com and producing them for commercial sale. This firm had no internal kitesurfing product-development effort and offered no royalties to user-innovators---who sought none. It also sold its products at prices much lower than those charged by companies that both developed and manufactured kites. + +It is not clear that manufacturers of kitesurfing equipment adhering to the traditional developer-manufacturer model can---or should---survive this new and powerful combination of freely revealed collaborative design and prototyping effort by a user innovation community combined with volume production by a specialist manufacturer. In effect, free revealing of product designs by users offsets manufacturers' economies of scale in design with user communities' economies of scope. These economies arise from the heterogeneity in information and resources found in a user community. +={ Custom products : + heterogeneity of user needs and ; + User need +2 +} + +!_ Manufacturers' Roles in User-Centered Innovation + +Users are not required to incorporate manufacturers in their product-development and product-diffusion activities. Indeed, as open source software projects clearly show, horizontal innovation communities consisting entirely of users can develop, diffuse, maintain, and consume software and other /{information}/ products by and for themselves---no manufacturer is required. Freedom from manufacturer involvement is possible because information products can be "produced" and distributed by users essentially for free on the web (Kollock 1999). In contrast, production and diffusion of physical products involves activities with significant economies of scale. For this reason, while product development and early diffusion of copies of physical products developed by users can be carried out by users themselves and within user innovation communities, mass production and general diffusion of physical products incorporating user innovations are usually carried out by manufacturing firms. +={ Innovation communities : + open source software and +5 ; + Open source software : + innovation and +5 | innovation communities and +5 +} + +For information products, general distribution is carried out within and beyond the user community by the community itself; no manufacturer is required: + +Innovating lead users ➔ All users. + +For physical products, general distribution typically requires manufacturers: + +Innovating lead users ➔ Manufacturer ➔ All users. + +In light of this situation, how can, should, or will manufacturers of products, services, and processes play profitable roles in user-centered innovation systems? Behlendorf (1999), Hecker (1999) and Raymond (1999) explore what might be possible in the specific context of open source software. More generally, many are experimenting with three possibilities: (1) Manufacturers may produce user-developed innovations for general commercial sale and/or offer a custom manufacturing service to specific users. (2) Manufacturers may sell kits of product-design tools and/or "product platforms" to ease users' innovation-related tasks. (3) Manufacturers may sell products or services that are complementary to user-developed innovations. +={ Behlendorf, B. ; + Hecker, F. ; + Raymond, E. +} + +!_ Producing User-Developed Products + +Firms can make a profitable business from identifying and mass producing user-developed innovations or developing and building new products based on ideas drawn from such innovations. They can gain advantages over competitors by learning to do this better than other manufacturers. They may, for example, learn to identify commercially promising user innovations more effectively that other firms. Firms using lead user search techniques such as those we will describe in chapter 10 are beginning to do this systematically rather than accidentally---surely an improvement. Effectively transferring user-developed innovations to mass manufacture is seldom as simple as producing a product based on a design by a single lead user. Often, a manufacturer combines features developed by several independent lead users to create an attractive commercial offering. This is a skill that a company can learn better than others in order to gain a competitive advantage. +={ Lead users : + innovation and | manufacturers and +1 ; + Manufacturers : + lead users and +1 +} + +The decision as to whether or when to take the plunge and commercialize a lead user innovation(s) is also not typically straightforward, and companies can improve their skills at inviting in the relevant information and making such assessments. As was discussed previously, manufacturers often do not understand emerging user needs and markets nearly as well as lead users do. Lead users therefore may engage in entrepreneurial activities, such as "selling" the potential of an idea to potential manufacturers and even lining up financing for a manufacturer when they think it very important to rapidly get widespread diffusion of a user-developed product. Lettl, Herstatt, and Gemünden (2004), who studied the commercialization of major advances in surgical equipment, found innovating users commonly engaging in these activities. It is also possible, of course, for innovating lead users to become manufacturers and produce the products they developed for general commercial sale. This has been shown to occur fairly frequently in the field of sporting goods (Shah 2000; Shah and Tripsas 2004; Hienerth 2004). +={ Gemünden, H. ; + Lettl, C. ; + Herstatt, C. ; + Hienerth, C. ; + Shah, S. ; + Tripsas, M. ; + Lead users : + surgical equipment and ; + Windsurfing ; + Custom products : + innovation and +1 | manufacturers and +1 ; + users and +1 ; + Users : + custom products and +1 +} + +Manufacturers can also elect to provide custom production or "foundry" services to users, differentiating themselves by producing users' designs faster, better, and/or cheaper than competitors. This type of business model is already advanced in many fields. Custom machine shops specialize in manufacturing mechanical parts to order; electronic assembly shops produce custom electronic products, chemical manufacturers offer "toll" manufacturing of custom products designed by others, and so on. Suppliers of custom integrated circuits offer an especially good example of custom manufacture of products designed by users. More than $15 billion worth of custom integrated circuits were produced in 2002, and the cumulative average growth rate of that market segment was 29 percent. Users benefit from designing their own circuits by getting exactly what they want more quickly than manufacturer-based engineers could supply what they need, and manufacturers benefit from producing the custom designs for users (Thomke and von Hippel 2002). +={ Thomke, S. ; + von Hippel, E. ; + Custom products : + suppliers and +2 ; + Suppliers +2 ; + Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users : + by manufacturers | by users +} + +!_ Supplying Toolkits and/or Platform Products to Users +={ Custom products : + product platforms and +7 ; + Toolkits +7 : + platform products and +7 +} + +Users interested in designing their own products want to do it efficiently. Manufacturers can therefore attract them to kits of design tools that ease their product-development tasks and to products that can serve as "platforms" upon which to develop and operate user-developed modifications. Some are supplying users with proprietary sets of design tools only. Cadence, a supplier of design tools for corporate and even individual users interested in designing their own custom semiconductor chips, is an example of this. Other manufacturers, including Harley-Davidson in the case of motorcycles and Microsoft in the case of its Excel spreadsheet software, sell platform products intentionally designed for post-sale modification by users. +={ Microsoft } + +Some firms that sell platform products or design tools to users have learned to systematically incorporate valuable innovations that users may develop back into their commercial products. In effect, this second strategy can often be pursued jointly with the manufacturing strategy described above. Consider, for example, StataCorp of College Station, Texas. StataCorp produces and sells Stata, a proprietary software program designed for statistics. It sells the basic system bundled with a number of families of statistical tests and with design tools that enable users to develop new tests for operation on the Stata platform. Advanced customers, many of them statisticians and social science researchers, find this capability very important to their work and do develop their own tests. Many then freely reveal tests they have developed on Internet websites set up by the users themselves. Other users then visit these sites to download and use, and perhaps to test, comment on, and improve these tests, much as users do in open source software communities. +={ StataCorp statistical software +2 ; + Toolkits : + StataCorp and +2 ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + innovation and +3 | intellectual property rights and +3 ; + Government policy : + free revealing and +3 | intellectual property rights and +3 | trade secrets and +3 ; + Innovation communities +3 : + open source software and +3 | and sources of innovation +3 ; + Intellectual property rights : + free revealing and +3 | trade secrets and +3 ; + Open source software : + innovation and +10 | innovation communities and +10 +} + +StataCorp personnel monitor the activity at user sites, and note the new tests that are of interest to many users. They then bring the most popular tests into their product portfolio as Stata modules. To do this, they rewrite the user's software code while adhering to the principles pioneered by the user-innovator. They then subject the module to extensive validation testing---a very important matter for statisticians. The net result is a symbiotic relationship. User-innovators are publicly credited by Stata for their ideas, and benefit by having their modules professionally tested. StataCorp gains a new commercial test module, rewritten and sold under its own copyright. Add-ons developed by users that are freely revealed will increase StataCorp's profits more than will equivalent add-ons developed and sold by manufacturers (Jokisch 2001). Similar strategies are pursued by manufacturers of simulator software (Henkel and Thies 2003). +={ Henkel, J. ; + Jokisch, M. ; + Thies, S. ; + Economic benefit, expectations of by lead users : + by manufacturers | by users +} + +Note, however, that StataCorp, in order to protect its proprietary position, does not reveal the core of its software program to users, and does not allow any user to modify it. This creates problems for those users who need to make modifications to the core in order to solve particular problems they encounter. Users with problems of this nature and users especially concerned about price have the option of turning to non-proprietary free statistical software packages available on the web, such as the "R" project (www.r-project.org). These alternatives are developed and supported by user communities and are available as open source software. The eventual effect of open source software alternatives on the viability of the business models of commercial vendors such as StataCorp and its competitors remains to be seen. + +A very similar pattern exists in the online gaming industry. Vendors of early online computer games were surprised to discover that sophisticated users were deciphering their closed source code in order to modify the games to be more to their liking. Some of these "mods" attracted large followings, and some game vendors were both impressed and supportive. Manufacturers also discovered that the net effect of user-developed mods was positive for them: mods actually increased the sales of their basic software, because users had to buy the vendors' proprietary software engine code in order to play the mods. Accordingly, a number of vendors began to actively support user-developers by supplying them with design tools to make it easier for them to build mods on their proprietary engine platforms (Jeppesen and Molin 2003). +={ Jeppesen, L. +1 ; + Molin, M. +} + +Both manufacturers and users involved with online gaming are experimenting with the possibilities of user-manufacturer symbiosis in a number of additional ways. For example, some vendors are experimenting with creating company-supported distribution channels through which users---who then become vendors---can sell their mods rather than simply offering them as free downloads (Jeppesen 2004). At the same time, some user communities are working in the opposite direction by joining together to develop open source software engines for video games. If the latter effort is successful, it will offer mod developers a platform and design tools that are entirely non-proprietary for the first time. As in the case of statistical software, the eventual outcomes of all these experiments are not yet clear. + +As a final example of a strategy in which manufacturers offer a platform to support user innovation of value to them, consider General Electric's innovation pattern with respect to the magnetic-resonance imaging machines it sells for medical use. Michael Harsh (GE's Director of R&D in the division that produces MRI machines) and his colleagues realized that nearly all the major, commercially important improvements to these machines are developed by leading-edge users rather than by GE or by competing machine producers. They also knew that commercialization of user-developed improvements would be easier and faster for GE if the users had developed their innovations using a GE MRI machine as a platform rather than a competitor's machine. Since MRI machines are expensive, GE developed a policy of selectively supplying machines at a very low price to scientists GE managers judged most likely to develop important improvements. These machines are supplied with restrictive interlocks removed so that the users can easily modify them. In exchange for this research support, the medical researchers give GE preferred access to innovations they develop. Over the years, supported researchers have provided a steady flow of significant improvements that have been first commercialized by GE. Managers consider the policy a major source of GE's commercial success in the MRI field. +={ General Electric ; + Harsh, M. ; + Toolkits : + GE and +} + +!_ Providing Complementary Products or Services + +Many user innovations require or benefit from complementary products or services, and manufacturers can often supply these at a profit. For example, IBM profits from user innovation in open source software by selling the complement of computer hardware. Specifically, it sells computer servers with open source software pre-installed, and as the popularity of that software goes up, so do server sales and profits. A firm named Red Hat distributes a version of the open source software computer operating system Linux, and also sells the complementary service of Linux technical support to users. Opportunities to provide profitable complements are not necessarily obvious at first glance, and providers often reap benefits without being aware of the user innovation for which they are providing a complement. Hospital emergency rooms, for example, certainly gain considerable business from providing medical care to the users and user-developers of physically demanding sports, but may not be aware of this. +={ IBM ; + Linux ; + Users : + innovation and +3 ; + Innovation communities : + open source software and ; + Linux ; + Innovation communities : + sources of innovation and +} + +!_ Discussion +={ Government policy : + intellectual property rights and +2 +} + +All the examples above explore how manufacturers can integrate themselves into a user-centered innovation system. However, manufacturers will not always find user innovations based on or related to their products to be in their interest. For example, manufacturers may be concerned about legal liabilities and costs sometimes associated with "unauthorized user tinkering." For example, an automaker might legitimately worry about the user-programmed engine controller chips that racing aficionados and others often install to change their cars' performance. The result can be findings of eventual commercial value as users explore new performance regimes that manufacturers' engineers might not have considered. However, if users choose to override manufacturers' programming to increase engine performance, there is also a clear risk of increased warrantee costs for manufacturers if engines fail as a consequence (Mollick 2004). +={ Mollick, Ethan } + +We have seen that manufacturers can often find ways to profit from user innovation. It is also the case, however, that user innovators and user innovation communities can provide many of these same functions for themselves. For example, StataCorp is successfully selling a proprietary statistical software package. User-developed alternatives exist on the web that are developed and maintained by user-innovators and can be downloaded at no charge. Which ownership model will prove more robust under what circumstances remains to be seen. Ultimately, since users are the customers, they get to choose. +={ StataCorp statistical software ; + Toolkits : + StataCorp and ; + Users : + innovation communities and ; + Innovation communities +} + +1~ 10 Application: Searching for Lead User Innovations +={ Users : + innovation and +59 ; + Lead users +59 : + innovation and +59 | identification of +49 +} + +Users and manufacturers can apply the insights developed in this book to improve their innovation processes. In this chapter, I illustrate by showing how firms can profit by /{systematically}/ searching for innovations developed by lead users. I first explain how this can be done. I then present findings of a study conducted at 3M to assess the effectiveness of lead user idea-generation techniques. Finally, I briefly review other studies reporting systematic searches for lead users by manufacturers, and the results obtained. +={ Lead users : + idea generation and | 3M and ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and | lead users and +16 ; + 3M Corporation +} + +!_ Searching for Lead Users + +Product-development processes traditionally used by manufacturers start with market researchers who study customers in their target markets to learn about unsatisfied needs. Next, the need information they uncover is transferred to in-house product developers who are charged with developing a responsive product. In other words, the approach is to find a user need and to fill it by means of in-house product development. +={ Marketing research +2 } + +These traditional processes cannot easily be adapted to systematic searching for lead user innovations. The focus on target-market customers means that lead users are regarded as outliers of no interest. Also, traditional market-research analyses focus on collecting and analyzing need information and not on possible solutions that users may have developed. For example, if a user says "I have developed this new product to make task X more convenient," market-research analyses typically will note that more convenience is wanted but not record the user-developed solution. After all, product development is the province of in-house engineers! + +We are therefore left with a question: How can manufacturers build a product-development process that systematically searches for and evaluates lead user-generated innovations? (See figure 10.1.) It turns out that the answer differs depending on whether the lead users sought are at the leading edge of "advanced analog" fields or at the leading edge of target markets. Searching for the former is more difficult, but experience shows that the user-developed innovations that are most radical (and profitable) relative to conventional thinking often come from lead users in "advanced analog" fields. +={ Manufacturers : + innovation and ; + Lead users : + characteristics of +1 ; + Marketing research +1 +} + +% Only lead user +% prototypes available +% Time +% Commercial versions of product available +% Number +% of users +% perceiving +% need +% Figure 10.1 +% Innovations by lead users precede equivalent commercial products. + +{di_evh_f10-1.png}image + +!_ Figure 10.1 +Innovations by lead users precede equivalent commercial products. + +!_ Identifying Lead Users in Advanced Analog Fields + +Lead users in advanced analog fields experience needs that are related to but more extreme than those being faced by /{any}/ users, including lead users, within the target market. They also often face a different set of constraints than those affecting users in the target market. These differences can force them to develop solutions that are entirely new from the perspective of the target market. + +As an example, consider the relationship between the braking requirements faced by users of automobiles (let's call auto users the target market) and the braking requirements faced by large commercial airplanes as they land on an airport runway (the advanced analog market). Clearly, the braking demands on large airplanes are much more extreme. Airplanes are much heavier than autos and land at higher speeds: their brakes must rapidly dissipate hundreds of times more energy to bring the vehicle to a stop. Also, the situational constraints are different. For example, auto drivers are often assisted in braking in winter by the application of salt or sand to icy roads. These aids cannot be applied in the case of aircraft: salt would damage aircraft bodies, and sand would be inhaled into jet engines and damage them. + +The result of the more extreme demands and additional constraints placed on solutions to aircraft braking was the development of antilock braking systems (ABS) for aircraft. Auto firms conducting searches for valuable lead user innovations regarding auto braking were able to learn about this out-of-field innovation and adapt if for use in autos---where it is common today. Before the development of ABS for autos, an automobile firm could have learned about the underlying concept by studying the practices of users with a strong need for controlling skidding while braking such as stock car auto racing teams. These lead users had learned to manually "pump" their brakes to help control this problem. However, auto company engineers were able to learn much more by studying the automated solutions developed in the "advanced analog" field of aerospace.~{ ABS braking is intended to keep a vehicle's wheels turning during braking. ABS works by automatically and rapidly "pumping" the brakes. The result is that the wheels continue to revolve rather than "locking up," and the operator continues to have control over steering. }~ + +Finding lead users in advanced analog markets can be difficult because discovering the relevance of a particular analog can itself be a creative act. One approach that has proven effective is to ask the more easily identified lead users in target markets for nominations. These lead users tend to know about useful advanced analogs, because they have been struggling with their leading-edge problems for a long time, and often have searched beyond the target market for information. + +Networking from innovators to more advanced innovators in this way is called pyramiding (von Hippel, Thomke, and Sonnack 1999). Pyramiding is a modified version of the "snowballing" technique sometimes used by sociologists to identify members of a group or accumulate samples of rare respondents (Bijker 1995). Snowballing relies on the fact that people with rare interests or attributes tend to know others like themselves. Pyramiding modifies this idea by assuming that people with a strong interest in a topic or field can direct an enquiring researcher to people /{more}/ expert than themselves. Experiments have shown that pyramiding can identify high-quality informants much more efficiently than can mass-screening techniques under many conditions (von Hippel, Franke, and Prügl 2005). Pyramiding was made into a practical industrial process by Mary Sonnack, a Division Scientist at 3M, and Joan Churchill, a psychologist specializing in the development of industrial training programs. +={ Bijker, W. ; + Churchill, J. ; + Franke, N. ; + Prügl, R. ; + Thomke, S. ; + von Hippel, E. +46 +} + +!_ Identifying Lead Users in Target Markets + +In general it is easier to identify users at the leading edge of target markets than it is to identify users in advanced analog fields. Screening for users with lead user characteristics can be used. When the desired type of lead user is so rare as to make screening impractical---often the case---pyramiding can be applied. In addition, manufacturers can take advantage of the fact that users at the leading edge of a target market often congregate at specialized sites or events that manufacturers can readily identify. At such sites, users may freely reveal what they have done and may learn from others about how to improve their own practices still further. Manufacturers interested in learning from these lead users can easily visit the sites and listen in. For example, sports equipment companies can go to sporting meets where lead users are known to compete, observe user innovations in action, and compare notes. +={ Manufacturers : + innovation and +} + +Essentially the same thing can be done at virtual sites. For example, recall the practices of StataCorp, a supplier of statistical software. Stata sells a set of standard statistical tests and also a language and tools that statisticians can use to design new tests to serve their own evolving needs. Some Stata users (statisticians) took the initiative to set up a few specialized websites, unaffiliated with StataCorp, where they post their innovations for others to download, use, comment on, and improve. StataCorp personnel visit these sites, learn about the user innovations, and observe which tests seem to be of interest to many users. They then develop proprietary versions of the more generally useful tests as commercial products. +={ Lead users : + StataCorp statistical software and ; + StataCorp statistical software +} + +When specialized rendezvous sites for lead users don't exist in a particular field, manufacturers may be able to create them. Technicon Corporation, for example, set up a series of seminars at which innovating users of their medical equipment got together and exchanged information on their innovations. Technicon engineers were free to listen in, and the innovations developed by these users were the sources of most of Technicon's important new product improvements (von Hippel and Finkelstein 1979). +={ Finkelstein, S. ; + Technicon Corporation +} + +!_ The 3M Experiment +={ Lead users : + 3M and +32 ; + 3M Corporation +32 +} + +To test whether lead users in advanced analog fields can in fact generate information that leads to commercially valuable new products, Lilien, Morrison, Searls, Sonnack, and von Hippel (2002) studied a natural experiment at 3M. That firm was carrying out both lead user projects and traditional market research-based idea-generation projects in the same divisions at the same time, and in sufficient numbers to make statistical comparisons of outcomes possible. +={ Lilien, G. +26 ; + Morrison, Pamela +26 ; + Searls, K. +26 ; + Sonnack, M. +26 ; + Lead users : + idea generation and +45 +} + +!_ Methods + +3M first began using the lead user method in one division in 1996. By May 2000, when data collection began, five divisions of 3M had completed seven lead user (LU) idea-generation projects and had funded further development of the product concepts generated by five of these. These same five divisions also had 42 contemporaneously funded projects that used "find a need and fill it" idea-generation methodologies that were traditional practice at 3M. We used these two samples of funded ideas to compare the performance of lead user idea-generation projects with traditional idea-generation projects. Although 3M cooperated in the study and permitted access to company records and to members of the product-development teams, the firm did not offer a controlled experimental setting. Rather, we as researchers were required to account for any naturally occurring differences after the fact. + +Our study methodology required a pre-post/test-control situation, with at least quasi-random assignments to treatment cells (Cook and Campbell 1979). In other words, our goal was to compare samples of development projects in 3M divisions that differed with respect to their use of lead user idea-generation methods, but that were as similar as possible in other respects. Identifying, understanding, and controlling for the many potential sources of difference that could affect the natural experiment involved careful field explorations. Thus, possible differences between project staffing and performance incentives applied to LU and non-LU idea-generation projects were assessed. We looked for (and did not find) differences in the capabilities or motivation of LU and non-LU project team members with respect to achieving a major new product advance. 3M managers also said that there was no difference in these matters, and a content analysis of formal annual performance goals set for the individual LU and non-LU team members in a division that allowed access to these data supported their views. +={ Campbell, D. ; + Cook, T. +} + +We also found no major differences in the innovation opportunities teams faced. They also looked for Hawthorne or placebo effects that might affect the project teams differentially, and found none. (The Hawthorne effect can be described as "I do better because extra attention is being paid to me or to my performance." The placebo effect can be described as "I expect this process will work and will strive to get the results I have been told are likely.") We concluded that the 3M samples of funded LU and non-LU idea-generation projects, though not satisfying the random assignment criterion for experimental design, appeared to satisfy rough equivalence criteria in test and control conditions associated with natural or quasi-experimentation. Data were collected by interviews and by survey instruments. + +With respect to the intended difference under study---the use of lead user methods within projects---all lead user teams employed an identical lead user process taught to them with identical coaching materials and with coaching provided by members of the same small set of internal 3M coaches. Each lead user team consisted of three or four members of the marketing and technical departments of the 3M division conducting the project. Teams began by identifying important market trends. Then, they engaged in pyramiding to identify lead users with respect to each trend both within the target market and in advanced analog markets. Information from a number of innovating lead users was then combined by the team to create a new product concept and business plan---an "LU idea" (von Hippel, Thomke, and Sonnack 1999). +={ Thomke, S. } + +% ={Sonnack, M.} + +Non-lead-user idea-generation projects were conducted in accordance with traditional 3M practices. I refer to these as non-LU idea generation methods and to teams using them as non-LU teams. Non-LU teams were similar to lead user teams in terms of size and make-up. They used data sources for idea generation that varied from project to project. Market data collected by outside organizations were sometimes used, as were data from focus groups with major customers and from customer panels, and information from lab personnel. Non-LU teams collected market information from target markets users but not from lead users. + +!_ Findings + +Our research compared all funded product concepts generated by LU and non-LU methods from February 1999 to May 2000 in each of the five 3M divisions that had funded one or more lead-user-developed product concepts. During that time, five ideas generated by lead user projects were being funded, along with 42 ideas generated by non-LU idea-generation methods. The results of these comparisons can be seen in table 10.1. Product concepts generated by seeking out and learning from lead users were found to be significantly more novel than those generated by non-LU methods. They were also found to address more original or newer customer needs, to have significantly higher market share, to have greater potential to develop into an entire product line, and to be more strategically important. The lead-user-developed product concepts also had projected annual sales in year 5 that were greater than those of ideas generated by non-LU methods by a factor of 8---an average of $146 million versus an average of $18 million in forecast annual sales. Thus, at 3M, lead user idea-generation projects clearly did generate new product concepts with much greater commercial potential than did traditional, non-LU methods (p < 0.005). + +!_ Table 10.1 +Concepts for new products developed by lead user project teams had far more commercial promise than those developed by non-lead-user project teams. + +table(h; c4: 40, 20, 20, 20){ + +~ +LU product concepts (n =5) +Non-LU product concepts (n = 42) +Significance + +Factors related to value of concept +~ +~ +~ + +Novelty compared with competition a +9.6 +6.8 +0.01 + +Originality/newness of customer needs addressed +8.3 +5.3 +0.09 + +% market share in year 5 +68% +33% +0.01 + +Estimated sales in year 5 (deflated for forecast error) +$146m +$18m +0.00 + +Potential for entire product family a +10.0 +7.5 +0.03 + +Operating profit +22% +24.0% +0.70 + +Probability of success +80% +66% +0.24 + +Strategic importance a +9.6 +7.3 +0.08 + +Intellectual property protection a +7.1 +6.7 +0.80 + +Factors related to organizational fit of concept +~ +~ +~ + +Fit with existing distribution channels a +8.8 +8.0 +0.61 + +Fit with existing manufacturing capabilities a +7.8 +6.7 +0.92 + +Fit with existing strategic plan a +9.8 +8.4 +0.24 + +}table + +Source: Lilien et al. 2002, table 1. \\ +a. Rated on a scale from 1 to 10. + +Note that the sales data for both the LU and non-LU projects are forecasts. To what extent can we rely on these? We explored this matter by collecting both forecast and actual sales data from five 3M division controllers. (Division controllers are responsible for authorizing new product-development investment expenditures.) We also obtained data from a 1995 internal study that compared 3M's sales forecasts with actual sales. We combined this information to develop a distribution of forecast errors for a number of 3M divisions, as well as overall forecast errors across the entire corporation. Those errors range from forecast/actual of +30 percent (over-forecast) to --13 percent (underforecast). On the basis of the information just described, and in consultation with 3M management, we deflated all sales forecast data by 25 percent. That deflator is consistent with 3M's historical experience and, we think, provides conservative sales forecasts.~{ In the general literature, Armstrong's (2001) review on forecast bias for new product introduction indicates that sales forecasts are generally optimistic, but that that upward bias decreases as the magnitude of the sales forecast increases. Coller and Yohn (1998) review the literature on bias in accuracy of management earnings forecasts and find that little systematic bias occurs. Tull's (1967) model calculates $15 million in revenue as a level above which forecasts actually become pessimistic on average. We think it reasonable to apply the same deflator to LU vs. non-LU project sales projections. Even if LU project personnel were for some reason more likely to be optimistic with respect to such projections than non-LU project personnel, that would not significantly affect our findings. Over 60 percent of the total dollar value of sales forecasts made for LU projects were actually made by personnel not associated with those projects (outside consulting firms or business analysts from other divisions). }~ Deflated data appear in table 10.1 and in the following tables. + +Rather strikingly, all five of the funded 3M lead user projects created the basis for major new product lines for 3M (table 10.2). In contrast, 41 of 42 funded product concepts generated by non-LU methods were improvements or extensions of existing product lines (χ^{2}^ test, p < 0.005). + +Following tt, p < 0.005).e advice of 3M divisional controllers, major product lines were defined as those separately reported in divisional financial statements. In 1999 in the 3M divisions we studied, sales of individual major product lines ranged from 7 percent to 73 percent of total divisional sales. The sales projections for funded lead user project ideas all fell well above the lower end of this range: projected sales five years after introduction for funded LU ideas, conservatively deflated as discussed above, ranged from 25 percent to over 300 percent of current total divisional sales. + +!_ Table 10.2 +Lead user project teams developed concepts for major new product lines. Non-lead-user project teams developed concepts for incremental product improvements. + +table(h; c3: 34, 33, 33){ + +~ +Incremental product improvements +Major new product lines + +LU method +0 +5 + +Non-LU method +41 +1 + +}table + +Source: Lilien et al. 2002, table 2. + +To illustrate what the major product line innovations that the LU process teams generated at 3M were like, I briefly describe four (one is not described for 3M proprietary reasons): + +_* A new approach to the prevention of infections associated with surgical operations. The new approach replaced the traditional "one size fits all" approach to infection prevention with a portfolio of patient-specific measures based on each patient's individual biological susceptibilities. This innovation involved new product lines plus related business and strategy innovations made by the team to bring this new approach to market successfully and profitably. + +_* Electronic test and communication equipment for telephone field repair workers that pioneered the inclusion of audio, video, and remote data access capabilities. These capabilities enabled physically isolated workers to carry out their problem-solving work as a virtual team with co-workers for the first time. + +_* A new approach, implemented via novel equipment, to the application of commercial graphics films that cut the time of application from 48 hours to less than 1 hour. (Commercial graphics films are used, for example, to cover entire truck trailers, buses, and other vehicles with advertising or decorative graphics.) The LU team's solutions involved technical innovations plus related channel and business model changes to help diffuse the innovation rapidly. + +_* A new approach to protecting fragile items in shipping cartons that replaces packaging materials such as foamed plastic. The new product lines implementing the approach were more environmentally friendly and much faster and more convenient for both shippers and package recipients than other products and methods on the market. + +Lilien, Morrison, Searls, Sonnack, and I also explored to see whether the major product lines generated by the lead user projects had characteristics similar to those of the major product lines that had been developed at 3M in the past, including Scotch Tape. To determine this we collected data on all major new product lines introduced to the market between 1950 and 2000 by the five 3M divisions that had executed one or more lead user studies. (The year 1950 was as far back as we could go and still find company employees who could provide some data about the innovation histories of these major products lines.) Examples from our 1950--2000 sample include the following: +={ Lilien, G. ; + Morrison, Pamela ; + Searls, K. +} + +% ={Sonnack, M.} + +_* Scotch Tape: A line of transparent mending tapes that was first of its type and a major success in many household and commercial applications. + +_* Disposable patient drapes for operating room use: A pioneering line of disposable products for the medical field now sold in many variations. + +_* Box sealing tapes: The first type of tape strong enough to reliably seal corrugated shipping boxes, it replaced stapling in most "corrugated shipper" applications. + +_* Commercial graphics films: Plastic films capable of withstanding outdoor environments that could be printed upon and adhered to large surfaces on vehicles such as the sides of trailer trucks. This product line changed the entire approach to outdoor signage. + +Table 10.3 provides profiles of the five LU major product lines and the 16 non-LU major product lines for which we were able to collect data. As can be seen, innovations generated with inputs from lead users are similar in many ways to the major innovations developed by 3M in the past. + +!_ Table 10.3 +Major new product lines (MNPLs) generated by lead-user methods are similar to MNPLs generated by 3M in the past. + +table(h; c4: 55, 15, 15, 15){ + +~ +LU MNPLs (n = 5) +Past 3M MNPLs (n = 16) +Significance + +Novelty a compared with competition +9.6 +8.0 +0.21 + +Originality/newness of customer needs addressed^{a}^ +8.3 +7.9 +0.78 + +% market share in year 5 +68% +61% +0.76 + +Estimated sales in year 5 (deflated for forecast error) +146m^{b}^ +$62m^{b}^ +0.04 + +Potential for entire product family^{a}^ +10.0 +9.4 +0.38 + +Operating profit +22% +27% +0.41 + +Probability of success +80% +87% +0.35 + +Strategic importance* +9.6 +8.5 +0.39 + +Intellectual property protection^{a}^ +7.1 +7.4 +0.81 + +Fit with distribution channels^{a}^ +8.8 +8.4 +0.77 + +Fit with manufacturing capabilities^{a}^ +7.8 +6.7 +0.53 + +Fit with strategic plan^{a}^ +9.8 +8.7 +0.32 + +}table + +Source: Lilien et al. 2002, table 4. \\ +a. Measured on a scale from 1 to 10. \\ +b. Five-year sales forecasts for all major product lines commercialized in 1994 or later (5 LU and 2 non-LU major product lines) have been deflated by 25% in line with 3M historical forecast error experience (see text). Five-year sales figures for major product lines commercialized before 1994 are actual historical sales data. This data has been converted to 1999 dollars using the Consumer Price Index from the Economic Report of the President (Council of Economic Advisors 2000). + +!_ Discussion + +The performance comparison between lead user and "find a need and fill it" idea-generation projects at 3M showed remarkably strong advantages associated with searching for ideas among lead users in advanced analog fields with needs similar to, but even more extreme than, needs encountered in the intended target market. The direction of this outcome is supported by findings from three other real-world industrial applications of lead user idea-generation methods that studied lead users in the target market but not in advanced analog markets. I briefly describe these three studies next. They each appear to have generated primarily next-generation products--- valuable for firms, but not the basis for radically new major product lines. + +%% + +_* Recall that Urban and von Hippel (1988) tested the relative commercial attractiveness of product concepts developed in the field of computer-aided systems for the design of printed circuit boards (PC-CAD). One of the concepts they tested contained novel features proposed by lead users that had innovated in the PC-CAD field in order to serve in-house need. The attractiveness of the "lead user concept" was then evaluated by a sample of 173 target-market users of PC-CAD systems relative to three other concept choices---one of which was a description of the best system then commercially available. Over 80 percent of the target-market users were found to prefer the concept incorporating the features developed by innovating lead users. Their reported purchase probability for a PC-CAD system incorporating the lead user features was 51 percent, over twice as high as the purchase probability indicated for any other system. The target-market users were also found willing to pay twice as much for a product embodying the lead user features than for PC-CAD products that did not incorporate them. +={ Urban, G. ; + Printed circuit CAD software +} + +_* Herstatt and von Hippel (1992) documented a lead user project seeking to develop a new line of pipe hangers---hardware used to attach pipes to the ceilings of commercial buildings. Hilti, a major manufacturer of construction-related equipment and products, conducted the project. The firm introduced a new line of pipe hanger products based on the lead user concept and a post-study evaluation has shown that this line has become a major commercial success for Hilti. +={ Herstatt, C. ; + Pipe hanger hardware +} + +_* Olson and Bakke (2001) report on two lead user studies carried out by Cinet, a leading IT systems integrator in Norway, for the firm's two major product areas, desktop personal computers, and Symfoni application GroupWare. These projects were very successful, with most of the ideas incorporated into next-generation products having been collected from lead users. +={ Bakke, G. ; + Olson, E. +} + +Active search for lead users that have innovated enables manufacturers to more rapidly commercialize lead user innovations. One might think that an alternative approach would be to identify lead users before they have innovated. Alert manufacturers could then make some prior arrangements to get preferred access to promising user-developed innovations by, for example, purchasing promising lead user organizations. I myself think that such vertical integration approaches are not practical. As was shown earlier, the character and attractiveness of innovations lead users may develop is based in part on the particular situations faced by and information stocks held by individual lead users. User innovation is therefore likely to be a widely distributed phenomenon, and it would be difficult to predict in advance which users are most likely to develop very valuable innovations. +={ Manufacturers : + lead users and +8 +} + +How do we square these findings with the arguments, put forth by Christensen (1997), by Slater and Narver (1998), and by others, that firms are likely to miss radical or disruptive innovations if they pay close attention to requests from their customers? Christensen (1997, p. 59, n. 21) writes: "The research of Eric von Hippel, frequently cited as evidence of the value of listening to customers, indicates that customers originate a large majority of new product ideas. . . . The [Christensen] value network framework would predict that the innovations toward which the customers in von Hippel's study led their suppliers would have been sustaining innovations. We would expect disruptive innovations to have come from other sources." +={ Christensen, C. +2 ; + Narver, J. ; + Slater, S. +} + +Unfortunately, the above contains a basic misunderstanding of my research findings. My findings, and related findings by others as well, deal with innovations by lead users, not customers, and /{lead users are a much broader category than customers of a specific firm}/. Lead users that generate innovations of interest to manufacturers can reside, as we have seen, at the leading edges of target markets, and also in advanced analog markets. The innovations that some lead users develop are certainly disruptive from the viewpoint of some manufacturers---but the lead users are unlikely to care about this. After all, they are developing products to serve their own needs. Tim Berners-Lee, for example, developed the World Wide Web as a lead user working at CERN---a user of that software. The World Wide Web was certainly disruptive to the business models of many firms, but this was not Berners-Lee's concern. Lead users typically have no reason to lead, mislead, or even contact manufacturers that might eventually benefit from or be disrupted by their innovations. Indeed, the likely absence of a preexisting customer relationship is the reason that manufacturing firms must search for lead user innovations /{outside}/ their customer lists---as 3M did in its lead user idea generation studies. "Listening to the voice of the customer" is /{not}/ the same thing as seeking out and learning from lead users (Danneels 2004). +={ Berners-Lee, T. ; + Danneels, E. ; + Lead users : + 3M and ; + 3M Corporation ; + Custom products : + manufacturers and +2 | users and +2 ; + Innovation : + distributed process of +2 | functional sources of +2 +} + +That basic misunderstanding aside, I do agree with Christensen and others that a manufacturer may well receive mainly requests for sustaining innovations from its /{customers}/. As was discussed in chapter 4, manufacturers have an incentive to develop innovations that utilize their existing capabilities---that are "sustaining" for them. Customers know this and, when considering switching to a new technology, are unlikely to request it from a manufacturer that would consider it to be disruptive: they know that such a manufacturer is unlikely to respond positively. The net result is that manufacturers' inputs from their existing customers may indeed be biased towards requests for sustaining innovations. + +I conclude this chapter by reminding the reader that studies of the sources of innovation show clearly that users will tend to develop some types of innovations but not all. It therefore makes sense for manufacturers to partition their product-development strategies and portfolios accordingly. They may wish, for example, to move away from actual new product development and search for lead users' innovations in the case of functionally novel products. At the same time manufacturers may decide to continue to develop products that do /{not}/ require high-fidelity models of need information and use environments to get right. One notable category of innovations with this characteristic is dimension-of-merit improvements to existing products. Sometimes users state their needs for improved products in terms of dimensions on which improvements are desired---dimensions of merit. As an example, consider that users may say "I want a computer that is as fast and cheap as possible." Similarly, users of medical imaging equipment may say "I want an image that is of as high a resolution as is technically possible." If manufacturers (or users) cannot get to the end point desired by these users right away, they will instead progressively introduce new product generations that move along the dimension of merit as rapidly and well as they can. Their rate of progress is determined by the rate at which /{solution}/ technologies improve over time. This means that sticky solution information rather than sticky need information is central to development of dimension-of-merit improvements. Manufacturers will tend to have the information they need to develop dimension of merit innovations internally. +={ Manufacturers : + dimensions-of-merit product improvements and ; + Sticky information : + dimensions-of-merit product improvements and | innovation and +} + +1~ 11 Application: Toolkits for User Innovation and Custom Design +={ Users : + innovation and +62 ; + Custom products : + manufacturers and +62 | toolkits and +62 ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and +62 ; + Toolkits +62 : + innovation and +62 ; + Users : + toolkits and +62 +} + +An improved understanding of the relative innovation capabilities of users and manufacturers can enable designs for more effective joint innovation processes. Toolkits for user innovation and custom design illustrate this possibility. In this new innovation process design, manufacturers actually /{abandon}/ their efforts to understand users' needs accurately and in detail. Instead, they outsource only /{need-related}/ innovation tasks to their users, who are equipped with appropriate toolkits. This process change differs from the lead user search processes discussed earlier in an interesting way. Lead user searchs identify existing innovations, but do nothing to change the conditions affecting user-innovators at the time a new product or service is being developed. Toolkits for users, in contrast, do change the conditions potential innovators face. By making innovation cheaper and quicker for users, they can increase the volume of user innovation. They also can channel innovative effort into directions supported by toolkits. +={ Toolkits : + characteristics of +3 +} + +In this chapter, I first explore why toolkits are useful. Next, I describe how to create an appropriate setting for toolkits and how toolkits function in detail. Finally, I discuss the conditions under which toolkits are likely to be of most value. + +!_ Benefits from Toolkits + +Toolkits for user innovation and design are integrated sets of product-design, prototyping, and design-testing tools intended for use by end users. The goal of a toolkit is to enable non-specialist users to design high-quality, producible custom products that exactly meet their needs. Toolkits often contain "user-friendly" features that guide users as they work. They are specific to a type of product or service and a specific production system. For example, a toolkit provided to customers interested in designing their own, custom digital semiconductor chips is tailored precisely for that purpose--- it cannot be used to design other types of products. Users apply a toolkit in conjunction with their rich understanding of their own needs to create a preliminary design, simulate or prototype it, evaluate its functioning in their own use environment, and then iteratively improve it until they are satisfied. +={ Toolkits : + manufacturers and +58 | user-friendly tools for ; + Information asymmetries +10 +} + +A variety of manufacturers have found it profitable to shift the tasks of custom product design to their customers along with appropriate toolkits for innovation. Results to date in the custom semiconductor field show development time cut by 2/3 or more for products of equivalent complexity and development costs cut significantly as well via the use of toolkits. In 2000, more than $15 billion worth of custom integrated circuits were sold that had been designed with the aid of toolkits---often by circuit users---and produced in the "silicon foundries" of custom semiconductor manufacturers such as LSI (Thomke and von Hippel 2002). International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), a global supplier of specialty flavors to the food industry, has built a toolkit that enables its customers to modify flavors for themselves, which IFF then manufactures. In the materials field, GE provides customers with Web-based tools for designing better plastic products. In software, a number of consumer product companies provide toolkits that allow people to add custom-designed modules to their standard products. For example, Westwood Studios provides its customers with toolkits that enable them to design important elements of their own video games (Jeppesen 2005). +={ Jeppesen, L. ; + Thomke, S. ; + von Hippel, E. +9 ; + Toolkits : + GE and | International Flavors and Fragrances and +} + +The primary function of toolkits for user design is to co-locate product-development and service-development tasks with the sticky information needed to execute them. Need-intensive tasks involved in developing a particular type of product or service are assigned to users, along with the tools needed to carry those tasks out. At the same time, solution-intensive tasks are assigned to manufacturers. +={ Toolkits : + users and +55 | sticky information and +8 ; + Sticky information : + toolkits and +8 +} + +As was discussed in chapter 5, problem solving in general, and product and service development in particular, is carried out via repeated cycles of learning by trial and error. When each cycle of a trial-and-error process requires access to sticky information located at more than one site, colocation of problem-solving activity with sticky information is achieved by repeatedly shifting problem solving to the relevant sticky information sites as product development proceeds. +={ Trial-and-error problem solving ; + Toolkits : + trial-and-error learning in +} + +For example, suppose that need information is sticky at the site of the potential product user and that solution information is sticky at the site of the manufacturer. A user may initiate a development project by drawing on local user-need information to specify a desired new product or service (figure 11.1). This information is likely to be sticky at least in part. Therefore, the user, even when exerting best efforts, will supply only partial and partially correct need and use-context information to the manufacturer. The manufacturer then applies its solution information to the partially accurate user information and creates a prototype that it thinks is responsive to the need and sends it to the user for testing. If the prototype is not satisfactory (and it often is not), the product is returned to the manufacturer for refinement. Typically, as empirical studies show (Tyre and von Hippel 1997; Kristensen 1992), sites of sticky need and / or solution information are repeatedly revisited as problem solvers strive to reach a satisfactory product design (figure 11.2). +={ Kristensen, P. ; + Tyre, M. +} + +%% Figure 11.1 +% Toolkits 149 +% Manufacturer +% activity +% User +% activity +% User iterates until satisfied. +% User draws on local need +% information to specify +% desired product or service. +% User draws on local need and +% context of use information to +% evaluate prototype. +% User changes specifications as +% needed. +% Manufacturer draws on +% local capability information +% to develop prototype +% responsive to specifications. +% Manufacturer iterates until +% user is satisfied. +% User-manufacturer +% boundary +% Figure 11.1 +% A pattern of problem solving often encountered in product and service development. + + +{di_evh_f11-1.png}image + +Figure 11.1 + +%% Figure 11.2 +% 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 +% 7 +% 0 +% 22 +% 7 +% 15 +% 30 +% Number of shifts +% Percent +% of +% sample +% Figure 11.2 +% Shifts in the location of problem solving from user site to lab observed during process +% machine debugging. Source: Tyre and von Hippel 1993, figure 2. + +{di_evh_f11-2.png}image + +Figure 11.2 + +Explicit management of user-manufacturer iterations has been built into a number of modern product-development processes. In the rapid application development method (Martin 1991), manufacturers learn to respond to initial user need inputs by quickly developing a partial prototype of a planned product containing the features likely to be most important to users. They deliver this to users, who apply it in their own setting to clarify their needs. Users then relay requests for changes or new features to the product developers, and this process is repeated until an acceptable fit between need and solution is found. Such iteration has been found to "better satisfy true user requirements and produce information and functionality that is more complete, more accurate, and more meaningful" (Connell and Shafer 1989). +={ Connell, J. ; + Martin, J. ; + Shafer, L. +} + +Even with careful management, however, iterative shifts in problem solving between users and manufacturer-based developers involve significant coordination costs. For example, a manufacturer's development team may be assigned to other tasks while it waits for user feedback, and so will not be immediately able to resume work on a project when needed feedback is received. It would be much better still to eliminate the need for cross-boundary iteration between user and manufacturer sites during product development, and this is what toolkits for user design are intended to do. The basic idea behind toolkits for user design is, as was mentioned earlier, to partition an overall product-development task into subproblems, each drawing on only one locus of sticky information. Then, each task is assigned to the party already having the sticky information needed to solve it. In this approach, both the user and the manufacturer still engage in iterative, trial-and-error problem solving to solve the problems assigned to them. But this iteration is internal to each party---no costly and time-consuming cross-boundary iteration between user and manufacturer is required (von Hippel 1998, 2001; Thomke and von Hippel 2002; von Hippel and Katz 2002). +={ Katz, R. ; + Thomke, S. ; + Task partitioning +10 +} + +To appreciate the major advantage in problem-solving speed and efficiency that concentrating problem solving within a single locus can create, consider a familiar example: the contrast between conducting financial strategy development with and without "user-operated" financial spreadsheet software: + +_* Before the development of easy-to-use financial spreadsheet programs such as Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel, a firm's chief financial officer might have carried out a financial strategy development exercise as follows. First, the CFO would have asked an assistant to develop an analysis incorporating a list of assumptions. A few hours or days might elapse before the result was delivered. Then the CFO would use her rich understanding of the firm and its goals to study the analysis. She would typically almost immediately spot some implications of the patterns developed, and would then ask for additional analyses to explore these implications. The assistant would take the new instructions and go back to work while the CFO switched to another task. When the assistant returned, the cycle would repeat until a satisfactory outcome was found. +={ Microsoft } + +_* After the development of financial spreadsheet programs, a CFO might begin an analysis by asking an assistant to load up a spreadsheet with corporate data. The CFO would then "play with" the data, trying out various ideas and possibilities and "what if" scenarios. The cycle time between trials would be reduced from days or hours to minutes. The CFO's full, rich information would be applied immediately to the effects of each trial. Unexpected patterns---suggestive to the CFO but often meaningless to a less knowledgeable assistant---would be immediately identified and explored further. + +It is generally acknowledged that spreadsheet software that enables expert users to "do it themselves" has led to better outcomes that are achieved faster (Levy 1984; Schrage 2000). The advantages are similar in the case of product and service development. Learning by doing via trial and error still occurs, of course, but the cycle time is much faster because the complete cycle of need-related learning is carried out at a single (user) site earlier in the development process. +={ Levy, S. ; + Schrage, M. ; + Trial-and-error problem solving +15 +} + +!_ Repartitioning of Development Tasks +={ Toolkits : + task partitioning +5 +} + +To create the setting for a toolkit, one must partition the tasks of product development to concentrate need-related information in some and solution-related information in others. This can involve fundamental changes to the underlying architecture of a product or service. As illustration, I first discuss the repartioning of the tasks involved in custom semiconductor chip development. Then, I show how the same principles can be applied in the less technical context of custom food design. + +Traditionally, fully customized integrated circuits were developed in an iterative process like that illustrated in figure 11.1. The process began with a user specifying the functions that the custom chip was to perform to a manufacturer of integrated circuits. The chip would then be designed by manufacturer employees, and an (expensive) prototype would be produced and sent to the user. Testing by the user would typically reveal faults in the chip and/or in the initial specification, responsive changes would be made, a new prototype would be built. This cycle would continue until the user was satisfied. In this traditional manufacturer-centered development process, manufacturers' development engineers typically incorporated need-related information into the design of both the fundamental elements of a circuit--- such as transistors, and the electrical "wiring" that interconnected those elements into a functioning circuit. + +The brilliant insight that allowed custom design of integrated circuits to be partitioned into solution-related and need-related subtasks was made by Mead and Conway (1980). They determined that the design of a digital chip's fundamental elements, such as its transistors, could be made standard for all circuits. This subtask required rich access to the manufacturer's sticky solution information regarding how semiconductors are fabricated, but did not require detailed information on users' specific needs. It could therefore be assigned to manufacturer-based chip-design and chip-fabrication engineers. It was also observed that the subtask of interconnecting standard circuit elements into a functioning integrated circuit required only sticky, need-related information about a chip's function---for example, whether it was to function as a microprocessor for a calculator or as a voice chip for a robotic dog. This subtask was therefore assigned to users along with a toolkit that enabled them to do it properly. In sum, this new type of chip, called a gate array, had a novel architecture created specifically to separate the problem-solving tasks requiring access to a manufacturer's sticky solution information from those requiring access to users' sticky need information. +={ Conway, C. ; + Mead, L. ; + Toolkits : + characteristics of +} + +The same basic principle can be illustrated in a less technical context: food design. In this field, manufacturer-based designers have traditionally undertaken the entire job of developing a novel food, and so they have freely blended need-specific design into any or all of the recipe-design elements wherever convenient. For example, manufacturer-based developers might find it convenient to create a novel cake by both designing a novel flavor and texture for the cake body, and designing a complementary novel flavor and texture into the frosting. However, it is possible to repartition these same tasks so that only a few draw on need-related information, and these can then be more easily transferred to users. + +The architecture of the pizza pie illustrates how this can be done. Many aspects of the design of a pizza, such as the dough and the sauce, have been made standard. User choice has been restricted to a single task: the design of toppings. In other words, all need-related information that is unique to a particular user has been linked to the toppings-design task only. Transfer of this single design task to users can still potentially offer creative individuals a very large design space to play in (although pizza shops typically restrict it sharply). Any edible ingredient one can think of, from eye of newt to edible flowers, is a potential topping component. But the fact that need-related information has been concentrated within only a single product-design task makes it much easier to transfer design freedom to the user. + +!_ The Functionality of Toolkits +={ Toolkits : + characteristics of +2 +} + +If a manufacturer outsources need-intensive design tasks to users, it must also make sure that users have the information they need to carry out those tasks effectively. This can be done via a toolkit for user innovation. Toolkits are not new as a general concept---every manufacturer equips its own engineers with a set of tools suitable for developing the type of products or services it wishes to produce. Toolkits for users also are not new---many users have personal collections of tools that they have assembled to help them create new items or modify standard ones. For example, some users have woodworking tools ranging from saws to glue which can be used to create or modify furniture---in very novel or very standard ways. Others may have a kit of software tools needed to create or modify software. What is new, however, is integrated toolkits enabling users to create /{and}/ test designs for custom products or services that can then be produced "as is" by manufacturers. + +Present practice dictates that a high-quality toolkit for user innovation will have five important attributes. (1) It will enable users to carry out complete cycles of trial-and-error learning. (2) It will offer users a solution space that encompasses the designs they want to create. (3) It will be user friendly in the sense of being operable with little specialized training. (4) It will contain libraries of commonly used modules that users can incorporate into custom designs. (5) It will ensure that custom products and services designed by users will be producible on a manufacturer's' production equipment without modification by the manufacturer. + +!_ Learning through Trial and Error +={ Toolkits : + trial-and-error learning in +5 +} + + +It is crucial that user toolkits for innovation enable users to go through complete trial-and-error cycles as they create their designs. Recall that trial-and-error problem solving is essential to product development. For example, suppose that a user is designing a new custom telephone answering system for her firm, using a software-based computer-telephony integration (CTI) design toolkit provided by a vendor. Suppose also that the user decides to include a new rule to "route all calls of X nature to Joe" in her design. A properly designed toolkit would allow her to temporarily place the new rule into the telephone system software, so that she could actually try it out (via a real test or a simulation) and see what happened. She might discover that the solution worked perfectly. Or she might find that the new rule caused some unexpected form of trouble---for example, Joe might be flooded with too many calls---in which case it would be "back to the drawing board" for another design and another trial. + +In the same way, toolkits for innovation in the semiconductor design field allow users to design a circuit that they think will meet their needs and then test the design by "running" it in the form of a computer simulation. This quickly reveals errors that the user can then quickly and cheaply fix using toolkit-supplied diagnostic and design tools. For example, a user might discover by testing a simulated circuit design that a switch needed to adjust the circuit had been forgotten and make that discovery simply by trying to make a needed adjustment. The user could then quickly and cheaply design in the needed switch without major cost or delay. + +One can appreciate the importance of giving the user the capability for trial-and-error learning by doing in a toolkit by thinking about the consequences of not having it. When users are not supplied with toolkits that enable them to draw on their local, sticky information and engage in trial-and-error learning, they must actually order a product and have it built to learn about design errors---typically a very costly and unsatisfactory way to proceed. For example, automobile manufacturers allow customers to select a range of options for their cars, but they do not offer the customer a way to learn during the design process and before buying. The cost to the customer is unexpected learning that comes too late: "That wide-tire option did look great in the picture. But now that the car has been delivered, I discover that I don't like the effect on handling. Worse, I find that my car is too wide to fit into my garage!" + +Similar disasters are often encountered by purchasers of custom computers. Many custom computer manufacturers offer a website that allows users to "design your own computer online." However, these websites do not allow users to engage in trial-and-error design. Instead, they simply allow users to select computer components such as processor chips and disk drives from lists of available options. Once these selections have been made, the design transaction is complete and the computer is built and shipped. The user has no way to test the functional effects of these choices before purchase and first field use---followed by celebration or regret. + +In contrast, a sophisticated toolkit for user innovation would allow the user to conduct trial-and-error tests to evaluate the effects of initial choices made and to improve on them. For example, a computer design site could add this capability by enabling users to actually test and evaluate the hardware configuration they specify on their own programs and computing tasks before buying. To do this, the site might, for example, provide access to a remote computer able to simulate the operation of the computer that the user has specified, and provide performance diagnostics and related choices in terms meaningful to the user (e.g., "If you add option x at cost y, the time it takes to complete your task will decrease by z seconds"). The user could then modify or confirm initial design choices according to trade-off preferences only he or she knows. + +!_ Appropriate Solution Spaces +={ Toolkits : + solution spaces and +3 +} + +Economical production of custom products and services is achievable only when a custom design falls within the pre-existing capability and degrees of freedom built into a particular manufacturer's production system. My colleagues and I call this the /{solution space}/ offered by that system. A solution space may vary from very large to small, and if the output of a toolkit is tied to a particular production system, then the design freedom that a toolkit can offer a user will be accordingly large or small. For example, the solution space offered by the production process of a manufacturer of custom integrated circuits offers a huge solution space to users---it will produce any combination of logic elements interconnected in any way that a user-designer might desire, with the result that the user can invent anything from a novel type of computer processor to a novel silicon organism within that space. However, note that the semiconductor production process also has stringent limits. It will only implement product designs expressed in terms of semiconductor logic---it will not implement designs for bicycles or houses. Also, even within the arena of semiconductors, it will only be able to produce semiconductors that fit within a certain range with respect to size and other properties. Another example of a production system offering a very large solution space to designers---and, potentially to user-designers via toolkits---is the automated machining center. Such a device can basically fashion any shape out of any machinable material that can be created by any combination of basic machining operations such as drilling and milling. As a consequence, toolkits for innovation intended to create designs that can be produced by automated machining centers can offer users access to that very large solution space. + +Large solution spaces can typically be made available to user-designers when production systems and associated toolkits allow users to manipulate and combine relatively basic and general-purpose building blocks and operations, as in the examples above. In contrast, small solution spaces typically result when users are only allowed to combine a relatively few pre-designed options. Thus, users who want to design their own custom automobiles are restricted to a relatively small solution space: they can only make choices from lists of options regarding such things as engines, transmissions, and paint colors. Similarly, purchasers of eyeglasses are restricted to combining "any frame from this list" of pre-designed frames, with "any lens type from that list" of pre-designed options. + +The reason producers of custom products or services enforce constraints on the solution space that user-designers may use is that custom products can be produced at reasonable prices only when custom user designs can be implemented by simply making low-cost adjustments to the production process. This condition is met within the solution space on offer. However, responding to requests that fall outside that space will require small or large additional investments by the manufacturer. For example, a producer of integrated circuits may have to invest many millions of dollars and rework an entire production process in order to respond to a customer's request for a larger chip that falls outside the solution space associated with its present production equipment. + +!_ User-Friendly Tools +={ Toolkits : + user-friendly tools for +6 +} + +User toolkits for innovation are most effective and successful when they are made "user friendly" by enabling users to use the skills they already have and to work in their own customary and well-practiced design language. This means that users don't have to learn the---typically different---design skills and language customarily used by manufacturer-based designers, and so they will require much less training to use the toolkit effectively. + +For example, in the case of custom integrated circuit design, the users of toolkits are typically electrical engineers who are designing electronic systems that will incorporate custom semiconductor chips. The digital design language normally used by electrical engineers is Boolean algebra. Therefore, user-friendly toolkits for custom semiconductor design are provided that allow toolkit users to design in this language. That is, users can create a design, test how it works, and make improvements using only their own, customary design language. At the conclusion of the design process, the toolkit then translates the user's logical design into the design inputs required by the semiconductor manufacturer's production system. + +A design toolkit based on a language and skills and tools familiar to the user is only possible to the extent that the user /{has}/ familiarity with some appropriate and reasonably complete language and set of skills and tools. Interestingly, this is the case more frequently than one might initially suppose, at least in terms of the /{function}/ that a user wants a product or service to perform---because functionality is the face that the product or a service presents to the user. (Indeed, an expert user of a product or service may be much more familiar with that functional face than manufacturer-based experts.) Thus, the user of a custom semiconductor is the expert in what he or she wants that custom chip to /{do}/, and is skilled at making complex tradeoffs among familiar functional elements to achieve a desired end: "If I increase chip clock speed, I can reduce the size of my cache memory and. . . ." + +As a less technical example, consider the matter of designing a custom hairstyle. There is certainly a great deal of information known to hairstylists that even an expert user may not know, such as how to achieve a certain look by means of layer cutting, or how to achieve a certain streaked color pattern by selectively dying some strands of hair. However, an expert user is often very well practiced at the skill of examining the shape of his or her face and hairstyle as reflected in a mirror, and visualizing specific improvements that might be desirable in matters such as curls, shape, or color. In addition, the user will be very familiar with the nature and functioning of everyday tools used to shape hair, such as scissors and combs. + +A user-friendly toolkit for hairstyling innovation can be built upon these familiar skills and tools. For example, a user can be invited to sit in front of a computer monitor, and study an image of her face and hairstyle as captured by a video camera. Then, she can select from a palette of colors and color patterns offered on the screen, can superimpose the effect on her existing hairstyle, can examine it, and can repeatedly modify it in a process of trial-and-error learning. Similarly, the user can select and manipulate images of familiar tools, such as combs and scissors, to alter the image of the length and shape of her own hairstyle as projected on the computer screen, can study and further modify the result achieved, and so forth. Note that the user's new design can be as radically new as is desired, because the toolkit gives the user access to the most basic hairstyling variables and tools such as hair color and scissors. When the user is satisfied, the completed design can be translated into technical hairstyling instructions in the language of a hairstyling specialist---the intended production system in this instance. + +In general, steady improvements in computer hardware and software are enabling toolkit designers to provide information to users in increasingly friendly ways. In earlier days, information was often provided to users in the form of specification sheets or books. The user was then required to know when a particular bit of information was relevant to a development project, find the book, and look it up. Today, a large range of potentially needed information can be embedded in a computerized toolkit, which is programmed to offer the user items of information only if and as a development being worked on makes them relevant. + +!_ Module Libraries +={ Toolkits : + module libraries for +1 +} + +Custom designs seldom are novel in all their parts. Therefore, a library of standard modules will be a valuable part of a toolkit for user innovation. Provision of such standard modules enables users to focus their creative work on those aspects of their product or service designs that cannot be implemented via pre-designed options. For example, architects will find it very useful to have access to a library of standard components, such as a range of standard structural support columns with pre-analyzed structural characteristics, that they can incorporate into their novel building designs. Similarly, users who want to design custom hairstyles will often find it helpful to begin by selecting a hairstyle from a toolkit library. The goal is to select a style that has some elements of the desired look. Users can then proceed to develop their own desired style by adding to and subtracting from that starting point. + +!_ Translating Users' Designs for Production + +The "language" of a toolkit for user innovation must be convertible without error into the language of the intended production system at the conclusion of the user's design work. If it is not, the entire purpose of the toolkit will be lost---because a manufacturer receiving a user design will essentially have to do the design work over again. Error-free translation need not emerge as a major problem---for example, it was never a major problem during the development of toolkits for integrated circuit design, because both chip designers and chip producers already used a language based on digital logic. In contrast, in some fields, translating from the design language preferred by users to the language required by intended production systems can be /{the}/ central problem in toolkit design. As an illustration, consider a recent toolkit test project managed by Ernie Gum, the Director of Food Product Development for the USA FoodServices Division of Nestlé. +={ Gum, E. +5 ; + Toolkits : + Nestlé and +5 +} + +One major business of Nestlé FoodServices is producing custom food products, such as custom Mexican sauces, for major restaurant chains. Custom foods of this type have traditionally been developed by or modified by the chains' executive chefs, using what are in effect design and production toolkits taught by culinary schools: recipe development procedures based on food ingredients available to individuals and restaurants, and processed with restaurant-style equipment. After using their traditional toolkits to develop or modify a recipe for a new menu item, executive chefs call in Nestlé Foodservices or another custom food producer and ask that firm to manufacture the product they have designed---and this is where the language translation problem rears its head. + +There is no error-free way to translate a recipe expressed in the language of a traditional restaurant-style culinary toolkit into the language required by a food-manufacturing facility. Food factories must use ingredients that can be obtained in quantity at consistent quality. These are not the same as, and may not taste quite the same as, the ingredients used by the executive chef during recipe development. Also, food factories use volume production equipment, such as huge-steam-heated retorts. Such equipment is very different from restaurant-style stoves and pots and pans, and it often cannot reproduce the cooking conditions created by the executive chef on a stove-top---for example, very rapid heating. Therefore, food-production factories cannot simply produce a recipe developed by or modified by an executive chef "as is" under factory conditions---it will not taste the same. + +As a consequence, even though an executive chef creates a prototype product using a traditional chef's toolkit, food manufacturers find most of that information---the information about ingredients and processing conditions---useless because it cannot be straightforwardly translated into factory-relevant terms. The only information that can be salvaged is the information about taste and texture contained in the prototype. And so, production chefs carefully examine and taste the customer's custom food prototype, then try to make something that tastes the same using factory ingredients and methods. But an executive chef's taste buds are not necessarily the same as production chef taste buds, and so the initial factory version---and the second and the third---is typically not what the customer wants. So the producer must create variation after variation until the customer is finally satisfied. + +To solve the translation problem, Gum created a novel toolkit of pre-processed food ingredients to be used by executive chefs during food development. Each ingredient in the toolkit was the Nestlé factory version of an ingredient traditionally used by chefs during recipe development: That is, it was an ingredient commercially available to Nestlé that had been processed as an independent ingredient on Nestlé factory equipment. Thus, a toolkit designed for developing Mexican sauces would contain a chili puree ingredient processed on industrial equipment identical to that used to produce food in commercial-size lots. (Each ingredient in such a toolkit also contains traces of materials that will interact during production---for example, traces of tomato are included in the chili puree---so that the taste effects of such interactions will also be apparent to toolkit users.) + +Chefs interested in using the Nestlé toolkit to prototype a novel Mexican sauce would receive a set of 20--30 ingredients, each in a separate plastic pouch. They would also be given instructions for the proper use of these ingredients. Toolkit users would then find that each component differs slightly from the fresh components he or she is used to. But such differences are discovered immediately through direct experience. The chef can then adjust ingredients and proportions to move to the desired final taste and texture that is desired. When a recipe based on toolkit components is finished, it can be immediately and precisely reproduced by Nestlé factories--- because now the executive chef is using the same language as the factory. In the Nestlé case, field testing by Food Product Development Department researchers showed that adding the error-free translation feature to toolkit-based design by users reduced the time of custom food development from 26 weeks to 3 weeks by eliminating repeated redesign and refinement interactions between Nestlé and purchasers of its custom food products. + +!_ Discussion + +A toolkit's success in the market is significantly correlated with that toolkit's quality and with industry conditions. Thus, Prügl and Franke (2005) studied the success of 100 toolkits offered in a single industry: computer gaming. They found that success, evaluated by independent experts, was significantly correlated with the quality of execution of the attributes of toolkits that have been discussed in this chapter. That is, success was found to be significantly affected by the quality of trial-and-error learning enabled by a toolkit, by the quality of fit of the solution space offered to users' design problems, by the user friendliness of the tools provided, and by the quality of module libraries offered with the toolkit. Schreier and Franke (2004) also obtained information on the importance of toolkit quality in a study of the value that users placed on consumer products (scarves, T shirts, cell phone covers) customized with a simple, manufacturer-supplied toolkit. They found user willingness to pay for custom designs, as measured by Vickrey auctions, was significantly negatively affected by the difficulty of creating custom designs with a toolkit. In contrast, willingness to pay was significantly positively affected by enjoyment experienced in using a toolkit. +={ Franke, N. ; + Prügl, R. ; + Schreier, M. ; + Trial-and-error problem solving ; + Custom products : + heterogeneity of user needs and +3 ; + User need +3 +} + +With respect to industry and market conditions, the toolkit-for-user innovation approach to product design is likely to be most appealing to toolkit suppliers when the heterogeneous needs of /{many}/ users can be addressed by a standard solution approach encoded in a toolkit. This is because it can be costly to encode all the solution and production information relevant to users' design decisions. For example, a toolkit for custom semiconductor design must contain information about the semi-conductor production process needed to ensure that product designs created by users are in fact producible. Encoding such information is a one-time cost, so it makes the best economic sense for solution approaches that many will want to use. + +Toolkits for user innovation are not an appropriate solution for all product needs, even when heterogeneous needs can be addressed by a common solution approach. Specifically, toolkits will not be the preferred approach when the product being designed requires the highest achievable performance. Toolkits incorporate automated design rules that cannot, at least at present, translate designs into products or software as skillfully as a human designer can. For example, a design for a gate array generated with a toolkit will typically take up more physical space on a silicon chip than would a fully custom-developed design of similar complexity. Even when toolkits are on offer, therefore, manufacturers may continue to design certain products (those with difficult technical demands) while customers take over the design of others (those involving complex or rapidly evolving user needs). + +Toolkits can be designed to offer a range of capabilities to users. At the high end, with toolkits such as those used to design custom integrated circuits, users can truly innovate, creating anything implementable in digital electronics, from a dishwasher controller to a novel supercomputer or form of artificial life. At the low end, the product configurators commonly offered by manufacturers of mass-customized products enable, for example, a watch purchaser to create a custom watch by selecting from lists of pre-designed faces, hands, cases, and straps. (Mass-customized production systems can manufacture a range of product variations in single-unit quantities at near mass-production costs (Pine 1993). In the United States, production systems used by these manufacturers are generally based on computerized production equipment.) +={ Pine, J. } + +The design freedom provided by toolkits for user innovation may not be of interest to all or even to most users in a market characterized by heterogeneous needs. A user must have a great enough need for something different to offset the costs of putting a toolkit to use for that approach to be of interest. Toolkits may therefore be offered only to a subset of users. In the case of software, toolkits may be provided to all users along with a standard, default version of the product or service, because the cost of delivering the extra software is essentially zero. In such a case, the toolkit's capability will simply lie unused in the background unless and until a user has sufficient incentive to evoke and employ it. +={ Lead users : + toolkits and +3 ; + Toolkits : + lead users and +3 +} + +Provision of toolkits to customers can be a complement to lead user idea-generation methods for manufacturers. Some users choosing to employ a toolkit to design a product precisely right for their own needs will be lead users, whose present strong need foreshadows a general need in the market. Manufacturers can find it valuable to identify and acquire the generally useful improvements made by lead users of toolkits, and then supply these to the general market. For this reason, manufacturers may find it valuable implement toolkits for innovation even if the portion of the target market that can directly use them is relatively small. + +Toolkits can affect existing business models in a field in ways that may or may not be to manufacturers' competitive advantage in the longer run. For example, consider that many manufacturers of products and services profit from both their design capabilities and their production capabilities. A switch to user-based customization via toolkits can affect their ability to do this over the long term. Thus, a manufacturer that is early in introducing a toolkit approach to custom product or service design may initially gain an advantage by tying that toolkit to its particular production facility. However, when toolkits are made available to customer designers, this tie often weakens over time. Customers and independent tool developers can eventually learn to design toolkits applicable to the processes of several manufacturers. Indeed, this is precisely what has happened in the custom integrated circuit industry. The toolkits revealed to users by the initial innovator, LSI, and later by rival producers were producer-specific. Over time, however, Cadance and other specialist toolkit supply firms emerged and developed toolkits that could be used to make designs producible by a number of vendors. The end result is that manufacturers that previously benefited from selling their product-design skills and their production skills can be eventually forced by the shifting of design tasks to customers via toolkits to a position of benefiting from their production skills only. + +Manufacturers that think long-term disadvantages may accrue from a switch to toolkits for user innovation and design will not necessarily have the luxury of declining to introduce toolkits. If any manufacturer introduces a high-quality toolkit into a field favoring its use, customers will tend to migrate to it, forcing competitors to follow. Therefore, a firm's only real choice in a field where conditions are favorable to the introduction of toolkits may be whether to lead or to follow. + +1~ 12 Linking User Innovation to Other Phenomena and Fields + +This final chapter is devoted to describing links between user-centered innovation and other phenomena and literatures. Of course, innovation writ large is related to anything and everything, so the phenomena and the literatures I will discuss here are only those hanging closest on the intellectual tree. My goal is to enable interested readers to migrate to further branches as they wish, assisted by the provision of a few important references. With respect to phenomena, I will first point out the relationship of user innovation to /{information}/ communities---of which user innovation communities are a subset. With respect to related fields, I begin by linking user-centric innovation phenomena explored in this book to the literature on the economics of knowledge, and to the competitive advantage of nations. Next I link it to research on the sociology of technology. Finally, I point out how findings regarding user innovation could---but do not yet---link to and complement the way that product development is taught to managers. +={ Information commons ; + Information communities ; + Product development ; + Technical communities +} + +!_ Information Communities +={ Information commons +8 ; + Information communities +8 +} + +Many of the considerations I have discussed with respect to user innovation communities apply to /{information}/ communities as well---a much more general category of which user innovation communities are a subset. I define information communities as communities or networks of individuals and/or organizations that rendezvous around an information commons, a collection of information that is open to all on equal terms. +={ Technical communities +1 } + +In close analogy to our discussions of innovation communities, I propose that commons-based information communities or networks will form when the following conditions hold: (1) Some have information that is not generally known. (2) Some are willing to freely reveal what they know. (3) Some beyond the information source have uses for what is revealed. On an intuitive basis, one can immediately see that these conditions are often met. Of course, people and firms know different things. Of course there are many things that one would not be averse to freely revealing; and of course others would often be interested in what is freely revealed. After all, as individuals we all regularly freely reveal information not generally known to people who ask, and presumably these people value at least some of the information we provide. +={ Free revealing of innovation information : + in information communities +3 +} + +The economics of information communities can be much simpler than that of the user innovation communities discussed earlier, because valuable proprietary information is often not at center stage. When the service provided by information communities is to offer non-proprietary "content" in a more convenient and accessible form, one need consider only the costs and benefits associated with information diffusion. One need not also consider potential losses associated with the free revealing of proprietary innovation-related information. + +It is likely that information communities are getting steadily more pervasive for the same reasons that user innovation communities are: the costs of diffusing information are getting steadily lower as computing and communication technologies improve. As a result, information communities may have a rapidly increasing impact on the economy and on the landscape of industry. They are and will be especially empowering to fragmented groups, whose members may for the first time gain low-cost access to a great deal of rich and fresh information of mutual interest. As is the case for user innovation networks, information networks can actually store content that participants freely reveal and make it available for free downloading. (Wikipedia is an example of this.) And/or, information networks can function to link information seekers and information holders rather than actually storing information. In the latter case, participants post to the network, hoping that someone with the requested information will spot their request and provide an answer (Lakhani and von Hippel 2003). Prominent examples can be found in the medical field in the form of specialized websites where patients with relatively rare conditions can for the first time find each other and also find specialists in those conditions. Patients and specialists who participate in these groups can both provide and get access to information that previously was scattered and for most practical purposes inaccessible. +={ Lakhani, K ; + Wikipedia ; + von Hippel, E. +} + +Just as is the case in user innovation groups, open information communities are developing rapidly, and the behaviors and infrastructure needed for success are being increasingly learned and codified. These communities are by no means restricted to user-participants. Thus, both patients and doctors frequently participate in medical information communities. Also, information communities can be run by profit-making firms and/or on a non-profit basis for and by information providers and users themselves--- just as we earlier saw was the case with innovation communities. Firms and users are developing many versions of open information communities and testing them in the market. As an example of a commercially supported information commons, consider e-Bay, where information is freely revealed by many under a structure provided by a commercial firm. The commercial firm then extracts a profit from commissions on transactions consummated between information providers and information seekers. As an example of an information community supported by users themselves, again consider Internet sites specializing in specific diseases---for example, childrenfacingillness.com. +={ Marketing research +1 } + +Information communities can have major effects on established ways of doing business. For example, markets become more efficient as the information provided to transaction participants improves. Thus, product and service manufacturers benefit from good information on the perceptions and preferences of potential buyers. Similarly, product and service purchasers benefit from good information on the characteristics of the various offerings in the market. Traditionally, firms have collected information on users' needs and on products' characteristics by means of face-to-face interviewing and (in the case of mass markets) questionnaires. Similar information of high quality now can be collected nearly without cost and can be posted on special Internet sites by users themselves and/or by for-profit enterprises. Dellarocas, Awad, and Zhang (2004) show that volunteered online movie reviews provide information that is just as accurate as that collected by surveys of representative samples of respondents. This emerging new approach to data aggregation will clearly affect the established business models of firms specializing in information collection, with websites like www.ciao.co.uk illustrating new possibilities. If the quality of information available to transaction participants goes up and the information price is low, transaction quality should go up. With the aid of online product-evaluation sites, it is likely that consumers will be able to apply much better information even to small buying decisions, such as the choice of a restaurant for tonight's dinner. +={ Awad, N. ; + Dellarocas C. ; + Zhang, X. +} + +What Paul David and colleagues call "open science" is a type of information community that is closely related to the innovation communities discussed earlier (David 1992; Dasgupta and David 1994; David 1998). Free revealing of findings is, of course, a characteristic of modern science. Academic scientists publish regularly and so freely reveal information that may have high proprietary value. This raises the same question explored in the case of innovation communities: Why, in view of the potential of free ridership, do scientists freely reveal the information they have developed at private cost? The answer overlaps with but also differs from the answers provided in the case of free revealing of proprietary innovations by innovation users. With respect to similarities, sociologists of science have found that reputation among peers is important to scientists, and that priority in the discovery of new knowledge is a major component of reputation. Because of the importance of priority, scientists generally rush their research projects to completion and then rush to freely reveal their new findings. This dynamic creates a great advantage from the point of view of social welfare (Merton 1973). +={ Dasgupta, P. ; + David, P. ; + Merton, Robert ; + Free revealing of innovation information : + in information communities +1 ; + Intellectual property rights : + information communities and ; + Users : + free revealing by +1 | information communities and +1 +} + +With respect to major differences, it is public policy in many countries to subsidize research with public funds. These policies are based on the assumption that only inadequate amounts of scientific research can be drawn forth by reputational inducements alone. Recall that, in contrast, innovations developed and freely revealed by innovation users are not subsidized from any source. Users, unlike "scientists," by definition have a personal or corporate use for the innovation-related knowledge they generate. This additional source of private reward may explain why user innovation communities can flourish without subsidy. +={ Knowledge, production and distribution of } + +!_ The Economics of Knowledge +={ Knowledge, production and distribution of +7 ; + Users : + knowledge and +7 +} + +In this field, Foray (2004) provides a rich road map regarding the economics of knowledge and the central role played by users. Foray argues that the radical changes in information and communication technologies (ICT) are creating major changes in the economics of knowledge production and distribution. Economists have traditionally reduced knowledge production to the function of research and development, defined as the activity specifically devoted to invention and innovation. Starting with Machlup (1962), economists also have identified the knowledge-based economy as consisting of specialized sectors focused on activities related to communication, education, the media, and computing and information-related services. Foray argues that these simplifications, although providing a rationale for a way to measure knowledge-generation activities, were never appropriate and now are totally misleading. +={ Machlup, F. ; + Foray, D. +2 +} + +Knowledge generation, Foray says, is now a major activity across all industrial sectors and is by no means restricted to R&D laboratories: we are in the age of the knowledge economy. He makes a central distinction between R&D that is conducted in laboratories remote from doing, and learning by doing at the site of production. He argues that both are important, and have complementary advantages and drawbacks. Laboratory research can ignore some of the complexities involved in production in search of basic understanding. Learning by doing has the contrasting advantage of being in the full fidelity of the real production process. The drawback to learning by doing, however, is that one is attempting to do two things at once---producing and learning---and this can force compromises onto both. + +Foray positions users at the heart of knowledge production. He says that one major challenge for management is to capture the knowledge being generated by users "on line" during the process of doing and producing, and to integrate it with knowledge created "off line" in laboratories. He discusses implications of the distributed nature of knowledge production among users and others, and notes that the increased capabilities of information and communication technologies tend to reduce innovators' ability to control the knowledge they create. He proposes that the most effective knowledge-management policies and practices will be biased toward knowledge sharing. + +Weber (2004, pp. 72--73) explores similar ideas in the specific context of open source software. "The conventional language of industrial-era economics," he notes, "identifies producers and consumers, supply and demand. The open source process scrambles these categories. Open source software users are not consumers in the conventional sense. . . . Users integrate into the production process itself in a profound way." Weber's central thesis is that the open source process is a new way of organizing production: +={ Weber, S. ; + Open source software : + knowledge and +} + +_1 One solution is the familiar economy that depends upon a blend of exclusive property rights, divisions of labor, reduction of transaction costs, and the management of principal-agent problems. The success of open source demonstrates the importance of a fundamentally different solution, built on top of an unconventional understanding of property rights configured around distribution. . . . And it relies on a set of organizational structures to coordinate behavior around the problem of managing distributed innovation, which is different from the division of labor. (ibid., p. 224) + +Weber details the property-rights regime used by open source projects, and also the nature of open source innovation communities and incentives acting on participants. He then argues that this new mode of production can extend beyond the development of open source software, to an extent and a degree that are not yet understood: +={ Weber, S. ; + Open source software : + knowledge and +} + +One important direction in which the open source experiment points is toward moving beyond the discussion of transaction as a key determinant of institutional design. . . . The elegant analytics of transaction cost economics do very interesting work in explaining how divisions of labor evolve through outsourcing of particular functions (the decision to buy rather than make something). But the open source process adds another element. The notion of open-sourcing as a strategic organizational decision can be seen as an efficiency choice around distributed innovation, just as outsourcing was an efficiency choice around transactions costs. . . . As information about what users want and need to do becomes more fine-grained, more individually differentiated, and harder to communicate, the incentives grow to shift the locus of innovation closer to them by empowering them with freely modifiable tools. (ibid., pp. 265--267) + +!_ National Competitive Advantage +={ Government policy : + and national competitive advantage +6 ; + Manufacturers : + and national competitive advantage +6 ; + National competitive advantage +6 : + See also Government policy ; + Users : + national competitive advantage and +6 +} + +Understanding national innovation systems and the competitive advantage of a nation's firms is an important matter for national policy makers (Nelson 1993). Can what we have learned in this book shed any light on their concerns? Porter (1991), assessing national competitive advantage through the intellectual lens of competitive strategy, concludes that one of four major factors determining the competitive advantage of nations is demand conditions. "A nation's firms," he argues, "gain competitive advantage if domestic buyers are, or are among, the world's most sophisticated and demanding buyers for the product or service. Such buyers provide a window into the most advanced buyer needs. . . . Buyers are demanding where home product needs are especially stringent or challenging because of local circumstances." For example: "The continental United States has been intensely drilled, and wells are being drilled in increasingly difficult and marginal fields. The pressure has been unusually great for American oil field equipment suppliers to perfect techniques that minimize the cost of difficult drilling and ensure full recovery from each field. This has pushed them to advance the state of the art and sustain strong international positions." (ibid., pp. 89--90) +={ Nelson, R. ; + Porter, M. +5 +} + +Porter also argues that /{early}/ domestic demand is also important: "Provided it anticipates buyer needs in other nations, early local demand for a product or service in a nation helps local firms to move sooner than foreign rivals to become established in an industry. They get the jump in building large-scale facilities and accumulating experience. . . . Only if home demand is anticipatory of international need will home demand contribute to advantage." (ibid., p. 95) + +From my perspective, Porter is making the case for the value of a nation's domestic lead users to national competitive advantage. However, he is also assuming that it is /{manufacturers}/ that innovate in response to advanced or stringent user demand. On the basis of the findings reported on in this book, I would modify this assumption by noting that, often, domestic manufacturers' links to /{innovating lead users}/ have the impacts on national competitive advantage that he describes---but that the lead users' input to favored domestic firms would include innovations as well as needs. + +Domestic lead users make a difference to national competitive advantage, Porter argues, because "local firms often enjoy some natural advantages in serving their home market compared to foreign firms, a result of proximity as well as language, regulation, and cultural affinities (even, frequently, if foreign firms are staffed with local nationals)." Porter continues: "Preferred access to a large domestic customer base can be a spur to investment by local firms. Home demand may be perceived as more certain and easier to forecast, while foreign demand is seen as uncertain even if firms think they have the ability to fill it." (ibid., p. 93) + +What new insights and research questions can the work of this book contribute to this analysis of national competitive advantage? On the one hand, I certainly see the pattern Porter describes in some studies of lead user innovation. For example, early in the history of the US semiconductor industry, AT&T, the inventor of the transistor and an early innovator, developed a number of novel types of production equipment as a user organization. AT&T engineers went to local machine shops to have these machines produced in volume to meet AT&T's in-house production needs. A side effect of this procurement strategy was to put many of these previously undistinguished firms into the business of producing advanced semi-conductor equipment to the world (von Hippel 1977, 1988). +={ von Hippel, E. } + +On the other hand, the findings of this book suggest that the "natural advantages" Porter proposes that domestic manufacturers will have with respect to filling the needs of local lead users may be eroding in the Internet age. As has been seen in the case of open source software, and by extension in the cases of other information-based products, users are capable of developing complex products in a coordinated way without geographic proximity. Participants in a particular open source project, for example, may come from a number of countries and may never meet face to face. In the case of physical products, the emergence of a pattern of user-based design followed by "foundry-style" production may also reduce the importance of propinquity between innovating lead users and manufacturers. As in the cases of integrated circuits and kitesurfing discussed earlier in this book, users can transmit CAD product-design information files from anywhere to any suitably equipped manufacturer for production. Probably only in the case of physical products where the interaction between product and production methods are not clear will geography continue to matter deeply in the age of the Internet. Nations may be able to create comparative advantages for domestic manufacturers with respect to profiting from innovation by lead users; however, they cannot assume that such advantages will continue to exist simply because of propinquity. +={ Custom products : + product platforms and | users and ; + Innovation communities : + open source software and ; + Kitesurfing ; + Open source software ; + Printed circuit CAD software ; + Open source software : + innovation communities and ; + Toolkits : + platform products and ; + Users : + custom products and +} + +!_ The Sociology of Technical Communities +={ Information commons +8 ; + Innovation communities : + sociology of +8 ; + Technical communities +8 +} + +Relevant elements of this field include studies in the sociology of technology in general and studies of the sociology of open source software communities in particular. Historical accounts of the evolution of a technology have often taken a linear view of their subject. In the linear view, a technology such as aerodynamics and related technological artifacts such as the airplane start at point A and then naturally evolve to end point B. In other words, it is implicitly assumed that the airplane will evolve from the artifact of wood and fabric and wire developed by the Wright brothers to the characteristics we associate with aircraft today. Nothing much to explain about that. +={ Open source software ; + Open source software : + innovation communities and +} + +In the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) model of technological evolution (Pinch and Bijker 1987), the direction in which an artifact (a product, for example) evolves depends very much on the meanings that different "groups with a problem" construct for it. These meanings, in turn, affect which of the many possible variations of a product are developed, how they evolve, and whether and how they eventually die. Groups that construct the meanings of a product centrally include, but are not restricted to, product users. For example, in the case of the bicycle, some relevant groups were users of various types---people who wanted to travel from place to place via bicycle, people who wanted to race bicycles, etc. Relevant non-user groups included "anticyclists," who had a negative view of the bicycle in its early days and wanted it to fail (Bijker 1995). +={ Bijker, W. ; + Pinch, T. +4 ; + Custom products : + users and +} + +When one takes the views of all relevant groups into account, one gets a much richer view of the "socially constructed" evolution of a technology. As a relatively recent example, consider the supersonic transport plane (SST) planned in the United States during the 1970s. Airlines, and potential passengers were "groups with a problem" who presumably wanted the technology for different reasons. Other relevant groups with a problem included people who expected to be negatively affected by the sonic boom the SST would cause, people who were concerned about the pollution its engines would cause in the stratosphere, and people who had other reasons for opposing or supporting the SST. Proposed designs evolved in an attempt to satisfy the various contending interest groups. Eventually it became clear that the SST designers could not arrive at a generally acceptable compromise solution and so the project failed (Horwich 1982). +={ Horwich, M. } + +Pinch and Kline (1996, pp. 774--775) elaborated on the original SCOT model by pointing out that the way a product is interpreted is not restricted to the design stage of a technology, but also can continue during the product's use. They illustrated with the case of the automobile: . . . +={ Kline, R. +2 } + +_1 although [automobile] manufacturers may have ascribed a particular meaning to the artifact they were not able to control how that artifact was used once it got into the hands of the users. Users precisely as users can embed new meanings into the technology. This happened with the adaptation of the car into rural life. As early as 1903, farm families started to define the car as more than a transportation device. In particular, they saw it as a general source of power. George Schmidt, a Kansas farmer, advised readers of the /{Rural New Yorker}/ in 1903 to "block up the hind axle and run a belt over the one wheel of the automobile and around the wheel on a [corn] sheller, grinder, saw, pump, or any other machine that the engine is capable of running, and see how the farmer can save money and be in style with any city man." T. A. Pottinger, an Illinois farm man, wrote in /{Wallace's Farmer}/ in 1909 that "the ideal farm car should have a detachable backseat, which could turn the vehicle into a small truck." Other Phenomena and Fields 173 +={ Pottinger, T. ; + Schmidt, G. +} + +Of course, user innovations and modifications are involved in these cases along with users' reinterpretation of product uses. Kline and Pinch report that manufacturers adopted some of the rural users' innovations, generally after a lag. For example, a car that could also serve as a small truck was eventually offered as a commercial product. +={ Users : + innovation and +13 ; + Manufacturers : + innovation and +} + +Research on communities of practice offers another link between studies of user innovation and sociology (Brown and Duguid 1991; Wenger 1998). The focus of this research is on the functioning of specialist communities. Researchers find that experts in a field spontaneously form interest groups that communicate to exchange their views and learnings on how to carry out and improve the practices of their profession. Members of communities of practice exchange help in informal ways that seem similar to the practices described above as characteristic of open source software projects and communities of sports innovators. +={ Brown, J. ; + Duguid, P. ; + Wenger, E. ; + Open source software +} + +Research on brand communities is still another related research thread (Muniz and O'Guinn 2001). Brand communities form around commercial brands and products (e.g., Lego construction toys) and even around products discontinued by their manufacturers e.g., Apple's Newton personal digital assistant). Brand communities can be intensely meaningful to participants and can involve user innovation. In Newton groups, for example, users develop new applications and exchange information about how to repair aging equipment (Muniz and Schau 2004). In Lego communities, lead users develop new products, new building techniques, and new offline and online multiplayer building projects that later prove to be of interest to the manufacturer (Antorini 2005). +={ Antorini, Y. ; + Brand communities ; + Muniz, A. ; + O'Guinn, T. ; + Schau, H. ; + Innovation communities : + brand and +} + +!_ The Management of Product Development +={ Product development +10 } + +Finally, I turn to links between user-centered innovation and teaching on the management of product development. Information on lead users as a source of new product ideas now appears in most marketing textbooks. There also should be a link to other elements of user-centered innovation processes in the literature on product-development management---but there really isn't much of one yet. Although much of the research on user innovation cited in this book is going on in schools of management and business economics, little of this information has moved into teaching related to the product-development process as of yet. + +Clearly, it would be useful to provide managers of both user firms and manufacturing firms with a better understanding of the management of user-centered innovation. It is a curious fact that even managers of firms that have built major product lines upon user-developed innovations may hold the manufacturer-centric view that "we developed that." For example, an early study of innovation in scientific instruments documented that nearly 80 percent of the major improvements commercialized by instrument manufacturers had been developed by users (von Hippel 1976). When I later discussed this finding with managers in instrument firms, most of them were astonished. They insisted that all the innovations in the study sample had been developed within manufacturing firms. They could be convinced otherwise only when supplied with actual publications by user-scientists describing user-built prototypes of those instrument improvements---prototypes developed from 5 to 7 years before any instrument firm had sold a functionally equivalent commercial product. +={ von Hippel, E. } + +My inquiries into why managers in this field and others held---and largely still hold---such contrary-to-fact beliefs identified several contributing factors. First, manufacturers seldom track where the major new products and product improvements they sell actually came from. Managers see no need to set up a tracking system, because the conventional wisdom is clear: "Everyone knows new products are developed by manufacturers such as ourselves based on user needs identified by market research." Further, the manufacturing firms have market-research and product-development departments in place, and innovations are somehow being produced. Thus, it is easy to conclude that the manufacturers' innovation processes must be working as expected. + +In fact, however, important, functionally novel innovations are often brought into manufacturers by informal channels. Product-development engineers may attend conferences and learn about important user innovations, salesmen and technical service personnel discover user-modified equipment on field visits, and so on. Once the basic innovation-related information is in house, the operating principles of a user's prototype will often be adopted, but the detailed design of the device will be changed and improved for production. After a while, the user's prototype, if remembered at all, will begin to look quite primitive to the firm's engineers relative to the much better product they have designed. Finally, when sales begin, the firm's advertising will urge customers to buy "/{our}/ wonderful new product." Other Phenomena and Fields 175 + +The net result is understandable: the user roots of many new commercial products, never widely known in manufacturing firms, are forgotten. And when it is time to develop the next innovation, management again turns to the conventional methods that "worked so well for us last time." Eventually, information about new user innovations will again arrive by pathways unnoticed and unmanaged---and with an unnecessary lag. + +To improve matters, managers must learn when it is appropriate to follow user-centered and manufacturer-centered innovation process paradigms and how user-centered innovation can best be managed when it is the method of choice. Managers in user firms and in manufacturing firms need tools with which to understand the innovate-or-buy decisions they face---to understand which product needs or which service needs users (rather than manufacturers) should invest in developing. Managers in user firms also need to learn how their firms can best carry out development work in their low-cost innovation niches: how they can best deploy their information-related advantages of being actual users and residing in the context of use to cheaply learn by doing. Managers in manufacturing firms will want to learn how they can best play a profitable role in user-centered innovation patterns when these play a role in the markets they serve. +={ Sticky information : + toolkits and +1 ; + Users : + innovate-or-buy decisions by | low-cost innovation niches of +} + +Innovating users may also want to learn whether and how to diffuse their innovations by becoming manufacturers. This may be a fairly common practice in some fields. Shah (2000) found that users of sports equipment sometimes became manufacturers by a very natural process. The users would demonstrate the performance and value of their innovations as they used them in public sporting events. Some of the participants in the meets would then ask "Can you make one of those for me too?" Informal hobby-level production would then sometimes become the basis of a major company. Lettl, Herstatt, and Gemünden (2004) report on case histories in which user-innovators became heavily involved in promoting the commercialization of important innovations in surgical equipment. These innovations tended to be developed by surgeons, who then often made major efforts to induce manufacturers to commercialize them. Hienerth (2004) documents how user-innovators in "rodeo kayaking" build their own boats, discover that kayak manufacturers (even those established by a previous generation of user-innovators) are unwilling to manufacture what they want, and so are driven to become manufacturers themselves. +={ Gemünden, H. ; + Lettl, C. ; + Herstatt, C. ; + Hienerth, C. ; + Shah, S. ; + Sporting equipment : + lead users and ; + Windsurfing ; + Surgical equipment +} + +Managers must learn that no single locus of innovation is the "right" one for either user firms or manufacturer firms. The locus of innovation varies between user firms and manufacturing firms according to market-related and information-related conditions. These conditions may well vary predictably over product life cycles. Utterback and Abernathy (1975) proposed that innovation by users is likely to be more important in the early stages of such cycles. Early in the life of a new product, there is a "fluid" stage in which the nature and the use of a product are unclear. Here, Utterback and Abernathy say, users play a big part in sorting the matter out, in part through innovation. Later, a dominant product design will emerge---a shared sense of exactly what a particular product is, what features and components it should include, and how it should function. (We all know, for example, that a car has four wheels and moves along the ground in directions determined by a steering wheel.) After that time, if the market for the product grows, innovation will shift from product to process as firms shift from the problem of what to produce to the problem of how to produce a well-understood product in ever greater volumes. From a lead user innovation perspective, of course, both functionally novel products and functionally novel processes are likely to be developed by users---in the first case users of the product, and in the second by manufacturing firms that use the process. +={ Albernathy, W. ; + Utterback, J. +} + +!_ In Conclusion + +In this book I have explored how and why users, individually and in firms and in communities, develop and freely reveal innovations. I have also argued that there is a general trend toward a open and distributed innovation process driven by steadily better and cheaper computing and communications. The net result is an ongoing shift toward the democratization of innovation. This welfare-enhancing shift is forcing major changes in user and manufacturer innovation practices, and is creating the need for change in government policies. It also, as I noted at the start of the book, presents major new opportunities for us all. Other Phenomena and Fields 177 + +1~ Notes + +!_ Chapter 2 + +1. LES contains four types of measures. Three ("benefits recognized early," "high benefits expected," and "direct elicitation of the construct") contain the core components of the lead user construct. The fourth ("applications generation") is a measure of a number of innovation-related activities in which users might engage: they "suggest new applications," they "pioneer those applications," and (because they have needs or problems earlier than their peers) they may be "used as a test site" (Morrison, Midgely, and Roberts 2004). + +!_ Chapter 3 + +1. Cluster analysis does not specify the "right" number of clusters---it simply segments a sample into smaller and smaller clusters until the analyst calls a halt. Determining an appropriate number of clusters within a sample can be done in different ways. Of course, it always possible to say that "I only want to deal with three market segments, so I will stop my analysis when my sample has been segmented into three clusters." More commonly, analysts will examine the increase of squared error sums of each step, and generally will view the optimal number of clusters as having been reached when the plot shows a sudden "elbow" (Myers 1996). Since this technique does not incorporate information on remaining within-cluster heterogeneity, it can lead to solutions with a large amount of within-cluster variance. The "cubic clustering criterion" (CCC) partially addresses this concern by measuring the within-cluster homogeneity relative to the between-cluster heterogeneity. It suggests choosing the number of clusters where this value peaks (Milligan and Cooper 1985). However, this method appears to be rarely used: Ketchen and Shook (1996) found it used in only 5 of 45 segmentation studies they examined. + +2. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix + +3. http://modules.apache.org/ + +4. To measure heterogeneity, Franke and I analyzed the extent to which j standards, varying from [1; i], meet the needs of the i individuals in our sample. Conceptually, we first locate a product in multi-dimensional need space (dimensions = 45 in the case of our present study) that minimizes the distances to each individual's needs. (This step is analogous to the Ward's method in cluster analysis that also minimizes within cluster variation; see Punj and Stewart 1983.) The "error" is then measured as the sum of squared Euclidean distances. We then repeated these steps to determine the error for two optimally positioned products, three products, and so on up to a number equaling I -- 1. The sum of squared errors for all cases is then a simple coefficient that measures how much the needs of i individuals can be satisfied with j standard products. The "coefficient of heterogeneity" just specified is sensitive both to the (average) distance between the needs and for the configuration of the needs: when the needs tend to form clusters the heterogeneity coefficient is lower than if they are evenly spread. To make the coefficient comparable across different populations, we calibrate it using a bootstrapping technique (Efron 1979) involving dividing the coefficient by the expected value (this value is generated by averaging the heterogeneity of many random distributions of heterogeneity of the same kind). The average random heterogeneity coefficient is then an appropriate value for calibration purposes: it assumes that there is no systematic relationship between the needs of the individuals or between the need dimensions. + +5. Conceptually, it can be possible to generate "one perfect product" for everyone--- in which case heterogeneity of demand is zero---by simply creating all the features wanted by anyone (45 + 92 features in the case of this study), and incorporating them in the "one perfect product." Users could then select the features they want from a menu contained in the one perfect product to tailor it to their own tastes. Doing this is at least conceptually possible in the case of software, but less so in the case of a physical product for two reasons: (1) delivering all possible physical options to everyone who buys the product would be expensive for physical goods (while costing nothing extra in the case of information products); (2) some options are mutually exclusive (an automobile cannot be both red and green at the same time). + +6. The difference between actual willingness to pay and expressed willingness to pay is much lower for private goods (our case) than for public goods. In the case of private goods, Loomis et al. (1996) found the expressed willingness to pay for art prints to be twice the actual WTP. Willis and Powe (1998) found that among visitors to a castle the expressed WTP was 60 percent lower than the actual WTP. In the case of public goods, Brown et al. (1996), in a study of willingness to pay for removal of a road from a wilderness area, found the expressed WTP to be 4--6 times the actual WTP. Lindsey and Knaap (1999), in a study of WTP for a public urban greenway, found the expressed WTP to be 2-10 times the actual WPT. Neil et al. (1994) found the expressed WTP for conserving an original painting in the desert to be 9 times the actual WTP. Seip and Strand (1992) found that less than 10 percent of those who expressed interest in paying to join an environmental organization actually joined. + +!_ Chapter 6 + +1. As a specific example of a project with an emergent goal, consider the beginnings of the Linux open source software project. In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a student in Finland, wanted a Unix operating system that could be run on his PC, which was equipped with a 386 processor. Minix was the only software available at that time but it was commercial, closed source, and it traded at US$150. Torvalds found this too expensive, and started development of a Posix-compatible operating system, later known as Linux. Torvalds did not immediately publicize a very broad and ambitious goal, nor did he attempt to recruit contributors. He simply expressed his private motivation in a message he posted on July 3, 1991, to the USENET newsgroup comp.os.minix (Wayner 2000): Hello netlanders, Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix standard definition. [Posix is a standard for UNIX designers. A software using POSIX is compatible with other UNIX-based software.] Could somebody please point me to a (preferably) machine-readable format of the latest posix-rules? Ftp-sites would be nice. In response, Torvalds got several return messages with Posix rules and people expressing a general interest in the project. By the early 1992, several skilled programmers contributed to Linux and the number of users increased by the day. Today, Linux is the largest open source development project extant in terms of number of developers. +={ Linux } + +!_ Chapter 7 + +1. When they do not incorporate these qualities, they would be more properly referred to as networks---but communities is the term commonly used, and I follow that practice here. + +2. hacker n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. . . . 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence password hacker, network hacker. The correct term for this sense is cracker (Raymond 1996). + +3. Source code is a sequence of instructions to be executed by a computer to accomplish a program's purpose. Programmers write computer software in the form of source code, and also document that source code with brief written explanations of the purpose and design of each section of their program. To convert a program into a form that can actually operate a computer, source code is translated into machine code using a software tool called a compiler. The compiling process removes program documentation and creates a binary version of the program---a sequence of computer instructions consisting only of strings of ones and zeros. Binary code is very difficult for programmers to read and interpret. Therefore, programmers or firms that wish to prevent others from understanding and modifying their code will release only binary versions of the software. In contrast, programmers or firms that wish to enable others to understand and update and modify their software will provide them with its source code. (Moerke 2000, Simon 1996). + +4. See www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL + +5. http://www.sourceforge.net + +6. "The owner(s) [or `maintainers'] of an open source software project are those who have the exclusive right, recognized by the community at large, to redistribute modified versions. . . . According to standard open source licenses, all parties are equal in the evolutionary game. But in practice there is a very well-recognized distinction between `official' patches [changes to the software], approved and integrated into the evolving software by the publicly recognized maintainers, and `rogue' patches by third parties. Rogue patches are unusual and generally not trusted." (Raymond 1999, p. 89) + +!_ Chapter 8 + +1. See also Bresnahan and Greenstein 1996b; Bresnahan and Saloner 1997; Saloner and Steinmueller 1996. + +!_ Chapter 10 + +1. ABS braking is intended to keep a vehicle's wheels turning during braking. ABS works by automatically and rapidly "pumping" the brakes. The result is that the wheels continue to revolve rather than "locking up," and the operator continues to have control over steering. + +2. In the general literature, Armstrong's (2001) review on forecast bias for new product introduction indicates that sales forecasts are generally optimistic, but that that upward bias decreases as the magnitude of the sales forecast increases. Coller and Yohn (1998) review the literature on bias in accuracy of management earnings forecasts and find that little systematic bias occurs. Tull's (1967) model calculates $15 million in revenue as a level above which forecasts actually become pessimistic on average. 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M. +yr: 1996 +ti: Austrian and Industrial Organization Perspectives on Firm Level Competitive Activity and Performance +jo: Organization Science +vo: 7, no. 3 +pg: 243-254 + +%% index di.eric_von_hippel_index.txt democratizing_innovation.eric_von_hippel_index.txt diff --git a/markup/non-pod-samples/free_culture.lawrence_lessignon-pod-sample.sst b/markup/non-pod-samples/free_culture.lawrence_lessignon-pod-sample.sst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a9141fe --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/non-pod-samples/free_culture.lawrence_lessignon-pod-sample.sst @@ -0,0 +1,5686 @@ +# SiSU 8.0 + +title: + main: "Free Culture" + subtitle: "How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity" + +creator: + author: "Lessig, Lawrence" + +date: + published: "2004-03-25" + created: "2004-03-25" + issued: "2004-03-25" + available: "2004-03-25" + valid: "2004-03-25" + modified: "2004-03-25" + +rights: + copyright: "Lawrence Lessig, 2004." + license: "Free Culture is Licensed under a Creative Commons License. This License permits non-commercial use of this work, so long as attribution is given. For more information about the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0/" + +classify: + topic_register: "SiSU markup sample:book:discourse;book:discourse:intellectual property|copyright|creative commons|free culture;copyright;free culture;creative commons;intellectual property:copyright|public domain;intellectual property:copyright:creative commons;book:subject:culture|copyright|society|public policy|mass media;culture;society" + +identifier: + isbn: "9781594200069" + oclc: "53324884" + +# :isbn="1594200068" + +links: [ + "{Free Culture}http://www.free-culture.cc", + "{Remixes}http://www.free-culture.cc/remixes/", + "{@ Wikipedia}http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_%28book%29", + "{@ Amazon.com}http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594200068", + "{@ Barnes & Noble}http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=1594200068" + ] + +make: + doc_type: "book" + breaks: "new=:B; break=1" + home_button_image: "{freeculture.home.png }http://www.free-culture.cc" + home_button_text: "{Free Culture}http://www.free-culture.cc; {Lawrence Lessig}http://www.lessig.org" + footer: "{Free Culture}http://www.free-culture.cc; {Lawrence Lessig}http://www.lessig.org" + pot_master: "free_culture.lawrence_lessig.sst" + +:A~ @title-author-date + +1~attribution Attribution~# + +To Eric Eldred - whose work first drew me to this cause, and for whom it continues still.~# + +:B~ PREFACE + +1~preface [Preface]-# + +!_ At the end +of his review of my first book, /{Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace}/, David Pogue, a brilliant writer and author of countless technical and computer- related texts, wrote this: + +``` quote +Unlike actual law, Internet software has no capacity to punish. It doesn't affect people who aren't online (and only a tiny minority of the world population is). And if you don't like the Internet's system, you can always flip off the modem.~{ David Pogue, "Don't Just Chat, Do Something," /{New York Times,}/ 30 January 2000. }~ +``` + +Pogue was skeptical of the core argument of the book - that software, or "code," functioned as a kind of law - and his review suggested the happy thought that if life in cyberspace got bad, we could always "drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome"- like simply flip a switch and be back home. Turn off the modem, unplug the computer, and any troubles that exist in /{that}/ space wouldn't "affect" us anymore. + +Pogue might have been right in 1999 - I'm skeptical, but maybe. But even if he was right then, the point is not right now: /{Free Culture}/ is about the troubles the Internet causes even after the modem is turned off. It is an argument about how the battles that now rage regarding life on-line have fundamentally affected "people who aren't online." There is no switch that will insulate us from the Internet's effect. + +But unlike /{Code}/, the argument here is not much about the Internet itself. It is instead about the consequence of the Internet to a part of our tradition that is much more fundamental, and, as hard as this is for a geek-wanna-be to admit, much more important. + +That tradition is the way our culture gets made. As I explain in the pages that follow, we come from a tradition of "free culture" - not "free" as in "free beer" (to borrow a phrase from the founder of the free-software movement, ~{ Richard M. Stallman, /{Free Software, Free Societies}/ 57 ( Joshua Gay, ed. 2002). }~ but "free" as in "free speech," "free markets," "free trade," "free enterprise," "free will," and "free elections." A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain /{as free as possible}/ from the control of the past. A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a "permission culture" - a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past. + +If we understood this change, I believe we would resist it. Not "we" on the Left or "you" on the Right, but we who have no stake in the particular industries of culture that defined the twentieth century. Whether you are on the Left or the Right, if you are in this sense disinterested, then the story I tell here will trouble you. For the changes I describe affect values that both sides of our political culture deem fundamental. + +We saw a glimpse of this bipartisan outrage in the early summer of 2003. As the FCC considered changes in media ownership rules that would relax limits on media concentration, an extraordinary coalition generated more than 700,000 letters to the FCC opposing the change. As William Safire described marching "uncomfortably alongside CodePink Women for Peace and the National Rifle Association, between liberal Olympia Snowe and conservative Ted Stevens," he formulated perhaps most simply just what was at stake: the concentration of power. And as he asked, +={ power, concentration of +2 } + +``` quote +Does that sound unconservative? Not to me. The concentration of power - political, corporate, media, cultural - should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy."~{ William Safire, "The Great Media Gulp," /{New York Times,}/ 22 May 2003. }~ +``` + +This idea is an element of the argument of /{Free Culture}/, though my focus is not just on the concentration of power produced by concentrations in ownership, but more importantly, if because less visibly, on the concentration of power produced by a radical change in the effective scope of the law. The law is changing; that change is altering the way our culture gets made; that change should worry you - whether or not you care about the Internet, and whether you're on Safire's left or on his right. + +!_ The inspiration +for the title and for much of the argument of this book comes from the work of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. Indeed, as I reread Stallman's own work, especially the essays in /{Free Software, Free Society}/, I realize that all of the theoretical insights I develop here are insights Stallman described decades ago. One could thus well argue that this work is "merely" derivative. + +I accept that criticism, if indeed it is a criticism. The work of a lawyer is always derivative, and I mean to do nothing more in this book than to remind a culture about a tradition that has always been its own. Like Stallman, I defend that tradition on the basis of values. Like Stallman, I believe those are the values of freedom. And like Stallman, I believe those are values of our past that will need to be defended in our future. A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now. + +Like Stallman's arguments for free software, an argument for free culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and even harder to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. + +Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is against that extremism that this book is written. + +:B~ INTRODUCTION + +1~intro [Intro]-# + +!_ On December 17, 1903, +on a windy North Carolina beach for just shy of one hundred seconds, the Wright brothers demonstrated that a heavier-than-air, self- propelled vehicle could fly. The moment was electric and its importance widely understood. Almost immediately, there was an explosion of interest in this newfound technology of manned flight, and a gaggle of innovators began to build upon it. +={ Wright brothers +1 } + +At the time the Wright brothers invented the airplane, American law held that a property owner presumptively owned not just the surface of his land, but all the land below, down to the center of the earth, and all the space above, to "an indefinite extent, upwards."~{ St. George Tucker, /{Blackstone's Commentaries}/ 3 (South Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1969), 18. }~ For many years, scholars had puzzled about how best to interpret the idea that rights in land ran to the heavens. Did that mean that you owned the stars? Could you prosecute geese for their willful and regular trespass? +={ air traffic, land ownership vs. +8 ; + land ownership, air traffic and +8 ; + property rights : + air traffic vs. +8 +} + +Then came airplanes, and for the first time, this principle of American law - deep within the foundations of our tradition, and acknowledged by the most important legal thinkers of our past - mattered. If my land reaches to the heavens, what happens when United flies over my field? Do I have the right to banish it from my property? Am I allowed to enter into an exclusive license with Delta Airlines? Could we set up an auction to decide how much these rights are worth? + +In 1945, these questions became a federal case. When North Carolina farmers Thomas Lee and Tinie Causby started losing chickens because of low-flying military aircraft (the terrified chickens apparently flew into the barn walls and died), the Causbys filed a lawsuit saying that the government was trespassing on their land. The airplanes, of course, never touched the surface of the Causbys' land. But if, as Blackstone, Kent, and Coke had said, their land reached to "an indefinite extent, upwards," then the government was trespassing on their property, and the Causbys wanted it to stop. +={ Causby, Thomas Lee ; + Causby, Tinie +} + +The Supreme Court agreed to hear the Causbys' case. Congress had declared the airways public, but if one's property really extended to the heavens, then Congress's declaration could well have been an unconstitutional "taking" of property without compensation. The Court acknowledged that "it is ancient doctrine that common law ownership of the land extended to the periphery of the universe." But Justice Douglas had no patience for ancient doctrine. In a single paragraph, hundreds of years of property law were erased. As he wrote for the Court, +={ Douglas, William O. +2 ; + Supreme Court, U.S. : + on airspace vs. land rights +4 +} + +``` quote +[The] doctrine has no place in the modern world. The air is a public highway, as Congress has declared. Were that not true, every transcontinental flight would subject the operator to countless trespass suits. Common sense revolts at the idea. To recognize such private claims to the airspace would clog these highways, seriously interfere with their control and development in the public interest, and transfer into private ownership that to which only the public has a just claim."~{ United States v. Causby, U.S. 328 (1946): 256, 261. The Court did find that there could be a "taking" if the government's use of its land effectively destroyed the value of the Causbys' land. This example was suggested to me by Keith Aoki's wonderful piece, "(Intellectual) Property and Sovereignty: Notes Toward a Cultural Geography of Authorship," /{Stanford Law Review}/ 48 (1996): 1293, 1333. See also Paul Goldstein, /{Real Property}/ (Mineola, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 1984), 1112-13. }~ +``` + +"Common sense revolts at the idea." + +This is how the law usually works. Not often this abruptly or impatiently, but eventually, this is how it works. It was Douglas's style not to dither. Other justices would have blathered on for pages to reach the conclusion that Douglas holds in a single line: "Common sense revolts at the idea." But whether it takes pages or a few words, it is the special genius of a common law system, as ours is, that the law adjusts to the technologies of the time. And as it adjusts, it changes. Ideas that were as solid as rock in one age crumble in another. + +Or at least, this is how things happen when there's no one powerful on the other side of the change. The Causbys were just farmers. And though there were no doubt many like them who were upset by the growing traffic in the air (though one hopes not many chickens flew themselves into walls), the Causbys of the world would find it very hard to unite and stop the idea, and the technology, that the Wright brothers had birthed. The Wright brothers spat airplanes into the technological meme pool; the idea then spread like a virus in a chicken coop; farmers like the Causbys found themselves surrounded by "what seemed reasonable" given the technology that the Wrights had produced. They could stand on their farms, dead chickens in hand, and shake their fists at these newfangled technologies all they wanted. They could call their representatives or even file a lawsuit. But in the end, the force of what seems "obvious" to everyone else - the power of "common sense" - would prevail. Their "private interest" would not be allowed to defeat an obvious public gain. +={ Causby, Thomas Lee ; + Causby, Tinie ; + Wright brothers +} + +!_ Edwin Howard Armstrong +is one of America's forgotten inventor geniuses. He came to the great American inventor scene just after the titans Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. But his work in the area of radio technology was perhaps the most important of any single inventor in the first fifty years of radio. He was better educated than Michael Faraday, who as a bookbinder's apprentice had discovered electric induction in 1831. But he had the same intuition about how the world of radio worked, and on at least three occasions, Armstrong invented profoundly important technologies that advanced our understanding of radio. +={ Armstrong, Edwin Howard +14 ; + Bell, Alexander Graham ; + Edison, Thomas ; + Faraday, Michael ; + radio : + FM spectrum of +12 +} + +On the day after Christmas, 1933, four patents were issued to Armstrong for his most significant invention - FM radio. Until then, consumer radio had been amplitude-modulated (AM) radio. The theorists of the day had said that frequency-modulated (FM) radio could never work. They were right about FM radio in a narrow band of spectrum. But Armstrong discovered that frequency-modulated radio in a wide band of spectrum would deliver an astonishing fidelity of sound, with much less transmitter power and static. + +On November 5, 1935, he demonstrated the technology at a meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers at the Empire State Building in New York City. He tuned his radio dial across a range of AM stations, until the radio locked on a broadcast that he had arranged from seventeen miles away. The radio fell totally silent, as if dead, and then with a clarity no one else in that room had ever heard from an electrical device, it produced the sound of an announcer's voice: "This is amateur station W2AG at Yonkers, New York, operating on frequency modulation at two and a half meters." + +The audience was hearing something no one had thought possible: + +``` quote +A glass of water was poured before the microphone in Yonkers; it sounded like a glass of water being poured. ... A paper was crumpled and torn; it sounded like paper and not like a crackling forest fire. ... Sousa marches were played from records and a piano solo and guitar number were performed. ... The music was projected with a live-ness rarely if ever heard before from a radio 'music box.' "~{ Lawrence Lessing, /{Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong}/ (Philadelphia: J. B. Lipincott Company, 1956), 209. }~ +``` + +As our own common sense tells us, Armstrong had discovered a vastly superior radio technology. But at the time of his invention, Armstrong was working for RCA. RCA was the dominant player in the then dominant AM radio market. By 1935, there were a thousand radio stations across the United States, but the stations in large cities were all owned by a handful of networks. +={ RCA +9 ; + media : + ownership concentration in +9 +} + +RCA's president, David Sarnoff, a friend of Armstrong's, was eager that Armstrong discover a way to remove static from AM radio. So Sarnoff was quite excited when Armstrong told him he had a device that removed static from "radio." But when Armstrong demonstrated his invention, Sarnoff was not pleased. +={ Sarnoff, David } + +``` quote +I thought Armstrong would invent some kind of a filter to remove static from our AM radio. I didn't think he'd start a revolution - start up a whole damn new industry to compete with RCA."~{ See "Saints: The Heroes and Geniuses of the Electronic Era," First Electronic Church of America, at www.webstationone.com/fecha, available at link #1. }~ +``` + +Armstrong's invention threatened RCA's AM empire, so the company launched a campaign to smother FM radio. While FM may have been a superior technology, Sarnoff was a superior tactician. As one author described, +={ FM radio +5 } + +``` quote +The forces for FM, largely engineering, could not overcome the weight of strategy devised by the sales, patent, and legal offices to subdue this threat to corporate position. For FM, if allowed to develop unrestrained, posed ... a complete reordering of radio power ... and the eventual overthrow of the carefully restricted AM system on which RCA had grown to power."~{ Lessing, 226. }~ +``` + +RCA at first kept the technology in house, insisting that further tests were needed. When, after two years of testing, Armstrong grew impatient, RCA began to use its power with the government to stall FM radio's deployment generally. In 1936, RCA hired the former head of the FCC and assigned him the task of assuring that the FCC assign spectrum in a way that would castrate FM - principally by moving FM radio to a different band of spectrum. At first, these efforts failed. But when Armstrong and the nation were distracted by World War II, RCA's work began to be more successful. Soon after the war ended, the FCC announced a set of policies that would have one clear effect: FM radio would be crippled. As Lawrence Lessing described it, +={ FCC : + on FM radio +2 ; + Lessig, Lawrence +1 +} + +``` quote +The series of body blows that FM radio received right after the war, in a series of rulings manipulated through the FCC by the big radio interests, were almost incredible in their force and deviousness."~{ Lessing, 256. }~ +``` + +To make room in the spectrum for RCA's latest gamble, television, FM radio users were to be moved to a totally new spectrum band. The power of FM radio stations was also cut, meaning FM could no longer be used to beam programs from one part of the country to another. (This change was strongly supported by AT&T, because the loss of FM relaying stations would mean radio stations would have to buy wired links from AT&T.) The spread of FM radio was thus choked, at least temporarily. +={ AT&T } + +Armstrong resisted RCA's efforts. In response, RCA resisted Armstrong's patents. After incorporating FM technology into the emerging standard for television, RCA declared the patents invalid - baselessly, and almost fifteen years after they were issued. It thus refused to pay him royalties. For six years, Armstrong fought an expensive war of litigation to defend the patents. Finally, just as the patents expired, RCA offered a settlement so low that it would not even cover Armstrong's lawyers' fees. Defeated, broken, and now broke, in 1954 Armstrong wrote a short note to his wife and then stepped out of a thirteenth- story window to his death. + +This is how the law sometimes works. Not often this tragically, and rarely with heroic drama, but sometimes, this is how it works. From the beginning, government and government agencies have been subject to capture. They are more likely captured when a powerful interest is threatened by either a legal or technical change. That powerful interest too often exerts its influence within the government to get the government to protect it. The rhetoric of this protection is of course always public spirited; the reality is something different. Ideas that were as solid as rock in one age, but that, left to themselves, would crumble in another, are sustained through this subtle corruption of our political process. RCA had what the Causbys did not: the power to stifle the effect of technological change. +={ Causby, Thomas Lee ; + Causby, Tinie +} + +!_ There's no +single inventor of the Internet. Nor is there any good date upon which to mark its birth. Yet in a very short time, the Internet has become part of ordinary American life. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 58 percent of Americans had access to the Internet in 2002, up from 49 percent two years before.~{ Amanda Lenhart, "The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A New Look at Internet Access and the Digital Divide," Pew Internet and American Life Project, 15 April 2003: 6, available at link #2. }~ That number could well exceed two thirds of the nation by the end of 2004. +={ Internet : + development of +2 +} + +As the Internet has been integrated into ordinary life, it has changed things. Some of these changes are technical - the Internet has made communication faster, it has lowered the cost of gathering data, and so on. These technical changes are not the focus of this book. They are important. They are not well understood. But they are the sort of thing that would simply go away if we all just switched the Internet off. They don't affect people who don't use the Internet, or at least they don't affect them directly. They are the proper subject of a book about the Internet. But this is not a book about the Internet. + +Instead, this book is about an effect of the Internet beyond the Internet itself: an effect upon how culture is made. My claim is that the Internet has induced an important and unrecognized change in that process. That change will radically transform a tradition that is as old as the Republic itself. Most, if they recognized this change, would reject it. Yet most don't even see the change that the Internet has introduced. + +We can glimpse a sense of this change by distinguishing between commercial and noncommercial culture, and by mapping the law's regulation of each. By "commercial culture" I mean that part of our culture that is produced and sold or produced to be sold. By "noncommercial culture" I mean all the rest. When old men sat around parks or on street corners telling stories that kids and others consumed, that was noncommercial culture. When Noah Webster published his "Reader," or Joel Barlow his poetry, that was commercial culture. +={ Barlow, Joel ; + culture : + commercial vs. noncommercial +6 ; + Webster, Noah +} + +At the beginning of our history, and for just about the whole of our tradition, noncommercial culture was essentially unregulated. Of course, if your stories were lewd, or if your song disturbed the peace, then the law might intervene. But the law was never directly concerned with the creation or spread of this form of culture, and it left this culture "free." The ordinary ways in which ordinary individuals shared and transformed their culture - telling stories, reenacting scenes from plays or TV, participating in fan clubs, sharing music, making tapes - were left alone by the law. + +The focus of the law was on commercial creativity. At first slightly, then quite extensively, the law protected the incentives of creators by granting them exclusive rights to their creative work, so that they could sell those exclusive rights in a commercial marketplace.~{ This is not the only purpose of copyright, though it is the overwhelmingly primary purpose of the copyright established in the federal constitution. State copyright law historically protected not just the commercial interest in publication, but also a privacy interest. By granting authors the exclusive right to first publication, state copyright law gave authors the power to control the spread of facts about them. See Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy," /{Harvard Law Review}/ 4 (1890): 193, 198-200. }~ This is also, of course, an important part of creativity and culture, and it has become an increasingly important part in America. But in no sense was it dominant within our tradition. It was instead just one part, a controlled part, balanced with the free. +={ Copyright infringement lawsuits : + commercial creativity as primary purpose of +2 +} + +This rough divide between the free and the controlled has now been erased.~{ 9. See Jessica Litman, /{Digital Copyright}/ (New York: Prometheus Books, 2001), ch. 13. }~ The Internet has set the stage for this erasure and, pushed by big media, the law has now affected it. For the first time in our tradition, the ordinary ways in which individuals create and share culture fall within the reach of the regulation of the law, which has expanded to draw within its control a vast amount of culture and creativity that it never reached before. The technology that preserved the balance of our history - between uses of our culture that were free and uses of our culture that were only upon permission - has been undone. The consequence is that we are less and less a free culture, more and more a permission culture. +={ free culture : + permission culture vs. ; + permission culture : + free culture vs. +} + +This change gets justified as necessary to protect commercial creativity. And indeed, protectionism is precisely its motivation. But the protectionism that justifies the changes that I will describe below is not the limited and balanced sort that has defined the law in the past. This is not a protectionism to protect artists. It is instead a protectionism to protect certain forms of business. Corporations threatened by the potential of the Internet to change the way both commercial and noncommercial culture are made and shared have united to induce lawmakers to use the law to protect them. It is the story of RCA and Armstrong; it is the dream of the Causbys. +={ Causby, Thomas Lee ; + Causby, Tinie ; + protection of artists vs. business interests +} + +For the Internet has unleashed an extraordinary possibility for many to participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that reaches far beyond local boundaries. That power has changed the marketplace for making and cultivating culture generally, and that change in turn threatens established content industries. The Internet is thus to the industries that built and distributed content in the twentieth century what FM radio was to AM radio, or what the truck was to the railroad industry of the nineteenth century: the beginning of the end, or at least a substantial transformation. Digital technologies, tied to the Internet, could produce a vastly more competitive and vibrant market for building and cultivating culture; that market could include a much wider and more diverse range of creators; those creators could produce and distribute a much more vibrant range of creativity; and depending upon a few important factors, those creators could earn more on average from this system than creators do today - all so long as the RCAs of our day don't use the law to protect themselves against this competition. + +Yet, as I argue in the pages that follow, that is precisely what is happening in our culture today. These modern-day equivalents of the early twentieth-century radio or nineteenth-century railroads are using their power to get the law to protect them against this new, more efficient, more vibrant technology for building culture. They are succeeding in their plan to remake the Internet before the Internet remakes them. + +It doesn't seem this way to many. The battles over copyright and the Internet seem remote to most. To the few who follow them, they seem mainly about a much simpler brace of questions - whether "piracy" will be permitted, and whether "property" will be protected. The "war" that has been waged against the technologies of the Internet - what Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) president Jack Valenti calls his "own terrorist war"~{ Amy Harmon, "Black Hawk Download: Moving Beyond Music, Pirates Use New Tools to Turn the Net into an Illicit Video Club," /{New York Times,}/ 17 January 2002. }~ - has been framed as a battle about the rule of law and respect for property. To know which side to take in this war, most think that we need only decide whether we're for property or against it. +={ Valenti, Jack : + on creative property rights +} + +If those really were the choices, then I would be with Jack Valenti and the content industry. I, too, am a believer in property, and especially in the importance of what Mr. Valenti nicely calls "creative property." I believe that "piracy" is wrong, and that the law, properly tuned, should punish "piracy," whether on or off the Internet. + +But those simple beliefs mask a much more fundamental question and a much more dramatic change. My fear is that unless we come to see this change, the war to rid the world of Internet "pirates" will also rid our culture of values that have been integral to our tradition from the start. + +These values built a tradition that, for at least the first 180 years of our Republic, guaranteed creators the right to build freely upon their past, and protected creators and innovators from either state or private control. The First Amendment protected creators against state control. And as Professor Neil Netanel powerfully argues,~{ Neil W. Netanel, "Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society," /{Yale Law Journal}/ 106 (1996): 283. }~ copyright law, properly balanced, protected creators against private control. Our tradition was thus neither Soviet nor the tradition of patrons. It instead carved out a wide berth within which creators could cultivate and extend our culture. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + First Amendment to ; + Copyright law : + as protection of creators ; + First Amendment ; + Netanel, Neil Weinstock +} + +Yet the law's response to the Internet, when tied to changes in the technology of the Internet itself, has massively increased the effective regulation of creativity in America. To build upon or critique the culture around us one must ask, Oliver Twist - like, for permission first. Permission is, of course, often granted - but it is not often granted to the critical or the independent. We have built a kind of cultural nobility; those within the noble class live easily; those outside it don't. But it is nobility of any form that is alien to our tradition. + +The story that follows is about this war. Is it not about the "centrality of technology" to ordinary life. I don't believe in gods, digital or otherwise. Nor is it an effort to demonize any individual or group, for neither do I believe in a devil, corporate or otherwise. It is not a morality tale. Nor is it a call to jihad against an industry. + +It is instead an effort to understand a hopelessly destructive war inspired by the technologies of the Internet but reaching far beyond its code. And by understanding this battle, it is an effort to map peace. There is no good reason for the current struggle around Internet technologies to continue. There will be great harm to our tradition and culture if it is allowed to continue unchecked. We must come to understand the source of this war. We must resolve it soon. + +!_ Like the Causbys' +battle, this war is, in part, about "property." The property of this war is not as tangible as the Causbys', and no innocent chicken has yet to lose its life. Yet the ideas surrounding this "property" are as obvious to most as the Causbys' claim about the sacredness of their farm was to them. We are the Causbys. Most of us take for granted the extraordinarily powerful claims that the owners of "intellectual property" now assert. Most of us, like the Causbys, treat these claims as obvious. And hence we, like the Causbys, object when a new technology interferes with this property. It is as plain to us as it was to them that the new technologies of the Internet are "trespassing" upon legitimate claims of "property." It is as plain to us as it was to them that the law should intervene to stop this trespass. +={ Causby, Thomas Lee +1 ; + Causby, Tinie +1 ; + intellectual property rights +8 +} + +And thus, when geeks and technologists defend their Armstrong or Wright brothers technology, most of us are simply unsympathetic. Common sense does not revolt. Unlike in the case of the unlucky Causbys, common sense is on the side of the property owners in this war. Unlike the lucky Wright brothers, the Internet has not inspired a revolution on its side. +={ Wright brothers } + +My hope is to push this common sense along. I have become increasingly amazed by the power of this idea of intellectual property and, more importantly, its power to disable critical thought by policy makers and citizens. There has never been a time in our history when more of our "culture" was as "owned" as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the /{uses}/ of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now. +={ power, concentration of } + +The puzzle is, Why? + +Is it because we have come to understand a truth about the value and importance of absolute property over ideas and culture? Is it because we have discovered that our tradition of rejecting such an absolute claim was wrong? + +Or is it because the idea of absolute property over ideas and culture benefits the RCAs of our time and fits our own unreflective intuitions? + +Is the radical shift away from our tradition of free culture an instance of America correcting a mistake from its past, as we did after a bloody war with slavery, and as we are slowly doing with inequality? Or is the radical shift away from our tradition of free culture yet another example of a political system captured by a few powerful special interests? + +Does common sense lead to the extremes on this question because common sense actually believes in these extremes? Or does common sense stand silent in the face of these extremes because, as with Armstrong versus RCA, the more powerful side has ensured that it has the more powerful view? + +I don't mean to be mysterious. My own views are resolved. I believe it was right for common sense to revolt against the extremism of the Causbys. I believe it would be right for common sense to revolt against the extreme claims made today on behalf of "intellectual property." What the law demands today is increasingly as silly as a sheriff arresting an airplane for trespass. But the consequences of this silliness will be much more profound. +={ Causby, Thomas Lee ; + Causby, Tinie +} + +!_ The struggle +that rages just now centers on two ideas: "piracy" and "property." My aim in this book's next two parts is to explore these two ideas. + +My method is not the usual method of an academic. I don't want to plunge you into a complex argument, buttressed with references to obscure French theorists' however natural that is for the weird sort we academics have become. Instead I begin in each part with a collection of stories that set a context within which these apparently simple ideas can be more fully understood. + +The two sections set up the core claim of this book: that while the Internet has indeed produced something fantastic and new, our government, pushed by big media to respond to this "something new," is destroying something very old. Rather than understanding the changes the Internet might permit, and rather than taking time to let "common sense" resolve how best to respond, we are allowing those most threatened by the changes to use their power to change the law - and more importantly, to use their power to change something fundamental about who we have always been. + +We allow this, I believe, not because it is right, and not because most of us really believe in these changes. We allow it because the interests most threatened are among the most powerful players in our depressingly compromised process of making law. This book is the story of one more consequence of this form of corruption - a consequence to which most of us remain oblivious. + +:B~ "PIRACY" + +1~intro_piracy [Intro]-# + +!_ Since the inception +of the law regulating creative property, there has been a war against "piracy." The precise contours of this concept, "piracy," are hard to sketch, but the animating injustice is easy to capture. As Lord Mansfield wrote in a case that extended the reach of English copyright law to include sheet music, +={ Copyright law : + English ; + Mansfield, William Murray, Lord ; + music publishing ; + sheet music +} + +``` quote +A person may use the copy by playing it, but he has no right to rob the author of the profit, by multiplying copies and disposing of them for his own use."~{ /{Bach v. Longman,}/ 98 Eng. Rep. 1274 (1777) (Mansfield). }~ +``` + +Today we are in the middle of another "war" against "piracy." The Internet has provoked this war. The Internet makes possible the efficient spread of content. Peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing is among the most efficient of the efficient technologies the Internet enables. Using distributed intelligence, p2p systems facilitate the easy spread of content in a way unimagined a generation ago. +={ Internet : + efficient content distribution on ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + efficiency of +1 +} + +_{This}_ efficiency does not respect the traditional lines of copyright. The network doesn't discriminate between the sharing of copyrighted and uncopyrighted content. Thus has there been a vast amount of sharing of copyrighted content. That sharing in turn has excited the war, as copyright owners fear the sharing will "rob the author of the profit." + +The warriors have turned to the courts, to the legislatures, and increasingly to technology to defend their "property" against this "piracy." A generation of Americans, the warriors warn, is being raised to believe that "property" should be "free." Forget tattoos, never mind body piercing - our kids are becoming thieves! + +There's no doubt that "piracy" is wrong, and that pirates should be punished. But before we summon the executioners, we should put this notion of "piracy" in some context. For as the concept is increasingly used, at its core is an extraordinary idea that is almost certainly wrong. + +The idea goes something like this: + +``` quote +Creative work has value; whenever I use, or take, or build upon the creative work of others, I am taking from them something of value. Whenever I take something of value from someone else, I should have their permission. The taking of something of value from someone else without permission is wrong. It is a form of piracy." +``` + +This view runs deep within the current debates. It is what NYU law professor Rochelle Dreyfuss criticizes as the "if value, then right" theory of creative property~{ See Rochelle Dreyfuss, "Expressive Genericity: Trademarks as Language in the Pepsi Generation," /{Notre Dame Law Review}/ 65 (1990): 397. }~ - if there is value, then someone must have a right to that value. It is the perspective that led a composers' rights organization, ASCAP, to sue the Girl Scouts for failing to pay for the songs that girls sang around Girl Scout campfires.~{ Lisa Bannon, "The Birds May Sing, but Campers Can't Unless They Pay Up," /{Wall Street Journal,}/ 21 August 1996, available at link #3; Jonathan Zittrain, "Calling Off the Copyright War: In Battle of Property vs. Free Speech, No One Wins," /{Boston Globe,}/ 24 November 2002. }~ There was "value" (the songs) so there must have been a "right" - even against the Girl Scouts. +={ ASCAP ; + Dreyfus, Rochelle ; + Girl Scouts ; + creative property : + "if value, then right" theory of +1 ; + if value, then right, theory +1 +} + +% note bad sort: ={"if value, then right" theory} + +This idea is certainly a possible understanding of how creative property should work. It might well be a possible design for a system of law protecting creative property. But the "if value, then right" theory of creative property has never been America's theory of creative property. It has never taken hold within our law. + +Instead, in our tradition, intellectual property is an instrument. It sets the groundwork for a richly creative society but remains subservient to the value of creativity. The current debate has this turned around. We have become so concerned with protecting the instrument that we are losing sight of the value. +={ copyright law : + on republishing vs. transformation of original work +1 ; + creativity : + legal restrictions on +3 +} + +The source of this confusion is a distinction that the law no longer takes care to draw - the distinction between republishing someone's work on the one hand and building upon or transforming that work on the other. Copyright law at its birth had only publishing as its concern; copyright law today regulates both. + +Before the technologies of the Internet, this conflation didn't matter all that much. The technologies of publishing were expensive; that meant the vast majority of publishing was commercial. Commercial entities could bear the burden of the law - even the burden of the Byzantine complexity that copyright law has become. It was just one more expense of doing business. + +But with the birth of the Internet, this natural limit to the reach of the law has disappeared. The law controls not just the creativity of commercial creators but effectively that of anyone. Although that expansion would not matter much if copyright law regulated only "copying," when the law regulates as broadly and obscurely as it does, the extension matters a lot. The burden of this law now vastly outweighs any original benefit - certainly as it affects noncommercial creativity, and increasingly as it affects commercial creativity as well. Thus, as we'll see more clearly in the chapters below, the law's role is less and less to support creativity, and more and more to protect certain industries against competition. Just at the time digital technology could unleash an extraordinary range of commercial and noncommercial creativity, the law burdens this creativity with insanely complex and vague rules and with the threat of obscenely severe penalties. We may be seeing, as Richard Florida writes, the "Rise of the Creative Class."~{ In /{The Rise of the Creative Class}/ (New York: Basic Books, 2002), Richard Florida documents a shift in the nature of labor toward a labor of creativity. His work, however, doesn't directly address the legal conditions under which that creativity is enabled or stifled. I certainly agree with him about the importance and significance of this change, but I also believe the conditions under which it will be enabled are much more tenuous. }~ Unfortunately, we are also seeing an extraordinary rise of regulation of this creative class. +={ copyright law : + creativity impeded by ; + Florida, Richard ; + Rise of the Creative Class, The (Florida) +} + +These burdens make no sense in our tradition. We should begin by understanding that tradition a bit more and by placing in their proper context the current battles about behavior labeled "piracy." + +1~ Chapter One: Creators + +!_ In 1928, +a cartoon character was born. An early Mickey Mouse made his debut in May of that year, in a silent flop called /{Plane Crazy}/. In November, in New York City's Colony Theater, in the first widely distributed cartoon synchronized with sound, /{Steamboat Willie}/ brought to life the character that would become Mickey Mouse. +={ animated cartoons +15 ; + cartoon films +16 ; + films : + animated +15 ; + Steamboat Willie +9 ; + Mikey Mouse +9 +} + +Synchronized sound had been introduced to film a year earlier in the movie /{The Jazz Singer}/. That success led Walt Disney to copy the technique and mix sound with cartoons. No one knew whether it would work or, if it did work, whether it would win an audience. But when Disney ran a test in the summer of 1928, the results were unambiguous. As Disney describes that first experiment, +={ Disney, Walt +5 } + +``` quote +A couple of my boys could read music, and one of them could play a mouth organ. We put them in a room where they could not see the screen and arranged to pipe their sound into the room where our wives and friends were going to see the picture. + +The boys worked from a music and sound-effects score. After several false starts, sound and action got off with the gun. The mouth organist played the tune, the rest of us in the sound department bammed tin pans and blew slide whistles on the beat. The synchronization was pretty close. + +The effect on our little audience was nothing less than electric. They responded almost instinctively to this union of sound and motion. I thought they were kidding me. So they put me in the audience and ran the action again. It was terrible, but it was wonderful! And it was something new!"~{ Leonard Maltin, /{Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons}/ (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 34-35. }~ +``` + +Disney's then partner, and one of animation's most extraordinary talents, Ub Iwerks, put it more strongly: "I have never been so thrilled in my life. Nothing since has ever equaled it." +={ Iwerks, Ub. } + +Disney had created something very new, based upon something relatively new. Synchronized sound brought life to a form of creativity that had rarely - except in Disney's hands - been anything more than filler for other films. Throughout animation's early history, it was Disney's invention that set the standard that others struggled to match. And quite often, Disney's great genius, his spark of creativity, was built upon the work of others. + +This much is familiar. What you might not know is that 1928 also marks another important transition. In that year, a comic (as opposed to cartoon) genius created his last independently produced silent film. That genius was Buster Keaton. The film was /{Steamboat Bill, Jr.}/ +={ Keaton, Buster +2 ; + Steamboat Bill, Jr. +2 +} + +Keaton was born into a vaudeville family in 1895. In the era of silent film, he had mastered using broad physical comedy as a way to spark uncontrollable laughter from his audience. Steamboat Bill, Jr. was a classic of this form, famous among film buffs for its incredible stunts. The film was classic Keaton - wildly popular and among the best of its genre. + +/{Steamboat Bill, Jr.}/ appeared before Disney's cartoon /{Steamboat Willie}/. The coincidence of titles is not coincidental. Steamboat Willie is a direct cartoon parody of Steamboat Bill,~{ I am grateful to David Gerstein and his careful history, described at link #4. According to Dave Smith of the Disney Archives, Disney paid royalties to use the music for five songs in /{Steamboat Willie:}/ "Steamboat Bill," "The Simpleton" (Delille), "Mischief Makers" (Carbonara), "Joyful Hurry No. 1" (Baron), and "Gawky Rube" (Lakay). A sixth song, "The Turkey in the Straw," was already in the public domain. Letter from David Smith to Harry Surden, 10 July 2003, on file with author. }~ and both are built upon a common song as a source. It is not just from the invention of synchronized sound in /{The Jazz Singer}/ that we get /{Steamboat Willie}/. It is also from Buster Keaton's invention of Steamboat Bill, Jr., itself inspired by the song "Steamboat Bill," that we get Steamboat Willie, and then from Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse. +={ derivative works : + piracy vs. +4 ; + piracy : + derivative work vs. +4 +} + +This "borrowing" was nothing unique, either for Disney or for the industry. Disney was always parroting the feature-length mainstream films of his day.~{ He was also a fan of the public domain. See Chris Sprigman, "The Mouse that Ate the Public Domain," Findlaw, 5 March 2002, at link #5. }~ So did many others. Early cartoons are filled with knockoffs - slight variations on winning themes; retellings of ancient stories. The key to success was the brilliance of the differences. With Disney, it was sound that gave his animation its spark. Later, it was the quality of his work relative to the production-line cartoons with which he competed. Yet these additions were built upon a base that was borrowed. Disney added to the work of others before him, creating something new out of something just barely old. +={ creativity : + by transforming previous works +3 ; + Disney, Inc. +6 +} + +Sometimes this borrowing was slight. Sometimes it was significant. Think about the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. If you're as oblivious as I was, you're likely to think that these tales are happy, sweet stories, appropriate for any child at bedtime. In fact, the Grimm fairy tales are, well, for us, grim. It is a rare and perhaps overly ambitious parent who would dare to read these bloody, moralistic stories to his or her child, at bedtime or anytime. +={ Grimm fairy tales +1 } + +Disney took these stories and retold them in a way that carried them into a new age. He animated the stories, with both characters and light. Without removing the elements of fear and danger altogether, he made funny what was dark and injected a genuine emotion of compassion where before there was fear. And not just with the work of the Brothers Grimm. Indeed, the catalog of Disney work drawing upon the work of others is astonishing when set together: /{Snow White}/ (1937), /{Fantasia}/ (1940), /{Pinocchio}/ (1940), /{Dumbo}/ (1941), /{Bambi}/ (1942), /{Song of the South}/ (1946), /{Cinderella}/ (1950), /{Alice in Wonderland}/ (1951), /{Robin Hood}/ (1952), /{Peter Pan}/ (1953), /{Lady and the Tramp}/ (1955), /{Mulan}/ (1998), /{Sleeping Beauty}/ (1959), /{101 Dalmatians}/ (1961), /{The Sword in the Stone}/ (1963), and /{The Jungle Book}/ (1967) - not to mention a recent example that we should perhaps quickly forget, /{Treasure Planet}/ (2003). In all of these cases, Disney (or Disney, Inc.) ripped creativity from the culture around him, mixed that creativity with his own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into the soul of his culture. Rip, mix, and burn. + +This is a kind of creativity. It is a creativity that we should remember and celebrate. There are some who would say that there is no creativity except this kind. We don't need to go that far to recognize its importance. We could call this "Disney creativity," though that would be a bit misleading. It is, more precisely, "Walt Disney creativity" - a form of expression and genius that builds upon the culture around us and makes it something different. + +In 1928, the culture that Disney was free to draw upon was relatively fresh. The public domain in 1928 was not very old and was therefore quite vibrant. The average term of copyright was just around thirty years - for that minority of creative work that was in fact copy-righted.~{ Until 1976, copyright law granted an author the possibility of two terms: an initial term and a renewal term. I have calculated the "average" term by determining the weighted average of total registrations for any particular year, and the proportion renewing. Thus, if 100 copyrights are registered in year 1, and only 15 are renewed, and the renewal term is 28 years, then the average term is 32.2 years. For the renewal data and other relevant data, see the Web site associated with this book, available at link #6. }~ That means that for thirty years, on average, the authors or copyright holders of a creative work had an "exclusive right" to control certain uses of the work. To use this copyrighted work in limited ways required the permission of the copyright owner. +={ copyright : + duration of +2 ; + public domain : + defined +2 | traditional term for conversion to +2 +} + +At the end of a copyright term, a work passes into the public domain. No permission is then needed to draw upon or use that work. No permission and, hence, no lawyers. The public domain is a "lawyer-free zone." Thus, most of the content from the nineteenth century was free for Disney to use and build upon in 1928. It was free for anyone - whether connected or not, whether rich or not, whether approved or not - to use and build upon. + +This is the ways things always were - until quite recently. For most of our history, the public domain was just over the horizon. From 1790 until 1978, the average copyright term was never more than thirty-two years, meaning that most culture just a generation and a half old was free for anyone to build upon without the permission of anyone else. Today's equivalent would be for creative work from the 1960s and 1970s to now be free for the next Walt Disney to build upon without permission. Yet today, the public domain is presumptive only for content from before the Great Depression. + +!_ Of course, +Walt Disney had no monopoly on "Walt Disney creativity." Nor does America. The norm of free culture has, until recently, and except within totalitarian nations, been broadly exploited and quite universal. +={ Disney, Walt } + +Consider, for example, a form of creativity that seems strange to many Americans but that is inescapable within Japanese culture: /{manga}/, or comics. The Japanese are fanatics about comics. Some 40 percent of publications are comics, and 30 percent of publication revenue derives from comics. They are everywhere in Japanese society, at every magazine stand, carried by a large proportion of commuters on Japan's extraordinary system of public transportation. +={ comics, Japanese +8 ; + derivative works : + piracy vs. +18 ; + Japanese comics +8 ; + manga +8 ; + piracy : + derivative work vs. +18 +} + +Americans tend to look down upon this form of culture. That's an unattractive characteristic of ours. We're likely to misunderstand much about manga, because few of us have ever read anything close to the stories that these "graphic novels" tell. For the Japanese, manga cover every aspect of social life. For us, comics are "men in tights." And anyway, it's not as if the New York subways are filled with readers of Joyce or even Hemingway. People of different cultures distract themselves in different ways, the Japanese in this interestingly different way. + +But my purpose here is not to understand manga. It is to describe a variant on manga that from a lawyer's perspective is quite odd, but from a Disney perspective is quite familiar. + +This is the phenomenon of /{doujinshi}/. Doujinshi are also comics, but they are a kind of copycat comic. A rich ethic governs the creation of doujinshi. It is not doujinshi if it is /{just}/ a copy; the artist must make a contribution to the art he copies, by transforming it either subtly or significantly. A doujinshi comic can thus take a mainstream comic and develop it differently - with a different story line. Or the comic can keep the character in character but change its look slightly. There is no formula for what makes the doujinshi sufficiently "different." But they must be different if they are to be considered true doujinshi. Indeed, there are committees that review doujinshi for inclusion within shows and reject any copycat comic that is merely a copy. +={ creativity : + by transforming previous works +14 ; + doujinshi comics +8 +} + +These copycat comics are not a tiny part of the manga market. They are huge. More than 33,000 "circles" of creators from across Japan produce these bits of Walt Disney creativity. More than 450,000 Japanese come together twice a year, in the largest public gathering in the country, to exchange and sell them. This market exists in parallel to the mainstream commercial manga market. In some ways, it obviously competes with that market, but there is no sustained effort by those who control the commercial manga market to shut the doujinshi market down. It flourishes, despite the competition and despite the law. +={ Disney, Walt +1 } + +The most puzzling feature of the doujinshi market, for those trained in the law, at least, is that it is allowed to exist at all. Under Japanese copyright law, which in this respect (on paper) mirrors American copyright law, the doujinshi market is an illegal one. Doujinshi are plainly "derivative works." There is no general practice by doujinshi artists of securing the permission of the manga creators. Instead, the practice is simply to take and modify the creations of others, as Walt Disney did with /{Steamboat Bill, Jr}/. Under both Japanese and American law, that "taking" without the permission of the original copyright owner is illegal. It is an infringement of the original copyright to make a copy or a derivative work without the original copyright owner's permission. +={ copyright law : + Japanese +1 ; + Steamboat Bill, Jr. +} + +Yet this illegal market exists and indeed flourishes in Japan, and in the view of many, it is precisely because it exists that Japanese manga flourish. As American graphic novelist Judd Winick said to me, "The early days of comics in America are very much like what's going on in Japan now. ... American comics were born out of copying each other. ... That's how [the artists] learn to draw - by going into comic books and not tracing them, but looking at them and copying them" and building from them.~{ For an excellent history, see Scott McCloud, /{Reinventing Comics}/ (New York: Perennial, 2000). }~ +={ Winick, Judd +1 } + +American comics now are quite different, Winick explains, in part because of the legal difficulty of adapting comics the way doujinshi are allowed. Speaking of Superman, Winick told me, "there are these rules and you have to stick to them." There are things Superman "cannot" do. "As a creator, it's frustrating having to stick to some parameters which are fifty years old." +={ Superman comics } + +The norm in Japan mitigates this legal difficulty. Some say it is precisely the benefit accruing to the Japanese manga market that explains the mitigation. Temple University law professor Salil Mehra, for example, hypothesizes that the manga market accepts these technical violations because they spur the manga market to be more wealthy and productive. Everyone would be worse off if doujinshi were banned, so the law does not ban doujinshi.~{ See Salil K. Mehra, "Copyright and Comics in Japan: Does Law Explain Why All the Comics My Kid Watches Are Japanese Imports?" /{Rutgers Law Review}/ 55 (2002): 155, 182. "[T]here might be a collective economic rationality that would lead manga and anime artists to forgo bringing legal actions for infringement. One hypothesis is that all manga artists may be better off collectively if they set aside their individual self-interest and decide not to press their legal rights. This is essentially a prisoner's dilemma solved." }~ +={ copyright law : + Japanese +1 ; + comics, Japanese ; + Mehra, Salil +1 +} + +The problem with this story, however, as Mehra plainly acknowledges, is that the mechanism producing this laissez faire response is not clear. It may well be that the market as a whole is better off if doujinshi are permitted rather than banned, but that doesn't explain why individual copyright owners don't sue nonetheless. If the law has no general exception for doujinshi, and indeed in some cases individual manga artists have sued doujinshi artists, why is there not a more general pattern of blocking this "free taking" by the doujinshi culture? + +I spent four wonderful months in Japan, and I asked this question as often as I could. Perhaps the best account in the end was offered by a friend from a major Japanese law firm. "We don't have enough lawyers," he told me one afternoon. There "just aren't enough resources to prosecute cases like this." + +This is a theme to which we will return: that regulation by law is a function of both the words on the books and the costs of making those words have effect. For now, focus on the obvious question that is begged: Would Japan be better off with more lawyers? Would manga be richer if doujinshi artists were regularly prosecuted? Would the Japanese gain something important if they could end this practice of uncompensated sharing? Does piracy here hurt the victims of the piracy, or does it help them? Would lawyers fighting this piracy help their clients or hurt them? + +!_ Let's pause +for a moment. + +If you're like I was a decade ago, or like most people are when they first start thinking about these issues, then just about now you should be puzzled about something you hadn't thought through before. + +We live in a world that celebrates "property." I am one of those celebrants. I believe in the value of property in general, and I also believe in the value of that weird form of property that lawyers call "intellectual property."~{ The term /{intellectual property}/ is of relatively recent origin. See Siva Vaidhyanathan, /{Copyrights and Copywrongs,}/ 11 (New York: New York University Press, 2001). See also Lawrence Lessig, /{The Future of Ideas}/ (New York: Random House, 2001), 293 n. 26. The term accurately describes a set of "property" rights - copyright, patents, trademark, and trade-secret - but the nature of those rights is very different. }~ A large, diverse society cannot survive without property; a large, diverse, and modern society cannot flourish without intellectual property. + +But it takes just a second's reflection to realize that there is plenty of value out there that "property" doesn't capture. I don't mean "money can't buy you love," but rather, value that is plainly part of a process of production, including commercial as well as noncommercial production. If Disney animators had stolen a set of pencils to draw Steamboat Willie, we'd have no hesitation in condemning that taking as wrong - even though trivial, even if unnoticed. Yet there was nothing wrong, at least under the law of the day, with Disney's taking from Buster Keaton or from the Brothers Grimm. There was nothing wrong with the taking from Keaton because Disney's use would have been considered "fair." There was nothing wrong with the taking from the Grimms because the Grimms' work was in the public domain. +={ Disney, Walt +5 ; + Grimm fairy tales +1 ; + Keaton, Buster +} + +Thus, even though the things that Disney took - or more generally, the things taken by anyone exercising Walt Disney creativity - are valuable, our tradition does not treat those takings as wrong. Some things remain free for the taking within a free culture, and that freedom is good. +={ free culture : + derivative works based on +6 +} + +The same with the doujinshi culture. If a doujinshi artist broke into a publisher's office and ran off with a thousand copies of his latest work - or even one copy - without paying, we'd have no hesitation in saying the artist was wrong. In addition to having trespassed, he would have stolen something of value. The law bans that stealing in whatever form, whether large or small. +={ copyright law : + Japanese +1 ; + comics, Japanese ; + doujinshi comics +1 ; + Japanese comics +1 ; + manga +1 +} + +Yet there is an obvious reluctance, even among Japanese lawyers, to say that the copycat comic artists are "stealing." This form of Walt Disney creativity is seen as fair and right, even if lawyers in particular find it hard to say why. + +It's the same with a thousand examples that appear everywhere once you begin to look. Scientists build upon the work of other scientists without asking or paying for the privilege. ("Excuse me, Professor Einstein, but may I have permission to use your theory of relativity to show that you were wrong about quantum physics?") Acting companies perform adaptations of the works of Shakespeare without securing permission from anyone. (Does /{anyone}/ believe Shakespeare would be better spread within our culture if there were a central Shakespeare rights clearinghouse that all productions of Shakespeare must appeal to first?) And Hollywood goes through cycles with a certain kind of movie: five asteroid films in the late 1990s; two volcano disaster films in 1997. +={ Shakespeare, William } + +Creators here and everywhere are always and at all times building upon the creativity that went before and that surrounds them now. That building is always and everywhere at least partially done without permission and without compensating the original creator. No society, free or controlled, has ever demanded that every use be paid for or that permission for Walt Disney creativity must always be sought. Instead, every society has left a certain bit of its culture free for the taking - free societies more fully than unfree, perhaps, but all societies to some degree. + +The hard question is therefore not /{whether}/ a culture is free. All cultures are free to some degree. The hard question instead is "/{How}/ free is this culture?" How much, and how broadly, is the culture free for others to take and build upon? Is that freedom limited to party members? To members of the royal family? To the top ten corporations on the New York Stock Exchange? Or is that freedom spread broadly? To artists generally, whether affiliated with the Met or not? To musicians generally, whether white or not? To filmmakers generally, whether affiliated with a studio or not? + +Free cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build upon; unfree, or permission, cultures leave much less. Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so. + +1~ Chapter Two: "Mere Copyists" + +!_ In 1839, +Louis Daguerre invented the first practical technology for producing what we would call "photographs." Appropriately enough, they were called "daguerreotypes." The process was complicated and expensive, and the field was thus limited to professionals and a few zealous and wealthy amateurs. (There was even an American Daguerre Association that helped regulate the industry, as do all such associations, by keeping competition down so as to keep prices up.) +={ Daguerre, Louis ; + photography +13 +} + +Yet despite high prices, the demand for daguerreotypes was strong. This pushed inventors to find simpler and cheaper ways to make "automatic pictures." William Talbot soon discovered a process for making "negatives." But because the negatives were glass, and had to be kept wet, the process still remained expensive and cumbersome. In the 1870s, dry plates were developed, making it easier to separate the taking of a picture from its developing. These were still plates of glass, and thus it was still not a process within reach of most amateurs. +={ Talbot, William } + +The technological change that made mass photography possible didn't happen until 1888, and was the creation of a single man. George Eastman, himself an amateur photographer, was frustrated by the technology of photographs made with plates. In a flash of insight (so to speak), Eastman saw that if the film could be made to be flexible, it could be held on a single spindle. That roll could then be sent to a developer, driving the costs of photography down substantially. By lowering the costs, Eastman expected he could dramatically broaden the population of photographers. +={ Eastman, George +12 ; + camera technology +6 +} + +Eastman developed flexible, emulsion-coated paper film and placed rolls of it in small, simple cameras: the Kodak. The device was marketed on the basis of its simplicity. "You press the button and we do the rest."~{ Reese V. Jenkins, /{Images and Enterprise}/ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 112. }~ As he described in /{The Kodak Primer}/: +={ Kodak cameras +4 ; + Kodak Primer, The (Eastman) +1 +} + +``` quote +The principle of the Kodak system is the separation of the work that any person whomsoever can do in making a photograph, from the work that only an expert can do. ... We furnish anybody, man, woman or child, who has sufficient intelligence to point a box straight and press a button, with an instrument which altogether removes from the practice of photography the necessity for exceptional facilities or, in fact, any special knowledge of the art. It can be employed without preliminary study, without a darkroom and without chemicals."~{ Brian Coe, /{The Birth of Photography}/ (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1977), 53. }~ +``` +={Coe, Brian} + +For $25, anyone could make pictures. The camera came preloaded with film, and when it had been used, the camera was returned to an Eastman factory, where the film was developed. Over time, of course, the cost of the camera and the ease with which it could be used both improved. Roll film thus became the basis for the explosive growth of popular photography. Eastman's camera first went on sale in 1888; one year later, Kodak was printing more than six thousand negatives a day. From 1888 through 1909, while industrial production was rising by 4.7 percent, photographic equipment and material sales increased by 11 percent.~{ Jenkins, 177. }~ Eastman Kodak's sales during the same period experienced an average annual increase of over 17 percent.~{ Based on a chart in Jenkins, p. 178. }~ + +The real significance of Eastman's invention, however, was not economic. It was social. Professional photography gave individuals a glimpse of places they would never otherwise see. Amateur photography gave them the ability to record their own lives in a way they had never been able to do before. As author Brian Coe notes, "For the first time the snapshot album provided the man on the street with a permanent record of his family and its activities. ... For the first time in history there exists an authentic visual record of the appearance and activities of the common man made without [literary] interpretation or bias."~{ Coe, 58. }~ +={ Coe, Brian } + +In this way, the Kodak camera and film were technologies of expression. The pencil or paintbrush was also a technology of expression, of course. But it took years of training before they could be deployed by amateurs in any useful or effective way. With the Kodak, expression was possible much sooner and more simply. The barrier to expression was lowered. Snobs would sneer at its "quality"; professionals would discount it as irrelevant. But watch a child study how best to frame a picture and you get a sense of the experience of creativity that the Kodak enabled. Democratic tools gave ordinary people a way to express themselves more easily than any tools could have before. +={ democracy : + in technologies of expression ; + expression, technologies of : + democratic +} + +What was required for this technology to flourish? Obviously, Eastman's genius was an important part. But also important was the legal environment within which Eastman's invention grew. For early in the history of photography, there was a series of judicial decisions that could well have changed the course of photography substantially. Courts were asked whether the photographer, amateur or professional, required permission before he could capture and print whatever image he wanted. Their answer was no.~{ For illustrative cases, see, for example, /{Pavesich v. N.E. Life Ins. Co.,}/ 50 S.E. 68 (Ga. 1905); /{Foster-Milburn Co. v. Chinn,}/ 123090 S.W. 364, 366 (Ky. 1909); /{Corliss v. Walker,}/ 64 F. 280 (Mass. Dist. Ct. 1894). }~ +={ permissions : + photography exempted from +5 +} + +The arguments in favor of requiring permission will sound surprisingly familiar. The photographer was "taking" something from the person or building whose photograph he shot - pirating something of value. Some even thought he was taking the target's soul. Just as Disney was not free to take the pencils that his animators used to draw Mickey, so, too, should these photographers not be free to take images that they thought valuable. +={ Disney, Walt +1 ; + images, ownership of +4 +} + +On the other side was an argument that should be familiar, as well. Sure, there may be something of value being used. But citizens should have the right to capture at least those images that stand in public view. (Louis Brandeis, who would become a Supreme Court Justice, thought the rule should be different for images from private spaces.~{ Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy," /{Harvard Law Review}/ 4 (1890): 193. }~) It may be that this means that the photographer gets something for nothing. Just as Disney could take inspiration from /{Steamboat Bill, Jr.}/ or the Brothers Grimm, the photographer should be free to capture an image without compensating the source. +={ Brandeis, Louis ; + Steamboat Bill, Jr. ; + camera technology +2 +} + +Fortunately for Mr. Eastman, and for photography in general, these early decisions went in favor of the pirates. In general, no permission would be required before an image could be captured and shared with others. Instead, permission was presumed. Freedom was the default. (The law would eventually craft an exception for famous people: commercial photographers who snap pictures of famous people for commercial purposes have more restrictions than the rest of us. But in the ordinary case, the image can be captured without clearing the rights to do the capturing.~{ See Melville B. Nimmer, "The Right of Publicity," /{Law and Contemporary Problems}/ 19 (1954): 203; William L. Prosser, "Privacy," /{California Law Review}/ 48 (1960) 398-407; /{White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc.,}/ 971 F. 2d 1395 (9th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 508 U.S. 951 (1993). }~) + +We can only speculate about how photography would have developed had the law gone the other way. If the presumption had been against the photographer, then the photographer would have had to demonstrate permission. Perhaps Eastman Kodak would have had to demonstrate permission, too, before it developed the film upon which images were captured. After all, if permission were not granted, then Eastman Kodak would be benefiting from the "theft" committed by the photographer. Just as Napster benefited from the copyright infringements committed by Napster users, Kodak would be benefiting from the "image-right" infringement of its photographers. We could imagine the law then requiring that some form of permission be demonstrated before a company developed pictures. We could imagine a system developing to demonstrate that permission. +={ Kodak cameras ; + Napster +} + +But though we could imagine this system of permission, it would be very hard to see how photography could have flourished as it did if the requirement for permission had been built into the rules that govern it. Photography would have existed. It would have grown in importance over time. Professionals would have continued to use the technology as they did - since professionals could have more easily borne the burdens of the permission system. But the spread of photography to ordinary people would not have occurred. Nothing like that growth would have been realized. And certainly, nothing like that growth in a democratic technology of expression would have been realized. +={ camera technology +6 ; + democracy : + in technologies of expression ; + expression, technologies of : + democratic +} + +!_ If you drive +through San Francisco's Presidio, you might see two gaudy yellow school buses painted over with colorful and striking images, and the logo "Just Think!" in place of the name of a school. But there's little that's "just" cerebral in the projects that these busses enable. These buses are filled with technologies that teach kids to tinker with film. Not the film of Eastman. Not even the film of your VCR. Rather the "film" of digital cameras. Just Think! is a project that enables kids to make films, as a way to understand and critique the filmed culture that they find all around them. Each year, these busses travel to more than thirty schools and enable three hundred to five hundred children to learn something about media by doing something with media. By doing, they think. By tinkering, they learn. +={ digital cameras ; + Just Think! +2 +} + +These buses are not cheap, but the technology they carry is increasingly so. The cost of a high-quality digital video system has fallen dramatically. As one analyst puts it, "Five years ago, a good real-time digital video editing system cost $25,000. Today you can get professional quality for $595."~{ H. Edward Goldberg, "Essential Presentation Tools: Hardware and Software You Need to Create Digital Multimedia Presentations," cadalyst, 1 February 2002, available at link #7. }~ These buses are filled with technology that would have cost hundreds of thousands just ten years ago. And it is now feasible to imagine not just buses like this, but classrooms across the country where kids are learning more and more of something teachers call "media literacy." +={ education : + in media literacy +19 ; + media literacy +19 ; + expression, technologies of : + media literacy and +19 +} + +"Media literacy," as Dave Yanofsky, the executive director of Just Think!, puts it, "is the ability ... to understand, analyze, and deconstruct media images. Its aim is to make [kids] literate about the way media works, the way it's constructed, the way it's delivered, and the way people access it." +={ Yanofsky, Dave } + +This may seem like an odd way to think about "literacy." For most people, literacy is about reading and writing. Faulkner and Hemingway and noticing split infinitives are the things that "literate" people know about. + +Maybe. But in a world where children see on average 390 hours of television commercials per year, or between 20,000 and 45,000 commercials generally,~{ Judith Van Evra, /{Television and Child Development}/ (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990); "Findings on Family and TV Study," /{Denver Post,}/ 25 May 1997, B6. }~ it is increasingly important to understand the "grammar" of media. For just as there is a grammar for the written word, so, too, is there one for media. And just as kids learn how to write by writing lots of terrible prose, kids learn how to write media by constructing lots of (at least at first) terrible media. +={ advertising ; + commercials ; + television : + advertising on +} + +A growing field of academics and activists sees this form of literacy as crucial to the next generation of culture. For though anyone who has written understands how difficult writing is - how difficult it is to sequence the story, to keep a reader's attention, to craft language to be understandable - few of us have any real sense of how difficult media is. Or more fundamentally, few of us have a sense of how media works, how it holds an audience or leads it through a story, how it triggers emotion or builds suspense. + +It took filmmaking a generation before it could do these things well. But even then, the knowledge was in the filming, not in writing about the film. The skill came from experiencing the making of a film, not from reading a book about it. One learns to write by writing and then reflecting upon what one has written. One learns to write with images by making them and then reflecting upon what one has created. + +This grammar has changed as media has changed. When it was just film, as Elizabeth Daley, executive director of the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication and dean of the USC School of Cinema- Television, explained to me, the grammar was about "the placement of objects, color, ... rhythm, pacing, and texture."~{ Interview with Elizabeth Daley and Stephanie Barish, 13 December 2002. }~ But as computers open up an interactive space where a story is "played" as well as experienced, that grammar changes. The simple control of narrative is lost, and so other techniques are necessary. Author Michael Crichton had mastered the narrative of science fiction. But when he tried to design a computer game based on one of his works, it was a new craft he had to learn. How to lead people through a game without their feeling they have been led was not obvious, even to a wildly successful author.~{ See Scott Steinberg, "Crichton Gets Medieval on PCs," E!online, 4 November 2000, available at link #8; "Timeline," 22 November 2000, available at link #9. }~ +={ Daley, Elizabeth +6 ; + Crichton, Michael ; + computer games +} + +This skill is precisely the craft a filmmaker learns. As Daley describes, "people are very surprised about how they are led through a film. [I]t is perfectly constructed to keep you from seeing it, so you have no idea. If a filmmaker succeeds you do not know how you were led." If you know you were led through a film, the film has failed. + +Yet the push for an expanded literacy - one that goes beyond text to include audio and visual elements - is not about making better film directors. The aim is not to improve the profession of filmmaking at all. Instead, as Daley explained, + +``` quote +From my perspective, probably the most important digital divide is not access to a box. It's the ability to be empowered with the language that that box works in. Otherwise only a very few people can write with this language, and all the rest of us are reduced to being read-only." +``` + +"Read-only." Passive recipients of culture produced elsewhere. Couch potatoes. Consumers. This is the world of media from the twentieth century. + +The twenty-first century could be different. This is the crucial point: It could be both read and write. Or at least reading and better understanding the craft of writing. Or best, reading and understanding the tools that enable the writing to lead or mislead. The aim of any literacy, and this literacy in particular, is to "empower people to choose the appropriate language for what they need to create or express."~{ Interview with Daley and Barish. }~ It is to enable students "to communicate in the language of the twenty-first century."~{ Ibid. }~ + +As with any language, this language comes more easily to some than to others. It doesn't necessarily come more easily to those who excel in written language. Daley and Stephanie Barish, director of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the Annenberg Center, describe one particularly poignant example of a project they ran in a high school. The high school was a very poor inner-city Los Angeles school. In all the traditional measures of success, this school was a failure. But Daley and Barish ran a program that gave kids an opportunity to use film to express meaning about something the students know something about - gun violence. +={ Barish, Stephanie +2 } + +The class was held on Friday afternoons, and it created a relatively new problem for the school. While the challenge in most classes was getting the kids to come, the challenge in this class was keeping them away. The "kids were showing up at 6 A.M. and leaving at 5 at night," said Barish. They were working harder than in any other class to do what education should be about - learning how to express themselves. + +Using whatever "free web stuff they could find," and relatively simple tools to enable the kids to mix "image, sound, and text," Barish said this class produced a series of projects that showed something about gun violence that few would otherwise understand. This was an issue close to the lives of these students. The project "gave them a tool and empowered them to be able to both understand it and talk about it," Barish explained. That tool succeeded in creating expression - far more successfully and powerfully than could have been created using only text. "If you had said to these students, 'you have to do it in text,' they would've just thrown their hands up and gone and done something else," Barish described, in part, no doubt, because expressing themselves in text is not something these students can do well. Yet neither is text a form in which /{these}/ ideas can be expressed well. The power of this message depended upon its connection to this form of expression. + +"But isn't education about teaching kids to write?" I asked. In part, of course, it is. But why are we teaching kids to write? Education, Daley explained, is about giving students a way of "constructing meaning." To say that that means just writing is like saying teaching writing is only about teaching kids how to spell. Text is one part - and increasingly, not the most powerful part - of constructing meaning. As Daley explained in the most moving part of our interview, +={ Daley, Elizabeth +3 } + +``` quote +What you want is to give these students ways of constructing meaning. If all you give them is text, they're not going to do it. Because they can't. You know, you've got Johnny who can look at a video, he can play a video game, he can do graffiti all over your walls, he can take your car apart, and he can do all sorts of other things. He just can't read your text. So Johnny comes to school and you say, "Johnny, you're illiterate. Nothing you can do matters." Well, Johnny then has two choices: He can dismiss you or he [can] dismiss himself. If his ego is healthy at all, he's going to dismiss you. [But i]nstead, if you say, "Well, with all these things that you can do, let's talk about this issue. Play for me music that you think reflects that, or show me images that you think reflect that, or draw for me something that reflects that." Not by giving a kid a video camera and ... saying, "Let's go have fun with the video camera and make a little movie." But instead, really help you take these elements that you understand, that are your language, and construct meaning about the topic. ... + +That empowers enormously. And then what happens, of course, is eventually, as it has happened in all these classes, they bump up against the fact, "I need to explain this and I really need to write something." And as one of the teachers told Stephanie, they would rewrite a paragraph 5, 6, 7, 8 times, till they got it right. +={Barish, Stephanie} + +Because they needed to. There was a reason for doing it. They needed to say something, as opposed to just jumping through your hoops. They actually needed to use a language that they didn't speak very well. But they had come to understand that they had a lot of power with this language." +``` + +!_ When two planes +crashed into the World Trade Center, another into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field, all media around the world shifted to this news. Every moment of just about every day for that week, and for weeks after, television in particular, and media generally, retold the story of the events we had just witnessed. The telling was a retelling, because we had seen the events that were described. The genius of this awful act of terrorism was that the delayed second attack was perfectly timed to assure that the whole world would be watching. +={ September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of +2 ; + World Trade Center ; + news coverage +21 +} + +These retellings had an increasingly familiar feel. There was music scored for the intermissions, and fancy graphics that flashed across the screen. There was a formula to interviews. There was "balance," and seriousness. This was news choreographed in the way we have increasingly come to expect it, "news as entertainment," even if the entertainment is tragedy. + +But in addition to this produced news about the "tragedy of September 11," those of us tied to the Internet came to see a very different production as well. The Internet was filled with accounts of the same events. Yet these Internet accounts had a very different flavor. Some people constructed photo pages that captured images from around the world and presented them as slide shows with text. Some offered open letters. There were sound recordings. There was anger and frustration. There were attempts to provide context. There was, in short, an extraordinary worldwide barn raising, in the sense Mike Godwin uses the term in his book /{Cyber Rights}/, around a news event that had captured the attention of the world. There was ABC and CBS, but there was also the Internet. +={ Cyber Rights (Godwin) ; + Godwin, Mike ; + Internet : + news events on +3 +} + +I don't mean simply to praise the Internet - though I do think the people who supported this form of speech should be praised. I mean instead to point to a significance in this form of speech. For like a Kodak, the Internet enables people to capture images. And like in a movie by a student on the "Just Think!" bus, the visual images could be mixed with sound or text. +={ Just Think! } + +But unlike any technology for simply capturing images, the Internet allows these creations to be shared with an extraordinary number of people, practically instantaneously. This is something new in our tradition - not just that culture can be captured mechanically, and obviously not just that events are commented upon critically, but that this mix of captured images, sound, and commentary can be widely spread practically instantaneously. + +September 11 was not an aberration. It was a beginning. Around the same time, a form of communication that has grown dramatically was just beginning to come into public consciousness: the Web-log, or blog. The blog is a kind of public diary, and within some cultures, such as in Japan, it functions very much like a diary. In those cultures, it records private facts in a public way - it's a kind of electronic /{Jerry Springer}/, available anywhere in the world. +={ September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of ; + blogs (Web-logs) +2 ; + Internet : + blogs on +2 ; + Web-logs (blogs) +2 +} + +But in the United States, blogs have taken on a very different character. There are some who use the space simply to talk about their private life. But there are many who use the space to engage in public discourse. Discussing matters of public import, criticizing others who are mistaken in their views, criticizing politicians about the decisions they make, offering solutions to problems we all see: blogs create the sense of a virtual public meeting, but one in which we don't all hope to be there at the same time and in which conversations are not necessarily linked. The best of the blog entries are relatively short; they point directly to words used by others, criticizing with or adding to them. They are arguably the most important form of unchoreographed public discourse that we have. +={ political discourse ; + Internet : + public discourse conducted on +15 +} + +That's a strong statement. Yet it says as much about our democracy as it does about blogs. This is the part of America that is most difficult for those of us who love America to accept: Our democracy has atrophied. Of course we have elections, and most of the time the courts allow those elections to count. A relatively small number of people vote in those elections. The cycle of these elections has become totally professionalized and routinized. Most of us think this is democracy. +={ democracy : + in technologies of expression +5 ; + elections +1 ; + expression, technologies of : + democratic +5 +} + +But democracy has never just been about elections. Democracy means rule by the people, but rule means something more than mere elections. In our tradition, it also means control through reasoned discourse. This was the idea that captured the imagination of Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French lawyer who wrote the most important account of early "Democracy in America." It wasn't popular elections that fascinated him - it was the jury, an institution that gave ordinary people the right to choose life or death for other citizens. And most fascinating for him was that the jury didn't just vote about the outcome they would impose. They deliberated. Members argued about the "right" result; they tried to persuade each other of the "right" result, and in criminal cases at least, they had to agree upon a unanimous result for the process to come to an end.~{ See, for example, Alexis de Tocqueville, /{Democracy in America,}/ bk. 1, trans. Henry Reeve (New York: Bantam Books, 2000), ch. 16. }~ +={ Tocqueville, Alexis de ; + democracy : + public discourse in +4 ; + jury system +} + +Yet even this institution flags in American life today. And in its place, there is no systematic effort to enable citizen deliberation. Some are pushing to create just such an institution.~{ Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin, "Deliberation Day," /{Journal of Political Philosophy}/ 10 (2) (2002): 129. }~ And in some towns in New England, something close to deliberation remains. But for most of us for most of the time, there is no time or place for "democratic deliberation" to occur. + +More bizarrely, there is generally not even permission for it to occur. We, the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm against talking about politics. It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme.~{ Cass Sunstein, /{Republic.com}/ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 65-80, 175, 182, 183, 192. }~ We say what our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say. +={ political discourse +11 } + +Enter the blog. The blog's very architecture solves one part of this problem. People post when they want to post, and people read when they want to read. The most difficult time is synchronous time. Technologies that enable asynchronous communication, such as e-mail, increase the opportunity for communication. Blogs allow for public discourse without the public ever needing to gather in a single public place. +={ blogs (Web-logs) +10 ; + e-mail ; + Internet : + blogs on +10 ; + Web-logs (blogs) +10 +} + +But beyond architecture, blogs also have solved the problem of norms. There's no norm (yet) in blog space not to talk about politics. Indeed, the space is filled with political speech, on both the right and the left. Some of the most popular sites are conservative or libertarian, but there are many of all political stripes. And even blogs that are not political cover political issues when the occasion merits. + +The significance of these blogs is tiny now, though not so tiny. The name Howard Dean may well have faded from the 2004 presidential race but for blogs. Yet even if the number of readers is small, the reading is having an effect. +={ Dean, Howard } + +One direct effect is on stories that had a different life cycle in the mainstream media. The Trent Lott affair is an example. When Lott "misspoke" at a party for Senator Strom Thurmond, essentially praising Thurmond's segregationist policies, he calculated correctly that this story would disappear from the mainstream press within forty-eight hours. It did. But he didn't calculate its life cycle in blog space. The bloggers kept researching the story. Over time, more and more instances of the same "misspeaking" emerged. Finally, the story broke back into the mainstream press. In the end, Lott was forced to resign as senate majority leader.~{ Noah Shachtman, "With Incessant Postings, a Pundit Stirs the Pot," /{New York Times,}/ 16 January 2003, G5. }~ +={ Lott, Trent ; + Thurmond, Storm ; + media : + blog pressure on +1 ; + Internet : + news events on +4 +} + +This different cycle is possible because the same commercial pressures don't exist with blogs as with other ventures. Television and newspapers are commercial entities. They must work to keep attention. If they lose readers, they lose revenue. Like sharks, they must move on. +={ media : + commercial imperatives of +1 +} + +But bloggers don't have a similar constraint. They can obsess, they can focus, they can get serious. If a particular blogger writes a particularly interesting story, more and more people link to that story. And as the number of links to a particular story increases, it rises in the ranks of stories. People read what is popular; what is popular has been selected by a very democratic process of peer-generated rankings. +={ Internet : + peer-generated rankings on +} + +There's a second way, as well, in which blogs have a different cycle from the mainstream press. As Dave Winer, one of the fathers of this movement and a software author for many decades, told me, another difference is the absence of a financial "conflict of interest." "I think you have to take the conflict of interest" out of journalism, Winer told me. "An amateur journalist simply doesn't have a conflict of interest, or the conflict of interest is so easily disclosed that you know you can sort of get it out of the way." +={ journalism +3 ; + Winer, Dave +4 +} + +These conflicts become more important as media becomes more concentrated (more on this below). A concentrated media can hide more from the public than an unconcentrated media can - as CNN admitted it did after the Iraq war because it was afraid of the consequences to its own employees.~{ Telephone interview with David Winer, 16 April 2003. }~ It also needs to sustain a more coherent account. (In the middle of the Iraq war, I read a post on the Internet from someone who was at that time listening to a satellite uplink with a reporter in Iraq. The New York headquarters was telling the reporter over and over that her account of the war was too bleak: She needed to offer a more optimistic story. When she told New York that wasn't warranted, they told her that /{they}/ were writing "the story.") +={ CNN ; + media : + commercial imperatives of ; + democracy : + in technologies of expression +3 ; + expression, technologies of : + democratic +3 ; + Iraq war ; + media : + ownership concentration in +} + +Blog space gives amateurs a way to enter the debate - "amateur" not in the sense of inexperienced, but in the sense of an Olympic athlete, meaning not paid by anyone to give their reports. It allows for a much broader range of input into a story, as reporting on the Columbia disaster revealed, when hundreds from across the southwest United States turned to the Internet to retell what they had seen.~{ John Schwartz, "Loss of the Shuttle: The Internet; A Wealth of Information Online," /{New York Times,}/ 2 February 2003, A28; Staci D. Kramer, "Shuttle Disaster Coverage Mixed, but Strong Overall," Online Journalism Review, 2 February 2003, available at link #10. }~ And it drives readers to read across the range of accounts and "triangulate," as Winer puts it, the truth. Blogs, Winer says, are "communicating directly with our constituency, and the middle man is out of it" - with all the benefits, and costs, that might entail. + +Winer is optimistic about the future of journalism infected with blogs. "It's going to become an essential skill," Winer predicts, for public figures and increasingly for private figures as well. It's not clear that "journalism" is happy about this - some journalists have been told to curtail their blogging.~{ See Michael Falcone, "Does an Editor's Pencil Ruin a Web Log?" /{New York Times,}/ 29 September 2003, C4. ("Not all news organizations have been as accepting of employees who blog. Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent in Iraq who started a blog about his reporting of the war on March 9, stopped posting 12 days later at his bosses' request. Last year Steve Olafson, a /{Houston Chronicle}/ reporter, was fired for keeping a personal Web log, published under a pseudonym, that dealt with some of the issues and people he was covering.") }~ But it is clear that we are still in transition. "A lot of what we are doing now is warm-up exercises," Winer told me. There is a lot that must mature before this space has its mature effect. And as the inclusion of content in this space is the least infringing use of the Internet (meaning infringing on copyright), Winer said, "we will be the last thing that gets shut down." + +This speech affects democracy. Winer thinks that happens because "you don't have to work for somebody who controls, [for] a gate-keeper." That is true. But it affects democracy in another way as well. As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy. Today there are probably a couple of million blogs where such writing happens. When there are ten million, there will be something extraordinary to report. +={ democracy : + public discourse in +} + +!_ John Seely Brown +is the chief scientist of the Xerox Corporation. His work, as his Web site describes it, is "human learning and ... the creation of knowledge ecologies for creating ... innovation." +={ Brown, John Seely +13 } + +Brown thus looks at these technologies of digital creativity a bit differently from the perspectives I've sketched so far. I'm sure he would be excited about any technology that might improve democracy. But his real excitement comes from how these technologies affect learning. + +As Brown believes, we learn by tinkering. When "a lot of us grew up," he explains, that tinkering was done "on motorcycle engines, lawn-mower engines, automobiles, radios, and so on." But digital technologies enable a different kind of tinkering - with abstract ideas though in concrete form. The kids at Just Think! not only think about how a commercial portrays a politician; using digital technology, they can take the commercial apart and manipulate it, tinker with it to see how it does what it does. Digital technologies launch a kind of bricolage, or "free collage," as Brown calls it. Many get to add to or transform the tinkering of many others. +={ advertising ; + Just Think! +5 ; + commercials ; + education : + tinkering as means of +11 +} + +The best large-scale example of this kind of tinkering so far is free software or open-source software (FS/{OSS). FS}/OSS is software whose source code is shared. Anyone can download the technology that makes a FS/OSS program run. And anyone eager to learn how a particular bit of FS/OSS technology works can tinker with the code. +={ free software/open-source software (FS/OSS) } + +This opportunity creates a "completely new kind of learning platform," as Brown describes. "As soon as you start doing that, you ... unleash a free collage on the community, so that other people can start looking at your code, tinkering with it, trying it out, seeing if they can improve it." Each effort is a kind of apprenticeship. "Open source becomes a major apprenticeship platform." + +In this process, "the concrete things you tinker with are abstract. They are code." Kids are "shifting to the ability to tinker in the abstract, and this tinkering is no longer an isolated activity that you're doing in your garage. You are tinkering with a community platform. ... You are tinkering with other people's stuff. The more you tinker the more you improve." The more you improve, the more you learn. + +This same thing happens with content, too. And it happens in the same collaborative way when that content is part of the Web. As Brown puts it, "the Web [is] the first medium that truly honors multiple forms of intelligence." Earlier technologies, such as the typewriter or word processors, helped amplify text. But the Web amplifies much more than text. "The Web ... says if you are musical, if you are artistic, if you are visual, if you are interested in film ... [then] there is a lot you can start to do on this medium. [It] can now amplify and honor these multiple forms of intelligence." + +Brown is talking about what Elizabeth Daley, Stephanie Barish, and Just Think! teach: that this tinkering with culture teaches as well as creates. It develops talents differently, and it builds a different kind of recognition. +={ Barish, Stephanie ; + Daley, Elizabeth +} + +Yet the freedom to tinker with these objects is not guaranteed. Indeed, as we'll see through the course of this book, that freedom is increasingly highly contested. While there's no doubt that your father had the right to tinker with the car engine, there's great doubt that your child will have the right to tinker with the images she finds all around. The law and, increasingly, technology interfere with a freedom that technology, and curiosity, would otherwise ensure. + +These restrictions have become the focus of researchers and scholars. Professor Ed Felten of Princeton (whom we'll see more of in chapter 10) has developed a powerful argument in favor of the "right to tinker" as it applies to computer science and to knowledge in general.~{ See, for example, Edward Felten and Andrew Appel, "Technological Access Control Interferes with Noninfringing Scholarship," /{Communications of the Association for Computer Machinery}/ 43 (2000): 9. }~ But Brown's concern is earlier, or younger, or more fundamental. It is about the learning that kids can do, or can't do, because of the law. +={ Felten, Ed } + +"This is where education in the twenty-first century is going," Brown explains. We need to "understand how kids who grow up digital think and want to learn." + +"Yet," as Brown continued, and as the balance of this book will evince, "we are building a legal system that completely suppresses the natural tendencies of today's digital kids. ... We're building an architecture that unleashes 60 percent of the brain [and] a legal system that closes down that part of the brain." + +We're building a technology that takes the magic of Kodak, mixes moving images and sound, and adds a space for commentary and an opportunity to spread that creativity everywhere. But we're building the law to close down that technology. + +"No way to run a culture," as Brewster Kahle, whom we'll meet in chapter 9, quipped to me in a rare moment of despondence. +={ Kahle, Brewster } + +1~ Chapter Three: Catalogs + +!_ In the fall of 2002, +Jesse Jordan of Oceanside, New York, enrolled as a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York. His major at RPI was information technology. Though he is not a programmer, in October Jesse decided to begin to tinker with search engine technology that was available on the RPI network. +={ Jordan, Jesse ; + Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) +2 : + computer network search engine of +10 ; + search engines +10 ; + university computer networks, p2p sharing on +20 ; + Internet : + search engines used on +6 +} + +RPI is one of America's foremost technological research institutions. It offers degrees in fields ranging from architecture and engineering to information sciences. More than 65 percent of its five thousand undergraduates finished in the top 10 percent of their high school class. The school is thus a perfect mix of talent and experience to imagine and then build, a generation for the network age. + +RPI's computer network links students, faculty, and administration to one another. It also links RPI to the Internet. Not everything available on the RPI network is available on the Internet. But the network is designed to enable students to get access to the Internet, as well as more intimate access to other members of the RPI community. + +Search engines are a measure of a network's intimacy. Google brought the Internet much closer to all of us by fantastically improving the quality of search on the network. Specialty search engines can do this even better. The idea of "intranet" search engines, search engines that search within the network of a particular institution, is to provide users of that institution with better access to material from that institution. Businesses do this all the time, enabling employees to have access to material that people outside the business can't get. Universities do it as well. +={ Google +1 } + +These engines are enabled by the network technology itself. Microsoft, for example, has a network file system that makes it very easy for search engines tuned to that network to query the system for information about the publicly (within that network) available content. Jesse's search engine was built to take advantage of this technology. It used Microsoft's network file system to build an index of all the files available within the RPI network. +={ Jordan, Jesse +16 ; + Microsoft : + network file system of +1 +} + +Jesse's wasn't the first search engine built for the RPI network. Indeed, his engine was a simple modification of engines that others had built. His single most important improvement over those engines was to fix a bug within the Microsoft file-sharing system that could cause a user's computer to crash. With the engines that existed before, if you tried to access a file through a Windows browser that was on a computer that was off-line, your computer could crash. Jesse modified the system a bit to fix that problem, by adding a button that a user could click to see if the machine holding the file was still on-line. + +Jesse's engine went on-line in late October. Over the following six months, he continued to tweak it to improve its functionality. By March, the system was functioning quite well. Jesse had more than one million files in his directory, including every type of content that might be on users' computers. + +Thus the index his search engine produced included pictures, which students could use to put on their own Web sites; copies of notes or research; copies of information pamphlets; movie clips that students might have created; university brochures - basically anything that users of the RPI network made available in a public folder of their computer. + +But the index also included music files. In fact, one quarter of the files that Jesse's search engine listed were music files. But that means, of course, that three quarters were not, and - so that this point is absolutely clear - Jesse did nothing to induce people to put music files in their public folders. He did nothing to target the search engine to these files. He was a kid tinkering with a Google-like technology at a university where he was studying information science, and hence, tinkering was the aim. Unlike Google, or Microsoft, for that matter, he made no money from this tinkering; he was not connected to any business that would make any money from this experiment. He was a kid tinkering with technology in an environment where tinkering with technology was precisely what he was supposed to do. +={ Google ; + education : + tinkering as means of +} + +On April 3, 2003, Jesse was contacted by the dean of students at RPI. The dean informed Jesse that the Recording Industry Association of America, the RIAA, would be filing a lawsuit against him and three other students whom he didn't even know, two of them at other universities. A few hours later, Jesse was served with papers from the suit. As he read these papers and watched the news reports about them, he was increasingly astonished. +={ copyright infringement lawsuits : + in recording industry +11 ; + copyright infringement lawsuits : + against student file sharing +11 ; + recording industry : + copyright infringement lawsuits of +11 ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + copyright infringement lawsuits filed by +11 +} + +"It was absurd," he told me. "I don't think I did anything wrong. ... I don't think there's anything wrong with the search engine that I ran or ... what I had done to it. I mean, I hadn't modified it in any way that promoted or enhanced the work of pirates. I just modified the search engine in a way that would make it easier to use" - again, a /{search engine}/, which Jesse had not himself built, using the Windows file-sharing system, which Jesse had not himself built, to enable members of the RPI community to get access to content, which Jesse had not himself created or posted, and the vast majority of which had nothing to do with music. + +But the RIAA branded Jesse a pirate. They claimed he operated a network and had therefore "willfully" violated copyright laws. They demanded that he pay them the damages for his wrong. For cases of "willful infringement," the Copyright Act specifies something lawyers call "statutory damages." These damages permit a copyright owner to claim $150,000 per infringement. As the RIAA alleged more than one hundred specific copyright infringements, they therefore demanded that Jesse pay them at least $15,000,000. +={ copyright infringement lawsuits : + exaggerated claims of | statutory damages of | individual defendants intimidated by +6 ; + statutory damages ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + intimidation tactics of +6 +} + +Similar lawsuits were brought against three other students: one other student at RPI, one at Michigan Technical University, and one at Princeton. Their situations were similar to Jesse's. Though each case was different in detail, the bottom line in each was exactly the same: huge demands for "damages" that the RIAA claimed it was entitled to. If you added up the claims, these four lawsuits were asking courts in the United States to award the plaintiffs close to $100 /{billion}/ - six times the /{total}/ profit of the film industry in 2001.~{ Tim Goral, "Recording Industry Goes After Campus P-2-P Networks: Suit Alleges $97.8 Billion in Damages," /{Professional Media Group LCC}/ 6 (2003): 5, available at 2003 WL 55179443. }~ +={ Michigan Technical University ; + Princeton University +} + +Jesse called his parents. They were supportive but a bit frightened. An uncle was a lawyer. He began negotiations with the RIAA. They demanded to know how much money Jesse had. Jesse had saved $12,000 from summer jobs and other employment. They demanded $12,000 to dismiss the case. + +The RIAA wanted Jesse to admit to doing something wrong. He refused. They wanted him to agree to an injunction that would essentially make it impossible for him to work in many fields of technology for the rest of his life. He refused. They made him understand that this process of being sued was not going to be pleasant. (As Jesse's father recounted to me, the chief lawyer on the case, Matt Oppenheimer, told Jesse, "You don't want to pay another visit to a dentist like me.") And throughout, the RIAA insisted it would not settle the case until it took every penny Jesse had saved. +={ Oppenheimer, Matt } + +Jesse's family was outraged at these claims. They wanted to fight. But Jesse's uncle worked to educate the family about the nature of the American legal system. Jesse could fight the RIAA. He might even win. But the cost of fighting a lawsuit like this, Jesse was told, would be at least $250,000. If he won, he would not recover that money. If he won, he would have a piece of paper saying he had won, and a piece of paper saying he and his family were bankrupt. +={ legal system, attorney costs in } + +So Jesse faced a mafia-like choice: $250,000 and a chance at winning, or $12,000 and a settlement. + +The recording industry insists this is a matter of law and morality. Let's put the law aside for a moment and think about the morality. Where is the morality in a lawsuit like this? What is the virtue in scapegoatism? The RIAA is an extraordinarily powerful lobby. The president of the RIAA is reported to make more than $1 million a year. Artists, on the other hand, are not well paid. The average recording artist makes $45,900.~{ Occupational Employment Survey, U.S. Dept. of Labor (2001) (27-2042 - Musicians and Singers). See also National Endowment for the Arts, /{More Than One in a Blue Moon}/ (2000). }~ There are plenty of ways for the RIAA to affect and direct policy. So where is the morality in taking money from a student for running a search engine?~{ Douglas Lichtman makes a related point in "KaZaA and Punishment," /{Wall Street Journal,}/ 10 September 2003, A24. }~ +={ artists : + recording industry payments to ; + recording industry : + artist remuneration in ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + lobbying power of +} + +On June 23, Jesse wired his savings to the lawyer working for the RIAA. The case against him was then dismissed. And with this, this kid who had tinkered a computer into a $15 million lawsuit became an activist: + +``` quote +I was definitely not an activist [before]. I never really meant to be an activist. ... [But] I've been pushed into this. In no way did I ever foresee anything like this, but I think it's just completely absurd what the RIAA has done." +``` + +Jesse's parents betray a certain pride in their reluctant activist. As his father told me, Jesse "considers himself very conservative, and so do I. ... He's not a tree hugger. . . . I think it's bizarre that they would pick on him. But he wants to let people know that they're sending the wrong message. And he wants to correct the record." + +1~ Chapter Four: "Pirates" +={ piracy : + in development of content industry +43 +} + +!_ If "piracy" means +using the creative property of others without their permission - if "if value, then right" is true - then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of "big media" today - film, records, radio, and cable TV - was born of a kind of piracy so defined. The consistent story is how last generation's pirates join this generation's country club - until now. +={ creative property : + "if value, then right" theory of ; + if value, then right, theory +} + +% note bad sort: ={"if value, then right" theory} + +2~ Film + +The film industry of Hollywood was built by fleeing pirates.~{ I am grateful to Peter DiMauro for pointing me to this extraordinary history. See also Siva Vaidhyanathan, /{Copyrights and Copywrongs,}/ 87-93, which details Edison's "adventures" with copyright and patent. }~ Creators and directors migrated from the East Coast to California in the early twentieth century in part to escape controls that patents granted the inventor of filmmaking, Thomas Edison. These controls were exercised through a monopoly "trust," the Motion Pictures Patents Company, and were based on Thomas Edison's creative property - patents. Edison formed the MPPC to exercise the rights this creative property gave him, and the MPPC was serious about the control it demanded. As one commentator tells one part of the story, +={Film industry:patent piracy at the inception of+4;Motion Pictures Patents Company (MPPC)+2;Hollywood film industry+3;patents:on film technology+4} + +``` quote +A January 1909 deadline was set for all companies to comply with the license. By February, unlicensed outlaws, who referred to themselves as independents protested the trust and carried on business without submitting to the Edison monopoly. In the summer of 1909 the independent movement was in full-swing, with producers and theater owners using illegal equipment and imported film stock to create their own underground market. + +With the country experiencing a tremendous expansion in the number of nickelodeons, the Patents Company reacted to the independent movement by forming a strong-arm subsidiary known as the General Film Company to block the entry of non-licensed independents. With coercive tactics that have become legendary, General Film confiscated unlicensed equipment, discontinued product supply to theaters which showed unlicensed films, and effectively monopolized distribution with the acquisition of all U.S. film exchanges, except for the one owned by the independent William Fox who defied the Trust even after his license was revoked."~{ J. A. Aberdeen, /{Hollywood Renegades: The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers}/ (Cobblestone Entertainment, 2000) and expanded texts posted at "The Edison Movie Monopoly: The Motion Picture Patents Company vs. the Independent Outlaws," available at link #11. For a discussion of the economic motive behind both these limits and the limits imposed by Victor on phonographs, see Randal C. Picker, "From Edison to the Broadcast Flag: Mechanisms of Consent and Refusal and the Propertization of Copyright" (September 2002), University of Chicago Law School, James M. Olin Program in Law and Economics, Working Paper No. 159. }~ +``` +={Fox, William; General Film Company} + +The Napsters of those days, the "independents," were companies like Fox. And no less than today, these independents were vigorously resisted. "Shooting was disrupted by machinery stolen, and 'accidents' resulting in loss of negatives, equipment, buildings and sometimes life and limb frequently occurred."~{ Marc Wanamaker, "The First Studios," /{The Silents Majority,}/ archived at link #12. }~ That led the independents to flee the East Coast. California was remote enough from Edison's reach that film- makers there could pirate his inventions without fear of the law. And the leaders of Hollywood filmmaking, Fox most prominently, did just that. +={ Edison, Thomas +5 } + +Of course, California grew quickly, and the effective enforcement of federal law eventually spread west. But because patents grant the patent holder a truly "limited" monopoly (just seventeen years at that time), by the time enough federal marshals appeared, the patents had expired. A new industry had been born, in part from the piracy of Edison's creative property. +={ patents : + duration of +} + +2~ Recorded Music +={ composers, copyright protections of +10 ; + copyright law : + on music recordings +10 ; + recording industry : + copyright protections in +10 | piracy in +10 +} + +The record industry was born of another kind of piracy, though to see how requires a bit of detail about the way the law regulates music. + +At the time that Edison and Henri Fourneaux invented machines for reproducing music (Edison the phonograph, Fourneaux the player piano), the law gave composers the exclusive right to control copies of their music and the exclusive right to control public performances of their music. In other words, in 1900, if I wanted a copy of Phil Russel's 1899 hit "Happy Mose," the law said I would have to pay for the right to get a copy of the musical score, and I would also have to pay for the right to perform it publicly. +={ Fourneaux, Henri +1 ; + phonograph +2 ; + player pianos +1 ; + Russel, Phil +} + +But what if I wanted to record "Happy Mose," using Edison's phonograph or Fourneaux's player piano? Here the law stumbled. It was clear enough that I would have to buy any copy of the musical score that I performed in making this recording. And it was clear enough that I would have to pay for any public performance of the work I was recording. But it wasn't totally clear that I would have to pay for a "public performance" if I recorded the song in my own house (even today, you don't owe the Beatles anything if you sing their songs in the shower), or if I recorded the song from memory (copies in your brain are not - yet - regulated by copyright law). So if I simply sang the song into a recording device in the privacy of my own home, it wasn't clear that I owed the composer anything. And more importantly, it wasn't clear whether I owed the composer anything if I then made copies of those recordings. Because of this gap in the law, then, I could effectively pirate someone else's song without paying its composer anything. + +The composers (and publishers) were none too happy about this capacity to pirate. As South Dakota senator Alfred Kittredge put it, +={ Kittredge, Alfred +1 ; + music publishing +2 +} + +``` quote +Imagine the injustice of the thing. A composer writes a song or an opera. A publisher buys at great expense the rights to the same and copyrights it. Along come the phonographic companies and companies who cut music rolls and deliberately steal the work of the brain of the composer and publisher without any regard for [their] rights.~{ To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright: Hearings on S. 6330 and H.R. 19853 Before the (Joint) Committees on Patents, 59th Cong. 59, 1st sess. (1906) (statement of Senator Alfred B. Kittredge, of South Dakota, chairman), reprinted in /{Legislative History of the 1909 Copyright Act,}/ E. Fulton Brylawski and Abe Goldman, eds. (South Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1976). }~ +``` +={ copyright law : + authors vs. composers +7 ; + creative property : + of authors vs. composers +7 ; + recording industry : + composers' rights vs. producers' rights in +} + +The innovators who developed the technology to record other people's works were "sponging upon the toil, the work, the talent, and genius of American composers,"~{ To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 223 (statement of Nathan Burkan, attorney for the Music Publishers Association). }~ and the "music publishing industry" was thereby "at the complete mercy of this one pirate."~{ To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 226 (statement of Nathan Burkan, attorney for the Music Publishers Association). }~ As John Philip Sousa put it, in as direct a way as possible, "When they make money out of my pieces, I want a share of it."~{ To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 23 (statement of John Philip Sousa, composer). }~ +={ Sousa, John Philip } + +These arguments have familiar echoes in the wars of our day. So, too, do the arguments on the other side. The innovators who developed the player piano argued that "it is perfectly demonstrable that the introduction of automatic music players has not deprived any composer of anything he had before their introduction." Rather, the machines increased the sales of sheet music.~{ To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 283-84 (statement of Albert Walker, representative of the Auto-Music Perforating Company of New York). }~ In any case, the innovators argued, the job of Congress was "to consider first the interest of [the public], whom they represent, and whose servants they are." "All talk about 'theft,'" the general counsel of the American Graphophone Company wrote, "is the merest claptrap, for there exists no property in ideas musical, literary or artistic, except as defined by statute."~{ To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 376 (prepared memorandum of Philip Mauro, general patent counsel of the American Graphophone Company Association). }~ +={ American Graphophone Company ; + player pianos ; + sheet music ; + Congress, U.S. : + on copyright laws +4 | on recording industry +4 ; + copyright law : + statutory licenses in +6 ; + recording industry : + statutory license system in +6 +} + +The law soon resolved this battle in favor of the composer /{and}/ the recording artist. Congress amended the law to make sure that composers would be paid for the "mechanical reproductions" of their music. But rather than simply granting the composer complete control over the right to make mechanical reproductions, Congress gave recording artists a right to record the music, at a price set by Congress, once the composer allowed it to be recorded once. This is the part of copyright law that makes cover songs possible. Once a composer authorizes a recording of his song, others are free to record the same song, so long as they pay the original composer a fee set by the law. +={ cover songs } + +American law ordinarily calls this a "compulsory license," but I will refer to it as a "statutory license." A statutory license is a license whose key terms are set by law. After Congress's amendment of the Copyright Act in 1909, record companies were free to distribute copies of recordings so long as they paid the composer (or copyright holder) the fee set by the statute. +={ compulsory license +4 ; + statutory licenses +4 +} + +This is an exception within the law of copyright. When John Grisham writes a novel, a publisher is free to publish that novel only if Grisham gives the publisher permission. Grisham, in turn, is free to charge whatever he wants for that permission. The price to publish Grisham is thus set by Grisham, and copyright law ordinarily says you have no permission to use Grisham's work except with permission of Grisham. +={ Grisham, John +1 } + +But the law governing recordings gives recording artists less. And thus, in effect, the law /{subsidizes}/ the recording industry through a kind of piracy - by giving recording artists a weaker right than it otherwise gives creative authors. The Beatles have less control over their creative work than Grisham does. And the beneficiaries of this less control are the recording industry and the public. The recording industry gets something of value for less than it otherwise would pay; the public gets access to a much wider range of musical creativity. Indeed, Congress was quite explicit about its reasons for granting this right. Its fear was the monopoly power of rights holders, and that that power would stifle follow-on creativity.~{ Copyright Law Revision: Hearings on S. 2499, S. 2900, H.R. 243, and H.R. 11794 Before the ( Joint) Committee on Patents, 60th Cong., 1st sess., 217 (1908) (statement of Senator Reed Smoot, chairman), reprinted in /{Legislative History of the 1909 Copyright Act,}/ E. Fulton Brylawski and Abe Goldman, eds. (South Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1976). }~ +={ Beatles } + +While the recording industry has been quite coy about this recently, historically it has been quite a supporter of the statutory license for records. As a 1967 report from the House Committee on the Judiciary relates, + +``` quote +the record producers argued vigorously that the compulsory license system must be retained. They asserted that the record industry is a half-billion-dollar business of great economic importance in the United States and throughout the world; records today are the principal means of disseminating music, and this creates special problems, since performers need unhampered access to musical material on nondiscriminatory terms. Historically, the record producers pointed out, there were no recording rights before 1909 and the 1909 statute adopted the compulsory license as a deliberate anti-monopoly condition on the grant of these rights. They argue that the result has been an outpouring of recorded music, with the public being given lower prices, improved quality, and a greater choice."~{ Copyright Law Revision: Report to Accompany H.R. 2512, House Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st sess., House Document no. 83, 66 (8 March 1967). I am grateful to Glenn Brown for drawing my attention to this report. }~ +``` + +By limiting the rights musicians have, by partially pirating their creative work, the record producers, and the public, benefit. + +2~ Radio +={ recording industry : + radio broadcast and +7 +} + +Radio was also born of piracy. + +When a radio station plays a record on the air, that constitutes a "public performance" of the composer's work.~{ See 17 /{United States Code,}/ sections 106 and 110. At the beginning, record companies printed "Not Licensed for Radio Broadcast" and other messages purporting to restrict the ability to play a record on a radio station. Judge Learned Hand rejected the argument that a warning attached to a record might restrict the rights of the radio station. See /{RCA Manufacturing Co. v. Whiteman,}/ 114 F. 2d 86 (2nd Cir. 1940). See also Randal C. Picker, "From Edison to the Broadcast Flag: Mechanisms of Consent and Refusal and the Propertization of Copyright," /{University of Chicago Law Review}/ 70 (2003): 281. }~ As I described above, the law gives the composer (or copyright holder) an exclusive right to public performances of his work. The radio station thus owes the composer money for that performance. + +But when the radio station plays a record, it is not only performing a copy of the /{composer's}/ work. The radio station is also performing a copy of the /{recording artist's}/ work. It's one thing to have "Happy Birthday" sung on the radio by the local children's choir; it's quite another to have it sung by the Rolling Stones or Lyle Lovett. The recording artist is adding to the value of the composition performed on the radio station. And if the law were perfectly consistent, the radio station would have to pay the recording artist for his work, just as it pays the composer of the music for his work. +={ artists : + recording industry payments to +3 ; + radio : + music recordings played on +3 ; + recording industry : + artist remuneration in +3 +} + +But it doesn't. Under the law governing radio performances, the radio station does not have to pay the recording artist. The radio station need only pay the composer. The radio station thus gets a bit of something for nothing. It gets to perform the recording artist's work for free, even if it must pay the composer something for the privilege of playing the song. + +This difference can be huge. Imagine you compose a piece of music. Imagine it is your first. You own the exclusive right to authorize public performances of that music. So if Madonna wants to sing your song in public, she has to get your permission. +={ Madonna +1 } + +Imagine she does sing your song, and imagine she likes it a lot. She then decides to make a recording of your song, and it becomes a top hit. Under our law, every time a radio station plays your song, you get some money. But Madonna gets nothing, save the indirect effect on the sale of her CDs. The public performance of her recording is not a "protected" right. The radio station thus gets to /{pirate}/ the value of Madonna's work without paying her anything. + +No doubt, one might argue that, on balance, the recording artists benefit. On average, the promotion they get is worth more than the performance rights they give up. Maybe. But even if so, the law ordinarily gives the creator the right to make this choice. By making the choice for him or her, the law gives the radio station the right to take something for nothing. + +2~ Cable TV +={ cable television +12 } + +Cable TV was also born of a kind of piracy. + +When cable entrepreneurs first started wiring communities with cable television in 1948, most refused to pay broadcasters for the content that they echoed to their customers. Even when the cable companies started selling access to television broadcasts, they refused to pay for what they sold. Cable companies were thus Napsterizing broadcasters' content, but more egregiously than anything Napster ever did - Napster never charged for the content it enabled others to give away. +={ Napster ; + television : + cable vs. broadcast +10 +} + +Broadcasters and copyright owners were quick to attack this theft. Rosel Hyde, chairman of the FCC, viewed the practice as a kind of "unfair and potentially destructive competition."~{ Copyright Law Revision - CATV: Hearing on S. 1006 Before the Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 89th Cong., 2nd sess., 78 (1966) (statement of Rosel H. Hyde, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission). }~ There may have been a "public interest" in spreading the reach of cable TV, but as Douglas Anello, general counsel to the National Association of Broadcasters, asked Senator Quentin Burdick during testimony, "Does public interest dictate that you use somebody else's property?"~{ Copyright Law Revision - CATV, 116 (statement of Douglas A. Anello, general counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters). }~ As another broadcaster put it, +={ Anello, Douglas ; + Burdick, Quentin ; + Hyde, Rosel ; + copyright law : + on cable television rebroadcasting +9 +} + +``` quote +The extraordinary thing about the CATV business is that it is the only business I know of where the product that is being sold is not paid for."~{ Copyright Law Revision - CATV, 126 (statement of Ernest W. Jennes, general counsel of the Association of Maximum Service Telecasters, Inc.). }~ +``` + +Again, the demand of the copyright holders seemed reasonable enough: + +``` quote +All we are asking for is a very simple thing, that people who now take our property for nothing pay for it. We are trying to stop piracy and I don't think there is any lesser word to describe it. I think there are harsher words which would fit it."~{ Copyright Law Revision - CATV, 169 (joint statement of Arthur B. Krim, president of United Artists Corp., and John Sinn, president of United Artists Television, Inc.). }~ +``` + +These were "free-ride[rs]," Screen Actor's Guild president Charlton Heston said, who were "depriving actors of compensation."~{ Copyright Law Revision - CATV, 209 (statement of Charlton Heston, president of the Screen Actors Guild). }~ +={ Screen Actors Guild ; + Heston, Charlton +} + +But again, there was another side to the debate. As Assistant Attorney General Edwin Zimmerman put it, +={ Zimmerman, Edwin +1 } + +``` quote +Our point here is that unlike the problem of whether you have any copyright protection at all, the problem here is whether copyright holders who are already compensated, who already have a monopoly, should be permitted to extend that monopoly. ... The question here is how much compensation they should have and how far back they should carry their right to compensation."~{ Copyright Law Revision - CATV, 216 (statement of Edwin M. Zimmerman, acting assistant attorney general). }~ +``` + +Copyright owners took the cable companies to court. Twice the Supreme Court held that the cable companies owed the copyright owners nothing. +={ Supreme Court, U.S. : + on cable television +} + +It took Congress almost thirty years before it resolved the question of whether cable companies had to pay for the content they "pirated." In the end, Congress resolved this question in the same way that it resolved the question about record players and player pianos. Yes, cable companies would have to pay for the content that they broadcast; but the price they would have to pay was not set by the copyright owner. The price was set by law, so that the broadcasters couldn't exercise veto power over the emerging technologies of cable. Cable companies thus built their empire in part upon a "piracy" of the value created by broadcasters' content. +={ Congress, U.S. : + on cable television | on copyright laws +} + +!_ These separate stories +sing a common theme. If "piracy" means using value from someone else's creative property without permission from that creator - as it is increasingly described today~{ See, for example, National Music Publisher's Association, /{The Engine of Free Expression: Copyright on the Internet - The Myth of Free Information,}/ available at link #13. "The threat of piracy"the use of someone else's creative work without permission or compensation - has grown with the Internet." }~ - then /{every}/ industry affected by copyright today is the product and beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, radio, cable TV. ... The list is long and could well be expanded. Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last. Every generation - until now. + +1~ Chapter Five: "Piracy" +={ piracy : + commercial +20 +} + +!_ There is piracy +of copyrighted material. Lots of it. This piracy comes in many forms. The most significant is commercial piracy, the unauthorized taking of other people's content within a commercial context. Despite the many justifications that are offered in its defense, this taking is wrong. No one should condone it, and the law should stop it. + +But as well as copy-shop piracy, there is another kind of "taking" that is more directly related to the Internet. That taking, too, seems wrong to many, and it is wrong much of the time. Before we paint this taking "piracy," however, we should understand its nature a bit more. For the harm of this taking is significantly more ambiguous than outright copying, and the law should account for that ambiguity, as it has so often done in the past. + +2~ Piracy I + +All across the world, but especially in Asia and Eastern Europe, there are businesses that do nothing but take others people's copyrighted content, copy it, and sell it - all without the permission of a copyright owner. The recording industry estimates that it loses about $4.6 billion every year to physical piracy~{ See IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), /{The Recording Industry Commercial Piracy Report 2003,}/ July 2003, available at link #14. See also Ben Hunt, "Companies Warned on Music Piracy Risk," /{Financial Times,}/ 14 February 2003, 11. }~ (that works out to one in three CDs sold worldwide). The MPAA estimates that it loses $3 billion annually worldwide to piracy. +={ Asia, commercial piracy in +3 ; + piracy : + in Asia +3 ; + CDs : + foreign piracy of +3 ; + copyright law : + international compliance with +6 ; + international law +5 ; + piracy : + international +7 ; + recording industry : + international piracy in ; + Motion Pictures Patents Company (MPPC) +} + +% check reference, MPAA appears to be indexed to Motion Pictures Patents Company (MPPC) which is referred to elsewhere in text as "Motion Pictures _Patent_ Company" + +This is piracy plain and simple. Nothing in the argument of this book, nor in the argument that most people make when talking about the subject of this book, should draw into doubt this simple point: This piracy is wrong. + +Which is not to say that excuses and justifications couldn't be made for it. We could, for example, remind ourselves that for the first one hundred years of the American Republic, America did not honor foreign copyrights. We were born, in this sense, a pirate nation. It might therefore seem hypocritical for us to insist so strongly that other developing nations treat as wrong what we, for the first hundred years of our existence, treated as right. +={ developing countries, foreign patent costs in +3 } + +That excuse isn't terribly strong. Technically, our law did not ban the taking of foreign works. It explicitly limited itself to American works. Thus the American publishers who published foreign works without the permission of foreign authors were not violating any rule. The copy shops in Asia, by contrast, are violating Asian law. Asian law does protect foreign copyrights, and the actions of the copy shops violate that law. So the wrong of piracy that they engage in is not just a moral wrong, but a legal wrong, and not just an internationally legal wrong, but a locally legal wrong as well. + +True, these local rules have, in effect, been imposed upon these countries. No country can be part of the world economy and choose not to protect copyright internationally. We may have been born a pirate nation, but we will not allow any other nation to have a similar childhood. + +If a country is to be treated as a sovereign, however, then its laws are its laws regardless of their source. The international law under which these nations live gives them some opportunities to escape the burden of intellectual property law.~{ See Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, /{Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?}/ (New York: The New Press, 2003), 10-13, 209. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement obligates member nations to create administrative and enforcement mechanisms for intellectual property rights, a costly proposition for developing countries. Additionally, patent rights may lead to higher prices for staple industries such as agriculture. Critics of TRIPS question the disparity between burdens imposed upon developing countries and benefits conferred to industrialized nations. TRIPS does permit governments to use patents for public, noncommercial uses without first obtaining the patent holder's permission. Developing nations may be able to use this to gain the benefits of foreign patents at lower prices. This is a promising strategy for developing nations within the TRIPS framework. }~ In my view, more developing nations should take advantage of that opportunity, but when they don't, then their laws should be respected. And under the laws of these nations, this piracy is wrong. + +Alternatively, we could try to excuse this piracy by noting that in any case, it does no harm to the industry. The Chinese who get access to American CDs at 50 cents a copy are not people who would have bought those American CDs at $15 a copy. So no one really has any less money than they otherwise would have had.~{ For an analysis of the economic impact of copying technology, see Stan Liebowitz, /{Rethinking the Network Economy}/ (New York: Amacom, 2002), 144-90. "In some instances ... the impact of piracy on the copyright holder's ability to appropriate the value of the work will be negligible. One obvious instance is the case where the individual engaging in pirating would not have purchased an original even if pirating were not an option." Ibid., 149. }~ +={ Asia, commercial piracy in ; + piracy : + in Asia ; + CDs : + foreign piracy of ; + copyright law : + statutory licenses in +} + +This is often true (though I have friends who have purchased many thousands of pirated DVDs who certainly have enough money to pay for the content they have taken), and it does mitigate to some degree the harm caused by such taking. Extremists in this debate love to say, "You wouldn't go into Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf without paying; why should it be any different with on-line music?" The difference is, of course, that when you take a book from Barnes & Noble, it has one less book to sell. By contrast, when you take an MP3 from a computer network, there is not one less CD that can be sold. The physics of piracy of the intangible are different from the physics of piracy of the tangible. +={ DVDs : + piracy of ; + piracy : + of intangible property +} + +This argument is still very weak. However, although copyright is a property right of a very special sort, it /{is}/ a property right. Like all property rights, the copyright gives the owner the right to decide the terms under which content is shared. If the copyright owner doesn't want to sell, she doesn't have to. There are exceptions: important statutory licenses that apply to copyrighted content regardless of the wish of the copyright owner. Those licenses give people the right to "take" copyrighted content whether or not the copyright owner wants to sell. But where the law does not give people the right to take content, it is wrong to take that content even if the wrong does no harm. If we have a property system, and that system is properly balanced to the technology of a time, then it is wrong to take property without the permission of a property owner. That is exactly what "property" means. +={ statutory licenses } + +Finally, we could try to excuse this piracy with the argument that the piracy actually helps the copyright owner. When the Chinese "steal" Windows, that makes the Chinese dependent on Microsoft. Microsoft loses the value of the software that was taken. But it gains users who are used to life in the Microsoft world. Over time, as the nation grows more wealthy, more and more people will buy software rather than steal it. And hence over time, because that buying will benefit Microsoft, Microsoft benefits from the piracy. If instead of pirating Microsoft Windows, the Chinese used the free GNU/Linux operating system, then these Chinese users would not eventually be buying Microsoft. Without piracy, then, Microsoft would lose. +={ Asia, commercial piracy in ; + piracy : + in Asia ; + free software/open-source software (FS/OSS) ; + GNU/Linux operating system ; + Linux operating system ; + Microsoft : + competitive strategies of ; + Windows ; + Microsoft : + international software piracy of | Windows operating system of +} + +This argument, too, is somewhat true. The addiction strategy is a good one. Many businesses practice it. Some thrive because of it. Law students, for example, are given free access to the two largest legal databases. The companies marketing both hope the students will become so used to their service that they will want to use it and not the other when they become lawyers (and must pay high subscription fees). +={ law : + databases of case reports in +} + +Still, the argument is not terribly persuasive. We don't give the alcoholic a defense when he steals his first beer, merely because that will make it more likely that he will buy the next three. Instead, we ordinarily allow businesses to decide for themselves when it is best to give their product away. If Microsoft fears the competition of GNU/Linux, then Microsoft can give its product away, as it did, for example, with Internet Explorer to fight Netscape. A property right means giving the property owner the right to say who gets access to what - at least ordinarily. And if the law properly balances the rights of the copyright owner with the rights of access, then violating the law is still wrong. +={ Netscape ; + Internet Explorer +} + +Thus, while I understand the pull of these justifications for piracy, and I certainly see the motivation, in my view, in the end, these efforts at justifying commercial piracy simply don't cut it. This kind of piracy is rampant and just plain wrong. It doesn't transform the content it steals; it doesn't transform the market it competes in. It merely gives someone access to something that the law says he should not have. Nothing has changed to draw that law into doubt. This form of piracy is flat out wrong. + +But as the examples from the four chapters that introduced this part suggest, even if some piracy is plainly wrong, not all "piracy" is. Or at least, not all "piracy" is wrong if that term is understood in the way it is increasingly used today. Many kinds of "piracy" are useful and productive, to produce either new content or new ways of doing business. Neither our tradition nor any tradition has ever banned all "piracy" in that sense of the term. + +This doesn't mean that there are no questions raised by the latest piracy concern, peer-to-peer file sharing. But it does mean that we need to understand the harm in peer-to-peer sharing a bit more before we condemn it to the gallows with the charge of piracy. +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + piracy vs. ; + piracy : + profit reduction as criterion of | p2p file sharing vs. +} + +For (1) like the original Hollywood, p2p sharing escapes an overly controlling industry; and (2) like the original recording industry, it simply exploits a new way to distribute content; but (3) unlike cable TV, no one is selling the content that is shared on p2p services. + +These differences distinguish p2p sharing from true piracy. They should push us to find a way to protect artists while enabling this sharing to survive. + +2~ Piracy II +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + piracy vs. +53 ; + piracy : + profit reduction as criterion of +23 | p2p file sharing vs. +53 +} + +The key to the "piracy" that the law aims to quash is a use that "rob[s] the author of [his] profit."~{ /{Bach v. Longman,}/ 98 Eng. Rep. 1274 (1777). }~ This means we must determine whether and how much p2p sharing harms before we know how strongly the law should seek to either prevent it or find an alternative to assure the author of his profit. + +Peer-to-peer sharing was made famous by Napster. But the inventors of the Napster technology had not made any major technological innovations. Like every great advance in innovation on the Internet (and, arguably, off the Internet as well~{ See Clayton M. Christensen, /{The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary National Bestseller That Changed the Way We Do Business}/ (New York: HarperBusiness, 2000). Professor Christensen examines why companies that give rise to and dominate a product area are frequently unable to come up with the most creative, paradigm-shifting uses for their own products. This job usually falls to outside innovators, who reassemble existing technology in inventive ways. For a discussion of Christensen's ideas, see Lawrence Lessig, /{Future,}/ 89-92, 139. }~), Shawn Fanning and crew had simply put together components that had been developed independently. +={ Fanning, Shawn ; + innovation ; + Internet : + music files downloaded from +8 ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + participation levels of ; + technology : + innovative improvements in ; + Napster +1 +} + +The result was spontaneous combustion. Launched in July 1999, Napster amassed over 10 million users within nine months. After eighteen months, there were close to 80 million registered users of the system.~{ See Carolyn Lochhead, "Silicon Valley Dream, Hollywood Nightmare," /{San Francisco Chronicle,}/ 24 September 2002, A1; "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide," /{New Scientist,}/ 6 July 2002, 42; Benny Evangelista, "Napster Names CEO, Secures New Financing," /{San Francisco Chronicle,}/ 23 May 2003, C1; "Napster's Wake-Up Call," /{Economist,}/ 24 June 2000, 23; John Naughton, "Hollywood at War with the Internet" (London) /{Times,}/ 26 July 2002, 18. }~ Courts quickly shut Napster down, but other services emerged to take its place. (Kazaa is currently the most popular p2p service. It boasts over 100 million members.) These services' systems are different architecturally, though not very different in function: Each enables users to make content available to any number of other users. With a p2p system, you can share your favorite songs with your best friend - or your 20,000 best friends. +={ Kazaa ; + Napster : + number of registrations on | replacement of +} + +According to a number of estimates, a huge proportion of Americans have tasted file-sharing technology. A study by Ipsos-Insight in September 2002 estimated that 60 million Americans had downloaded music - 28 percent of Americans older than 12.~{ See Ipsos-Insight, /{TEMPO: Keeping Pace with Online Music Distribution}/ (September 2002), reporting that 28 percent of Americans aged twelve and older have downloaded music off of the Internet and 30 percent have listened to digital music files stored on their computers. }~ A survey by the NPD group quoted in /{The New York Times}/ estimated that 43 million citizens used file-sharing networks to exchange content in May 2003.~{ Amy Harmon, "Industry Offers a Carrot in Online Music Fight," /{New York Times,}/ 6 June 2003, A1. }~ The vast majority of these are not kids. Whatever the actual figure, a massive quantity of content is being "taken" on these networks. The ease and inexpensiveness of file-sharing networks have inspired millions to enjoy music in a way that they hadn't before. + +Some of this enjoying involves copyright infringement. Some of it does not. And even among the part that is technically copyright infringement, calculating the actual harm to copyright owners is more complicated than one might think. So consider - a bit more carefully than the polarized voices around this debate usually do - the kinds of sharing that file sharing enables, and the kinds of harm it entails. + +File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into four types. +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + four types of +4 ; + Napster : + range of content on +} + +_1 A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn't make it available for free. Most probably wouldn't have, but clearly there are some who would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing. + +_1 B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he's not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased. +={ advertising } + +_1 C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a solid weekend "recalling" old songs. She was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero - the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector. +={ recording industry : + out-of-print music of +} + +_1 D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away. + +How do these different types of sharing balance out? + +Let's start with some simple but important points. From the perspective of the law, only type D sharing is clearly legal. From the perspective of economics, only type A sharing is clearly harmful.~{ See Liebowitz, /{Rethinking the Network Economy,}/ 148-49. }~ Type B sharing is illegal but plainly beneficial. Type C sharing is illegal, yet good for society (since more exposure to music is good) and harmless to the artist (since the work is not otherwise available). So how sharing matters on balance is a hard question to answer - and certainly much more difficult than the current rhetoric around the issue suggests. + +Whether on balance sharing is harmful depends importantly on how harmful type A sharing is. Just as Edison complained about Hollywood, composers complained about piano rolls, recording artists complained about radio, and broadcasters complained about cable TV, the music industry complains that type A sharing is a kind of "theft" that is "devastating" the industry. +={ Edison, Thomas } + +While the numbers do suggest that sharing is harmful, how harmful is harder to reckon. It has long been the recording industry's practice to blame technology for any drop in sales. The history of cassette recording is a good example. As a study by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young put it, "Rather than exploiting this new, popular technology, the labels fought it."~{ See Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, /{Technology Evolution and the Music Industry's Business Model Crisis}/ (2003), 3. This report describes the music industry's effort to stigmatize the budding practice of cassette taping in the 1970s, including an advertising campaign featuring a cassette-shape skull and the caption "Home taping is killing music." \\ At the time digital audio tape became a threat, the Office of Technical Assessment conducted a survey of consumer behavior. In 1988, 40 percent of consumers older than ten had taped music to a cassette format. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, /{Copyright and Home Copying: Technology Challenges the Law,}/ OTA-CIT-422 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, October 1989), 145-56. }~ The labels claimed that every album taped was an album unsold, and when record sales fell by 11.4 percent in 1981, the industry claimed that its point was proved. Technology was the problem, and banning or regulating technology was the answer. +={ cassette recording +1 ; + recording industry : + new technology opposed by +2 ; + technology : + established industries threatened by changes in +2 +} + +Yet soon thereafter, and before Congress was given an opportunity to enact regulation, MTV was launched, and the industry had a record turnaround. "In the end," Cap Gemini concludes, "the 'crisis' ... was not the fault of the tapers" who did not [stop after MTV came into being] - but had to a large extent resulted from stagnation in musical innovation at the major labels."~{ U.S. Congress, /{Copyright and Home Copying,}/ 4. }~ +={ MTV } + +But just because the industry was wrong before does not mean it is wrong today. To evaluate the real threat that p2p sharing presents to the industry in particular, and society in general - or at least the society that inherits the tradition that gave us the film industry, the record industry, the radio industry, cable TV, and the VCR - the question is not simply whether type A sharing is harmful. The question is also /{how}/ harmful type A sharing is, and how beneficial the other types of sharing are. + +We start to answer this question by focusing on the net harm, from the standpoint of the industry as a whole, that sharing networks cause. The "net harm" to the industry as a whole is the amount by which type A sharing exceeds type B. If the record companies sold more records through sampling than they lost through substitution, then sharing networks would actually benefit music companies on balance. They would therefore have little /{static}/ reason to resist them. + +Could that be true? Could the industry as a whole be gaining because of file sharing? Odd as that might sound, the data about CD sales actually suggest it might be close. +={ CDs : + sales levels of +3 ; + recording industry : + CD sales level in +3 ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + on CD sales decline +3 +} + +In 2002, the RIAA reported that CD sales had fallen by 8.9 percent, from 882 million to 803 million units; revenues fell 6.7 percent.~{ See Recording Industry Association of America, /{2002 Yearend Statistics,}/ available at link #15. A later report indicates even greater losses. See Recording Industry Association of America, /{Some Facts About Music Piracy,}/ 25 June 2003, available at link #16: "In the past four years, unit shipments of recorded music have fallen by 26 percent from 1.16 billion units in 1999 to 860 million units in 2002 in the United States (based on units shipped). In terms of sales, revenues are down 14 percent, from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $12.6 billion last year (based on U.S. dollar value of shipments). The music industry worldwide has gone from a $39 billion industry in 2000 down to a $32 billion industry in 2002 (based on U.S. dollar value of shipments)." }~ This confirms a trend over the past few years. The RIAA blames Internet piracy for the trend, though there are many other causes that could account for this drop. SoundScan, for example, reports a more than 20 percent drop in the number of CDs released since 1999. That no doubt accounts for some of the decrease in sales. Rising prices could account for at least some of the loss. "From 1999 to 2001, the average price of a CD rose 7.2 percent, from $13.04 to $14.19."~{ Jane Black, "Big Music's Broken Record," BusinessWeek online, 13 February 2003, available at link #17. }~ Competition from other forms of media could also account for some of the decline. As Jane Black of /{BusinessWeek}/ notes, "The soundtrack to the film /{High Fidelity}/ has a list price of $18.98. You could get the whole movie [on DVD] for $19.99."~{ Ibid. }~ +={ Black, Jane ; + CDs : + prices of ; + DVDs : + price of +} + +But let's assume the RIAA is right, and all of the decline in CD sales is because of Internet sharing. Here's the rub: In the same period that the RIAA estimates that 803 million CDs were sold, the RIAA estimates that 2.1 billion CDs were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 percent. +={ piracy : + of intangible property +1 +} + +There are too many different things happening at the same time to explain these numbers definitively, but one conclusion is unavoidable: The recording industry constantly asks, "What's the difference between downloading a song and stealing a CD?" - but their own numbers reveal the difference. If I steal a CD, then there is one less CD to sell. Every taking is a lost sale. But on the basis of the numbers the RIAA provides, it is absolutely clear that the same is not true of downloads. If every download were a lost sale - if every use of Kazaa "rob[bed] the author of [his] profit" - then the industry would have suffered a 100 percent drop in sales last year, not a 7 percent drop. If 2.6 times the number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, and yet sales revenue dropped by just 6.7 percent, then there is a huge difference between "downloading a song and stealing a CD." +={ Kazaa } + +These are the harms - alleged and perhaps exaggerated but, let's assume, real. What of the benefits? File sharing may impose costs on the recording industry. What value does it produce in addition to these costs? +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + benefits of +8 +} + +One benefit is type C sharing - making available content that is technically still under copyright but is no longer commercially available. This is not a small category of content. There are millions of tracks that are no longer commercially available.~{ By one estimate, 75 percent of the music released by the major labels is no longer in print. See Online Entertainment and Copyright Law - Coming Soon to a Digital Device Near You: Hearing Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 107th Cong., 1st sess. (3 April 2001) (prepared statement of the Future of Music Coalition), available at link #18. }~ And while it's conceivable that some of this content is not available because the artist producing the content doesn't want it to be made available, the vast majority of it is unavailable solely because the publisher or the distributor has decided it no longer makes economic sense /{to the company}/ to make it available. +={ recording industry : + out-of-print music of +3 +} + +In real space - long before the Internet - the market had a simple response to this problem: used book and record stores. There are thousands of used book and used record stores in America today.~{ While there are not good estimates of the number of used record stores in existence, in 2002, there were 7,198 used book dealers in the United States, an increase of 20 percent since 1993. See Book Hunter Press, /{The Quiet Revolution: The Expansion of the Used Book Market}/ (2002), available at link #19. Used records accounted for $260 million in sales in 2002. See National Association of Recording Merchandisers, "2002 Annual Survey Results," available at link #20. }~ These stores buy content from owners, then sell the content they buy. And under American copyright law, when they buy and sell this content, /{even if the content is still under copyright}/, the copyright owner doesn't get a dime. Used book and record stores are commercial entities; their owners make money from the content they sell; but as with cable companies before statutory licensing, they don't have to pay the copyright owner for the content they sell. +={ books : + free on-line releases of +4 ; + books : + out of print +3 ; + books : + resales of +2 ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + of books +4 ; + used record sales +} + +Type C sharing, then, is very much like used book stores or used record stores. It is different, of course, because the person making the content available isn't making money from making the content available. It is also different, of course, because in real space, when I sell a record, I don't have it anymore, while in cyberspace, when someone shares my 1949 recording of Bernstein's "Two Love Songs," I still have it. That difference would matter economically if the owner of the 1949 copyright were selling the record in competition to my sharing. But we're talking about the class of content that is not currently commercially available. The Internet is making it available, through cooperative sharing, without competing with the market. +={ Bernstein, Leonard ; + Internet : + books on +4 +} + +It may well be, all things considered, that it would be better if the copyright owner got something from this trade. But just because it may well be better, it doesn't follow that it would be good to ban used book stores. Or put differently, if you think that type C sharing should be stopped, do you think that libraries and used book stores should be shut as well? + +Finally, and perhaps most importantly, file-sharing networks enable type D sharing to occur - the sharing of content that copyright owners want to have shared or for which there is no continuing copyright. This sharing clearly benefits authors and society. Science fiction author Cory Doctorow, for example, released his first novel, /{Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom}/, both free on-line and in bookstores on the same day. His (and his publisher's) thinking was that the on-line distribution would be a great advertisement for the "real" book. People would read part on-line, and then decide whether they liked the book or not. If they liked it, they would be more likely to buy it. Doctorow's content is type D content. If sharing networks enable his work to be spread, then both he and society are better off. (Actually, much better off: It is a great book!) +={ Doctorow, Cory ; + Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Doctorow) +} + +Likewise for work in the public domain: This sharing benefits society with no legal harm to authors at all. If efforts to solve the problem of type A sharing destroy the opportunity for type D sharing, then we lose something important in order to protect type A content. +={ public domain : + p2p sharing of works in +} + +The point throughout is this: While the recording industry understandably says, "This is how much we've lost," we must also ask, "How much has society gained from p2p sharing? What are the efficiencies? What is the content that otherwise would be unavailable?" + +For unlike the piracy I described in the first section of this chapter, much of the "piracy" that file sharing enables is plainly legal and good. And like the piracy I described in chapter 4, much of this piracy is motivated by a new way of spreading content caused by changes in the technology of distribution. Thus, consistent with the tradition that gave us Hollywood, radio, the recording industry, and cable TV, the question we should be asking about file sharing is how best to preserve its benefits while minimizing (to the extent possible) the wrongful harm it causes artists. The question is one of balance. The law should seek that balance, and that balance will be found only with time. + +"But isn't the war just a war against illegal sharing? Isn't the target just what you call type A sharing?" +={ piracy : + profit reduction as criterion of +} + +You would think. And we should hope. But so far, it is not. The effect of the war purportedly on type A sharing alone has been felt far beyond that one class of sharing. That much is obvious from the Napster case itself. When Napster told the district court that it had developed a technology to block the transfer of 99.4 percent of identified infringing material, the district court told counsel for Napster 99.4 percent was not good enough. Napster had to push the infringements "down to zero."~{ See Transcript of Proceedings, In Re: Napster Copyright Litigation at 34- 35 (N.D. Cal., 11 July 2001), nos. MDL-00-1369 MHP, C 99-5183 MHP, available at link #21. For an account of the litigation and its toll on Napster, see Joseph Menn, /{All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster}/ (New York: Crown Business, 2003), 269-82. }~ +={ copyright infringement lawsuits : + zero tolerance in +2 ; + Napster : + infringing material blocked by +1 ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + infringement protections in +1 +} + +If 99.4 percent is not good enough, then this is a war on file-sharing technologies, not a war on copyright infringement. There is no way to assure that a p2p system is used 100 percent of the time in compliance with the law, any more than there is a way to assure that 100 percent of VCRs or 100 percent of Xerox machines or 100 percent of handguns are used in compliance with the law. Zero tolerance means zero p2p. The court's ruling means that we as a society must lose the benefits of p2p, even for the totally legal and beneficial uses they serve, simply to assure that there are zero copyright infringements caused by p2p. + +Zero tolerance has not been our history. It has not produced the content industry that we know today. The history of American law has been a process of balance. As new technologies changed the way content was distributed, the law adjusted, after some time, to the new technology. In this adjustment, the law sought to ensure the legitimate rights of creators while protecting innovation. Sometimes this has meant more rights for creators. Sometimes less. + +So, as we've seen, when "mechanical reproduction" threatened the interests of composers, Congress balanced the rights of composers against the interests of the recording industry. It granted rights to composers, but also to the recording artists: Composers were to be paid, but at a price set by Congress. But when radio started broadcasting the recordings made by these recording artists, and they complained to Congress that their "creative property" was not being respected (since the radio station did not have to pay them for the creativity it broadcast), Congress rejected their claim. An indirect benefit was enough. +={ artists : + recording industry payments to ; + composers, copyright protections of ; + Congress, U.S. : + on copyright laws +3 | on recording industry +1 ; + copyright law : + on music recordings +2 | statutory licenses in +2 ; + radio : + music recordings played on ; + recording industry : + artist remuneration in | copyright protections in | radio broadcast and ; + statutory licenses : + composer's rights vs. producers' rights in +} + +Cable TV followed the pattern of record albums. When the courts rejected the claim that cable broadcasters had to pay for the content they rebroadcast, Congress responded by giving broadcasters a right to compensation, but at a level set by the law. It likewise gave cable companies the right to the content, so long as they paid the statutory price. +={ cable television +1 ; + Congress, U.S. : + on cable television +1 ; + copyright law : + on cable television rebroadcasting +1 ; + television : + cable vs. broadcast +1 +} + +This compromise, like the compromise affecting records and player pianos, served two important goals - indeed, the two central goals of any copyright legislation. First, the law assured that new innovators would have the freedom to develop new ways to deliver content. Second, the law assured that copyright holders would be paid for the content that was distributed. One fear was that if Congress simply required cable TV to pay copyright holders whatever they demanded for their content, then copyright holders associated with broadcasters would use their power to stifle this new technology, cable. But if Congress had permitted cable to use broadcasters' content for free, then it would have unfairly subsidized cable. Thus Congress chose a path that would assure /{compensation}/ without giving the past (broadcasters) control over the future (cable). +={ copyright law : + innovative freedom balanced with fair compensation in | two central goals of ; + innovation : + copyright profit balanced with | industry establishment opposed to +7 ; + player pianos +} + +In the same year that Congress struck this balance, two major producers and distributors of film content filed a lawsuit against another technology, the video tape recorder (VTR, or as we refer to them today, VCRs) that Sony had produced, the Betamax. Disney's and Universal's claim against Sony was relatively simple: Sony produced a device, Disney and Universal claimed, that enabled consumers to engage in copyright infringement. Because the device that Sony built had a "record" button, the device could be used to record copyrighted movies and shows. Sony was therefore benefiting from the copyright infringement of its customers. It should therefore, Disney and Universal claimed, be partially liable for that infringement. +={ Betamax +2 ; + cassette recording : + VCRs +2 ; + copyright infringement lawsuits : + distribution technology targeted in +12 ; + Disney, Inc. : + Sony Betamax technology opposed by +6 ; + film industry : + VCR taping facility opposed by +6 ; + Sony : + Betamax technology developed by +2 ; + television : + VCR taping of +2 ; + VCRs +2 ; + Universal Pictures +8 +} + +There was something to Disney's and Universal's claim. Sony did decide to design its machine to make it very simple to record television shows. It could have built the machine to block or inhibit any direct copying from a television broadcast. Or possibly, it could have built the machine to copy only if there were a special "copy me" signal on the line. It was clear that there were many television shows that did not grant anyone permission to copy. Indeed, if anyone had asked, no doubt the majority of shows would not have authorized copying. And in the face of this obvious preference, Sony could have designed its system to minimize the opportunity for copyright infringement. It did not, and for that, Disney and Universal wanted to hold it responsible for the architecture it chose. + +MPAA president Jack Valenti became the studios' most vocal champion. Valenti called VCRs "tapeworms." He warned, "When there are 20, 30, 40 million of these VCRs in the land, we will be invaded by millions of 'tapeworms,' eating away at the very heart and essence of the most precious asset the copyright owner has, his copyright."~{ Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders): Hearing on S. 1758 Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 1st and 2nd sess., 459 (1982) (testimony of Jack Valenti, president, Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.). }~ "One does not have to be trained in sophisticated marketing and creative judgment," he told Congress, "to understand the devastation on the after-theater marketplace caused by the hundreds of millions of tapings that will adversely impact on the future of the creative community in this country. It is simply a question of basic economics and plain common sense."~{ Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders), 475. }~ Indeed, as surveys would later show, 45 percent of VCR owners had movie libraries of ten videos or more~{ /{Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Sony Corp. of America,}/ 480 F. Supp. 429, 438 (C.D. Cal., 1979). }~ - a use the Court would later hold was not "fair." By "allowing VCR owners to copy freely by the means of an exemption from copyright infringement without creating a mechanism to compensate copyright owners," Valenti testified, Congress would "take from the owners the very essence of their property: the exclusive right to control who may use their work, that is, who may copy it and thereby profit from its reproduction."~{ Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders), 485 (testimony of Jack Valenti). }~ +={ Congress, U.S. : + on copyright laws +3 | on VCR technology ; + Valenti, Jack : + on VCR technology +1 +} + +It took eight years for this case to be resolved by the Supreme Court. In the interim, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Hollywood in its jurisdiction - leading Judge Alex Kozinski, who sits on that court, refers to it as the "Hollywood Circuit" - held that Sony would be liable for the copyright infringement made possible by its machines. Under the Ninth Circuit's rule, this totally familiar technology - which Jack Valenti had called "the Boston Strangler of the American film industry" (worse yet, it was a /{Japanese}/ Boston Strangler of the American film industry) - was an illegal technology.~{ /{Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Sony Corp. of America,}/ 659 F. 2d 963 (9th Cir. 1981). }~ +={ Court of Appeals : + Ninth Circuit ; + Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ; + Supreme Court, U.S. : + on VCR technology +3 ; + Kozinski, Alex +} + +But the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Ninth Circuit. And in its reversal, the Court clearly articulated its understanding of when and whether courts should intervene in such disputes. As the Court wrote, +={ Supreme Court, U.S. : + on balance of interests in copyright law +2 +} + +``` quote +Sound policy, as well as history, supports our consistent deference to Congress when major technological innovations alter the market for copyrighted materials. Congress has the constitutional authority and the institutional ability to accommodate fully the varied permutations of competing interests that are inevitably implicated by such new technology."~{ /{Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.,}/ 464 U.S. 417, 431 (1984). }~ +``` +={ innovative freedom balanced with fair compensation in +12 ; + innovation : + copyright profit balanced with +12 +} + +Congress was asked to respond to the Supreme Court's decision. But as with the plea of recording artists about radio broadcasts, Congress ignored the request. Congress was convinced that American film got enough, this "taking" notwithstanding. +={ cassette recording : + VCRs +3 ; + Congress, U.S. : + on copyright laws +4 | on VCR technology +3 ; + VCRs +3 +} + +If we put these cases together, a pattern is clear: + +table(h; c4: 10, 30, 30, 30){ + +CASE +WHOSE VALUE WAS "PIRATED" +RESPONSE OF THE COURTS +RESPONSE OF CONGRESS + +Recordings +Composers +No Protection +Statutory License + +Radio +Recording Artists +N/A +Nothing + +Cable TV +Broadcasters +No Protection +Statutory License + +VCR +Film Creators +No Protection +Nothing + +}table + +In each case throughout our history, a new technology changed the way content was distributed.~{ These are the most important instances in our history, but there are other cases as well. The technology of digital audio tape (DAT), for example, was regulated by Congress to minimize the risk of piracy. The remedy Congress imposed did burden DAT producers, by taxing tape sales and controlling the technology of DAT. See Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (Title 17 of the /{United States Code}/), Pub. L. No. 102-563, 106 Stat. 4237, codified at 17 U.S.C. §1001. Again, however, this regulation did not eliminate the opportunity for free riding in the sense I've described. See Lessig, /{Future,}/ 71. See also Picker, "From Edison to the Broadcast Flag," /{University of Chicago Law Review}/ 70 (2003): 293-96. }~ In each case, throughout our history, that change meant that someone got a "free ride" on someone else's work. + +In /{none}/ of these cases did either the courts or Congress eliminate all free riding. In /{none}/ of these cases did the courts or Congress insist that the law should assure that the copyright holder get all the value that his copyright created. In every case, the copyright owners complained of "piracy." In every case, Congress acted to recognize some of the legiti macy in the behavior of the "pirates." In each case, Congress allowed some new technology to benefit from content made before. It balanced the interests at stake. + +When you think across these examples, and the other examples that make up the first four chapters of this section, this balance makes sense. Was Walt Disney a pirate? Would doujinshi be better if creators had to ask permission? Should tools that enable others to capture and spread images as a way to cultivate or criticize our culture be better regulated? Is it really right that building a search engine should expose you to $15 million in damages? Would it have been better if Edison had controlled film? Should every cover band have to hire a lawyer to get permission to record a song? +={ Disney, Walt ; + Edison, Thomas +} + +We could answer yes to each of these questions, but our tradition has answered no. In our tradition, as the Supreme Court has stated, copyright "has never accorded the copyright owner complete control over all possible uses of his work."~{ /{Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.,}/ 464 U.S. 417, 432 (1984). }~ Instead, the particular uses that the law regulates have been defined by balancing the good that comes from granting an exclusive right against the burdens such an exclusive right creates. And this balancing has historically been done /{after}/ a technology has matured, or settled into the mix of technologies that facilitate the distribution of content. +={ Supreme Court, U.S. : + on balance of interests in copyright law +} + +We should be doing the same thing today. The technology of the Internet is changing quickly. The way people connect to the Internet (wires vs. wireless) is changing very quickly. No doubt the network should not become a tool for "stealing" from artists. But neither should the law become a tool to entrench one particular way in which artists (or more accurately, distributors) get paid. As I describe in some detail in the last chapter of this book, we should be securing income to artists while we allow the market to secure the most efficient way to promote and distribute content. This will require changes in the law, at least in the interim. These changes should be designed to balance the protection of the law against the strong public interest that innovation continue. + +This is especially true when a new technology enables a vastly superior mode of distribution. And this p2p has done. P2p technologies can be ideally efficient in moving content across a widely diverse network. Left to develop, they could make the network vastly more efficient. Yet these "potential public benefits," as John Schwartz writes in /{The New York Times}/, "could be delayed in the P2P fight."~{ John Schwartz, "New Economy: The Attack on Peer-to-Peer Software Echoes Past Efforts," /{New York Times,}/ 22 September 2003, C3. }~ +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + benefits of +1 ; + Schwartz, John +} + +!_ Yet when anyone +begins to talk about "balance," the copyright warriors raise a different argument. "All this hand waving about balance and incentives," they say, "misses a fundamental point. Our content," the warriors insist, "is our /{property}/. Why should we wait for Congress to 'rebalance' our property rights? Do you have to wait before calling the police when your car has been stolen? And why should Congress deliberate at all about the merits of this theft? Do we ask whether the car thief had a good use for the car before we arrest him?" + +"It is /{our property}/," the warriors insist. "And it should be protected just as any other property is protected." + +:B~ "PROPERTY" + +1~intro_property [Intro]-# + +!_ The copyright warriors +are right: A copyright is a kind of property. It can be owned and sold, and the law protects against its theft. Ordinarily, the copyright owner gets to hold out for any price he wants. Markets reckon the supply and demand that partially determine the price she can get. +={ copyright : + as property +5 ; + property rights : + copyright vs. +5 +} + +% would have placed index links on heading above, but is an un-numbered heading + +But in ordinary language, to call a copyright a "property" right is a bit misleading, for the property of copyright is an odd kind of property. Indeed, the very idea of property in any idea or any expression is very odd. I understand what I am taking when I take the picnic table you put in your backyard. I am taking a thing, the picnic table, and after I take it, you don't have it. But what am I taking when I take the good /{idea}/ you had to put a picnic table in the backyard - by, for example, going to Sears, buying a table, and putting it in my backyard? What is the thing I am taking then? + +The point is not just about the thingness of picnic tables versus ideas, though that's an important difference. The point instead is that in the ordinary case - indeed, in practically every case except for a narrow range of exceptions - ideas released to the world are free. I don't take anything from you when I copy the way you dress - though I might seem weird if I did it every day, and especially weird if you are a woman. Instead, as Thomas Jefferson said (and as is especially true when I copy the way someone else dresses), - He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."~{ Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813) in /{The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,}/ vol. 6 (Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds., 1903), 330, 333-34. }~ +={ Jefferson, Thomas } + +The exceptions to free use are ideas and expressions within the reach of the law of patent and copyright, and a few other domains that I won't discuss here. Here the law says you can't take my idea or expression without my permission: The law turns the intangible into property. +={ property rights : + intangibility of +} + +But how, and to what extent, and in what form - the details, in other words - matter. To get a good sense of how this practice of turning the intangible into property emerged, we need to place this "property" in its proper context.~{ As the legal realists taught American law, all property rights are intangible. A property right is simply a right that an individual has against the world to do or not do certain things that may or may not attach to a physical object. The right itself is intangible, even if the object to which it is (metaphorically) attached is tangible. See Adam Mossoff, "What Is Property? Putting the Pieces Back Together," /{Arizona Law Review}/ 45 (2003): 373, 429 n. 241. }~ + +My strategy in doing this will be the same as my strategy in the preceding part. I offer four stories to help put the idea of "copyright material is property" in context. Where did the idea come from? What are its limits? How does it function in practice? After these stories, the significance of this true statement - "copyright material is property" - will be a bit more clear, and its implications will be revealed as quite different from the implications that the copyright warriors would have us draw. + +1~ Chapter Six: Founders +={ books : + English copyright law developed for +40 ; + copyright law : + development of +40 | English +40 ; + England, copyright laws developed in +40 ; + United Kingdom : + history of copyright law in +40 +} + +!_ William Shakespeare +wrote /{Romeo and Juliet}/ in 1595. The play was first published in 1597. It was the eleventh major play that Shakespeare had written. He would continue to write plays through 1613, and the plays that he wrote have continued to define Anglo-American culture ever since. So deeply have the works of a sixteenth-century writer seeped into our culture that we often don't even recognize their source. I once overheard someone commenting on Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Henry V: "I liked it, but Shakespeare is so full of clichés." +={ Branagh, Kenneth ; + Henry V. ; + Shakespeare, William ; + Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) +2 +} + +In 1774, almost 180 years after /{Romeo and Juliet}/ was written, the "copy-right" for the work was still thought by many to be the exclusive right of a single London publisher, Jacob Tonson.~{ Jacob Tonson is typically remembered for his associations with prominent eighteenth-century literary figures, especially John Dryden, and for his handsome "definitive editions" of classic works. In addition to /{Romeo and Juliet,}/ he published an astonishing array of works that still remain at the heart of the English canon, including collected works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Dryden. See Keith Walker, "Jacob Tonson, Bookseller," /{American Scholar}/ 61:3 (1992): 424-31. }~ Tonson was the most prominent of a small group of publishers called the Conger~{ Lyman Ray Patterson, /{Copyright in Historical Perspective}/ (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), 151-52. }~ who controlled bookselling in England during the eighteenth century. The Conger claimed a perpetual right to control the "copy" of books that they had acquired from authors. That perpetual right meant that no one else could publish copies of a book to which they held the copyright. Prices of the classics were thus kept high; competition to produce better or cheaper editions was eliminated. +={ Conger ; + Tonson, Jacob +1 +} + +Now, there's something puzzling about the year 1774 to anyone who knows a little about copyright law. The better-known year in the history of copyright is 1710, the year that the British Parliament adopted the first "copyright" act. Known as the Statute of Anne, the act stated that all published works would get a copyright term of fourteen years, renewable once if the author was alive, and that all works already published by 1710 would get a single term of twenty-one additional years.~{ As Siva Vaidhyanathan nicely argues, it is erroneous to call this a "copyright law." See Vaidhyanathan, /{Copyrights and Copywrongs,}/ 40. }~ Under this law, /{Romeo and Juliet}/ should have been free in 1731. So why was there any issue about it still being under Tonson's control in 1774? +={ British Parliament ; + copyright : + duration of +1 | renewability of ; + Statute of Anne (1710) +} + +The reason is that the English hadn't yet agreed on what a "copyright" was - indeed, no one had. At the time the English passed the Statute of Anne, there was no other legislation governing copyrights. The last law regulating publishers, the Licensing Act of 1662, had expired in 1695. That law gave publishers a monopoly over publishing, as a way to make it easier for the Crown to control what was published. But after it expired, there was no positive law that said that the publishers, or "Stationers," had an exclusive right to print books. +={ law : + common vs. positive +1 ; + positive law ; + Licensing Act (1662) +} + +There was no /{positive}/ law, but that didn't mean that there was no law. The Anglo-American legal tradition looks to both the words of legislatures and the words of judges to know the rules that are to govern how people are to behave. We call the words from legislatures "positive law." We call the words from judges "common law." The common law sets the background against which legislatures legislate; the legislature, ordinarily, can trump that background only if it passes a law to displace it. And so the real question after the licensing statutes had expired was whether the common law protected a copyright, independent of any positive law. +={ common law } + +This question was important to the publishers, or "booksellers," as they were called, because there was growing competition from foreign publishers. The Scottish, in particular, were increasingly publishing and exporting books to England. That competition reduced the profits of the Conger, which reacted by demanding that Parliament pass a law to again give them exclusive control over publishing. That demand ultimately resulted in the Statute of Anne. +={ Conger ; + British Parliament +2 ; + Scottish publishers ; + Statute of Anne (1710) +1 +} + +The Statute of Anne granted the author or "proprietor" of a book an exclusive right to print that book. In an important limitation, however, and to the horror of the booksellers, the law gave the bookseller that right for a limited term. At the end of that term, the copyright "expired," and the work would then be free and could be published by anyone. Or so the legislature is thought to have believed. +={ copyright : + as narrow monopoly right +33 +} + +Now, the thing to puzzle about for a moment is this: Why would Parliament limit the exclusive right? Not why would they limit it to the particular limit they set, but why would they limit the right /{at all?}}/ + +For the booksellers, and the authors whom they represented, had a very strong claim. Take /{Romeo and Juliet}/ as an example: That play was written by Shakespeare. It was his genius that brought it into the world. He didn't take anybody's property when he created this play (that's a controversial claim, but never mind), and by his creating this play, he didn't make it any harder for others to craft a play. So why is it that the law would ever allow someone else to come along and take Shakespeare's play without his, or his estate's, permission? What reason is there to allow someone else to "steal" Shakespeare's work? +={ Shakespeare, William ; + Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) +} + +The answer comes in two parts. We first need to see something special about the notion of "copyright" that existed at the time of the Statute of Anne. Second, we have to see something important about "booksellers." +={ Statute of Anne (1710) } + +First, about copyright. In the last three hundred years, we have come to apply the concept of "copyright" ever more broadly. But in 1710, it wasn't so much a concept as it was a very particular right. The copyright was born as a very specific set of restrictions: It forbade others from reprinting a book. In 1710, the "copy-right" was a right to use a particular machine to replicate a particular work. It did not go beyond that very narrow right. It did not control any more generally how a work could be /{used}/. Today the right includes a large collection of restrictions on the freedom of others: It grants the author the exclusive right to copy, the exclusive right to distribute, the exclusive right to perform, and so on. +={ usage restrictions attached to } + +So, for example, even if the copyright to Shakespeare's works were perpetual, all that would have meant under the original meaning of the term was that no one could reprint Shakespeare's work without the permission of the Shakespeare estate. It would not have controlled anything, for example, about how the work could be performed, whether the work could be translated, or whether Kenneth Branagh would be allowed to make his films. The "copy-right" was only an exclusive right to print - no less, of course, but also no more. +={ Branagh, Kenneth ; + Shakespeare, William +} + +Even that limited right was viewed with skepticism by the British. They had had a long and ugly experience with "exclusive rights," especially "exclusive rights" granted by the Crown. The English had fought a civil war in part about the Crown's practice of handing out monopolies - especially monopolies for works that already existed. King Henry VIII granted a patent to print the Bible and a monopoly to Darcy to print playing cards. The English Parliament began to fight back against this power of the Crown. In 1656, it passed the Statute of Monopolies, limiting monopolies to patents for new inventions. And by 1710, Parliament was eager to deal with the growing monopoly in publishing. +={ Henry VIII, King of England ; + monopoly, copyright as +27 ; + Statue of Monopolies (1656) +} + +Thus the "copy-right," when viewed as a monopoly right, was naturally viewed as a right that should be limited. (However convincing the claim that "it's my property, and I should have it forever," try sounding convincing when uttering, "It's my monopoly, and I should have it forever.") The state would protect the exclusive right, but only so long as it benefited society. The British saw the harms from special-interest favors; they passed a law to stop them. + +Second, about booksellers. It wasn't just that the copyright was a monopoly. It was also that it was a monopoly held by the booksellers. Booksellers sound quaint and harmless to us. They were not viewed as harmless in seventeenth-century England. Members of the Conger were increasingly seen as monopolists of the worst kind - tools of the Crown's repression, selling the liberty of England to guarantee themselves a monopoly profit. The attacks against these monopolists were harsh: Milton described them as "old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of book-selling"; they were "men who do not therefore labour in an honest profession to which learning is indetted."~{ Philip Wittenberg, /{The Protection and Marketing of Literary Property}/ (New York: J. Messner, Inc., 1937), 31. }~ +={ Milton, John ; + booksellers, English +25 ; + Conger ; + copyright : + duration of +25 +} + +Many believed the power the booksellers exercised over the spread of knowledge was harming that spread, just at the time the Enlightenment was teaching the importance of education and knowledge spread generally. The idea that knowledge should be free was a hallmark of the time, and these powerful commercial interests were interfering with that idea. +={ Enlightenment ; + knowledge, freedom of +} + +To balance this power, Parliament decided to increase competition among booksellers, and the simplest way to do that was to spread the wealth of valuable books. Parliament therefore limited the term of copyrights, and thereby guaranteed that valuable books would become open to any publisher to publish after a limited time. Thus the setting of the term for existing works to just twenty-one years was a compromise to fight the power of the booksellers. The limitation on terms was an indirect way to assure competition among publishers, and thus the construction and spread of culture. +={ British Parliament +4 } + +When 1731 (1710 + 21) came along, however, the booksellers were getting anxious. They saw the consequences of more competition, and like every competitor, they didn't like them. At first booksellers simply ignored the Statute of Anne, continuing to insist on the perpetual right to control publication. But in 1735 and 1737, they tried to persuade Parliament to extend their terms. Twenty-one years was not enough, they said; they needed more time. +={ Statute of Anne (1710) +2 ; + copyright : + in perpetuity +2 +} + +Parliament rejected their requests. As one pamphleteer put it, in words that echo today, + +``` quote +I see no Reason for granting a further Term now, which will not hold as well for granting it again and again, as often as the Old ones Expire; so that should this Bill pass, it will in Effect be establishing a perpetual Monopoly, a Thing deservedly odious in the Eye of the Law; it will be a great Cramp to Trade, a Discouragement to Learning, no Benefit to the Authors, but a general Tax on the Publick; and all this only to increase the private Gain of the Booksellers."~{ A Letter to a Member of Parliament concerning the Bill now depending in the House of Commons, for making more effectual an Act in the Eighth Year of the Reign of Queen Anne, entitled, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned (London, 1735), in Brief Amici Curiae of Tyler T. Ochoa et al., 8, /{Eldred v. Ashcroft,}/ 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01- 618). }~ +``` + +Having failed in Parliament, the publishers turned to the courts in a series of cases. Their argument was simple and direct: The Statute of Anne gave authors certain protections through positive law, but those protections were not intended as replacements for the common law. Instead, they were intended simply to supplement the common law. Under common law, it was already wrong to take another person's creative "property" and use it without his permission. The Statute of Anne, the booksellers argued, didn't change that. Therefore, just because the protections of the Statute of Anne expired, that didn't mean the protections of the common law expired: Under the common law they had the right to ban the publication of a book, even if its Statute of Anne copyright had expired. This, they argued, was the only way to protect authors. +={ common law ; + law : + common vs. positive ; + positive law +} + +This was a clever argument, and one that had the support of some of the leading jurists of the day. It also displayed extraordinary chutzpah. Until then, as law professor Raymond Patterson has put it, "The publishers ... had as much concern for authors as a cattle rancher has for cattle."~{ Lyman Ray Patterson, "Free Speech, Copyright, and Fair Use," /{Vanderbilt Law Review}/ 40 (1987): 28. For a wonderfully compelling account, see Vaidhyanathan, 37-48. }~ The bookseller didn't care squat for the rights of the author. His concern was the monopoly profit that the author's work gave. + +The booksellers' argument was not accepted without a fight. The hero of this fight was a Scottish bookseller named Alexander Donaldson.~{ For a compelling account, see David Saunders, /{Authorship and Copyright}/ (London: Routledge, 1992), 62-69. }~ +={ Donaldson, Alexander +3 ; + Patterson, Raymond ; + Scottish publishers +3 +} + +Donaldson was an outsider to the London Conger. He began his career in Edinburgh in 1750. The focus of his business was inexpensive reprints "of standard works whose copyright term had expired," at least under the Statute of Anne.~{ Mark Rose, /{Authors and Owners}/ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 92. }~ Donaldson's publishing house prospered and became "something of a center for literary Scotsmen." "[A]mong them," Professor Mark Rose writes, was "the young James Boswell who, together with his friend Andrew Erskine, published an anthology of contemporary Scottish poems with Donaldson."~{ Ibid., 93. }~ +={ Statute of Anne (1710) +8 ; + Conger +1 ; + Boswell, James ; + Erskine, Andrew ; + Rose, Mark +} + +When the London booksellers tried to shut down Donaldson's shop in Scotland, he responded by moving his shop to London, where he sold inexpensive editions "of the most popular English books, in defiance of the supposed common law right of Literary Property."~{ Lyman Ray Patterson, /{Copyright in Historical Perspective,}/ 167 (quoting Borwell). }~ His books undercut the Conger prices by 30 to 50 percent, and he rested his right to compete upon the ground that, under the Statute of Anne, the works he was selling had passed out of protection. +={ common law +3 } + +The London booksellers quickly brought suit to block "piracy" like Donaldson's. A number of actions were successful against the "pirates," the most important early victory being /{Millar v. Taylor}/. +={ Millar v. Taylor +5 } + +Millar was a bookseller who in 1729 had purchased the rights to James Thomson's poem "The Seasons." Millar complied with the requirements of the Statute of Anne, and therefore received the full protection of the statute. After the term of copyright ended, Robert Taylor began printing a competing volume. Millar sued, claiming a perpetual common law right, the Statute of Anne notwithstanding.~{ Howard B. Abrams, "The Historic Foundation of American Copyright Law: Exploding the Myth of Common Law Copyright," /{Wayne Law Review}/ 29 (1983): 1152. }~ +={ Thomson, James +1 ; + copyright : + in perpetuity +1 ; + Seasons, The (Thomson) ; + Taylor, Robert +} + +Astonishingly to modern lawyers, one of the greatest judges in English history, Lord Mansfield, agreed with the booksellers. Whatever protection the Statute of Anne gave booksellers, it did not, he held, extinguish any common law right. The question was whether the common law would protect the author against subsequent "pirates." Mansfield's answer was yes: The common law would bar Taylor from reprinting Thomson's poem without Millar's permission. That common law rule thus effectively gave the booksellers a perpetual right to control the publication of any book assigned to them. +={ Mansfield, William Murray, Lord +1 } + +Considered as a matter of abstract justice - reasoning as if justice were just a matter of logical deduction from first principles - Mansfield's conclusion might make some sense. But what it ignored was the larger issue that Parliament had struggled with in 1710: How best to limit the monopoly power of publishers? Parliament's strategy was to offer a term for existing works that was long enough to buy peace in 1710, but short enough to assure that culture would pass into competition within a reasonable period of time. Within twenty-one years, Parliament believed, Britain would mature from the controlled culture that the Crown coveted to the free culture that we inherited. +={ British Parliament +2 } + +The fight to defend the limits of the Statute of Anne was not to end there, however, and it is here that Donaldson enters the mix. +={ Donaldson, Alexander +5 ; + Scottish publishers +5 ; + Statute of Anne (1710) +2 +} + +Millar died soon after his victory, so his case was not appealed. His estate sold Thomson's poems to a syndicate of printers that included Thomas Beckett. ~{ Ibid., 1156. }~ Donaldson then released an unauthorized edition of Thomson's works. Beckett, on the strength of the decision in /{Millar}/, got an injunction against Donaldson. Donaldson appealed the case to the House of Lords, which functioned much like our own Supreme Court. In February of 1774, that body had the chance to interpret the meaning of Parliament's limits from sixty years before. +={ Thomson, James ; + Becket, Thomas ; + House of Lords +5 ; + Supreme Court, U.S. : + House of Lords vs. +2 +} + +As few legal cases ever do, /{Donaldson v. Beckett}/ drew an enormous amount of attention throughout Britain. Donaldson's lawyers argued that whatever rights may have existed under the common law, the Statute of Anne terminated those rights. After passage of the Statute of Anne, the only legal protection for an exclusive right to control publication came from that statute. Thus, they argued, after the term specified in the Statute of Anne expired, works that had been protected by the statute were no longer protected. +={ Donaldson v. Beckett +8 ; + common law +3 +} + +The House of Lords was an odd institution. Legal questions were presented to the House and voted upon first by the "law lords," members of special legal distinction who functioned much like the Justices in our Supreme Court. Then, after the law lords voted, the House of Lords generally voted. + +The reports about the law lords' votes are mixed. On some counts, it looks as if perpetual copyright prevailed. But there is no ambiguity about how the House of Lords voted as whole. By a two-to-one majority (22 to 11) they voted to reject the idea of perpetual copyrights. Whatever one's understanding of the common law, now a copyright was fixed for a limited time, after which the work protected by copyright passed into the public domain. +={ copyright : + in perpetuity +1 ; + public domain : + English legal establishment of +1 +} + +"The public domain." Before the case of /{Donaldson v. Beckett}/, there was no clear idea of a public domain in England. Before 1774, there was a strong argument that common law copyrights were perpetual. After 1774, the public domain was born. For the first time in Anglo- American history, the legal control over creative works expired, and the greatest works in English history - including those of Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Johnson, and Bunyan - were free of legal restraint. +={ Bacon, Francis ; + Bunyan, John ; + Johnson, Samuel ; + Milton, John ; + Shakespeare, William +} + +It is hard for us to imagine, but this decision by the House of Lords fueled an extraordinarily popular and political reaction. In Scotland, where most of the "pirate publishers" did their work, people celebrated the decision in the streets. As the /{Edinburgh Advertiser}/ reported, "No private cause has so much engrossed the attention of the public, and none has been tried before the House of Lords in the decision of which so many individuals were interested." "Great rejoicing in Edinburgh upon victory over literary property: bonfires and illuminations."~{ Rose, 97. }~ +={ Scottish publishers } + +In London, however, at least among publishers, the reaction was equally strong in the opposite direction. The /{Morning Chronicle}/ reported: + +``` quote +By the above decision ... near 200,000 pounds worth of what was honestly purchased at public sale, and which was yesterday thought property is now reduced to nothing. The Booksellers of London and Westminster, many of whom sold estates and houses to purchase Copy-right, are in a manner ruined, and those who after many years industry thought they had acquired a competency to provide for their families now find themselves without a shilling to devise to their successors."~{ Ibid. }~ +``` + +"Ruined" is a bit of an exaggeration. But it is not an exaggeration to say that the change was profound. The decision of the House of Lords meant that the booksellers could no longer control how culture in England would grow and develop. Culture in England was thereafter /{free}/. Not in the sense that copyrights would not be respected, for of course, for a limited time after a work was published, the bookseller had an exclusive right to control the publication of that book. And not in the sense that books could be stolen, for even after a copyright expired, you still had to buy the book from someone. But /{free}/ in the sense that the culture and its growth would no longer be controlled by a small group of publishers. As every free market does, this free market of free culture would grow as the consumers and producers chose. English culture would develop as the many English readers chose to let it develop - chose in the books they bought and wrote; chose in the memes they repeated and endorsed. Chose in a /{competitive context}/, not a context in which the choices about what culture is available to people and how they get access to it are made by the few despite the wishes of the many. +={ House of Lords ; + free culture : + English legal establishment of +} + +At least, this was the rule in a world where the Parliament is anti-monopoly, resistant to the protectionist pleas of publishers. In a world where the Parliament is more pliant, free culture would be less protected. +={ British Parliament } + +1~ Chapter Seven: Recorders +={ copyright law : + fair use and +22 ; + documentary film +22 ; + Else, Jon +22 ; + fair use : + in documentary film +22 ; + films : + fair use of copyrighted material in +22 +} + +!_ Jon Else +is a filmmaker. He is best known for his documentaries and has been very successful in spreading his art. He is also a teacher, and as a teacher myself, I envy the loyalty and admiration that his students feel for him. (I met, by accident, two of his students at a dinner party. He was their god.) + +Else worked on a documentary that I was involved in. At a break, he told me a story about the freedom to create with film in America today. + +In 1990, Else was working on a documentary about Wagner's Ring Cycle. The focus was stagehands at the San Francisco Opera. Stage- hands are a particularly funny and colorful element of an opera. During a show, they hang out below the stage in the grips' lounge and in the lighting loft. They make a perfect contrast to the art on the stage. +={ Wagner, Richard +1 ; + San Francisco Opera +} + +During one of the performances, Else was shooting some stage- hands playing checkers. In one corner of the room was a television set. Playing on the television set, while the stagehands played checkers and the opera company played Wagner, was /{The Simpsons}/. As Else judged it, this touch of cartoon helped capture the flavor of what was special about the scene. +={ Simpsons, The +16 } + +Years later, when he finally got funding to complete the film, Else attempted to clear the rights for those few seconds of /{The Simpsons}/. For of course, those few seconds are copyrighted; and of course, to use copyrighted material you need the permission of the copyright owner, unless "fair use" or some other privilege applies. +={ films : + multiple copyrights associated with +} + +Else called /{Simpsons}/ creator Matt Groening's office to get permission. Groening approved the shot. The shot was a four-and-a-half-second image on a tiny television set in the corner of the room. How could it hurt? Groening was happy to have it in the film, but he told Else to contact Gracie Films, the company that produces the program. +={ Gracie Films +1 ; + Groening, Matt +2 +} + +Gracie Films was okay with it, too, but they, like Groening, wanted to be careful. So they told Else to contact Fox, Gracie's parent company. Else called Fox and told them about the clip in the corner of the one room shot of the film. Matt Groening had already given permission, Else said. He was just confirming the permission with Fox. +={ Fox (film company) +1 } + +Then, as Else told me, "two things happened. First we discovered ... that Matt Groening doesn't own his own creation - or at least that someone [at Fox] believes he doesn't own his own creation." And second, Fox "wanted ten thousand dollars as a licensing fee for us to use this four-point-five seconds of ... entirely unsolicited /{Simpsons}/ which was in the corner of the shot." + +Else was certain there was a mistake. He worked his way up to someone he thought was a vice president for licensing, Rebecca Herrera. He explained to her, "There must be some mistake here. ... We're asking for your educational rate on this." That was the educational rate, Herrera told Else. A day or so later, Else called again to confirm what he had been told. +={ Herrera, Rebecca +1 } + +"I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight," he told me. "Yes, you have your facts straight," she said. It would cost $10,000 to use the clip of /{The Simpsons}/ in the corner of a shot in a documentary film about Wagner's Ring Cycle. And then, astonishingly, Herrera told Else, "And if you quote me, I'll turn you over to our attorneys." As an assistant to Herrera told Else later on, "They don't give a shit. They just want the money." +={ Wagner, Richard } + +Else didn't have the money to buy the right to replay what was playing on the television backstage at the San Francisco Opera.To reproduce this reality was beyond the documentary filmmaker's budget. At the very last minute before the film was to be released, Else digitally replaced the shot with a clip from another film that he had worked on, /{The Day After Trinity}/, from ten years before. +={ San Francisco Opera ; + Day After Trinity, The +} + +!_ There's no doubt +that someone, whether Matt Groening or Fox, owns the copyright to /{The Simpsons}/. That copyright is their property. To use that copyrighted material thus sometimes requires the permission of the copyright owner. If the use that Else wanted to make of the /{Simpsons}/ copyright were one of the uses restricted by the law, then he would need to get the permission of the copyright owner before he could use the work in that way. And in a free market, it is the owner of the copyright who gets to set the price for any use that the law says the owner gets to control. +={ Fox (film company) +2 ; + Groening, Matt +2 +} + +For example, "public performance" is a use of /{The Simpsons}/ that the copyright owner gets to control. If you take a selection of favorite episodes, rent a movie theater, and charge for tickets to come see "My Favorite /{Simpsons}/," then you need to get permission from the copyright owner. And the copyright owner (rightly, in my view) can charge whatever she wants - $10 or $1,000,000. That's her right, as set by the law. + +But when lawyers hear this story about Jon Else and Fox, their first thought is "fair use."~{ For an excellent argument that such use is "fair use," but that lawyers don't permit recognition that it is "fair use," see Richard A. Posner with William F. Patry, "Fair Use and Statutory Reform in the Wake of /{Eldred}/" (draft on file with author), University of Chicago Law School, 5 August 2003. }~ Else's use of just 4.5 seconds of an indirect shot of a /{Simpsons}/ episode is clearly a fair use of /{The Simpsons}/ - and fair use does not require the permission of anyone. + +So I asked Else why he didn't just rely upon "fair use." Here's his reply: + +``` quote +The /{Simpsons}/ fiasco was for me a great lesson in the gulf between what lawyers find irrelevant in some abstract sense, and what is crushingly relevant in practice to those of us actually trying to make and broadcast documentaries. I never had any doubt that it was "clearly fair use" in an absolute legal sense. But I couldn't rely on the concept in any concrete way. Here's why: +={ fair use : + legal intimidation tactics against +6 +} + +1. Before our films can be broadcast, the network requires that we buy Errors and Omissions insurance. The carriers require a detailed "visual cue sheet" listing the source and licensing status of each shot in the film. They take a dim view of "fair use," and a claim of "fair use" can grind the application process to a halt. +={ Errors and Omissions insurance } + +2. I probably never should have asked Matt Groening in the first place. But I knew (at least from folklore) that Fox had a history of tracking down and stopping unlicensed /{Simpsons}/ usage, just as George Lucas had a very high profile litigating /{Star Wars}/ usage. So I decided to play by the book, thinking that we would be granted free or cheap license to four seconds of /{Simpsons}/. As a documentary producer working to exhaustion on a shoestring, the last thing I wanted was to risk legal trouble, even nuisance legal trouble, and even to defend a principle. +={ Fox (film company) +1 ; + Groening, Matt ; + Lucas, George ; + Star Wars +} + +3. I did, in fact, speak with one of your colleagues at Stanford Law School ... who confirmed that it was fair use. He also confirmed that Fox would "depose and litigate you to within an inch of your life," regardless of the merits of my claim. He made clear that it would boil down to who had the bigger legal department and the deeper pockets, me or them. + +4. The question of fair use usually comes up at the end of the project, when we are up against a release deadline and out of money." +``` + +In theory, fair use means you need no permission. The theory therefore supports free culture and insulates against a permission culture. But in practice, fair use functions very differently. The fuzzy lines of the law, tied to the extraordinary liability if lines are crossed, means that the effective fair use for many types of creators is slight. The law has the right aim; practice has defeated the aim. + +This practice shows just how far the law has come from its eighteenth-century roots. The law was born as a shield to protect publishers' profits against the unfair competition of a pirate. It has matured into a sword that interferes with any use, transformative or not. + +1~ Chapter Eight: Transformers +={ films : + clips and collages of +37 +} + +!_ In 1993, +Alex Alben was a lawyer working at Starwave, Inc. Starwave was an innovative company founded by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen to develop digital entertainment. Long before the Internet became popular, Starwave began investing in new technology for delivering entertainment in anticipation of the power of networks. +={ Alben, Alex +27 ; + Allen, Paul ; + Microsoft ; + Starwave +7 +} + +Alben had a special interest in new technology. He was intrigued by the emerging market for CD-ROM technology - not to distribute film, but to do things with film that otherwise would be very difficult. In 1993, he launched an initiative to develop a product to build retrospectives on the work of particular actors. The first actor chosen was Clint Eastwood. The idea was to showcase all of the work of Eastwood, with clips from his films and interviews with figures important to his career. +={ artists : + retrospective collections on +21 ; + CD-ROMs, film clips used in +21 ; + Eastwood, Clint +15 +} + +At that time, Eastwood had made more than fifty films, as an actor and as a director. Alben began with a series of interviews with Eastwood, asking him about his career. Because Starwave produced those interviews, it was free to include them on the CD. + +That alone would not have made a very interesting product, so Starwave wanted to add content from the movies in Eastwood's career: posters, scripts, and other material relating to the films Eastwood made. Most of his career was spent at Warner Brothers, and so it was relatively easy to get permission for that content. +={ permissions : + for use of film clips +33 ; + Warner Brothers +} + +Then Alben and his team decided to include actual film clips. "Our goal was that we were going to have a clip from every one of East-wood's films," Alben told me. It was here that the problem arose. "No one had ever really done this before," Alben explained. "No one had ever tried to do this in the context of an artistic look at an actor's career." +={ films : + multiple copyrights associated with +14 +} + +Alben brought the idea to Michael Slade, the CEO of Starwave. Slade asked, "Well, what will it take?" +={ Slade, Michael +2 } + +Alben replied, "Well, we're going to have to clear rights from everyone who appears in these films, and the music and everything else that we want to use in these film clips." Slade said, "Great! Go for it."~{ Technically, the rights that Alben had to clear were mainly those of publicity"rights an artist has to control the commercial exploitation of his image. But these rights, too, burden "Rip, Mix, Burn" creativity, as this chapter evinces. }~ + +The problem was that neither Alben nor Slade had any idea what clearing those rights would mean. Every actor in each of the films could have a claim to royalties for the reuse of that film. But CD-ROMs had not been specified in the contracts for the actors, so there was no clear way to know just what Starwave was to do. + +I asked Alben how he dealt with the problem. With an obvious pride in his resourcefulness that obscured the obvious bizarreness of his tale, Alben recounted just what they did: + +``` quote +So we very mechanically went about looking up the film clips. We made some artistic decisions about what film clips to include - of course we were going to use the "Make my day" clip from /{Dirty Harry}/. But you then need to get the guy on the ground who's wiggling under the gun and you need to get his permission. And then you have to decide what you are going to pay him. +={ Dirty, Harry } + +We decided that it would be fair if we offered them the day-player rate for the right to reuse that performance. We're talking about a clip of less than a minute, but to reuse that performance in the CD-ROM the rate at the time was about $600. + +So we had to identify the people - some of them were hard to identify because in Eastwood movies you can't tell who's the guy crashing through the glass - is it the actor or is it the stuntman? And then we just, we put together a team, my assistant and some others, and we just started calling people." +``` + +Some actors were glad to help - Donald Sutherland, for example, followed up himself to be sure that the rights had been cleared. Others were dumbfounded at their good fortune. Alben would ask, "Hey, can I pay you $600 or maybe if you were in two films, you know, $1,200?" And they would say, "Are you for real? Hey, I'd love to get $1,200." And some of course were a bit difficult (estranged ex-wives, in particular). But eventually, Alben and his team had cleared the rights to this retrospective CD-ROM on Clint Eastwood's career. +={ Sutherland, Donald } + +It was one /{year}/ later - " and even then we weren't sure whether we were totally in the clear." + +Alben is proud of his work. The project was the first of its kind and the only time he knew of that a team had undertaken such a massive project for the purpose of releasing a retrospective. + +``` quote +Everyone thought it would be too hard. Everyone just threw up their hands and said, "Oh, my gosh, a film, it's so many copyrights, there's the music, there's the screenplay, there's the director, there's the actors." But we just broke it down. We just put it into its constituent parts and said, "Okay, there's this many actors, this many directors, ... this many musicians," and we just went at it very systematically and cleared the rights." +``` + +And no doubt, the product itself was exceptionally good. Eastwood loved it, and it sold very well. + +But I pressed Alben about how weird it seems that it would have to take a year's work simply to clear rights. No doubt Alben had done this efficiently, but as Peter Drucker has famously quipped, "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."~{ U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Acquisition Management, /{Seven Steps to Performance-Based Services Acquisition,}/ available at link #22. }~ Did it make sense, I asked Alben, that this is the way a new work has to be made? +={ Drucker, Peter } + +For, as he acknowledged, "very few ... have the time and resources, and the will to do this," and thus, very few such works would ever be made. Does it make sense, I asked him, from the standpoint of what anybody really thought they were ever giving rights for originally, that you would have to go clear rights for these kinds of clips? + +``` quote +I don't think so. When an actor renders a performance in a movie, he or she gets paid very well. ... And then when 30 seconds of that performance is used in a new product that is a retrospective of somebody's career, I don't think that that person ... should be compensated for that." +``` + +Or at least, is this /{how}/ the artist should be compensated? Would it make sense, I asked, for there to be some kind of statutory license that someone could pay and be free to make derivative use of clips like this? Did it really make sense that a follow-on creator would have to track down every artist, actor, director, musician, and get explicit permission from each? Wouldn't a lot more be created if the legal part of the creative process could be made to be more clean? + +``` quote +Absolutely. I think that if there were some fair-licensing mechanism - where you weren't subject to hold-ups and you weren't subject to estranged former spouses - you'd see a lot more of this work, because it wouldn't be so daunting to try to put together a retrospective of someone's career and meaningfully illustrate it with lots of media from that person's career. You'd build in a cost as the producer of one of these things. You'd build in a cost of paying X dollars to the talent that performed. But it would be a known cost. That's the thing that trips everybody up and makes this kind of product hard to get off the ground. If you knew I have a hundred minutes of film in this product and it's going to cost me X, then you build your budget around it, and you can get investments and everything else that you need to produce it. But if you say, "Oh, I want a hundred minutes of something and I have no idea what it's going to cost me, and a certain number of people are going to hold me up for money," then it becomes difficult to put one of these things together." +``` + +Alben worked for a big company. His company was backed by some of the richest investors in the world. He therefore had authority and access that the average Web designer would not have. So if it took him a year, how long would it take someone else? And how much creativity is never made just because the costs of clearing the rights are so high? + +These costs are the burdens of a kind of regulation. Put on a Republican hat for a moment, and get angry for a bit. The government defines the scope of these rights, and the scope defined determines how much it's going to cost to negotiate them. (Remember the idea that land runs to the heavens, and imagine the pilot purchasing fly- through rights as he negotiates to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco.) These rights might well have once made sense; but as circumstances change, they make no sense at all. Or at least, a well-trained, regulation-minimizing Republican should look at the rights and ask, "Does this still make sense?" +={ Republican Party } + +I've seen the flash of recognition when people get this point, but only a few times. The first was at a conference of federal judges in California. The judges were gathered to discuss the emerging topic of cyber-law. I was asked to be on the panel. Harvey Saferstein, a well-respected lawyer from an L.A. firm, introduced the panel with a video that he and a friend, Robert Fairbank, had produced. +={ Saferstein, Harvey ; + Fairbank, Robert +} + +The video was a brilliant collage of film from every period in the twentieth century, all framed around the idea of a /{60 Minutes}/ episode. The execution was perfect, down to the sixty-minute stopwatch. The judges loved every minute of it. +={ 60 Minutes } + +When the lights came up, I looked over to my copanelist, David Nimmer, perhaps the leading copyright scholar and practitioner in the nation. He had an astonished look on his face, as he peered across the room of over 250 well- entertained judges. Taking an ominous tone, he began his talk with a question: "Do you know how many federal laws were just violated in this room?" +={ Nimmer, David +1 } + +For of course, the two brilliantly talented creators who made this film hadn't done what Alben did. They hadn't spent a year clearing the rights to these clips; technically, what they had done violated the law. Of course, it wasn't as if they or anyone were going to be prosecuted for this violation (the presence of 250 judges and a gaggle of federal marshals notwithstanding). But Nimmer was making an important point: A year before anyone would have heard of the word Napster, and two years before another member of our panel, David Boies, would defend Napster before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Nimmer was trying to get the judges to see that the law would not be friendly to the capacities that this technology would enable. Technology means you can now do amazing things easily; but you couldn't easily do them legally. +={ Alben, Alex ; + Boies, David ; + Court of Appeals : + Ninth Circuit ; + Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ; + Napster +} + +!_ We live in +a "cut and paste" culture enabled by technology. Anyone building a presentation knows the extraordinary freedom that the cut and paste architecture of the Internet created - in a second you can find just about any image you want; in another second, you can have it planted in your presentation. +={ technology : + cut-and-paste culture enabled by +4 +} + +But presentations are just a tiny beginning. Using the Internet and its archives, musicians are able to string together mixes of sound never before imagined; filmmakers are able to build movies out of clips on computers around the world. An extraordinary site in Sweden takes images of politicians and blends them with music to create biting political commentary. A site called Camp Chaos has produced some of the most biting criticism of the record industry that there is through the mixing of Flash! and music. +={ Camp Chaos } + +All of these creations are technically illegal. Even if the creators wanted to be "legal," the cost of complying with the law is impossibly high. Therefore, for the law-abiding sorts, a wealth of creativity is never made. And for that part that is made, if it doesn't follow the clearance rules, it doesn't get released. + +To some, these stories suggest a solution: Let's alter the mix of rights so that people are free to build upon our culture. Free to add or mix as they see fit. We could even make this change without necessarily requiring that the "free" use be free as in "free beer." Instead, the system could simply make it easy for follow-on creators to compensate artists without requiring an army of lawyers to come along: a rule, for example, that says "the royalty owed the copyright owner of an unregistered work for the derivative reuse of his work will be a flat 1 percent of net revenues, to be held in escrow for the copyright owner." Under this rule, the copyright owner could benefit from some royalty, but he would not have the benefit of a full property right (meaning the right to name his own price) unless he registers the work. +={ copyright law : + royalty proposal on derivative reuse in ; + derivative works : + royalty system proposed for +} + +Who could possibly object to this? And what reason would there be for objecting? We're talking about work that is not now being made; which if made, under this plan, would produce new income for artists. What reason would anyone have to oppose it? + +!_ In February 2003, +DreamWorks studios announced an agreement with Mike Myers, the comic genius of /{Saturday Night Live}/ and Austin Powers. According to the announcement, Myers and DreamWorks would work together to form a "unique filmmaking pact." Under the agreement, DreamWorks "will acquire the rights to existing motion picture hits and classics, write new storylines and - with the use of state- of-the-art digital technology - insert Myers and other actors into the film, thereby creating an entirely new piece of entertainment." +={ DreamWorks +2 ; + Myers, Mike +2 ; + Saturday Night Live +} + +The announcement called this "film sampling." As Myers explained, "Film Sampling is an exciting way to put an original spin on existing films and allow audiences to see old movies in a new light. Rap artists have been doing this for years with music and now we are able to take that same concept and apply it to film." Steven Spielberg is quoted as saying, "If anyone can create a way to bring old films to new audiences, it is Mike." +={ Spielberg, Steven +1 ; + film sampling +3 ; + rap music +} + +Spielberg is right. Film sampling by Myers will be brilliant. But if you don't think about it, you might miss the truly astonishing point about this announcement. As the vast majority of our film heritage remains under copyright, the real meaning of the DreamWorks announcement is just this: It is Mike Myers and only Mike Myers who is free to sample. Any general freedom to build upon the film archive of our culture, a freedom in other contexts presumed for us all, is now a privilege reserved for the funny and famous - and presumably rich. + +This privilege becomes reserved for two sorts of reasons. The first continues the story of the last chapter: the vagueness of "fair use." Much of "sampling" should be considered "fair use." But few would rely upon so weak a doctrine to create. That leads to the second reason that the privilege is reserved for the few: The costs of negotiating the legal rights for the creative reuse of content are astronomically high. These costs mirror the costs with fair use: You either pay a lawyer to defend your fair use rights or pay a lawyer to track down permissions so you don't have to rely upon fair use rights. Either way, the creative process is a process of paying lawyers - again a privilege, or perhaps a curse, reserved for the few. +={ copyright law : + fair use and ; + fair use : + in sampling works +} + +1~ Chapter Nine: Collectors +={ archives, digital +29 ; + culture : + archives of +29 +} + +!_ In April 1996, +millions of "bots" - computer codes designed to "spider," or automatically search the Internet and copy content - began running across the Net. Page by page, these bots copied Internet-based information onto a small set of computers located in a basement in San Francisco's Presidio. Once the bots finished the whole of the Internet, they started again. Over and over again, once every two months, these bits of code took copies of the Internet and stored them. +={ bots +1 ; + spider +} + +By October 2001, the bots had collected more than five years of copies. And at a small announcement in Berkeley, California, the archive that these copies created, the Internet Archive, was opened to the world. Using a technology called "the Way Back Machine," you could enter a Web page, and see all of its copies going back to 1996, as well as when those pages changed. +={ Internet Archive +18 ; + Way Back Machine +} + +This is the thing about the Internet that Orwell would have appreciated. In the dystopia described in /{1984}/, old newspapers were constantly updated to assure that the current view of the world, approved of by the government, was not contradicted by previous news reports. Thousands of workers constantly reedited the past, meaning there was no way ever to know whether the story you were reading today was the story that was printed on the date published on the paper. +={ Orwell, George +1 ; + 1984 (Orwell) +} + +It's the same with the Internet. If you go to a Web page today, there's no way for you to know whether the content you are reading is the same as the content you read before. The page may seem the same, but the content could easily be different. The Internet is Orwell's library - constantly updated, without any reliable memory. + +Until the Way Back Machine, at least. With the Way Back Machine, and the Internet Archive underlying it, you can see what the Internet was. You have the power to see what you remember. More importantly, perhaps, you also have the power to find what you don't remember and what others might prefer you forget.~{ The temptations remain, however. Brewster Kahle reports that the White House changes its own press releases without notice. A May 13, 2003, press release stated, "Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended." That was later changed, without notice, to "Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended." E-mail from Brewster Kahle, 1 December 2003. }~ +={ Way Back Machine } + +!_ We take it +for granted that we can go back to see what we remember reading. Think about newspapers. If you wanted to study the reaction of your hometown newspaper to the race riots in Watts in 1965, or to Bull Connor's water cannon in 1963, you could go to your public library and look at the newspapers. Those papers probably exist on microfiche. If you're lucky, they exist in paper, too. Either way, you are free, using a library, to go back and remember - not just what it is convenient to remember, but remember something close to the truth. +={ libraries : + archival function of +1 ; + newspapers : + archives of +2 +} + +It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. That's not quite correct. We /{all}/ forget history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we forget. More directly, the key is whether an objective past can keep us honest. Libraries help do that, by collecting content and keeping it, for schoolchildren, for researchers, for grandma. A free society presumes this knowledge. +={ history, records of } + +The Internet was an exception to this presumption. Until the Internet Archive, there was no way to go back. The Internet was the quintessentially transitory medium. And yet, as it becomes more important in forming and reforming society, it becomes more and more important to maintain in some historical form. It's just bizarre to think that we have scads of archives of newspapers from tiny towns around the world, yet there is but one copy of the Internet - the one kept by the Internet Archive. + +Brewster Kahle is the founder of the Internet Archive. He was a very successful Internet entrepreneur after he was a successful computer researcher. In the 1990s, Kahle decided he had had enough business success. It was time to become a different kind of success. So he launched a series of projects designed to archive human knowledge. The Internet Archive was just the first of the projects of this Andrew Carnegie of the Internet. By December of 2002, the archive had over 10 billion pages, and it was growing at about a billion pages a month. +={ Kahle, Brewster +20 } + +The Way Back Machine is the largest archive of human knowledge in human history. At the end of 2002, it held "two hundred and thirty terabytes of material" - and was "ten times larger than the Library of Congress." And this was just the first of the archives that Kahle set out to build. In addition to the Internet Archive, Kahle has been constructing the Television Archive. Television, it turns out, is even more ephemeral than the Internet. While much of twentieth- century culture was constructed through television, only a tiny proportion of that culture is available for anyone to see today. Three hours of news are recorded each evening by Vanderbilt University - thanks to a specific exemption in the copyright law.That content is indexed, and is available to scholars for a very low fee. "But other than that, [television] is almost unavailable," Kahle told me. "If you were Barbara Walters you could get access to [the archives], but if you are just a graduate student?" As Kahle put it, +={ Library of Congress ; + Television Archive ; + Vanderbuilt University ; + Way Back Machine ; + libraries : + archival function of ; + news coverage +6 +} + +``` quote +Do you remember when Dan Quayle was interacting with Murphy Brown? Remember that back and forth surreal experience of a politician interacting with a fictional television character? If you were a graduate student wanting to study that, and you wanted to get those original back and forth exchanges between the two, the /{60 Minutes}/ episode that came out after it ... it would be almost impossible. ... Those materials are almost unfindable. ..." +``` +={ Quayle, Dan ; + 60 Minutes +} + +Why is that? Why is it that the part of our culture that is recorded in newspapers remains perpetually accessible, while the part that is recorded on videotape is not? How is it that we've created a world where researchers trying to understand the effect of media on nineteenth-century America will have an easier time than researchers trying to understand the effect of media on twentieth-century America? +={ newspapers : + archives of +} + +In part, this is because of the law. Early in American copyright law, copyright owners were required to deposit copies of their work in libraries. These copies were intended both to facilitate the spread of knowledge and to assure that a copy of the work would be around once the copyright expired, so that others might access and copy the work. +={ libraries : + archival function of +2 +} + +These rules applied to film as well. But in 1915, the Library of Congress made an exception for film. Film could be copyrighted so long as such deposits were made. But the filmmaker was then allowed to borrow back the deposits - for an unlimited time at no cost. In 1915 alone, there were more than 5,475 films deposited and "borrowed back." Thus, when the copyrights to films expire, there is no copy held by any library. The copy exists - if it exists at all - in the library archive of the film company.~{ Doug Herrick, "Toward a National Film Collection: Motion Pictures at the Library of Congress," /{Film Library Quarterly}/ 13 nos. 2-3 (1980): 5; Anthony Slide, /{Nitrate Won't Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United States}/ (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1992), 36. }~ +={ Library of Congress ; + films : + archive of +} + +The same is generally true about television. Television broadcasts were originally not copyrighted - there was no way to capture the broadcasts, so there was no fear of "theft." But as technology enabled capturing, broadcasters relied increasingly upon the law. The law required they make a copy of each broadcast for the work to be "copy-righted." But those copies were simply kept by the broadcasters. No library had any right to them; the government didn't demand them. The content of this part of American culture is practically invisible to anyone who would look. +={ Television Archive +1 } + +Kahle was eager to correct this. Before September 11, 2001, he and his allies had started capturing television. They selected twenty stations from around the world and hit the Record button. After September 11, Kahle, working with dozens of others, selected twenty stations from around the world and, beginning October 11, 2001, made their coverage during the week of September 11 available free on- line. Anyone could see how news reports from around the world covered the events of that day. +={ September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of } + +Kahle had the same idea with film. Working with Rick Prelinger, whose archive of film includes close to 45,000 "ephemeral films" (meaning films other than Hollywood movies, films that were never copyrighted), Kahle established the Movie Archive. Prelinger let Kahle digitize 1,300 films in this archive and post those films on the Internet to be downloaded for free. Prelinger's is a for- profit company. It sells copies of these films as stock footage. What he has discovered is that after he made a significant chunk available for free, his stock footage sales went up dramatically. People could easily find the material they wanted to use. Some downloaded that material and made films on their own. Others purchased copies to enable other films to be made. Either way, the archive enabled access to this important part of our culture. Want to see a copy of the "Duck and Cover" film that instructed children how to save themselves in the middle of nuclear attack? Go to archive.org, and you can download the film in a few minutes - for free. +={ films : + archive of ; + archive.org : + see also Internet Archive ; + Internet Archive ; + Movie Archive ; + Duck and Cover film ; + ephemeral films ; + Prelinger, Rick +} + +Here again, Kahle is providing access to a part of our culture that we otherwise could not get easily, if at all. It is yet another part of what defines the twentieth century that we have lost to history. The law doesn't require these copies to be kept by anyone, or to be deposited in an archive by anyone. Therefore, there is no simple way to find them. + +The key here is access, not price. Kahle wants to enable free access to this content, but he also wants to enable others to sell access to it. His aim is to ensure competition in access to this important part of our culture. Not during the commercial life of a bit of creative property, but during a second life that all creative property has - a noncommercial life. +={ creative property : + noncommercial second life of +4 +} + +For here is an idea that we should more clearly recognize. Every bit of creative property goes through different "lives." In its first life, if the creator is lucky, the content is sold. In such cases the commercial market is successful for the creator. The vast majority of creative property doesn't enjoy such success, but some clearly does. For that content, commercial life is extremely important. Without this commercial market, there would be, many argue, much less creativity. + +After the commercial life of creative property has ended, our tradition has always supported a second life as well. A newspaper delivers the news every day to the doorsteps of America. The very next day, it is used to wrap fish or to fill boxes with fragile gifts or to build an archive of knowledge about our history. In this second life, the content can continue to inform even if that information is no longer sold. + +The same has always been true about books. A book goes out of print very quickly (the average today is after about a year~{ Dave Barns, "Fledgling Career in Antique Books: Woodstock Landlord, Bar Owner Starts a New Chapter by Adopting Business," /{Chicago Tribune,}/ 5 September 1997, at Metro Lake 1L. Of books published between 1927 and 1946, only 2.2 percent were in print in 2002. R. Anthony Reese, "The First Sale Doctrine in the Era of Digital Networks," /{Boston College Law Review}/ 44 (2003): 593 n. 51. }~). After it is out of print, it can be sold in used book stores without the copyright owner getting anything and stored in libraries, where many get to read the book, also for free. Used book stores and libraries are thus the second life of a book. That second life is extremely important to the spread and stability of culture. +={ libraries : + archival function of +1 ; + books : + out of print +} + +Yet increasingly, any assumption about a stable second life for creative property does not hold true with the most important components of popular culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For these - television, movies, music, radio, the Internet - there is no guarantee of a second life. For these sorts of culture, it is as if we've replaced libraries with Barnes & Noble superstores. With this culture, what's accessible is nothing but what a certain limited market demands. Beyond that, culture disappears. + +!_ For most of +the twentieth century, it was economics that made this so. It would have been insanely expensive to collect and make accessible all television and film and music: The cost of analog copies is extraordinarily high. So even though the law in principle would have restricted the ability of a Brewster Kahle to copy culture generally, the real restriction was economics. The market made it impossibly difficult to do anything about this ephemeral culture; the law had little practical effect. +={ technology : + archival opportunity offered through +3 +} + +Perhaps the single most important feature of the digital revolution is that for the first time since the Library of Alexandria, it is feasible to imagine constructing archives that hold all culture produced or distributed publicly. Technology makes it possible to imagine an archive of all books published, and increasingly makes it possible to imagine an archive of all moving images and sound. +={ libraries : + archival function of +4 +} + +The scale of this potential archive is something we've never imagined before. The Brewster Kahles of our history have dreamed about it; but we are for the first time at a point where that dream is possible. As Kahle describes, + +``` quote +It looks like there's about two to three million recordings of music. Ever. There are about a hundred thousand theatrical releases of movies, ... and about one to two million movies [distributed] during the twentieth century. There are about twenty-six million different titles of books. All of these would fit on computers that would fit in this room and be able to be afforded by a small company. So we're at a turning point in our history. Universal access is the goal. And the opportunity of leading a different life, based on this, is ... thrilling. It could be one of the things humankind would be most proud of. Up there with the Library of Alexandria, putting a man on the moon, and the invention of the printing press." +``` +={ books : + total number of ; + films : + total number of ; + music recordings : + total number of +} + +Kahle is not the only librarian. The Internet Archive is not the only archive. But Kahle and the Internet Archive suggest what the future of libraries or archives could be. /{When}/ the commercial life of creative property ends, I don't know. But it does. And whenever it does, Kahle and his archive hint at a world where this knowledge, and culture, remains perpetually available. Some will draw upon it to understand it; some to criticize it. Some will use it, as Walt Disney did, to re-create the past for the future. These technologies promise something that had become unimaginable for much of our past - a future /{for}/ our past. The technology of digital arts could make the dream of the Library of Alexandria real again. +={ Internet Archive ; + creative property : + noncommercial second life of ; + Disney, Walt ; + technology : + archival opportunity offered through +1 +} + +Technologists have thus removed the economic costs of building such an archive. But lawyers' costs remain. For as much as we might like to call these "archives," as warm as the idea of a "library" might seem, the "content" that is collected in these digital spaces is also some-one's "property." And the law of property restricts the freedoms that Kahle and others would exercise. + +1~ Chapter Ten: "Property" + +!_ Jack Valenti +has been the president of the Motion Picture Association of America since 1966. He first came to Washington, D.C., with Lyndon Johnson's administration - literally. The famous picture of Johnson's swearing-in on Air Force One after the assassination of President Kennedy has Valenti in the background. In his almost forty years of running the MPAA, Valenti has established himself as perhaps the most prominent and effective lobbyist in Washington. +={ Johnson, Lyndon ; + Kennedy, John F. ; + Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) +3 ; + film industry : + trade association of +3 ; + television : + industry association of +3 ; + Valenti, Jack : + background of +} + +The MPAA is the American branch of the international Motion Picture Association. It was formed in 1922 as a trade association whose goal was to defend American movies against increasing domestic criticism. The organization now represents not only filmmakers but producers and distributors of entertainment for television, video, and cable. Its board is made up of the chairmen and presidents of the seven major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States: Walt Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers. +={ Disney, Inc. ; + MGM ; + Paramount Pictures ; + Twentieth Century Fox ; + Sony Pictures Entertainment ; + Universal Pictures ; + Warner Brothers +} + +Valenti is only the third president of the MPAA. No president before him has had as much influence over that organization, or over Washington. As a Texan, Valenti has mastered the single most important political skill of a Southerner - the ability to appear simple and slow while hiding a lightning-fast intellect. To this day, Valenti plays the simple, humble man. But this Harvard MBA, and author of four books, who finished high school at the age of fifteen and flew more than fifty combat missions in World War II, is no Mr. Smith. When Valenti went to Washington, he mastered the city in a quintessentially Washingtonian way. +={ Valenti, Jack : + background of +5 +} + +In defending artistic liberty and the freedom of speech that our culture depends upon, the MPAA has done important good. In crafting the MPAA rating system, it has probably avoided a great deal of speech-regulating harm. But there is an aspect to the organization's mission that is both the most radical and the most important. This is the organization's effort, epitomized in Valenti's every act, to redefine the meaning of "creative property." +={ film industry : + rating system of ; + speech, freedom of : + film-rating system vs. +} + +In 1982, Valenti's testimony to Congress captured the strategy perfectly: +={ Valenti, Jack : + on creative property rights +11 +} + +``` quote +No matter the lengthy arguments made, no matter the charges and the counter-charges, no matter the tumult and the shouting, reasonable men and women will keep returning to the fundamental issue, the central theme which animates this entire debate: /{Creative property owners must be accorded the same rights and protection resident in all other property owners in the nation}/. That is the issue. That is the question. And that is the rostrum on which this entire hearing and the debates to follow must rest."~{ Home Recording of Copyrighted Works: Hearings on H.R. 4783, H.R. 4794, H.R. 4808, H.R. 5250, H.R. 5488, and H.R. 5705 Before the Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, 97th Cong., 2nd sess. (1982): 65 (testimony of Jack Valenti). }~ +``` +={ creative property : + other property rights vs. +25 +} + +The strategy of this rhetoric, like the strategy of most of Valenti's rhetoric, is brilliant and simple and brilliant because simple. The "central theme" to which "reasonable men and women" will return is this: "Creative property owners must be accorded the same rights and protections resident in all other property owners in the nation." There are no second-class citizens, Valenti might have continued. There should be no second-class property owners. + +This claim has an obvious and powerful intuitive pull. It is stated with such clarity as to make the idea as obvious as the notion that we use elections to pick presidents. But in fact, there is no more extreme a claim made by /{anyone}/ who is serious in this debate than this claim of Valenti's. Jack Valenti, however sweet and however brilliant, is perhaps the nation's foremost extremist when it comes to the nature and scope of "creative property." His views have /{no}/ reasonable connection to our actual legal tradition, even if the subtle pull of his Texan charm has slowly redefined that tradition, at least in Washington. +={ creative property : + constitutional tradition on +9 +} + +While "creative property" is certainly "property" in a nerdy and precise sense that lawyers are trained to understand,~{ Lawyers speak of "property" not as an absolute thing, but as a bundle of rights that are sometimes associated with a particular object. Thus, my "property right" to my car gives me the right to exclusive use, but not the right to drive at 150 miles an hour. For the best effort to connect the ordinary meaning of "property" to "lawyer talk," see Bruce Ackerman, /{Private Property and the Constitution}/ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 26-27. }~ it has never been the case, nor should it be, that "creative property owners" have been "ac- corded the same rights and protection resident in all other property owners." Indeed, if creative property owners were given the same rights as all other property owners, that would effect a radical, and radically undesirable, change in our tradition. + +Valenti knows this. But he speaks for an industry that cares squat for our tradition and the values it represents. He speaks for an industry that is instead fighting to restore the tradition that the British overturned in 1710. In the world that Valenti's changes would create, a powerful few would exercise powerful control over how our creative culture would develop. + +I have two purposes in this chapter. The first is to convince you that, historically, Valenti's claim is absolutely wrong. The second is to convince you that it would be terribly wrong for us to reject our history. We have always treated rights in creative property differently from the rights resident in all other property owners. They have never been the same. And they should never be the same, because, however counterintuitive this may seem, to make them the same would be to fundamentally weaken the opportunity for new creators to create. Creativity depends upon the owners of creativity having less than perfect control. + +Organizations such as the MPAA, whose board includes the most powerful of the old guard, have little interest, their rhetoric notwithstanding, in assuring that the new can displace them. No organization does. No person does. (Ask me about tenure, for example.) But what's good for the MPAA is not necessarily good for America. A society that defends the ideals of free culture must preserve precisely the opportunity for new creativity to threaten the old. +={ Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ; + film industry : + trade association of +} + +!_ To get +just a hint that there is something fundamentally wrong in Valenti's argument, we need look no further than the United States Constitution itself. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + on creative property +4 +} + +The framers of our Constitution loved "property." Indeed, so strongly did they love property that they built into the Constitution an important requirement. If the government takes your property - if it condemns your house, or acquires a slice of land from your farm - it is required, under the Fifth Amendment's "Takings Clause," to pay you "just compensation" for that taking. The Constitution thus guarantees that property is, in a certain sense, sacred. It cannot /{ever}/ be taken from the property owner unless the government pays for the privilege. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + Fifth Amendment to | Takings Clause of +1 ; + Fifth Amendment ; + Takings Clause +1 ; + property rights : + Takings Clause on +1 +} + +Yet the very same Constitution speaks very differently about what Valenti calls "creative property." In the clause granting Congress the power to create "creative property," the Constitution /{requires}/ that after a "limited time," Congress take back the rights that it has granted and set the "creative property" free to the public domain. Yet when Congress does this, when the expiration of a copyright term "takes" your copyright and turns it over to the public domain, Congress does not have any obligation to pay "just compensation" for this "taking." Instead, the same Constitution that requires compensation for your land requires that you lose your "creative property" right without any compensation at all. + +The Constitution thus on its face states that these two forms of property are not to be accorded the same rights. They are plainly to be treated differently. Valenti is therefore not just asking for a change in our tradition when he argues that creative-property owners should be accorded the same rights as every other property-right owner. He is effectively arguing for a change in our Constitution itself. + +Arguing for a change in our Constitution is not necessarily wrong. There was much in our original Constitution that was plainly wrong. The Constitution of 1789 entrenched slavery; it left senators to be appointed rather than elected; it made it possible for the electoral college to produce a tie between the president and his own vice president (as it did in 1800). The framers were no doubt extraordinary, but I would be the first to admit that they made big mistakes. We have since rejected some of those mistakes; no doubt there could be others that we should reject as well. So my argument is not simply that because Jefferson did it, we should, too. +={ Jefferson, Thomas +1 ; + copyright law : + innovative freedom balanced with fair compensation in +2 ; + electoral college ; + Senate, U.S. ; + slavery +} + +Instead, my argument is that because Jefferson did it, we should at least try to understand /{why}/. Why did the framers, fanatical property types that they were, reject the claim that creative property be given the same rights as all other property? Why did they require that for creative property there must be a public domain? + +To answer this question, we need to get some perspective on the history of these "creative property" rights, and the control that they enabled. Once we see clearly how differently these rights have been defined, we will be in a better position to ask the question that should be at the core of this war: Not /{whether}/ creative property should be protected, but how. Not /{whether}/ we will enforce the rights the law gives to creative-property owners, but what the particular mix of rights ought to be. Not /{whether}/ artists should be paid, but whether institutions designed to assure that artists get paid need also control how culture develops. + +To answer these questions, we need a more general way to talk about how property is protected. More precisely, we need a more general way than the narrow language of the law allows. In /{Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace}/, I used a simple model to capture this more general perspective. For any particular right or regulation, this model asks how four different modalities of regulation interact to support or weaken the right or regulation. I represented it with this diagram: +={ Code (Lessig) ; + Lessig, Lawrence ; + free culture : + four modalities of constraint on +20 ; + regulation : + four modalities of +20 ; + copyright law : + as ex post regulation modality +5 ; + law : + as constraint modality +5 +} + +{freeculture01.png 350x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +At the center of this picture is a regulated dot: the individual or group that is the target of regulation, or the holder of a right. (In each case throughout, we can describe this either as regulation or as a right. For simplicity's sake, I will speak only of regulations.) The ovals represent four ways in which the individual or group might be regulated - either constrained or, alternatively, enabled. Law is the most obvious constraint (to lawyers, at least). It constrains by threatening punishments after the fact if the rules set in advance are violated. So if, for example, you willfully infringe Madonna's copyright by copying a song from her latest CD and posting it on the Web, you can be punished with a $150,000 fine. The fine is an ex post punishment for violating an ex ante rule. It is imposed by the state. +={ Madonna } + +Norms are a different kind of constraint. They, too, punish an individual for violating a rule. But the punishment of a norm is imposed by a community, not (or not only) by the state. There may be no law against spitting, but that doesn't mean you won't be punished if you spit on the ground while standing in line at a movie. The punishment might not be harsh, though depending upon the community, it could easily be more harsh than many of the punishments imposed by the state. The mark of the difference is not the severity of the rule, but the source of the enforcement. +={ norms, regulatory influence of +1 } + +The market is a third type of constraint. Its constraint is effected through conditions: You can do X if you pay Y; you'll be paid M if you do N. These constraints are obviously not independent of law or norms - it is property law that defines what must be bought if it is to be taken legally; it is norms that say what is appropriately sold. But given a set of norms, and a background of property and contract law, the market imposes a simultaneous constraint upon how an individual or group might behave. +={ market constraints +1 } + +Finally, and for the moment, perhaps, most mysteriously, "architecture" - the physical world as one finds it - is a constraint on behavior. A fallen bridge might constrain your ability to get across a river. Railroad tracks might constrain the ability of a community to integrate its social life. As with the market, architecture does not effect its constraint through ex post punishments. Instead, also as with the market, architecture effects its constraint through simultaneous conditions. These conditions are imposed not by courts enforcing contracts, or by police punishing theft, but by nature, by "architecture." If a 500-pound boulder blocks your way, it is the law of gravity that enforces this constraint. If a $500 airplane ticket stands between you and a flight to New York, it is the market that enforces this constraint. +={ architecture, constraint effected through } + +So the first point about these four modalities of regulation is obvious: They interact. Restrictions imposed by one might be reinforced by another. Or restrictions imposed by one might be undermined by another. +={ law : + as constraint modality +5 +} + +The second point follows directly: If we want to understand the effective freedom that anyone has at a given moment to do any particular thing, we have to consider how these four modalities interact. Whether or not there are other constraints (there may well be; my claim is not about comprehensiveness), these four are among the most significant, and any regulator (whether controlling or freeing) must consider how these four in particular interact. + +So, for example, consider the "freedom" to drive a car at a high speed. That freedom is in part restricted by laws: speed limits that say how fast you can drive in particular places at particular times. It is in part restricted by architecture: speed bumps, for example, slow most rational drivers; governors in buses, as another example, set the maximum rate at which the driver can drive. The freedom is in part restricted by the market: Fuel efficiency drops as speed increases, thus the price of gasoline indirectly constrains speed. And finally, the norms of a community may or may not constrain the freedom to speed. Drive at 50 mph by a school in your own neighborhood and you're likely to be punished by the neighbors. The same norm wouldn't be as effective in a different town, or at night. +={ architecture, constraint effected through ; + market constraints ; + norms, regulatory influence of ; + driving speed, constraints on +1 ; + speeding, constraints on +1 +} + +The final point about this simple model should also be fairly clear: While these four modalities are analytically independent, law has a special role in affecting the three.~{ By describing the way law affects the other three modalities, I don't mean to suggest that the other three don't affect law. Obviously, they do. Law's only distinction is that it alone speaks as if it has a right self-consciously to change the other three. The right of the other three is more timidly expressed. See Lawrence Lessig, /{Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace}/ (New York: Basic Books, 1999): 90-95; Lawrence Lessig, "The New Chicago School," /{Journal of Legal Studies,}/ June 1998. }~ The law, in other words, sometimes operates to increase or decrease the constraint of a particular modality. Thus, the law might be used to increase taxes on gasoline, so as to increase the incentives to drive more slowly. The law might be used to mandate more speed bumps, so as to increase the difficulty of driving rapidly. The law might be used to fund ads that stigmatize reckless driving. Or the law might be used to require that other laws be more strict - a federal requirement that states decrease the speed limit, for example" so as to decrease the attractiveness of fast driving. + +{freeculture02.png 540x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +These constraints can thus change, and they can be changed. To understand the effective protection of liberty or protection of property at any particular moment, we must track these changes over time. A restriction imposed by one modality might be erased by another. A freedom enabled by one modality might be displaced by another.~{ Some people object to this way of talking about "liberty." They object because their focus when considering the constraints that exist at any particular moment are constraints imposed exclusively by the government. For instance, if a storm destroys a bridge, these people think it is meaningless to say that one's liberty has been restrained. A bridge has washed out, and it's harder to get from one place to another. To talk about this as a loss of freedom, they say, is to confuse the stuff of politics with the vagaries of ordinary life. I don't mean to deny the value in this narrower view, which depends upon the context of the inquiry. I do, however, mean to argue against any insistence that this narrower view is the only proper view of liberty. As I argued in /{Code,}/ we come from a long tradition of political thought with a broader focus than the narrow question of what the government did when. John Stuart Mill defended freedom of speech, for example, from the tyranny of narrow minds, not from the fear of government prosecution; John Stuart Mill, /{On Liberty}/ (Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), 19. John R. Commons famously defended the economic freedom of labor from constraints imposed by the market; John R. Commons, "The Right to Work," in Malcom Rutherford and Warren J. Samuels, eds., /{John R. Commons: Selected Essays}/ (London: Routledge: 1997), 62. The Americans with Disabilities Act increases the liberty of people with physical disabilities by changing the architecture of certain public places, thereby making access to those places easier; 42 /{United States Code}/, section 12101 (2000). Each of these interventions to change existing conditions changes the liberty of a particular group. The effect of those interventions should be accounted for in order to understand the effective liberty that each of these groups might face. }~ + +2~ Why Hollywood Is Right + +The most obvious point that this model reveals is just why, or just how, Hollywood is right. The copyright warriors have rallied Congress and the courts to defend copyright. This model helps us see why that rallying makes sense. +={ copyright : + four regulatory modalities on +8 +} + +Let's say this is the picture of copyright's regulation before the Internet: + +{freeculture01.png 350x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +There is balance between law, norms, market, and architecture. The law limits the ability to copy and share content, by imposing penalties on those who copy and share content. Those penalties are reinforced by technologies that make it hard to copy and share content (architecture) and expensive to copy and share content (market). Finally, those penalties are mitigated by norms we all recognize - kids, for example, taping other kids' records. These uses of copyrighted material may well be infringement, but the norms of our society (before the Internet, at least) had no problem with this form of infringement. +={ architecture, constraint effected through +1 ; + law : + as constraint modality ; + norms, regulatory influence of +1 +} + +Enter the Internet, or, more precisely, technologies such as MP3s and p2p sharing. Now the constraint of architecture changes dramatically, as does the constraint of the market. And as both the market and architecture relax the regulation of copyright, norms pile on. The happy balance (for the warriors, at least) of life before the Internet becomes an effective state of anarchy after the Internet. +={ Internet : + copyright regulatory balance lost with +4 ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + regulatory balance lost in ; + market constraints ; + MP3s +} + +Thus the sense of, and justification for, the warriors' response. Technology has changed, the warriors say, and the effect of this change, when ramified through the market and norms, is that a balance of protection for the copyright owners' rights has been lost. This is Iraq after the fall of Saddam, but this time no government is justifying the looting that results. +={ technology : + established industries threatened by changes in +} + +{freeculture03.png 350x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +Neither this analysis nor the conclusions that follow are new to the warriors. Indeed, in a "White Paper" prepared by the Commerce Department (one heavily influenced by the copyright warriors) in 1995, this mix of regulatory modalities had already been identified and the strategy to respond already mapped. In response to the changes the Internet had effected, the White Paper argued (1) Congress should strengthen intellectual property law, (2) businesses should adopt innovative marketing techniques, (3) technologists should push to develop code to protect copyrighted material, and (4) educators should educate kids to better protect copyright. +={ Commerce, U.S. Department of ; + regulation : + as establishment protectionism +6 +} + +This mixed strategy is just what copyright needed - if it was to preserve the particular balance that existed before the change induced by the Internet. And it's just what we should expect the content industry to push for. It is as American as apple pie to consider the happy life you have as an entitlement, and to look to the law to protect it if something comes along to change that happy life. Homeowners living in a flood plain have no hesitation appealing to the government to rebuild (and rebuild again) when a flood (architecture) wipes away their property (law). Farmers have no hesitation appealing to the government to bail them out when a virus (architecture) devastates their crop. Unions have no hesitation appealing to the government to bail them out when imports (market) wipe out the U.S. steel industry. +={ farming ; + steel industry +} + +Thus, there's nothing wrong or surprising in the content industry's campaign to protect itself from the harmful consequences of a technological innovation. And I would be the last person to argue that the changing technology of the Internet has not had a profound effect on the content industry's way of doing business, or as John Seely Brown describes it, its "architecture of revenue." +={ Brown, John Seely } + +But just because a particular interest asks for government support, it doesn't follow that support should be granted. And just because technology has weakened a particular way of doing business, it doesn't follow that the government should intervene to support that old way of doing business. Kodak, for example, has lost perhaps as much as 20 percent of their traditional film market to the emerging technologies of digital cameras.~{ See Geoffrey Smith, "Film vs. Digital: Can Kodak Build a Bridge?" BusinessWeek online, 2 August 1999, available at link #23. For a more recent analysis of Kodak's place in the market, see Chana R. Schoenberger, "Can Kodak Make Up for Lost Moments?" Forbes.com, 6 October 2003, available at link #24. }~ Does anyone believe the government should ban digital cameras just to support Kodak? Highways have weakened the freight business for railroads. Does anyone think we should ban trucks from roads /{for the purpose of}/ protecting the railroads? Closer to the subject of this book, remote channel changers have weakened the "stickiness" of television advertising (if a boring commercial comes on the TV, the remote makes it easy to surf ), and it may well be that this change has weakened the television advertising market. But does anyone believe we should regulate remotes to reinforce commercial television? (Maybe by limiting them to function only once a second, or to switch to only ten channels within an hour?) +={ advertising ; + television : + advertising on ; + commercials ; + camera technology ; + digital cameras ; + Kodak cameras ; + railroad industry ; + remote channel changers +} + +The obvious answer to these obviously rhetorical questions is no. In a free society, with a free market, supported by free enterprise and free trade, the government's role is not to support one way of doing business against others. Its role is not to pick winners and protect them against loss. If the government did this generally, then we would never have any progress. As Microsoft chairman Bill Gates wrote in 1991, in a memo criticizing software patents, "established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."~{ Fred Warshofsky, /{The Patent Wars}/ (New York: Wiley, 1994), 170-71. }~ And relative to a startup, established companies also have the means. (Think RCA and FM radio.) A world in which competitors with new ideas must fight not only the market but also the government is a world in which competitors with new ideas will not succeed. It is a world of stasis and increasingly concentrated stagnation. It is the Soviet Union under Brezhnev. +={ free market, technological changes in +2 ; + Brezhnev, Leonid ; + FM radio ; + radio : + FM spectrum of ; + Gates, Bill ; + market competition ; + RCA +} + +Thus, while it is understandable for industries threatened with new technologies that change the way they do business to look to the government for protection, it is the special duty of policy makers to guarantee that that protection not become a deterrent to progress. It is the duty of policy makers, in other words, to assure that the changes they create, in response to the request of those hurt by changing technology, are changes that preserve the incentives and opportunities for innovation and change. + +In the context of laws regulating speech - which include, obviously, copyright law - that duty is even stronger. When the industry complaining about changing technologies is asking Congress to respond in a way that burdens speech and creativity, policy makers should be especially wary of the request. It is always a bad deal for the government to get into the business of regulating speech markets. The risks and dangers of that game are precisely why our framers created the First Amendment to our Constitution: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." So when Congress is being asked to pass laws that would "abridge" the freedom of speech, it should ask" carefully - whether such regulation is justified. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + First Amendment to ; + First Amendment ; + speech, freedom of : + constitutional guarantee of +} + +My argument just now, however, has nothing to do with whether the changes that are being pushed by the copyright warriors are "justified." My argument is about their effect. For before we get to the question of justification, a hard question that depends a great deal upon your values, we should first ask whether we understand the effect of the changes the content industry wants. + +Here's the metaphor that will capture the argument to follow. + +In 1873, the chemical DDT was first synthesized. In 1948, Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller won the Nobel Prize for his work demonstrating the insecticidal properties of DDT. By the 1950s, the insecticide was widely used around the world to kill disease-carrying pests. It was also used to increase farm production. +={ Müller, Paul Hermann +3 ; + DDT +6 ; + insecticide, environmental consequences of +6 ; + farming +4 +} + +No one doubts that killing disease-carrying pests or increasing crop production is a good thing. No one doubts that the work of Müller was important and valuable and probably saved lives, possibly millions. + +But in 1962, Rachel Carson published /{Silent Spring}/, which argued that DDT, whatever its primary benefits, was also having unintended environmental consequences. Birds were losing the ability to reproduce. Whole chains of the ecology were being destroyed. +={ Carson, Rachel ; + Silent Spring (Carson) ; + environmentalism +4 +} + +No one set out to destroy the environment. Paul Müller certainly did not aim to harm any birds. But the effort to solve one set of problems produced another set which, in the view of some, was far worse than the problems that were originally attacked. Or more accurately, the problems DDT caused were worse than the problems it solved, at least when considering the other, more environmentally friendly ways to solve the problems that DDT was meant to solve. + +It is to this image precisely that Duke University law professor James Boyle appeals when he argues that we need an "environmentalism" for culture.~{ See, for example, James Boyle, "A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?" /{Duke Law Journal}/ 47 (1997): 87. }~ His point, and the point I want to develop in the balance of this chapter, is not that the aims of copyright are flawed. Or that authors should not be paid for their work. Or that music should be given away "for free." The point is that some of the ways in which we might protect authors will have unintended consequences for the cultural environment, much like DDT had for the natural environment. And just as criticism of DDT is not an endorsement of malaria or an attack on farmers, so, too, is criticism of one particular set of regulations protecting copyright not an endorsement of anarchy or an attack on authors. It is an environment of creativity that we seek, and we should be aware of our actions' effects on the environment. +={ Boyle, James ; + copyright law : + innovative freedom balanced with fair compensation in +1 +} + +My argument, in the balance of this chapter, tries to map exactly this effect. No doubt the technology of the Internet has had a dramatic effect on the ability of copyright owners to protect their content. But there should also be little doubt that when you add together the changes in copyright law over time, plus the change in technology that the Internet is undergoing just now, the net effect of these changes will not be only that copyrighted work is effectively protected. Also, and generally missed, the net effect of this massive increase in protection will be devastating to the environment for creativity. + +In a line: To kill a gnat, we are spraying DDT with consequences for free culture that will be far more devastating than that this gnat will be lost. + +2~ Beginnings + +America copied English copyright law. Actually, we copied and improved English copyright law. Our Constitution makes the purpose of "creative property" rights clear; its express limitations reinforce the English aim to avoid overly powerful publishers. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + on creative property | copyright purpose established in +6 | Progress Clause of +5 ; + copyright : + constitutional purpose of | duration of ; + creative property : + constitutional tradition on +6 ; + Progress Clause +5 ; + copyright : + duration of +} + +The power to establish "creative property" rights is granted to Congress in a way that, for our Constitution, at least, is very odd. Article I, section 8, clause 8 of our Constitution states that: +={ Congress, U.S. : + in constitutional Progress Clause +2 +} + +_1 Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." + +We can call this the "Progress Clause," for notice what this clause does not say. It does not say Congress has the power to grant "creative property rights." It says that Congress has the power /{to promote progress}/. The grant of power is its purpose, and its purpose is a public one, not the purpose of enriching publishers, nor even primarily the purpose of rewarding authors. + +The Progress Clause expressly limits the term of copyrights. As we saw in chapter 6, the English limited the term of copyright so as to assure that a few would not exercise disproportionate control over culture by exercising disproportionate control over publishing. We can assume the framers followed the English for a similar purpose. Indeed, unlike the English, the framers reinforced that objective, by requiring that copyrights extend "to Authors" only. +={ copyright law : + as protection of creators +2 | history of American +22 +} + +The design of the Progress Clause reflects something about the Constitution's design in general. To avoid a problem, the framers built structure. To prevent the concentrated power of publishers, they built a structure that kept copyrights away from publishers and kept them short. To prevent the concentrated power of a church, they banned the federal government from establishing a church. To prevent concentrating power in the federal government, they built structures to reinforce the power of the states - including the Senate, whose members were at the time selected by the states, and an electoral college, also selected by the states, to select the president. In each case, a /{structure}/ built checks and balances into the constitutional frame, structured to prevent otherwise inevitable concentrations of power. +={ Senate, U.S. ; + Constitution, U.S. : + structural checks and balances of ; + electoral college +} + +I doubt the framers would recognize the regulation we call "copyright" today. The scope of that regulation is far beyond anything they ever considered. To begin to understand what they did, we need to put our "copyright" in context: We need to see how it has changed in the 210 years since they first struck its design. + +Some of these changes come from the law: some in light of changes in technology, and some in light of changes in technology given a particular concentration of market power. In terms of our model, we started here: +={ copyright : + four regulatory modalities on +} + +{freeculture01.png 350x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +%% image 05 same as 01, renumber? + +We will end here: + +{freeculture04.png 310x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +Let me explain how. + +2~ Law: Duration +={ copyright : + duration of +14 +} + +When the first Congress enacted laws to protect creative property, it faced the same uncertainty about the status of creative property that the English had confronted in 1774. Many states had passed laws protecting creative property, and some believed that these laws simply supplemented common law rights that already protected creative authorship.~{ William W. Crosskey, /{Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States}/ (London: Cambridge University Press, 1953), vol. 1, 485-86: "extinguish[ing], by plain implication of "the supreme Law of the Land," /{the perpetual rights which authors had, or were supposed by some to have, under the Common Law}/" (emphasis added). }~ This meant that there was no guaranteed public domain in the United States in 1790. If copyrights were protected by the common law, then there was no simple way to know whether a work published in the United States was controlled or free. Just as in England, this lingering uncertainty would make it hard for publishers to rely upon a public domain to reprint and distribute works. +={ Congress, U.S. : + on copyright laws +2 ; + Copyright Act (1790) +3 ; + creative property : + common law protections of ; + public domain : + balance of U.S. content in +5 +} + +That uncertainty ended after Congress passed legislation granting copyrights. Because federal law overrides any contrary state law, federal protections for copyrighted works displaced any state law protections. Just as in England the Statute of Anne eventually meant that the copyrights for all English works expired, a federal statute meant that any state copyrights expired as well. +={ Statute of Anne (1710) ; + law : + federal vs. state +2 +} + +In 1790, Congress enacted the first copyright law. It created a federal copyright and secured that copyright for fourteen years. If the author was alive at the end of that fourteen years, then he could opt to renew the copyright for another fourteen years. If he did not renew the copyright, his work passed into the public domain. +={ copyright : + renewability of +11 +} + +While there were many works created in the United States in the first ten years of the Republic, only 5 percent of the works were actually registered under the federal copyright regime. Of all the work created in the United States both before 1790 and from 1790 through 1800, 95 percent immediately passed into the public domain; the balance would pass into the pubic domain within twenty-eight years at most, and more likely within fourteen years.~{ Although 13,000 titles were published in the United States from 1790 to 1799, only 556 copyright registrations were filed; John Tebbel, /{A History of Book Publishing in the United States,}/ vol. 1, /{The Creation of an Industry, 1630- 1865}/ (New York: Bowker, 1972), 141. Of the 21,000 imprints recorded before 1790, only twelve were copyrighted under the 1790 act; William J. Maher, /{Copyright Term, Retrospective Extension and the Copyright Law of 1790 in Historical Context,}/ 7-10 (2002), available at link #25. Thus, the overwhelming majority of works fell immediately into the public domain. Even those works that were copyrighted fell into the public domain quickly, because the term of copyright was short. The initial term of copyright was fourteen years, with the option of renewal for an additional fourteen years. Copyright Act of May 31, 1790, §1, 1 stat. 124. }~ + +This system of renewal was a crucial part of the American system of copyright. It assured that the maximum terms of copyright would be granted only for works where they were wanted. After the initial term of fourteen years, if it wasn't worth it to an author to renew his copyright, then it wasn't worth it to society to insist on the copyright, either. + +Fourteen years may not seem long to us, but for the vast majority of copyright owners at that time, it was long enough: Only a small minority of them renewed their copyright after fourteen years; the balance allowed their work to pass into the public domain.~{ Few copyright holders ever chose to renew their copyrights. For instance, of the 25,006 copyrights registered in 1883, only 894 were renewed in 1910. For a year-by-year analysis of copyright renewal rates, see Barbara A. Ringer, "Study No. 31: Renewal of Copyright," /{Studies on Copyright,}/ vol. 1 (New York: Practicing Law Institute, 1963), 618. For a more recent and comprehensive analysis, see William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner, "Indefinitely Renewable Copyright," /{University of Chicago Law Review}/ 70 (2003): 471, 498-501, and accompanying figures. }~ + +Even today, this structure would make sense. Most creative work has an actual commercial life of just a couple of years. Most books fall out of print after one year.~{ See Ringer, ch. 9, n. 2. }~ When that happens, the used books are traded free of copyright regulation. Thus the books are no longer /{effectively}/ controlled by copyright. The only practical commercial use of the books at that time is to sell the books as used books; that use - because it does not involve publication - is effectively free. +={ books : + resales of | out of print +} + +In the first hundred years of the Republic, the term of copyright was changed once. In 1831, the term was increased from a maximum of 28 years to a maximum of 42 by increasing the initial term of copyright from 14 years to 28 years. In the next fifty years of the Republic, the term increased once again. In 1909, Congress extended the renewal term of 14 years to 28 years, setting a maximum term of 56 years. +={ Congress, U.S. : + on copyright laws +6 | copyright terms extended by +6 ; + copyright law : + term extensions in +6 +} + +Then, beginning in 1962, Congress started a practice that has defined copyright law since. Eleven times in the last forty years, Congress has extended the terms of existing copyrights; twice in those forty years, Congress extended the term of future copyrights. Initially, the extensions of existing copyrights were short, a mere one to two years. In 1976, Congress extended all existing copyrights by nineteen years. And in 1998, in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Congress extended the term of existing and future copyrights by twenty years. +={ Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) +1 ; + public domain : + future patents vs. future copyrights in +4 +} + +The effect of these extensions is simply to toll, or delay, the passing of works into the public domain. This latest extension means that the public domain will have been tolled for thirty-nine out of fifty-five years, or 70 percent of the time since 1962. Thus, in the twenty years after the Sonny Bono Act, while one million patents will pass into the public domain, zero copyrights will pass into the public domain by virtue of the expiration of a copyright term. +={ patents : + in public domain +} + +The effect of these extensions has been exacerbated by another, little-noticed change in the copyright law. Remember I said that the framers established a two- part copyright regime, requiring a copyright owner to renew his copyright after an initial term. The requirement of renewal meant that works that no longer needed copyright protection would pass more quickly into the public domain. The works remaining under protection would be those that had some continuing commercial value. + +The United States abandoned this sensible system in 1976. For all works created after 1978, there was only one copyright term - the maximum term. For "natural" authors, that term was life plus fifty years. For corporations, the term was seventy-five years. Then, in 1992, Congress abandoned the renewal requirement for all works created before 1978. All works still under copyright would be accorded the maximum term then available. After the Sonny Bono Act, that term was ninety-five years. +={ Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) ; + copyright : + of natural authors vs. corporations ; + corporations : + copyright terms for +} + +This change meant that American law no longer had an automatic way to assure that works that were no longer exploited passed into the public domain. And indeed, after these changes, it is unclear whether it is even possible to put works into the public domain. The public domain is orphaned by these changes in copyright law. Despite the requirement that terms be "limited," we have no evidence that anything will limit them. + +The effect of these changes on the average duration of copyright is dramatic. In 1973, more than 85 percent of copyright owners failed to renew their copyright. That meant that the average term of copyright in 1973 was just 32.2 years. Because of the elimination of the renewal requirement, the average term of copyright is now the maximum term. In thirty years, then, the average term has tripled, from 32.2 years to 95 years.~{ These statistics are understated. Between the years 1910 and 1962 (the first year the renewal term was extended), the average term was never more than thirty-two years, and averaged thirty years. See Landes and Posner, "Indefinitely Renewable Copyright," loc. cit. }~ + +2~ Law: Scope +={ copyright : + scope of +17 +} + +The "scope" of a copyright is the range of rights granted by the law. The scope of American copyright has changed dramatically. Those changes are not necessarily bad. But we should understand the extent of the changes if we're to keep this debate in context. + +In 1790, that scope was very narrow. Copyright covered only "maps, charts, and books." That means it didn't cover, for example, music or architecture. More significantly, the right granted by a copyright gave the author the exclusive right to "publish" copyrighted works. That means someone else violated the copyright only if he republished the work without the copyright owner's permission. Finally, the right granted by a copyright was an exclusive right to that particular book. The right did not extend to what lawyers call "derivative works." It would not, therefore, interfere with the right of someone other than the author to translate a copyrighted book, or to adapt the story to a different form (such as a drama based on a published book). +={ copyright law : + on republishing vs. transformation of original work ; + derivative works : + historical shift in copyright coverage of +2 +} + +This, too, has changed dramatically. While the contours of copyright today are extremely hard to describe simply, in general terms, the right covers practically any creative work that is reduced to a tangible form. It covers music as well as architecture, drama as well as computer programs. It gives the copyright owner of that creative work not only the exclusive right to "publish" the work, but also the exclusive right of control over any "copies" of that work. And most significant for our purposes here, the right gives the copyright owner control over not only his or her particular work, but also any "derivative work" that might grow out of the original work. In this way, the right covers more creative work, protects the creative work more broadly, and protects works that are based in a significant way on the initial creative work. + +At the same time that the scope of copyright has expanded, procedural limitations on the right have been relaxed. I've already described the complete removal of the renewal requirement in 1992. In addition to the renewal requirement, for most of the history of American copyright law, there was a requirement that a work be registered before it could receive the protection of a copyright. There was also a requirement that any copyrighted work be marked either with that famous © or the word /{copyright}/. And for most of the history of American copyright law, there was a requirement that works be deposited with the government before a copyright could be secured. +={ copyright : + marking of +2 ; + formalities +2 ; + copyright law : + registration requirement of +2 +} + +The reason for the registration requirement was the sensible understanding that for most works, no copyright was required. Again, in the first ten years of the Republic, 95 percent of works eligible for copyright were never copyrighted. Thus, the rule reflected the norm: Most works apparently didn't need copyright, so registration narrowed the regulation of the law to the few that did. The same reasoning justified the requirement that a work be marked as copyrighted - that way it was easy to know whether a copyright was being claimed. The requirement that works be deposited was to assure that after the copyright expired, there would be a copy of the work somewhere so that it could be copied by others without locating the original author. + +All of these "formalities" were abolished in the American system when we decided to follow European copyright law. There is no requirement that you register a work to get a copyright; the copyright now is automatic; the copyright exists whether or not you mark your work with a ©; and the copyright exists whether or not you actually make a copy available for others to copy. +={ copyright law : + European +} + +Consider a practical example to understand the scope of these differences. + +If, in 1790, you wrote a book and you were one of the 5 percent who actually copyrighted that book, then the copyright law protected you against another publisher's taking your book and republishing it without your permission. The aim of the act was to regulate publishers so as to prevent that kind of unfair competition. In 1790, there were 174 publishers in the United States.~{ See Thomas Bender and David Sampliner, "Poets, Pirates, and the Creation of American Literature," 29 /{New York University Journal of International Law and Politics}/ 255 (1997), and James Gilraeth, ed., Federal Copyright Records, 1790- 1800 (U.S. G.P.O., 1987). }~ The Copyright Act was thus a tiny regulation of a tiny proportion of a tiny part of the creative market in the United States - publishers. +={ Copyright Act (1790) +1 } + +The act left other creators totally unregulated. If I copied your poem by hand, over and over again, as a way to learn it by heart, my act was totally unregulated by the 1790 act. If I took your novel and made a play based upon it, or if I translated it or abridged it, none of those activities were regulated by the original copyright act. These creative activities remained free, while the activities of publishers were restrained. +={ copyright law : + on republishing vs. transformation of original work +8 ; + derivative works : + piracy vs. +3 ; + piracy : + derivative work vs. +6 +} + +Today the story is very different: If you write a book, your book is automatically protected. Indeed, not just your book. Every e-mail, every note to your spouse, every doodle, /{every}/ creative act that's reduced to a tangible form - all of this is automatically copyrighted. There is no need to register or mark your work. The protection follows the creation, not the steps you take to protect it. + +That protection gives you the right (subject to a narrow range of fair use exceptions) to control how others copy the work, whether they copy it to republish it or to share an excerpt. + +That much is the obvious part. Any system of copyright would control competing publishing. But there's a second part to the copyright of today that is not at all obvious. This is the protection of "derivative rights." If you write a book, no one can make a movie out of your book without permission. No one can translate it without permission. CliffsNotes can't make an abridgment unless permission is granted. All of these derivative uses of your original work are controlled by the copyright holder. The copyright, in other words, is now not just an exclusive right to your writings, but an exclusive right to your writings and a large proportion of the writings inspired by them. + +It is this derivative right that would seem most bizarre to our framers, though it has become second nature to us. Initially, this expansion was created to deal with obvious evasions of a narrower copyright. If I write a book, can you change one word and then claim a copyright in a new and different book? Obviously that would make a joke of the copyright, so the law was properly expanded to include those slight modifications as well as the verbatim original work. + +In preventing that joke, the law created an astonishing power within a free culture - at least, it's astonishing when you understand that the law applies not just to the commercial publisher but to anyone with a computer. I understand the wrong in duplicating and selling someone else's work. But whatever /{that}/ wrong is, transforming someone else's work is a different wrong. Some view transformation as no wrong at all - they believe that our law, as the framers penned it, should not protect derivative rights at all.~{ Jonathan Zittrain, "The Copyright Cage," /{Legal Affairs,}/ July/August 2003, available at link #26. }~ Whether or not you go that far, it seems plain that whatever wrong is involved is fundamentally different from the wrong of direct piracy. + +Yet copyright law treats these two different wrongs in the same way. I can go to court and get an injunction against your pirating my book. I can go to court and get an injunction against your transformative use of my book.~{ Professor Rubenfeld has presented a powerful constitutional argument about the difference that copyright law should draw (from the perspective of the First Amendment) between mere "copies" and derivative works. See Jed Rubenfeld, "The Freedom of Imagination: Copyright's Constitutionality," /{Yale Law Journal}/ 112 (2002): 1-60 (see especially pp. 53-59). }~ These two different uses of my creative work are treated the same. + +This again may seem right to you. If I wrote a book, then why should you be able to write a movie that takes my story and makes money from it without paying me or crediting me? Or if Disney creates a creature called "Mickey Mouse," why should you be able to make Mickey Mouse toys and be the one to trade on the value that Disney originally created? +={ Disney, Walt ; + Mickey Mouse +} + +These are good arguments, and, in general, my point is not that the derivative right is unjustified. My aim just now is much narrower: simply to make clear that this expansion is a significant change from the rights originally granted. + +2~ Law and Architecture: Reach + +Whereas originally the law regulated only publishers, the change in copyright's scope means that the law today regulates publishers, users, and authors. It regulates them because all three are capable of making copies, and the core of the regulation of copyright law is copies.~{ This is a simplification of the law, but not much of one. The law certainly regulates more than "copies" - a public performance of a copyrighted song, for example, is regulated even though performance per se doesn't make a copy; 17 /{United States Code,}/ section 106(4). And it certainly sometimes doesn't regulate a "copy"; 17 /{United States Code,}/ section 112(a). But the presumption under the existing law (which regulates "copies;" 17 /{United States Code,}/ section 102) is that if there is a copy, there is a right. }~ +={ copyright law : + copies as core issue of +1 | scope of +2 +} + +"Copies." That certainly sounds like the obvious thing for /{copy}/right law to regulate. But as with Jack Valenti's argument at the start of this chapter, that "creative property" deserves the "same rights" as all other property, it is the /{obvious}/ that we need to be most careful about. For while it may be obvious that in the world before the Internet, copies were the obvious trigger for copyright law, upon reflection, it should be obvious that in the world with the Internet, copies should /{not}/ be the trigger for copyright law. More precisely, they should not /{always}/ be the trigger for copyright law. +={ Valenti, Jack : + on creative property rights ; + creative property : + other property rights vs. +1 +} + +This is perhaps the central claim of this book, so let me take this very slowly so that the point is not easily missed. My claim is that the Internet should at least force us to rethink the conditions under which the law of copyright automatically applies,~{ Thus, my argument is not that in each place that copyright law extends, we should repeal it. It is instead that we should have a good argument for its extending where it does, and should not determine its reach on the basis of arbitrary and automatic changes caused by technology. }~ because it is clear that the current reach of copyright was never contemplated, much less chosen, by the legislators who enacted copyright law. + +We can see this point abstractly by beginning with this largely empty circle. + +{freeculture05.png 350x350 "uses" }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +Think about a book in real space, and imagine this circle to represent all its potential /{uses}/. Most of these uses are unregulated by copyright law, because the uses don't create a copy. If you read a book, that act is not regulated by copyright law. If you give someone the book, that act is not regulated by copyright law. If you resell a book, that act is not regulated (copyright law expressly states that after the first sale of a book, the copyright owner can impose no further conditions on the disposition of the book). If you sleep on the book or use it to hold up a lamp or let your puppy chew it up, those acts are not regulated by copyright law, because those acts do not make a copy. +={ books : + three types of uses of +9 ; + copyright law : + copies as core issue of +16 ; + Internet : + copyright applicability altered by technology of +16 ; + technology : + copyright intent altered by +16 ; + derivative works : + piracy vs. +3 ; + piracy : + derivative work vs. +3 +} + +% piracy derivative work vs. in original index, not found, but included for page indicated + +{freeculture06.png 350x350 "unregulated" }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +Obviously, however, some uses of a copyrighted book are regulated by copyright law. Republishing the book, for example, makes a copy. It is therefore regulated by copyright law. Indeed, this particular use stands at the core of this circle of possible uses of a copyrighted work. It is the paradigmatic use properly regulated by copyright regulation (see first diagram on next page). + +Finally, there is a tiny sliver of otherwise regulated copying uses that remain unregulated because the law considers these "fair uses." +={ fair use +6 ; + copyright law : + fair use and +6 +} + +{freeculture07.png 350x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +These are uses that themselves involve copying, but which the law treats as unregulated because public policy demands that they remain unregulated. You are free to quote from this book, even in a review that is quite negative, without my permission, even though that quoting makes a copy. That copy would ordinarily give the copyright owner the exclusive right to say whether the copy is allowed or not, but the law denies the owner any exclusive right over such "fair uses" for public policy (and possibly First Amendment) reasons. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + First Amendment to ; + First Amendment +} + +{freeculture08.png 450x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +{freeculture09.png 350x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +In real space, then, the possible uses of a book are divided into three sorts: (1) unregulated uses, (2) regulated uses, and (3) regulated uses that are nonetheless deemed "fair" regardless of the copyright owner's views. +={ copyright : + usage restrictions attached to +8 +} + +Enter the Internet - a distributed, digital network where every use of a copyrighted work produces a copy.~{ I don't mean "nature" in the sense that it couldn't be different, but rather that its present instantiation entails a copy. Optical networks need not make copies of content they transmit, and a digital network could be designed to delete anything it copies so that the same number of copies remain. }~ And because of this single, arbitrary feature of the design of a digital network, the scope of category 1 changes dramatically. Uses that before were presumptively unregulated are now presumptively regulated. No longer is there a set of presumptively unregulated uses that define a freedom associated with a copyrighted work. Instead, each use is now subject to the copyright, because each use also makes a copy - category 1 gets sucked into category 2. And those who would defend the unregulated uses of copyrighted work must look exclusively to category 3, fair uses, to bear the burden of this shift. +={ books : + on Internet +7 ; + Internet : + books on +7 ; + fair use : + Internet burdens on +} + +So let's be very specific to make this general point clear. Before the Internet, if you purchased a book and read it ten times, there would be no plausible /{copyright}/-related argument that the copyright owner could make to control that use of her book. Copyright law would have nothing to say about whether you read the book once, ten times, or every night before you went to bed. None of those instances of use - reading - could be regulated by copyright law because none of those uses produced a copy. + +But the same book as an e-book is effectively governed by a different set of rules. Now if the copyright owner says you may read the book only once or only once a month, then /{copyright law}/ would aid the copyright owner in exercising this degree of control, because of the accidental feature of copyright law that triggers its application upon there being a copy. Now if you read the book ten times and the license says you may read it only five times, then whenever you read the book (or any portion of it) beyond the fifth time, you are making a copy of the book contrary to the copyright owner's wish. +={ e-books +5 ; + derivative works : + technological developments and +4 +} + +There are some people who think this makes perfect sense. My aim just now is not to argue about whether it makes sense or not. My aim is only to make clear the change. Once you see this point, a few other points also become clear: + +First, making category 1 disappear is not anything any policy maker ever intended. Congress did not think through the collapse of the presumptively unregulated uses of copyrighted works. There is no evidence at all that policy makers had this idea in mind when they allowed our policy here to shift. Unregulated uses were an important part of free culture before the Internet. + +Second, this shift is especially troubling in the context of transformative uses of creative content. Again, we can all understand the wrong in commercial piracy. But the law now purports to regulate /{any}/ transformation you make of creative work using a machine. "Copy and paste" and "cut and paste" become crimes. Tinkering with a story and releasing it to others exposes the tinkerer to at least a requirement of justification. However troubling the expansion with respect to copying a particular work, it is extraordinarily troubling with respect to transformative uses of creative work. +={ copyright law : + on republishing vs. transformation of original work +1 +} + +Third, this shift from category 1 to category 2 puts an extraordinary burden on category 3 ("fair use") that fair use never before had to bear. If a copyright owner now tried to control how many times I could read a book on-line, the natural response would be to argue that this is a violation of my fair use rights. But there has never been any litigation about whether I have a fair use right to read, because before the Internet, reading did not trigger the application of copyright law and hence the need for a fair use defense. The right to read was effectively protected before because reading was not regulated. +={ fair use : + Internet burdens on +1 ; + copyright law : + fair use and +1 ; + derivative works : + fair use vs. +1 +} + +This point about fair use is totally ignored, even by advocates for free culture. We have been cornered into arguing that our rights depend upon fair use - never even addressing the earlier question about the expansion in effective regulation. A thin protection grounded in fair use makes sense when the vast majority of uses are /{unregulated}/. But when everything becomes presumptively regulated, then the protections of fair use are not enough. + +The case of Video Pipeline is a good example. Video Pipeline was in the business of making "trailer" advertisements for movies available to video stores. The video stores displayed the trailers as a way to sell videos. Video Pipeline got the trailers from the film distributors, put the trailers on tape, and sold the tapes to the retail stores. +={ Video Pipeline +5 ; + advertising +2 ; + film industry : + trailer advertisements of +2 +} + +The company did this for about fifteen years. Then, in 1997, it began to think about the Internet as another way to distribute these previews. The idea was to expand their "selling by sampling" technique by giving on-line stores the same ability to enable "browsing." Just as in a bookstore you can read a few pages of a book before you buy the book, so, too, you would be able to sample a bit from the movie on-line before you bought it. +={ browsing } + +In 1998, Video Pipeline informed Disney and other film distributors that it intended to distribute the trailers through the Internet (rather than sending the tapes) to distributors of their videos. Two years later, Disney told Video Pipeline to stop. The owner of Video Pipeline asked Disney to talk about the matter - he had built a business on distributing this content as a way to help sell Disney films; he had customers who depended upon his delivering this content. Disney would agree to talk only if Video Pipeline stopped the distribution immediately. Video Pipeline thought it was within their "fair use" rights to distribute the clips as they had. So they filed a lawsuit to ask the court to declare that these rights were in fact their rights. +={ Disney, Inc. +3 ; + copyright law : + fair use and ; + copyright law : + copies as core issue of +3 ; + fair use : + legal intimidation tactics against +3 +} + +Disney countersued - for $100 million in damages. Those damages were predicated upon a claim that Video Pipeline had - willfully infringed" on Disney's copyright. When a court makes a finding of willful infringement, it can award damages not on the basis of the actual harm to the copyright owner, but on the basis of an amount set in the statute. Because Video Pipeline had distributed seven hundred clips of Disney movies to enable video stores to sell copies of those movies, Disney was now suing Video Pipeline for $100 million. +={ copyright : + usage restrictions attached to +2 ; + copyright infringement lawsuits : + willful infringement findings in +2 ; + willful infringement +} + +Disney has the right to control its property, of course. But the video stores that were selling Disney's films also had some sort of right to be able to sell the films that they had bought from Disney. Disney's claim in court was that the stores were allowed to sell the films and they were permitted to list the titles of the films they were selling, but they were not allowed to show clips of the films as a way of selling them without Disney's permission. + +Now, you might think this is a close case, and I think the courts would consider it a close case. My point here is to map the change that gives Disney this power. Before the Internet, Disney couldn't really control how people got access to their content. Once a video was in the marketplace, the "first-sale doctrine" would free the seller to use the video as he wished, including showing portions of it in order to engender sales of the entire movie video. But with the Internet, it becomes possible for Disney to centralize control over access to this content. Because each use of the Internet produces a copy, use on the Internet becomes subject to the copyright owner's control. The technology expands the scope of effective control, because the technology builds a copy into every transaction. +={ first-sale doctrine } + +No doubt, a potential is not yet an abuse, and so the potential for control is not yet the abuse of control. Barnes & Noble has the right to say you can't touch a book in their store; property law gives them that right. But the market effectively protects against that abuse. If Barnes & Noble banned browsing, then consumers would choose other bookstores. Competition protects against the extremes. And it may well be (my argument so far does not even question this) that competition would prevent any similar danger when it comes to copyright. Sure, publishers exercising the rights that authors have assigned to them might try to regulate how many times you read a book, or try to stop you from sharing the book with anyone. But in a competitive market such as the book market, the dangers of this happening are quite slight. +={ Barnes & Noble ; + browsing ; + market competition +} + +Again, my aim so far is simply to map the changes that this changed architecture enables. Enabling technology to enforce the control of copyright means that the control of copyright is no longer defined by balanced policy. The control of copyright is simply what private owners choose. In some contexts, at least, that fact is harmless. But in some contexts it is a recipe for disaster. + +2~ Architecture and Law: Force + +The disappearance of unregulated uses would be change enough, but a second important change brought about by the Internet magnifies its significance. This second change does not affect the reach of copyright regulation; it affects how such regulation is enforced. + +In the world before digital technology, it was generally the law that controlled whether and how someone was regulated by copyright law. The law, meaning a court, meaning a judge: In the end, it was a human, trained in the tradition of the law and cognizant of the balances that tradition embraced, who said whether and how the law would restrict your freedom. +={ copyright law : + technology as automatic enforcer of ; + technology : + copyright enforcement controlled by +} + +There's a famous story about a battle between the Marx Brothers and Warner Brothers. The Marxes intended to make a parody of /{Casablanca}/. Warner Brothers objected. They wrote a nasty letter to the Marxes, warning them that there would be serious legal consequences if they went forward with their plan.~{ See David Lange, "Recognizing the Public Domain," /{Law and Contemporary Problems}/ 44 (1981): 172-73. }~ +={ Marx Brothers +3 ; + Warner Brothers +2 ; + Casablanca +1 +} + +This led the Marx Brothers to respond in kind. They warned Warner Brothers that the Marx Brothers "were brothers long before you were."~{ Ibid. See also Vaidhyanathan, /{Copyrights and Copywrongs,}/ 1-3. }~ The Marx Brothers therefore owned the word /{brothers}/, and if Warner Brothers insisted on trying to control /{Casablanca}/, then the Marx Brothers would insist on control over /{brothers}/. + +An absurd and hollow threat, of course, because Warner Brothers, like the Marx Brothers, knew that no court would ever enforce such a silly claim. This extremism was irrelevant to the real freedoms anyone (including Warner Brothers) enjoyed. + +On the Internet, however, there is no check on silly rules, because on the Internet, increasingly, rules are enforced not by a human but by a machine: Increasingly, the rules of copyright law, as interpreted by the copyright owner, get built into the technology that delivers copyrighted content. It is code, rather than law, that rules. And the problem with code regulations is that, unlike law, code has no shame. Code would not get the humor of the Marx Brothers. The consequence of that is not at all funny. +={ books : + on Internet +30 ; + Internet : + books on +28 +} + +Consider the life of my Adobe eBook Reader. +={ Adobe eBook Reader +2 ; + copyright law : + technology as automatic enforcer of +68 ; + technology : + copyright enforcement controlled by +68 ; + e-books +27 +} + +An e-book is a book delivered in electronic form. An Adobe eBook is not a book that Adobe has published; Adobe simply produces the software that publishers use to deliver e-books. It provides the technology, and the publisher delivers the content by using the technology. + +On the next page is a picture of an old version of my Adobe eBook Reader. + +As you can see, I have a small collection of e-books within this e-book library. Some of these books reproduce content that is in the public domain: /{Middlemarch}/, for example, is in the public domain. Some of them reproduce content that is not in the public domain: My own book /{The Future of Ideas}/ is not yet within the public domain. +={ Future of Ideas, The (Lessig) ; + Lessig, Lawrence ; + Middlemarch (Eliot) +1 ; + public domain : + e-book restrictions on +9 +} + +Consider /{Middlemarch}/ first. If you click on my e-book copy of /{Middlemarch}/, you'll see a fancy cover, and then a button at the bottom called Permissions. +={ Internet : + copyright enforced through +46 ; + permissions : + coded controls vs. +23 +} + +{freeculture10.png 340x450 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +If you click on the Permissions button, you'll see a list of the permissions that the publisher purports to grant with this book. + +{freeculture11.png 560x250 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +According to my eBook Reader, I have the permission to copy to the clipboard of the computer ten text selections every ten days. (So far, I've copied no text to the clipboard.) I also have the permission to print ten pages from the book every ten days. Lastly, I have the permission to use the Read Aloud button to hear /{Middlemarch}/ read aloud through the computer. +={ Middlemarch (Eliot) } + +{freeculture12.png 310x410 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +Here's the e-book for another work in the public domain (including the translation): Aristotle's /{Politics}/. +={ Aristotle ; + Politics (Aristotle) +} + +According to its permissions, no printing or copying is permitted at all. But fortunately, you can use the Read Aloud button to hear the book. + +{freeculture13.png 560x220 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +Finally (and most embarrassingly), here are the permissions for the original e- book version of my last book, /{The Future of Ideas}/: +={ Future of Ideas, The (Lessig) ; + Lessig, Lawrence +} + +{freeculture14.png 560x224 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +No copying, no printing, and don't you dare try to listen to this book! + +Now, the Adobe eBook Reader calls these controls "permissions" - as if the publisher has the power to control how you use these works. For works under copyright, the copyright owner certainly does have the power - up to the limits of the copyright law. But for work not under copyright, there is no such copyright power.~{ In principle, a contract might impose a requirement on me. I might, for example, buy a book from you that includes a contract that says I will read it only three times, or that I promise to read it three times. But that obligation (and the limits for creating that obligation) would come from the contract, not from copyright law, and the obligations of contract would not necessarily pass to anyone who subsequently acquired the book. }~ When my e-book of /{Middlemarch}/ says I have the permission to copy only ten text selections into the memory every ten days, what that really means is that the eBook Reader has enabled the publisher to control how I use the book on my computer, far beyond the control that the law would enable. + +The control comes instead from the code - from the technology within which the e- book "lives." Though the e-book says that these are permissions, they are not the sort of "permissions" that most of us deal with. When a teenager gets "permission" to stay out till midnight, she knows (unless she's Cinderella) that she can stay out till 2 A.M., but will suffer a punishment if she's caught. But when the Adobe eBook Reader says I have the permission to make ten copies of the text into the computer's memory, that means that after I've made ten copies, the computer will not make any more. The same with the printing restrictions: After ten pages, the eBook Reader will not print any more pages. It's the same with the silly restriction that says that you can't use the Read Aloud button to read my book aloud - it's not that the company will sue you if you do; instead, if you push the Read Aloud button with my book, the machine simply won't read aloud. + +These are /{controls}/, not permissions. Imagine a world where the Marx Brothers sold word processing software that, when you tried to type "Warner Brothers," erased "Brothers" from the sentence. +={ Marx Brothers ; + Warner Brothers +} + +This is the future of copyright law: not so much copyright /{law}/ as copyright /{code}/. The controls over access to content will not be controls that are ratified by courts; the controls over access to content will be controls that are coded by programmers. And whereas the controls that are built into the law are always to be checked by a judge, the controls that are built into the technology have no similar built-in check. + +How significant is this? Isn't it always possible to get around the controls built into the technology? Software used to be sold with technologies that limited the ability of users to copy the software, but those were trivial protections to defeat. Why won't it be trivial to defeat these protections as well? + +We've only scratched the surface of this story. Return to the Adobe eBook Reader. + +Early in the life of the Adobe eBook Reader, Adobe suffered a public relations nightmare. Among the books that you could download for free on the Adobe site was a copy of /{Alice's Adventures in Wonderland}/. This wonderful book is in the public domain. Yet when you clicked on Permissions for that book, you got the following report: +={ Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Caroll) +4 ; + public domain : + e-book restrictions on +4 +} + +{freeculture15.png 560x310 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +Here was a public domain children's book that you were not allowed to copy, not allowed to lend, not allowed to give, and, as the "permissions" indicated, not allowed to "read aloud"! + +The public relations nightmare attached to that final permission. For the text did not say that you were not permitted to use the Read Aloud button; it said you did not have the permission to read the book aloud. That led some people to think that Adobe was restricting the right of parents, for example, to read the book to their children, which seemed, to say the least, absurd. + +Adobe responded quickly that it was absurd to think that it was trying to restrict the right to read a book aloud. Obviously it was only restricting the ability to use the Read Aloud button to have the book read aloud. But the question Adobe never did answer is this: Would Adobe thus agree that a consumer was free to use software to hack around the restrictions built into the eBook Reader? If some company (call it Elcomsoft) developed a program to disable the technological protection built into an Adobe eBook so that a blind person, say, could use a computer to read the book aloud, would Adobe agree that such a use of an eBook Reader was fair? Adobe didn't answer because the answer, however absurd it might seem, is no. + +The point is not to blame Adobe. Indeed, Adobe is among the most innovative companies developing strategies to balance open access to content with incentives for companies to innovate. But Adobe's technology enables control, and Adobe has an incentive to defend this control. That incentive is understandable, yet what it creates is often crazy. + +To see the point in a particularly absurd context, consider a favorite story of mine that makes the same point. + +Consider the robotic dog made by Sony named "Aibo." The Aibo learns tricks, cuddles, and follows you around. It eats only electricity and that doesn't leave that much of a mess (at least in your house). +={ Aibo robotic dog +6 ; + robotic dog +6 ; + Sony : + Aibo robotic dog produced by +6 +} + +The Aibo is expensive and popular. Fans from around the world have set up clubs to trade stories. One fan in particular set up a Web site to enable information about the Aibo dog to be shared. This fan set up aibopet.com (and aibohack.com, but that resolves to the same site), and on that site he provided information about how to teach an Aibo to do tricks in addition to the ones Sony had taught it. +={ hacks +4 } + +"Teach" here has a special meaning. Aibos are just cute computers. You teach a computer how to do something by programming it differently. So to say that aibopet.com was giving information about how to teach the dog to do new tricks is just to say that aibopet.com was giving information to users of the Aibo pet about how to hack their computer "dog" to make it do new tricks (thus, aibohack.com). + +If you're not a programmer or don't know many programmers, the word /{hack}/ has a particularly unfriendly connotation. Nonprogrammers hack bushes or weeds. Nonprogrammers in horror movies do even worse. But to programmers, or coders, as I call them, /{hack}/ is a much more positive term. /{Hack}/ just means code that enables the program to do something it wasn't originally intended or enabled to do. If you buy a new printer for an old computer, you might find the old computer doesn't run, or "drive," the printer. If you discovered that, you'd later be happy to discover a hack on the Net by someone who has written a driver to enable the computer to drive the printer you just bought. + +Some hacks are easy. Some are unbelievably hard. Hackers as a community like to challenge themselves and others with increasingly difficult tasks. There's a certain respect that goes with the talent to hack well. There's a well-deserved respect that goes with the talent to hack ethically. + +The Aibo fan was displaying a bit of both when he hacked the program and offered to the world a bit of code that would enable the Aibo to dance jazz. The dog wasn't programmed to dance jazz. It was a clever bit of tinkering that turned the dog into a more talented creature than Sony had built. + +I've told this story in many contexts, both inside and outside the United States. Once I was asked by a puzzled member of the audience, is it permissible for a dog to dance jazz in the United States? We forget that stories about the backcountry still flow across much of the world. So let's just be clear before we continue: It's not a crime anywhere (anymore) to dance jazz. Nor is it a crime to teach your dog to dance jazz. Nor should it be a crime (though we don't have a lot to go on here) to teach your robot dog to dance jazz. Dancing jazz is a completely legal activity. One imagines that the owner of aibopet.com thought, /{What possible problem could there be with teaching a robot dog to dance?}/ + +Let's put the dog to sleep for a minute, and turn to a pony show - not literally a pony show, but rather a paper that a Princeton academic named Ed Felten prepared for a conference. This Princeton academic is well known and respected. He was hired by the government in the Microsoft case to test Microsoft's claims about what could and could not be done with its own code. In that trial, he demonstrated both his brilliance and his coolness. Under heavy badgering by Microsoft lawyers, Ed Felten stood his ground. He was not about to be bullied into being silent about something he knew very well. +={ Felten, Ed +11 ; + Microsoft : + government case against +} + +But Felten's bravery was really tested in April 2001.~{ See Pamela Samuelson, "Anticircumvention Rules: Threat to Science," /{Science}/ 293 (2001): 2028; Brendan I. Koerner, "Play Dead: Sony Muzzles the Techies Who Teach a Robot Dog New Tricks," /{American Prospect,}/ 1 January 2002; "Court Dismisses Computer Scientists' Challenge to DMCA," /{Intellectual Property Litigation Reporter,}/ 11 December 2001; Bill Holland, "Copyright Act Raising Free-Speech Concerns," /{Billboard,}/ 26 May 2001; Janelle Brown, "Is the RIAA Running Scared?" Salon.com, 26 April 2001; Electronic Frontier Foundation, "Frequently Asked Questions about /{Felten and USENIX v. RIAA}/ Legal Case," available at link #27. }~ He and a group of colleagues were working on a paper to be submitted at conference. The paper was intended to describe the weakness in an encryption system being developed by the Secure Digital Music Initiative as a technique to control the distribution of music. +={ Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) +5 ; + encryption systems +5 ; + Internet : + encryption systems designed for +5 +} + +The SDMI coalition had as its goal a technology to enable content owners to exercise much better control over their content than the Internet, as it originally stood, granted them. Using encryption, SDMI hoped to develop a standard that would allow the content owner to say "this music cannot be copied," and have a computer respect that command. The technology was to be part of a "trusted system" of control that would get content owners to trust the system of the Internet much more. + +When SDMI thought it was close to a standard, it set up a competition. In exchange for providing contestants with the code to an SDMI-encrypted bit of content, contestants were to try to crack it and, if they did, report the problems to the consortium. + +Felten and his team figured out the encryption system quickly. He and the team saw the weakness of this system as a type: Many encryption systems would suffer the same weakness, and Felten and his team thought it worthwhile to point this out to those who study encryption. + +Let's review just what Felten was doing. Again, this is the United States. We have a principle of free speech. We have this principle not just because it is the law, but also because it is a really great idea. A strongly protected tradition of free speech is likely to encourage a wide range of criticism. That criticism is likely, in turn, to improve the systems or people or ideas criticized. +={ speech, freedom of : + useful criticism fostered by +} + +What Felten and his colleagues were doing was publishing a paper describing the weakness in a technology. They were not spreading free music, or building and deploying this technology. The paper was an academic essay, unintelligible to most people. But it clearly showed the weakness in the SDMI system, and why SDMI would not, as presently constituted, succeed. + +What links these two, aibopet.com and Felten, is the letters they then received. Aibopet.com received a letter from Sony about the aibopet.com hack. Though a jazz-dancing dog is perfectly legal, Sony wrote: +={ Aibo robotic dog +1 ; + robotic dog +1 ; + Sony : + Aibo robotic dog produced by +1 +} + +``` quote +Your site contains information providing the means to circumvent AIBO-ware's copy protection protocol constituting a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." +``` +={ circumvention technologies ; + Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) +7 ; + DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) +7 ; + copyright law : + circumvention technology banned by +19 ; + technology : + of circumvention +} + +And though an academic paper describing the weakness in a system of encryption should also be perfectly legal, Felten received a letter from an RIAA lawyer that read: +={ Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + on encryption system critique +1 +} + +``` quote +Any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public Challenge would be outside the scope of activities permitted by the Agreement and could subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA")." +``` + +In both cases, this weirdly Orwellian law was invoked to control the spread of information. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act made spreading such information an offense. + +The DMCA was enacted as a response to copyright owners' first fear about cyberspace. The fear was that copyright control was effectively dead; the response was to find technologies that might compensate. These new technologies would be copyright protection technologies - technologies to control the replication and distribution of copyrighted material. They were designed as /{code}/ to modify the original /{code}/ of the Internet, to reestablish some protection for copyright owners. + +The DMCA was a bit of law intended to back up the protection of this code designed to protect copyrighted material. It was, we could say, /{legal code}/ intended to buttress /{software code}/ which itself was intended to support the /{legal code of copyright}/. + +But the DMCA was not designed merely to protect copyrighted works to the extent copyright law protected them. Its protection, that is, did not end at the line that copyright law drew. The DMCA regulated devices that were designed to circumvent copyright protection measures. It was designed to ban those devices, whether or not the use of the copyrighted material made possible by that circumvention would have been a copyright violation. +={ circumvention technologies +13 ; + fair use : + circumvention technology ban and +1 ; + technology : + of circumvention +13 +} + +Aibopet.com and Felten make the point. The Aibo hack circumvented a copyright protection system for the purpose of enabling the dog to dance jazz. That enablement no doubt involved the use of copyrighted material. But as aibopet.com's site was noncommercial, and the use did not enable subsequent copyright infringements, there's no doubt that aibopet.com's hack was fair use of Sony's copyrighted material. Yet fair use is not a defense to the DMCA. The question is not whether the use of the copyrighted material was a copyright violation. The question is whether a copyright protection system was circumvented. +={ Felten, Ed +1 ; + Aibo robotic dog ; + robotic dog ; + Sony : + Aibo robotic dog produced by ; + copyright law : + fair use and +} + +The threat against Felten was more attenuated, but it followed the same line of reasoning. By publishing a paper describing how a copyright protection system could be circumvented, the RIAA lawyer suggested, Felten himself was distributing a circumvention technology. Thus, even though he was not himself infringing anyone's copyright, his academic paper was enabling others to infringe others' copyright. +={ Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + on circumvention technology +} + +The bizarreness of these arguments is captured in a cartoon drawn in 1981 by Paul Conrad. At that time, a court in California had held that the VCR could be banned because it was a copyright-infringing technology: It enabled consumers to copy films without the permission of the copyright owner. No doubt there were uses of the technology that were legal: Fred Rogers, aka "Mr. Rogers," for example, had testified in that case that he wanted people to feel free to tape /{Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood}/. +={ Conrad, Paul ; + Rogers, Fred ; + cassette recording : + VCRs +10 ; + VCRs +10 ; + Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood ; + television : + VCR taping of +8 +} + +``` quote +Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the "Neighborhood" at hours when some children cannot use it. I think that it's a real service to families to be able to record such programs and show them at appropriate times. I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the "Neighborhood" off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the "Neighborhood" because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been "You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions." Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important."~{ /{Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.,}/ 464 U.S. 417, 455 fn. 27 (1984). Rogers never changed his view about the VCR. See James Lardner, /{Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, and the Onslaught of the VCR}/ (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 270-71. }~ +``` + +Even though there were uses that were legal, because there were some uses that were illegal, the court held the companies producing the VCR responsible. + +This led Conrad to draw the cartoon below, which we can adopt to the DMCA. +={ Conrad, Paul ; + Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) +2 ; + DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) +2 +} + +No argument I have can top this picture, but let me try to get close. + +The anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA target copyright circumvention technologies. Circumvention technologies can be used for different ends. They can be used, for example, to enable massive pirating of copyrighted material - a bad end. Or they can be used to enable the use of particular copyrighted materials in ways that would be considered fair use - a good end. + +A handgun can be used to shoot a police officer or a child. Most would agree such a use is bad. Or a handgun can be used for target practice or to protect against an intruder. At least some would say that such a use would be good. It, too, is a technology that has both good and bad uses. +={ guns +1 ; + handguns +1 +} + +{freeculture16.png 425x500 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +The obvious point of Conrad's cartoon is the weirdness of a world where guns are legal, despite the harm they can do, while VCRs (and circumvention technologies) are illegal. Flash: /{No one ever died from copyright circumvention}/. Yet the law bans circumvention technologies absolutely, despite the potential that they might do some good, but permits guns, despite the obvious and tragic harm they do. +={ Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + on circumvention technology +1 +} + +The Aibo and RIAA examples demonstrate how copyright owners are changing the balance that copyright law grants. Using code, copyright owners restrict fair use; using the DMCA, they punish those who would attempt to evade the restrictions on fair use that they impose through code. Technology becomes a means by which fair use can be erased; the law of the DMCA backs up that erasing. +={ Conrad, Paul ; + Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) ; + DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) ; + Aibo robotic dog +1 ; + robotic dog +1 ; + copyright law : + fair use and +1 ; + fair use : + technological restriction of +1 +} + +This is how /{code}/ becomes /{law}/. The controls built into the technology of copy and access protection become rules the violation of which is also a violation of the law. In this way, the code extends the law - increasing its regulation, even if the subject it regulates (activities that would otherwise plainly constitute fair use) is beyond the reach of the law. Code becomes law; code extends the law; code thus extends the control that copyright owners effect - at least for those copyright holders with the lawyers who can write the nasty letters that Felten and aibopet.com received. +={ Felten, Ed } + +There is one final aspect of the interaction between architecture and law that contributes to the force of copyright's regulation. This is the ease with which infringements of the law can be detected. For contrary to the rhetoric common at the birth of cyberspace that on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog, increasingly, given changing technologies deployed on the Internet, it is easy to find the dog who committed a legal wrong. The technologies of the Internet are open to snoops as well as sharers, and the snoops are increasingly good at tracking down the identity of those who violate the rules. + +For example, imagine you were part of a /{Star Trek}/ fan club. You gathered every month to share trivia, and maybe to enact a kind of fan fiction about the show. One person would play Spock, another, Captain Kirk. The characters would begin with a plot from a real story, then simply continue it.~{ For an early and prescient analysis, see Rebecca Tushnet, "Legal Fictions, Copyright, Fan Fiction, and a New Common Law," /{Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Journal}/ 17 (1997): 651. }~ + +Before the Internet, this was, in effect, a totally unregulated activity. No matter what happened inside your club room, you would never be interfered with by the copyright police. You were free in that space to do as you wished with this part of our culture. You were allowed to build on it as you wished without fear of legal control. +={ Internet : + copyright enforced through +1 +} + +But if you moved your club onto the Internet, and made it generally available for others to join, the story would be very different. Bots scouring the Net for trademark and copyright infringement would quickly find your site. Your posting of fan fiction, depending upon the ownership of the series that you're depicting, could well inspire a lawyer's threat. And ignoring the lawyer's threat would be extremely costly indeed. The law of copyright is extremely efficient. The penalties are severe, and the process is quick. +={ bots } + +This change in the effective force of the law is caused by a change in the ease with which the law can be enforced. That change too shifts the law's balance radically. It is as if your car transmitted the speed at which you traveled at every moment that you drove; that would be just one step before the state started issuing tickets based upon the data you transmitted. That is, in effect, what is happening here. + +2~ Market: Concentration + +So copyright's duration has increased dramatically - tripled in the past thirty years. And copyright's scope has increased as well - from regulating only publishers to now regulating just about everyone. And copyright's reach has changed, as every action becomes a copy and hence presumptively regulated. And as technologists find better ways to control the use of content, and as copyright is increasingly enforced through technology, copyright's force changes, too. Misuse is easier to find and easier to control. This regulation of the creative process, which began as a tiny regulation governing a tiny part of the market for creative work, has become the single most important regulator of creativity there is. It is a massive expansion in the scope of the government's control over innovation and creativity; it would be totally unrecognizable to those who gave birth to copyright's control. + +Still, in my view, all of these changes would not matter much if it weren't for one more change that we must also consider. This is a change that is in some sense the most familiar, though its significance and scope are not well understood. It is the one that creates precisely the reason to be concerned about all the other changes I have described. + +This is the change in the concentration and integration of the media. In the past twenty years, the nature of media ownership has undergone a radical alteration, caused by changes in legal rules governing the media. Before this change happened, the different forms of media were owned by separate media companies. Now, the media is increasingly owned by only a few companies. Indeed, after the changes that the FCC announced in June 2003, most expect that within a few years, we will live in a world where just three companies control more than 85 percent of the media. +={ FCC : + media ownership regulated by +2 ; + media : + ownership concentration in +21 +} + +These changes are of two sorts: the scope of concentration, and its nature. + +Changes in scope are the easier ones to describe. As Senator John McCain summarized the data produced in the FCC's review of media ownership, "five companies control 85 percent of our media sources."~{ FCC Oversight: Hearing Before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (22 May 2003) (statement of Senator John McCain). }~ The five recording labels of Universal Music Group, BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI control 84.8 percent of the U.S. music market.~{ Lynette Holloway, "Despite a Marketing Blitz, CD Sales Continue to Slide," /{New York Times,}/ 23 December 2002. }~ The "five largest cable companies pipe programming to 74 percent of the cable subscribers nationwide."~{ Molly Ivins, "Media Consolidation Must Be Stopped," /{Charleston Gazette,}/ 31 May 2003. }~ +={ BMG ; + cable television ; + EMI ; + McCain, John ; + recording industry : + ownership concentration in ; + Sony Music Entertainment ; + Universal Music Group ; + Warner Music Group ; + television : + ownership consolidation in +} + +The story with radio is even more dramatic. Before deregulation, the nation's largest radio broadcasting conglomerate owned fewer than seventy-five stations. Today /{one}/ company owns more than 1,200 stations. During that period of consolidation, the total number of radio owners dropped by 34 percent. Today, in most markets, the two largest broadcasters control 74 percent of that market's revenues. Overall, just four companies control 90 percent of the nation's radio advertising revenues. +={ radio : + ownership concentration in +} + +Newspaper ownership is becoming more concentrated as well. Today, there are six hundred fewer daily newspapers in the United States than there were eighty years ago, and ten companies control half of the nation's circulation. There are twenty major newspaper publishers in the United States. The top ten film studios receive 99 percent of all film revenue. The ten largest cable companies account for 85 percent of all cable revenue. This is a market far from the free press the framers sought to protect. Indeed, it is a market that is quite well protected - by the market. +={ cable television +2 ; + television : + ownership consolidation in +2 ; + film industry : + consolidation of ; + newspapers : + ownership consolidation of +2 +} + +Concentration in size alone is one thing. The more invidious change is in the nature of that concentration. As author James Fallows put it in a recent article about Rupert Murdoch, +={ Fallows, James +1 ; + radio : + ownership concentration in +2 ; + Murdoch, Rupert +1 +} + +``` quote +Murdoch's companies now constitute a production system unmatched in its integration. They supply content - Fox movies ... Fox TV shows ... Fox-controlled sports broadcasts, plus newspapers and books. They sell the content to the public and to advertisers - in newspapers, on the broadcast network, on the cable channels. And they operate the physical distribution system through which the content reaches the customers. Murdoch's satellite systems now distribute News Corp. content in Europe and Asia; if Murdoch becomes DirecTV's largest single owner, that system will serve the same function in the United States."~{ James Fallows, "The Age of Murdoch," /{Atlantic Monthly}/ (September 2003): 89. }~ +``` +={ DirectTV ; + Fox (film company) ; + News Corp +} + +The pattern with Murdoch is the pattern of modern media. Not just large companies owning many radio stations, but a few companies owning as many outlets of media as possible. A picture describes this pattern better than a thousand words could do: + +{freeculture17.png 560x350 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ + +Does this concentration matter? Will it affect what is made, or what is distributed? Or is it merely a more efficient way to produce and distribute content? +={ innovation : + media conglomeration as disincentive for +13 +} + +My view was that concentration wouldn't matter. I thought it was nothing more than a more efficient financial structure. But now, after reading and listening to a barrage of creators try to convince me to the contrary, I am beginning to change my mind. + +Here's a representative story that begins to suggest how this integration may matter. + +In 1969, Norman Lear created a pilot for /{All in the Family}/. He took the pilot to ABC. The network didn't like it. It was too edgy, they told Lear. Make it again. Lear made a second pilot, more edgy than the first. ABC was exasperated. You're missing the point, they told Lear. We wanted less edgy, not more. +={ Lear, Norman +2 ; + ABC +1 ; + All in the Family ; + television : + independent production for +7 +} + +Rather than comply, Lear simply took the show elsewhere. CBS was happy to have the series; ABC could not stop Lear from walking. The copyrights that Lear held assured an independence from network control.~{ Leonard Hill, "The Axis of Access," remarks before Weidenbaum Center Forum, "Entertainment Economics: The Movie Industry," St. Louis, Missouri, 3 April 2003 (transcript of prepared remarks available at link #28; for the Lear story, not included in the prepared remarks, see link #29). }~ +={ CBS } + +The network did not control those copyrights because the law forbade the networks from controlling the content they syndicated. The law required a separation between the networks and the content producers; that separation would guarantee Lear freedom. And as late as 1992, because of these rules, the vast majority of prime time television - 75 percent of it - was "independent" of the networks. + +In 1994, the FCC abandoned the rules that required this independence. After that change, the networks quickly changed the balance. In 1985, there were twenty- five independent television production studios; in 2002, only five independent television studios remained. "In 1992, only 15 percent of new series were produced for a network by a company it controlled. Last year, the percentage of shows produced by controlled companies more than quintupled to 77 percent." "In 1992, 16 new series were produced independently of conglomerate control, last year there was one."~{ NewsCorp./DirecTV Merger and Media Consolidation: Hearings on Media Ownership Before the Senate Commerce Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (2003) (testimony of Gene Kimmelman on behalf of Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America), available at link #30. Kimmelman quotes Victoria Riskin, president of Writers Guild of America, West, in her Remarks at FCC En Banc Hearing, Richmond, Virginia, 27 February 2003. }~ In 2002, 75 percent of prime time television was owned by the networks that ran it. "In the ten-year period between 1992 and 2002, the number of prime time television hours per week produced by network studios increased over 200%, whereas the number of prime time television hours per week produced by independent studios decreased 63%."~{ Ibid. }~ +={ FCC : + on television production studios +} + +Today, another Norman Lear with another /{All in the Family}/ would find that he had the choice either to make the show less edgy or to be fired: The content of any show developed for a network is increasingly owned by the network. +={ Lear, Norman ; + All in the Family +} + +While the number of channels has increased dramatically, the ownership of those channels has narrowed to an ever smaller and smaller few. As Barry Diller said to Bill Moyers, +={ Diller, Barry +1 ; + Moyers, Bill +} + +``` quote +Well, if you have companies that produce, that finance, that air on their channel and then distribute worldwide everything that goes through their controlled distribution system, then what you get is fewer and fewer actual voices participating in the process. [We u]sed to have dozens and dozens of thriving independent production companies producing television programs. Now you have less than a handful."~{ "Barry Diller Takes on Media Deregulation," /{Now with Bill Moyers,}/ Bill Moyers, 25 April 2003, edited transcript available at link #31. }~ +``` + +This narrowing has an effect on what is produced. The product of such large and concentrated networks is increasingly homogenous. Increasingly safe. Increasingly sterile. The product of news shows from networks like this is increasingly tailored to the message the network wants to convey. This is not the communist party, though from the inside, it must feel a bit like the communist party. No one can question without risk of consequence - not necessarily banishment to Siberia, but punishment nonetheless. Independent, critical, different views are quashed. This is not the environment for a democracy. +={ democracy : + media concentration and +} + +Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the "Innovator's Dilemma": the fact that large traditional firms find it rational to ignore new, breakthrough technologies that compete with their core business. The same analysis could help explain why large, traditional media companies would find it rational to ignore new cultural trends.~{ Clayton M. Christensen, /{The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary National Bestseller that Changed the Way We Do Business}/ (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1997). Christensen acknowledges that the idea was first suggested by Dean Kim Clark. See Kim B. Clark, "The Interaction of Design Hierarchies and Market Concepts in Technological Evolution," /{Research Policy}/ 14 (1985): 235- 51. For a more recent study, see Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan, /{Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market - and How to Successfully Transform Them}/ (New York: Currency/Doubleday, 2001). }~ Lumbering giants not only don't, but should not, sprint. Yet if the field is only open to the giants, there will be far too little sprinting. +={ Christensen, Clayton M. ; + Innovator's Dilemma, The (Christensen) +} + +I don't think we know enough about the economics of the media market to say with certainty what concentration and integration will do. The efficiencies are important, and the effect on culture is hard to measure. + +But there is a quintessentially obvious example that does strongly suggest the concern. + +In addition to the copyright wars, we're in the middle of the drug wars. Government policy is strongly directed against the drug cartels; criminal and civil courts are filled with the consequences of this battle. + +Let me hereby disqualify myself from any possible appointment to any position in government by saying I believe this war is a profound mistake. I am not pro drugs. Indeed, I come from a family once wrecked by drugs - though the drugs that wrecked my family were all quite legal. I believe this war is a profound mistake because the collateral damage from it is so great as to make waging the war insane. When you add together the burdens on the criminal justice system, the desperation of generations of kids whose only real economic opportunities are as drug warriors, the queering of constitutional protections because of the constant surveillance this war requires, and, most profoundly, the total destruction of the legal systems of many South American nations because of the power of the local drug cartels, I find it impossible to believe that the marginal benefit in reduced drug consumption by Americans could possibly outweigh these costs. +={ drugs : + illegal +2 ; + criminal justice system +} + +You may not be convinced. That's fine. We live in a democracy, and it is through votes that we are to choose policy. But to do that, we depend fundamentally upon the press to help inform Americans about these issues. + +Beginning in 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy launched a media campaign as part of the "war on drugs." The campaign produced scores of short film clips about issues related to illegal drugs. In one series (the Nick and Norm series) two men are in a bar, discussing the idea of legalizing drugs as a way to avoid some of the collateral damage from the war. One advances an argument in favor of drug legalization. The other responds in a powerful and effective way against the argument of the first. In the end, the first guy changes his mind (hey, it's television). The plug at the end is a damning attack on the pro-legalization campaign. +={ advertising +4 ; + commercials +4 ; + television : + advertising on +4 ; + Nick and Norm anti-drug campaign +} + +Fair enough. It's a good ad. Not terribly misleading. It delivers its message well. It's a fair and reasonable message. + +But let's say you think it is a wrong message, and you'd like to run a countercommercial. Say you want to run a series of ads that try to demonstrate the extraordinary collateral harm that comes from the drug war. Can you do it? + +Well,obviously, these ads cost lots of money. Assume you raise the money. Assume a group of concerned citizens donates all the money in the world to help you get your message out. Can you be sure your message will be heard then? + +No.You cannot. Television stations have a general policy of avoiding "controversial" ads. Ads sponsored by the government are deemed uncontroversial; ads disagreeing with the government are controversial. This selectivity might be thought inconsistent with the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court has held that stations have the right to choose what they run. Thus, the major channels of commercial media will refuse one side of a crucial debate the opportunity to present its case. And the courts will defend the rights of the stations to be this biased.~{ The Marijuana Policy Project, in February 2003, sought to place ads that directly responded to the Nick and Norm series on stations within the Washington, D.C., area. Comcast rejected the ads as "against [their] policy." The local NBC affiliate, WRC, rejected the ads without reviewing them. The local ABC affiliate, WJOA, originally agreed to run the ads and accepted payment to do so, but later decided not to run the ads and returned the collected fees. Interview with Neal Levine, 15 October 2003. These restrictions are, of course, not limited to drug policy. See, for example, Nat Ives, "On the Issue of an Iraq War, Advocacy Ads Meet with Rejection from TV Networks," /{New York Times,}/ 13 March 2003, C4. Outside of election-related air time there is very little that the FCC or the courts are willing to do to even the playing field. For a general overview, see Rhonda Brown, "Ad Hoc Access: The Regulation of Editorial Advertising on Television and Radio," /{Yale Law and Policy Review}/ 6 (1988): 449-79, and for a more recent summary of the stance of the FCC and the courts, see /{Radio-Television News Directors Association v. FCC,}/ 184 F. 3d 872 (D.C. Cir. 1999). Municipal authorities exercise the same authority as the networks. In a recent example from San Francisco, the San Francisco transit authority rejected an ad that criticized its Muni diesel buses. Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, "Antidiesel Group Fuming After Muni Rejects Ad," SFGate.com, 16 June 2003, available at link #32. The ground was that the criticism was "too controversial." }~ +={ Constitution, U.S. : + First Amendment to ; + First Amendment ; + Supreme Court, U.S. : + on television advertising bans ; + television : + controversy avoided by +} + +I'd be happy to defend the networks' rights, as well - if we lived in a media market that was truly diverse. But concentration in the media throws that condition into doubt. If a handful of companies control access to the media, and that handful of companies gets to decide which political positions it will allow to be promoted on its channels, then in an obvious and important way, concentration matters. You might like the positions the handful of companies selects. But you should not like a world in which a mere few get to decide which issues the rest of us get to know about. + +2~ Together +={ copyright : + scope of +25 +} + +There is something innocent and obvious about the claim of the copyright warriors that the government should "protect my property." In the abstract, it is obviously true and, ordinarily, totally harmless. No sane sort who is not an anarchist could disagree. + +But when we see how dramatically this "property" has changed - when we recognize how it might now interact with both technology and markets to mean that the effective constraint on the liberty to cultivate our culture is dramatically different - the claim begins to seem less innocent and obvious. Given (1) the power of technology to supplement the law's control, and (2) the power of concentrated markets to weaken the opportunity for dissent, if strictly enforcing the massively expanded "property" rights granted by copyright fundamentally changes the freedom within this culture to cultivate and build upon our past, then we have to ask whether this property should be redefined. + +Not starkly. Or absolutely. My point is not that we should abolish copyright or go back to the eighteenth century. That would be a total mistake, disastrous for the most important creative enterprises within our culture today. + +But there is a space between zero and one, Internet culture notwithstanding. And these massive shifts in the effective power of copyright regulation, tied to increased concentration of the content industry and resting in the hands of technology that will increasingly enable control over the use of culture, should drive us to consider whether another adjustment is called for. Not an adjustment that increases copyright's power. Not an adjustment that increases its term. Rather, an adjustment to restore the balance that has traditionally defined copyright's regulation - a weakening of that regulation, to strengthen creativity. + +Copyright law has not been a rock of Gibraltar. It's not a set of constant commitments that, for some mysterious reason, teenagers and geeks now flout. Instead, copyright power has grown dramatically in a short period of time, as the technologies of distribution and creation have changed and as lobbyists have pushed for more control by copyright holders. Changes in the past in response to changes in technology suggest that we may well need similar changes in the future. And these changes have to be /{reductions}/ in the scope of copyright, in response to the extraordinary increase in control that technology and the market enable. + +For the single point that is lost in this war on pirates is a point that we see only after surveying the range of these changes. When you add together the effect of changing law, concentrated markets, and changing technology, together they produce an astonishing conclusion: /{Never in our history have fewer had a legal right to control more of the development of our culture than now}/. + +Not when copyrights were perpetual, for when copyrights were perpetual, they affected only that precise creative work. Not when only publishers had the tools to publish, for the market then was much more diverse. Not when there were only three television networks, for even then, newspapers, film studios, radio stations, and publishers were independent of the networks. /{Never}/ has copyright protected such a wide range of rights, against as broad a range of actors, for a term that was remotely as long. This form of regulation - a tiny regulation of a tiny part of the creative energy of a nation at the founding - is now a massive regulation of the overall creative process. Law plus technology plus the market now interact to turn this historically benign regulation into the most significant regulation of culture that our free society has known.~{ Siva Vaidhyanathan captures a similar point in his "four surrenders" of copyright law in the digital age. See Vaidhyanathan, 159-60. }~ +={ copyright : + in perpetuity +} + +!_ This has been +a long chapter. Its point can now be briefly stated. + +At the start of this book, I distinguished between commercial and noncommercial culture. In the course of this chapter, I have distinguished between copying a work and transforming it. We can now combine these two distinctions and draw a clear map of the changes that copyright law has undergone. +={ copyright law : + history of American +10 | on republishing vs. transformation of original work +16 ; + culture : + commercial vs. noncommercial +11 ; + derivative works : + historical shift in copyright coverage of +14 ; + public domain : + balance of U.S. content in +14 +} + +In 1790, the law looked like this: + +table(h; c3: 33, 33, 33){ + + +Publish +Transform + +Commercial +© +Free + +Noncommercial +Free +Free + +}table + +The act of publishing a map, chart, and book was regulated by copyright law. Nothing else was. Transformations were free. And as copyright attached only with registration, and only those who intended to benefit commercially would register, copying through publishing of noncommercial work was also free. +={ copyright law : + registration requirement of ; + copyright law : + copies as core issue of +7 +} + +By the end of the nineteenth century, the law had changed to this: + +table(h; c3: 33, 33, 33){ + + +Publish +Transform + +Commercial +© +© + +Noncommercial +Free +Free + +}table + +Derivative works were now regulated by copyright law - if published, which again, given the economics of publishing at the time, means if offered commercially. But noncommercial publishing and transformation were still essentially free. +={ derivative works : + technological developments and +5 ; + technology : + of copying +5 +} + +In 1909 the law changed to regulate copies, not publishing, and after this change, the scope of the law was tied to technology. As the technology of copying became more prevalent, the reach of the law expanded. Thus by 1975, as photocopying machines became more common, we could say the law began to look like this: +={ photocopyring machines +} + +table(h; c3: 33, 33, 33){ + + +Publish +Transform + +Commercial +© +© + +Noncommercial +©/Free +Free + +}table + +The law was interpreted to reach noncommercial copying through, say, copy machines, but still much of copying outside of the commercial market remained free. But the consequence of the emergence of digital technologies, especially in the context of a digital network, means that the law now looks like this: + +table(h; c3: 33, 33, 33){ + + +Publish +Transform + +Commercial +© +© + +Noncommercial +© +© + +}table + +Every realm is governed by copyright law, whereas before most creativity was not. The law now regulates the full range of creativity - commercial or not, transformative or not - with the same rules designed to regulate commercial publishers. + +Obviously, copyright law is not the enemy. The enemy is regulation that does no good. So the question that we should be asking just now is whether extending the regulations of copyright law into each of these domains actually does any good. +={ copyright : + duration of +2 +} + +I have no doubt that it does good in regulating commercial copying. But I also have no doubt that it does more harm than good when regulating (as it regulates just now) noncommercial copying and, especially, noncommercial transformation. And increasingly, for the reasons sketched especially in chapters 7 and 8, one might well wonder whether it does more harm than good for commercial transformation. More commercial transformative work would be created if derivative rights were more sharply restricted. + +The issue is therefore not simply whether copyright is property. Of course copyright is a kind of "property," and of course, as with any property, the state ought to protect it. But first impressions notwithstanding, historically, this property right (as with all property rights~{ It was the single most important contribution of the legal realist movement to demonstrate that all property rights are always crafted to balance public and private interests. See Thomas C. Grey, "The Disintegration of Property," in /{Nomos XXII: Property,}/ J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds. (New York: New York University Press, 1980). }~) has been crafted to balance the important need to give authors and artists incentives with the equally important need to assure access to creative work. This balance has always been struck in light of new technologies. And for almost half of our tradition, the "copyright" did not control /{at all}/ the freedom of others to build upon or transform a creative work. American culture was born free, and for almost 180 years our country consistently protected a vibrant and rich free culture. +={ copyright : + as property +1 ; + copyright law : + fair use and +1 | innovative freedom balanced with fair compensation in +2 ; + fair use : + legal intimidation tactics against +1 ; + property rights : + as balance of public good vs. private +2 | copyright vs. +2 +} + +We achieved that free culture because our law respected important limits on the scope of the interests protected by "property." The very birth of "copyright" as a statutory right recognized those limits, by granting copyright owners protection for a limited time only (the story of chapter 6). The tradition of "fair use" is animated by a similar concern that is increasingly under strain as the costs of exercising any fair use right become unavoidably high (the story of chapter 7). Adding statutory rights where markets might stifle innovation is another familiar limit on the property right that copyright is (chapter 8). And granting archives and libraries a broad freedom to collect, claims of property notwithstanding, is a crucial part of guaranteeing the soul of a culture (chapter 9). Free cultures, like free markets, are built with property. But the nature of the property that builds a free culture is very different from the extremist vision that dominates the debate today. +={ archives : + digital ; + culture : + archives of ; + culture archives of ; + libraries : + archival function of +} + +Free culture is increasingly the casualty in this war on piracy. In response to a real, if not yet quantified, threat that the technologies of the Internet present to twentieth-century business models for producing and distributing culture, the law and technology are being transformed in a way that will undermine our tradition of free culture. The property right that is copyright is no longer the balanced right that it was, or was intended to be. The property right that is copyright has become unbalanced, tilted toward an extreme. The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check with a lawyer. +={ free culture : + permission culture vs. ; + permission culture : + free culture vs. +} + +:B~ PUZZLES + +1~ Chapter Eleven: Chimera + +!_ In a well-known +short story by H. G. Wells, a mountain climber named Nunez trips (literally, down an ice slope) into an unknown and isolated valley in the Peruvian Andes.~{ H. G. Wells, "The Country of the Blind" (1904, 1911). See H. G. Wells, /{The Country of the Blind and Other Stories,}/ Michael Sherborne, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). }~ The valley is extraordinarily beautiful, with "sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit." But the villagers are all blind. Nunez takes this as an opportunity. "In the Country of the Blind," he tells himself, "the One-Eyed Man is King." So he resolves to live with the villagers to explore life as a king. +={ Wells, H.G. +8 ; + Country of the Blind, The (Wells) +8 +} + +Things don't go quite as he planned. He tries to explain the idea of sight to the villagers. They don't understand. He tells them they are "blind." They don't have the word /{blind}/. They think he's just thick. Indeed, as they increasingly notice the things he can't do (hear the sound of grass being stepped on, for example), they increasingly try to control him. He, in turn, becomes increasingly frustrated. "'You don't understand,' he cried, in a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and which broke. 'You are blind and I can see. Leave me alone!'" + +The villagers don't leave him alone. Nor do they see (so to speak) the virtue of his special power. Not even the ultimate target of his affection, a young woman who to him seems "the most beautiful thing in the whole of creation," understands the beauty of sight. Nunez's description of what he sees "seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence." "She did not believe," Wells tells us, and "she could only half understand, but she was mysteriously delighted." + +When Nunez announces his desire to marry his "mysteriously delighted" love, the father and the village object. "You see, my dear," her father instructs, "he's an idiot. He has delusions. He can't do anything right." They take Nunez to the village doctor. + +After a careful examination, the doctor gives his opinion. "His brain is affected," he reports. + +"What affects it?" the father asks. + +"Those queer things that are called the eyes ... are diseased ... in such a way as to affect his brain." + +The doctor continues: "I think I may say with reasonable certainty that in order to cure him completely, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation - namely, to remove these irritant bodies [the eyes]." + +"Thank Heaven for science!" says the father to the doctor. They inform Nunez of this condition necessary for him to be allowed his bride. (You'll have to read the original to learn what happens in the end. I believe in free culture, but never in giving away the end of a story.) + +!_ It sometimes +happens that the eggs of twins fuse in the mother's womb. That fusion produces a "chimera." A chimera is a single creature with two sets of DNA. The DNA in the blood, for example, might be different from the DNA of the skin. This possibility is an underused plot for murder mysteries. "But the DNA shows with 100 percent certainty that she was not the person whose blood was at the scene. ..." +={ chimeras +7 ; + twins, as chimera +2 +} + +Before I had read about chimeras, I would have said they were impossible. A single person can't have two sets of DNA. The very idea of DNA is that it is the code of an individual. Yet in fact, not only can two individuals have the same set of DNA (identical twins), but one person can have two different sets of DNA (a chimera). Our understanding of a "person" should reflect this reality. + +The more I work to understand the current struggle over copyright and culture, which I've sometimes called unfairly, and sometimes not unfairly enough, "the copyright wars," the more I think we're dealing with a chimera. For example, in the battle over the question "What is p2p file sharing?" both sides have it right, and both sides have it wrong. One side says, "File sharing is just like two kids taping each others' records - the sort of thing we've been doing for the last thirty years without any question at all." That's true, at least in part. When I tell my best friend to try out a new CD that I've bought, but rather than just send the CD, I point him to my p2p server, that is, in all relevant respects, just like what every executive in every recording company no doubt did as a kid: sharing music. +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + shoplifting vs. +4 ; + piracy : + of intangible property +6 +} + +But the description is also false in part. For when my p2p server is on a p2p network through which anyone can get access to my music, then sure, my friends can get access, but it stretches the meaning of "friends" beyond recognition to say "my ten thousand best friends" can get access. Whether or not sharing my music with my best friend is what "we have always been allowed to do," we have not always been allowed to share music with "our ten thousand best friends." +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + felony punishments for +4 ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + total legalization of ; + copyright law : + felony punishment for infringement of +2 ; + Internet : + music files downloaded from +12 +} + +Likewise, when the other side says, "File sharing is just like walking into a Tower Records and taking a CD off the shelf and walking out with it," that's true, at least in part. If, after Lyle Lovett (finally) releases a new album, rather than buying it, I go to Kazaa and find a free copy to take, that is very much like stealing a copy from Tower. +={ Kazaa ; + Lovett, Lyle +} + +But it is not quite stealing from Tower. After all, when I take a CD from Tower Records, Tower has one less CD to sell. And when I take a CD from Tower Records, I get a bit of plastic and a cover, and something to show on my shelves. (And, while we're at it, we could also note that when I take a CD from Tower Records, the maximum fine that might be imposed on me, under California law, at least, is $1,000. According to the RIAA, by contrast, if I download a ten-song CD, I'm liable for $1,500,000 in damages.) +={ copyright infringement lawsuits : + exaggerated claims of +2 | in recording industry +2 | against student file sharing +2 ; + recording industry : + copyright infringement lawsuits of +2 ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + copyright infringement lawsuits filed by +2 ; + copyright law : + felony punishment for infringement of +2 +} + +The point is not that it is as neither side describes. The point is that it is both - both as the RIAA describes it and as Kazaa describes it. It is a chimera. And rather than simply denying what the other side asserts, we need to begin to think about how we should respond to this chimera. What rules should govern it? +={ Kazaa } + +We could respond by simply pretending that it is not a chimera. We could, with the RIAA, decide that every act of file sharing should be a felony. We could prosecute families for millions of dollars in damages just because file sharing occurred on a family computer. And we can get universities to monitor all computer traffic to make sure that no computer is used to commit this crime. These responses might be extreme, but each of them has either been proposed or actually implemented.~{ For an excellent summary, see the report prepared by GartnerG2 and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, "Copy- right and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World," 27 June 2003, available at link #33. Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) have introduced a bill that would treat unauthorized on-line copying as a felony offense with punishments ranging as high as five years imprisonment; see Jon Healey, "House Bill Aims to Up Stakes on Piracy," /{Los Angeles Times,}/ 17 July 2003, available at link #34. Civil penalties are currently set at $150,000 per copied song. For a recent (and unsuccessful) legal challenge to the RIAA's demand that an ISP reveal the identity of a user accused of sharing more than 600 songs through a family computer, see /{RIAA v. Verizon Internet Services (In re. Verizon Internet Services),}/ 240 F. Supp. 2d 24 (D.D.C. 2003). Such a user could face liability ranging as high as $90 million. Such astronomical figures furnish the RIAA with a powerful arsenal in its prosecution of file sharers. Settlements ranging from $12,000 to $17,500 for four students accused of heavy file sharing on university networks must have seemed a mere pittance next to the $98 billion the RIAA could seek should the matter proceed to court. See Elizabeth Young, "Downloading Could Lead to Fines," redandblack.com, 26 August 2003, available at link #35. For an example of the RIAA's targeting of student file sharing, and of the subpoenas issued to universities to reveal student file-sharer identities, see James Collins, "RIAA Steps Up Bid to Force BC, MIT to Name Students," /{Boston Globe,}/ 8 August 2003, D3, available at link #36. }~ +={ university computer networks, p2p sharing on } + +Alternatively, we could respond to file sharing the way many kids act as though we've responded. We could totally legalize it. Let there be no copyright liability, either civil or criminal, for making copyrighted content available on the Net. Make file sharing like gossip: regulated, if at all, by social norms but not by law. +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + total legalization of +} + +Either response is possible. I think either would be a mistake. Rather than embrace one of these two extremes, we should embrace something that recognizes the truth in both. And while I end this book with a sketch of a system that does just that, my aim in the next chapter is to show just how awful it would be for us to adopt the zero-tolerance extreme. I believe /{either}/ extreme would be worse than a reasonable alternative. But I believe the zero-tolerance solution would be the worse of the two extremes. +={ copyright infringement lawsuits : + zero tolerance in +1 ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + zero-tolerance of +7 +} + +Yet zero tolerance is increasingly our government's policy. In the middle of the chaos that the Internet has created, an extraordinary land grab is occurring. The law and technology are being shifted to give content holders a kind of control over our culture that they have never had before. And in this extremism, many an opportunity for new innovation and new creativity will be lost. +={ copyright law : + technology as automatic enforcer of +4 ; + recording industry : + copyright protections in +2 ; + technology : + copyright enforcement controlled by +3 +} + +I'm not talking about the opportunities for kids to "steal" music. My focus instead is the commercial and cultural innovation that this war will also kill. We have never seen the power to innovate spread so broadly among our citizens, and we have just begun to see the innovation that this power will unleash. Yet the Internet has already seen the passing of one cycle of innovation around technologies to distribute content. The law is responsible for this passing. As the vice president for global public policy at one of these new innovators, eMusic.com, put it when criticizing the DMCA's added protection for copyrighted material, +={ copyright law : + on music recordings +1 ; + Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) ; + DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) ; + eMusic.com +4 ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + infringement protections in +3 +} + +``` quote +eMusic opposes music piracy. We are a distributor of copyrighted material, and we want to protect those rights. + +But building a technology fortress that locks in the clout of the major labels is by no means the only way to protect copyright interests, nor is it necessarily the best. It is simply too early to answer that question. Market forces operating naturally may very well produce a totally different industry model. + +This is a critical point. The choices that industry sectors make with respect to these systems will in many ways directly shape the market for digital media and the manner in which digital media are distributed. This in turn will directly influence the options that are available to consumers, both in terms of the ease with which they will be able to access digital media and the equipment that they will require to do so. Poor choices made this early in the game will retard the growth of this market, hurting everyone's interests."~{ WIPO and the DMCA One Year Later: Assessing Consumer Access to Digital Entertainment on the Internet and Other Media: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection, House Committee on Commerce, 106th Cong. 29 (1999) (statement of Peter Harter, vice president, Global Public Policy and Standards, EMusic.com), available in LEXIS, Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony File. }~ +``` + +In April 2001, eMusic.com was purchased by Vivendi Universal, one of "the major labels." Its position on these matters has now changed. +={ Vivendi Universal } + +Reversing our tradition of tolerance now will not merely quash piracy. It will sacrifice values that are important to this culture, and will kill opportunities that could be extraordinarily valuable. + +1~ Chapter Twelve: Harms + +!_ To fight +"piracy," to protect "property," the content industry has launched a war. Lobbying and lots of campaign contributions have now brought the government into this war. As with any war, this one will have both direct and collateral damage. As with any war of prohibition, these damages will be suffered most by our own people. + +My aim so far has been to describe the consequences of this war, in particular, the consequences for "free culture." But my aim now is to extend this description of consequences into an argument. Is this war justified? + +In my view, it is not. There is no good reason why this time, for the first time, the law should defend the old against the new, just when the power of the property called "intellectual property" is at its greatest in our history. + +Yet "common sense" does not see it this way. Common sense is still on the side of the Causbys and the content industry. The extreme claims of control in the name of property still resonate; the uncritical rejection of "piracy" still has play. +={ piracy : + uncritical rejection of +1 +} + +There will be many consequences of continuing this war. I want to describe just three. All three might be said to be unintended. I am quite confident the third is unintended. I'm less sure about the first two. The first two protect modern RCAs, but there is no Howard Armstrong in the wings to fight today's monopolists of culture. +={ Armstrong, Edwin Howard ; + RCA +} + +2~ Constraining Creators +={ copyright law : + creativity impeded by +14 ; + creativity : + legal restrictions on +14 +} + +In the next ten years we will see an explosion of digital technologies. These technologies will enable almost anyone to capture and share content. Capturing and sharing content, of course, is what humans have done since the dawn of man. It is how we learn and communicate. But capturing and sharing through digital technology is different. The fidelity and power are different. You could send an e-mail telling someone about a joke you saw on Comedy Central, or you could send the clip. You could write an essay about the inconsistencies in the arguments of the politician you most love to hate, or you could make a short film that puts statement against statement. You could write a poem to express your love, or you could weave together a string - a mash-up - of songs from your favorite artists in a collage and make it available on the Net. +={ technology : + of digital capturing and sharing +2 +} + +This digital "capturing and sharing" is in part an extension of the capturing and sharing that has always been integral to our culture, and in part it is something new. It is continuous with the Kodak, but it explodes the boundaries of Kodak-like technologies. The technology of digital "capturing and sharing" promises a world of extraordinarily diverse creativity that can be easily and broadly shared. And as that creativity is applied to democracy, it will enable a broad range of citizens to use technology to express and criticize and contribute to the culture all around. +={ democracy : + digital sharing within ; + Kodak cameras +} + +Technology has thus given us an opportunity to do something with culture that has only ever been possible for individuals in small groups, isolated from others. Think about an old man telling a story to a collection of neighbors in a small town. Now imagine that same storytelling extended across the globe. + +Yet all this is possible only if the activity is presumptively legal. In the current regime of legal regulation, it is not. Forget file sharing for a moment. Think about your favorite amazing sites on the Net. Web sites that offer plot summaries from forgotten television shows; sites that catalog cartoons from the 1960s; sites that mix images and sound to criticize politicians or businesses; sites that gather newspaper articles on remote topics of science or culture. There is a vast amount of creative work spread across the Internet. But as the law is currently crafted, this work is presumptively illegal. +={ Internet : + creative Web sites on +} + +That presumption will increasingly chill creativity, as the examples of extreme penalties for vague infringements continue to proliferate. It is impossible to get a clear sense of what's allowed and what's not, and at the same time, the penalties for crossing the line are astonishingly harsh. The four students who were threatened by the RIAA (Jesse Jordan of chapter 3 was just one) were threatened with a $98 billion lawsuit for building search engines that permitted songs to be copied. Yet WorldCom - which defrauded investors of $11 billion, resulting in a loss to investors in market capitalization of over $200 billion - received a fine of a mere $750 million.~{ See Lynne W. Jeter, /{Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at WorldCom}/ (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 176, 204; for details of the settlement, see MCI press release, "MCI Wins U.S. District Court Approval for SEC Settlement" (7 July 2003), available at link #37. }~ And under legislation being pushed in Congress right now, a doctor who negligently removes the wrong leg in an operation would be liable for no more than $250,000 in damages for pain and suffering.~{ The bill, modeled after California's tort reform model, was passed in the House of Representatives but defeated in a Senate vote in July 2003. For an overview, see Tanya Albert, "Measure Stalls in Senate: 'We'll Be Back,' Say Tort Reformers," amednews.com, 28 July 2003, available at link #38, and "Senate Turns Back Malpractice Caps," CBSNews.com, 9 July 2003, available at link #39. President Bush has continued to urge tort reform in recent months. }~ Can common sense recognize the absurdity in a world where the maximum fine for downloading two songs off the Internet is more than the fine for a doctor's negligently butchering a patient? +={ WorldCom ; + copyright infringement lawsuits : + exaggerated claims of | individual defendants intimidated by +1 | in recording industry ; + doctors malpractice claims against ; + Jordan, Jesse ; + legal system, attorney costs in +1 ; + recording industry : + copyright infringement lawsuits of ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + copyright infringement lawsuits filed by +} + +The consequence of this legal uncertainty, tied to these extremely high penalties, is that an extraordinary amount of creativity will either never be exercised, or never be exercised in the open. We drive this creative process underground by branding the modern-day Walt Disneys "pirates." We make it impossible for businesses to rely upon a public domain, because the boundaries of the public domain are designed to be unclear. It never pays to do anything except pay for the right to create, and hence only those who can pay are allowed to create. As was the case in the Soviet Union, though for very different reasons, we will begin to see a world of underground art - not because the message is necessarily political, or because the subject is controversial, but because the very act of creating the art is legally fraught. Already, exhibits of "illegal art" tour the United States.~{ See Danit Lidor, "Artists Just Wanna Be Free," /{Wired,}/ 7 July 2003, available at link #40. For an overview of the exhibition, see link #41. }~ In what does their "illegality" consist? In the act of mixing the culture around us with an expression that is critical or reflective. +={ public domain : + legal murkiness on ; + art, underground +} + +Part of the reason for this fear of illegality has to do with the changing law. I described that change in detail in chapter 10. But an even bigger part has to do with the increasing ease with which infractions can be tracked. As users of file-sharing systems discovered in 2002, it is a trivial matter for copyright owners to get courts to order Internet service providers to reveal who has what content. It is as if your cassette tape player transmitted a list of the songs that you played in the privacy of your own home that anyone could tune into for whatever reason they chose. +={ copyright law : + technology as automatic enforcer of +1 ; + Internet : + user identities released by service providers of ; + ISPs (Internet service providers), user identities revealed by ; + technology : + copyright enforcement controlled by +1 +} + +Never in our history has a painter had to worry about whether his painting infringed on someone else's work; but the modern-day painter, using the tools of Photoshop, sharing content on the Web, must worry all the time. Images are all around, but the only safe images to use in the act of creation are those purchased from Corbis or another image farm. And in purchasing, censoring happens. There is a free market in pencils; we needn't worry about its effect on creativity. But there is a highly regulated, monopolized market in cultural icons; the right to cultivate and transform them is not similarly free. +={ images, ownership of } + +Lawyers rarely see this because lawyers are rarely empirical. As I described in chapter 7, in response to the story about documentary filmmaker Jon Else, I have been lectured again and again by lawyers who insist Else's use was fair use, and hence I am wrong to say that the law regulates such a use. +={ Else, Jon ; + copyright law : + fair use and +2 ; + fair use : + legal intimidation tactics against +2 ; + legal system, attorney costs in +5 +} + +But fair use in America simply means the right to hire a lawyer to defend your right to create. And as lawyers love to forget, our system for defending rights such as fair use is astonishingly bad - in practically every context, but especially here. It costs too much, it delivers too slowly, and what it delivers often has little connection to the justice underlying the claim. The legal system may be tolerable for the very rich. For everyone else, it is an embarrassment to a tradition that prides itself on the rule of law. +={ copyright infringement lawsuits : + exaggerated claims of +4 | individual defendants intimidated by +4 +} + +Judges and lawyers can tell themselves that fair use provides adequate "breathing room" between regulation by the law and the access the law should allow. But it is a measure of how out of touch our legal system has become that anyone actually believes this. The rules that publishers impose upon writers, the rules that film distributors impose upon filmmakers, the rules that newspapers impose upon journalists - these are the real laws governing creativity. And these rules have little relationship to the "law" with which judges comfort themselves. + +For in a world that threatens $150,000 for a single willful infringement of a copyright, and which demands tens of thousands of dollars to even defend against a copyright infringement claim, and which would never return to the wrongfully accused defendant anything of the costs she suffered to defend her right to speak - in that world, the astonishingly broad regulations that pass under the name "copyright" silence speech and creativity. And in that world, it takes a studied blindness for people to continue to believe they live in a culture that is free. + +As Jed Horovitz, the businessman behind Video Pipeline, said to me, +={ Horovitz, Jed +1 ; + Video Pipeline +} + +``` quote +We're losing [creative] opportunities right and left. Creative people are being forced not to express themselves. Thoughts are not being expressed. And while a lot of stuff may [still] be created, it still won't get distributed. Even if the stuff gets made ... you're not going to get it distributed in the mainstream media unless you've got a little note from a lawyer saying, "This has been cleared." You're not even going to get it on PBS without that kind of permission. That's the point at which they control it." +``` + +2~ Constraining Innovators +={ copyright law : + innovation hampered by +48 ; + innovation : + industry establishment opposed to +48 ; + regulation : + as establishment protectionism +48 +} + +The story of the last section was a crunchy-lefty story - creativity quashed, artists who can't speak, yada yada yada. Maybe that doesn't get you going. Maybe you think there's enough weird art out there, and enough expression that is critical of what seems to be just about everything. And if you think that, you might think there's little in this story to worry you. + +But there's an aspect of this story that is not lefty in any sense. Indeed, it is an aspect that could be written by the most extreme pro-market ideologue. And if you're one of these sorts (and a special one at that, 188 pages into a book like this), then you can see this other aspect by substituting "free market" every place I've spoken of "free culture." The point is the same, even if the interests affecting culture are more fundamental. +={ market constraints +1 } + +The charge I've been making about the regulation of culture is the same charge free marketers make about regulating markets. Everyone, of course, concedes that some regulation of markets is necessary - at a minimum, we need rules of property and contract, and courts to enforce both. Likewise, in this culture debate, everyone concedes that at least some framework of copyright is also required. But both perspectives vehemently insist that just because some regulation is good, it doesn't follow that more regulation is better. And both perspectives are constantly attuned to the ways in which regulation simply enables the powerful industries of today to protect themselves against the competitors of tomorrow. + +This is the single most dramatic effect of the shift in regulatory strategy that I described in chapter 10. The consequence of this massive threat of liability tied to the murky boundaries of copyright law is that innovators who want to innovate in this space can safely innovate only if they have the sign-off from last generation's dominant industries. That lesson has been taught through a series of cases that were designed and executed to teach venture capitalists a lesson. That lesson - what former Napster CEO Hank Barry calls a "nuclear pall" that has fallen over the Valley - has been learned. +={ Barry, Hank ; + venture capitalists +} + +Consider one example to make the point, a story whose beginning I told in /{The Future of Ideas}/ and which has progressed in a way that even I (pessimist extraordinaire) would never have predicted. +={ Future of Ideas, The (Lessig) ; + Lessig, Lawrence +} + +In 1997, Michael Roberts launched a company called MP3.com. MP3.com was keen to remake the music business. Their goal was not just to facilitate new ways to get access to content. Their goal was also to facilitate new ways to create content. Unlike the major labels, MP3.com offered creators a venue to distribute their creativity, without demanding an exclusive engagement from the creators. +={ MP3.com +8 ; + my.mp3.com +8 ; + Roberts, Michael +} + +To make this system work, however, MP3.com needed a reliable way to recommend music to its users. The idea behind this alternative was to leverage the revealed preferences of music listeners to recommend new artists. If you like Lyle Lovett, you're likely to enjoy Bonnie Raitt. And so on. +={ Lovett, Lyle } + +This idea required a simple way to gather data about user preferences. MP3.com came up with an extraordinarily clever way to gather this preference data. In January 2000, the company launched a service called my.mp3.com. Using software provided by MP3.com, a user would sign into an account and then insert into her computer a CD. The software would identify the CD, and then give the user access to that content. So, for example, if you inserted a CD by Jill Sobule, then wherever you were - at work or at home - you could get access to that music once you signed into your account. The system was therefore a kind of music-lockbox. +={ CDs : + preference data on +2 +} + +No doubt some could use this system to illegally copy content. But that opportunity existed with or without MP3.com. The aim of the my.mp3.com service was to give users access to their own content, and as a by-product, by seeing the content they already owned, to discover the kind of content the users liked. + +To make this system function, however, MP3.com needed to copy 50,000 CDs to a server. (In principle, it could have been the user who uploaded the music, but that would have taken a great deal of time, and would have produced a product of questionable quality.) It therefore purchased 50,000 CDs from a store, and started the process of making copies of those CDs. Again, it would not serve the content from those copies to anyone except those who authenticated that they had a copy of the CD they wanted to access. So while this was 50,000 copies, it was 50,000 copies directed at giving customers something they had already bought. + +Nine days after MP3.com launched its service, the five major labels, headed by the RIAA, brought a lawsuit against MP3.com. MP3.com settled with four of the five. Nine months later, a federal judge found MP3.com to have been guilty of willful infringement with respect to the fifth. Applying the law as it is, the judge imposed a fine against MP3.com of $118 million. MP3.com then settled with the remaining plaintiff, Vivendi Universal, paying over $54 million. Vivendi purchased MP3.com just about a year later. +={ Vivendi Universal +2 ; + copyright infringement lawsuits : + distribution technology targeted in | exaggerated claims of | in recording industry +3 ; + recording industry : + copyright infringement lawsuits of ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + copyright infringement lawsuits filed by ; + regulation : + outsize penalties of +} + +That part of the story I have told before. Now consider its conclusion. + +After Vivendi purchased MP3.com, Vivendi turned around and filed a malpractice lawsuit against the lawyers who had advised it that they had a good faith claim that the service they wanted to offer would be considered legal under copyright law. This lawsuit alleged that it should have been obvious that the courts would find this behavior illegal; therefore, this lawsuit sought to punish any lawyer who had dared to suggest that the law was less restrictive than the labels demanded. +={ copyright law : + malpractice lawsuits against lawyers advising on +2 ; + lawyers : + malpractice suits against +2 +} + +The clear purpose of this lawsuit (which was settled for an unspecified amount shortly after the story was no longer covered in the press) was to send an unequivocal message to lawyers advising clients in this space: It is not just your clients who might suffer if the content industry directs its guns against them. It is also you. So those of you who believe the law should be less restrictive should realize that such a view of the law will cost you and your firm dearly. + +This strategy is not just limited to the lawyers. In April 2003, Universal and EMI brought a lawsuit against Hummer Winblad, the venture capital firm (VC) that had funded Napster at a certain stage of its development, its cofounder (John Hummer), and general partner (Hank Barry).~{ See Joseph Menn, "Universal, EMI Sue Napster Investor," /{Los Angeles Times,}/ 23 April 2003. For a parallel argument about the effects on innovation in the distribution of music, see Janelle Brown, "The Music Revolution Will Not Be Digitized," Salon.com, 1 June 2001, available at link #42. See also Jon Healey, "Online Music Services Besieged," /{Los Angeles Times,}/ 28 May 2001. }~ The claim here, as well, was that the VC should have recognized the right of the content industry to control how the industry should develop. They should be held personally liable for funding a company whose business turned out to be beyond the law. Here again, the aim of the lawsuit is transparent: Any VC now recognizes that if you fund a company whose business is not approved of by the dinosaurs, you are at risk not just in the marketplace, but in the courtroom as well. Your investment buys you not only a company, it also buys you a lawsuit. So extreme has the environment become that even car manufacturers are afraid of technologies that touch content. In an article in /{Business 2.0}/, Rafe Needleman describes a discussion with BMW: +={ Barry, Hank ; + copyright infringement lawsuits : + distribution technology targeted in ; + BMW +1 ; + cars, MP3 sound systems in +1 ; + EMI ; + Hummer, John ; + Hummer Winblad ; + MP3 players ; + Napster : + venture capital for ; + Needleman, Raffe +1 ; + Universal Music Group ; + venture capitalists +} + +``` quote +I asked why, with all the storage capacity and computer power in the car, there was no way to play MP3 files. I was told that BMW engineers in Germany had rigged a new vehicle to play MP3s via the car's built-in sound system, but that the company's marketing and legal departments weren't comfortable with pushing this forward for release stateside. Even today, no new cars are sold in the United States with bona fide MP3 players. ..."~{ Rafe Needleman, "Driving in Cars with MP3s," /{Business 2.0,}/ 16 June 2003, available at link #43. I am grateful to Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli for this example. }~ +``` + +This is the world of the mafia - filled with "your money or your life" offers, governed in the end not by courts but by the threats that the law empowers copyright holders to exercise. It is a system that will obviously and necessarily stifle new innovation. It is hard enough to start a company. It is impossibly hard if that company is constantly threatened by litigation. + +The point is not that businesses should have a right to start illegal enterprises. The point is the definition of "illegal." The law is a mess of uncertainty. We have no good way to know how it should apply to new technologies. Yet by reversing our tradition of judicial deference, and by embracing the astonishingly high penalties that copyright law imposes, that uncertainty now yields a reality which is far more conservative than is right. If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we'd not only have fewer parking tickets, we'd also have much less driving. The same principle applies to innovation. If innovation is constantly checked by this uncertain and unlimited liability, we will have much less vibrant innovation and much less creativity. +={ market constraints +2 ; + permission culture : + transaction cost of +2 ; + regulation : + outsize penalties of ; + technology : + legal murkiness on +} + +The point is directly parallel to the crunchy-lefty point about fair use. Whatever the "real" law is, realism about the effect of law in both contexts is the same. This wildly punitive system of regulation will systematically stifle creativity and innovation. It will protect some industries and some creators, but it will harm industry and creativity generally. Free market and free culture depend upon vibrant competition. Yet the effect of the law today is to stifle just this kind of competition. The effect is to produce an overregulated culture, just as the effect of too much control in the market is to produce an overregulated-regulated market. + +The building of a permission culture, rather than a free culture, is the first important way in which the changes I have described will burden innovation. A permission culture means a lawyer's culture - a culture in which the ability to create requires a call to your lawyer. Again, I am not antilawyer, at least when they're kept in their proper place. I am certainly not antilaw. But our profession has lost the sense of its limits. And leaders in our profession have lost an appreciation of the high costs that our profession imposes upon others. The inefficiency of the law is an embarrassment to our tradition. And while I believe our profession should therefore do everything it can to make the law more efficient, it should at least do everything it can to limit the reach of the law where the law is not doing any good. The transaction costs buried within a permission culture are enough to bury a wide range of creativity. Someone needs to do a lot of justifying to justify that result. + +!_ The uncertainty +of the law is one burden on innovation. There is a second burden that operates more directly. This is the effort by many in the content industry to use the law to directly regulate the technology of the Internet so that it better protects their content. +={ Internet : + efficient content distribution on +4 +} + +The motivation for this response is obvious. The Internet enables the efficient spread of content. That efficiency is a feature of the Inter-net's design. But from the perspective of the content industry, this feature is a "bug." The efficient spread of content means that content distributors have a harder time controlling the distribution of content. One obvious response to this efficiency is thus to make the Internet less efficient. If the Internet enables "piracy," then, this response says, we should break the kneecaps of the Internet. + +The examples of this form of legislation are many. At the urging of the content industry, some in Congress have threatened legislation that would require computers to determine whether the content they access is protected or not, and to disable the spread of protected content.~{ "Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World," GartnerG2 and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (2003), 33-35, available at link #44. }~ Congress has already launched proceedings to explore a mandatory "broadcast flag" that would be required on any device capable of transmitting digital video (i.e., a computer), and that would disable the copying of any content that is marked with a broadcast flag. Other members of Congress have proposed immunizing content providers from liability for technology they might deploy that would hunt down copyright violators and disable their machines.~{ GartnerG2, 26-27. }~ +={ broadcast flag ; + Congress, U.S. : + on copyright laws +} + +In one sense, these solutions seem sensible. If the problem is the code, why not regulate the code to remove the problem. But any regulation of technical infrastructure will always be tuned to the particular technology of the day. It will impose significant burdens and costs on the technology, but will likely be eclipsed by advances around exactly those requirements. + +In March 2002, a broad coalition of technology companies, led by Intel, tried to get Congress to see the harm that such legislation would impose.~{ See David McGuire, "Tech Execs Square Off Over Piracy," Newsbytes, 28 February 2002 (Entertainment). }~ Their argument was obviously not that copyright should not be protected. Instead, they argued, any protection should not do more harm than good. +={ Congress, U.S. : + on copyright laws +5 ; + Intel +} + +!_ There is one +more obvious way in which this war has harmed innovation - again, a story that will be quite familiar to the free market crowd. + +Copyright may be property, but like all property, it is also a form of regulation. It is a regulation that benefits some and harms others. When done right, it benefits creators and harms leeches. When done wrong, it is regulation the powerful use to defeat competitors. + +As I described in chapter 10, despite this feature of copyright as regulation, and subject to important qualifications outlined by Jessica Litman in her book /{Digital Copyright}/,~{ Jessica Litman, /{Digital Copyright}/ (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2001). }~ overall this history of copyright is not bad. As chapter 10 details, when new technologies have come along, Congress has struck a balance to assure that the new is protected from the old. Compulsory, or statutory, licenses have been one part of that strategy. Free use (as in the case of the VCR) has been another. +={ cassette recording : + VCRs ; + VCRs ; + Digital Copyright (Litman) ; + Litman, Jessica ; + statutory licenses ; + copyright law : + statutory licenses in +} + +But that pattern of deference to new technologies has now changed with the rise of the Internet. Rather than striking a balance between the claims of a new technology and the legitimate rights of content creators, both the courts and Congress have imposed legal restrictions that will have the effect of smothering the new to benefit the old. + +The response by the courts has been fairly universal.~{ The only circuit court exception is found in /{Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) v. Diamond Multimedia Systems,}/ 180 F. 3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999). There the court of appeals for the Ninth Circuit reasoned that makers of a portable MP3 player were not liable for contributory copyright infringement for a device that is unable to record or redistribute music (a device whose only copying function is to render portable a music file already stored on a user's hard drive). At the district court level, the only exception is found in /{Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.,}/ 259 F. Supp. 2d 1029 (C.D. Cal., 2003), where the court found the link between the distributor and any given user's conduct too attenuated to make the distributor liable for contributory or vicarious infringement liability. }~ It has been mirrored in the responses threatened and actually implemented by Congress. I won't catalog all of those responses here.~{ For example, in July 2002, Representative Howard Berman introduced the Peer- to-Peer Piracy Prevention Act (H.R. 5211), which would immunize copyright holders from liability for damage done to computers when the copyright holders use technology to stop copyright infringement. In August 2002, Representative Billy Tauzin introduced a bill to mandate that technologies capable of rebroadcasting digital copies of films broadcast on TV (i.e., computers) respect a "broadcast flag" that would disable copying of that content. And in March of the same year, Senator Fritz Hollings introduced the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, which mandated copyright protection technology in all digital media devices. See GartnerG2, "Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World," 27 June 2003, 33-34, available at link #44. }~ But there is one example that captures the flavor of them all. This is the story of the demise of Internet radio. +={ Internet : + radio on +18 ; + radio : + on Internet +18 +} + +As I described in chapter 4, when a radio station plays a song, the recording artist doesn't get paid for that "radio performance" unless he or she is also the composer. So, for example if Marilyn Monroe had recorded a version of "Happy Birthday" - to memorialize her famous performance before President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden - then whenever that recording was played on the radio, the current copyright owners of "Happy Birthday" would get some money, whereas Marilyn Monroe would not. +={ artists : + recording industry payments to +1 ; + copyright law : + on music recordings +1 ; + Kennedy, John F. ; + Monroe, Marilyn ; + radio : + music recordings played on +1 ; + recording industry : + artist remuneration in +1 ; + recording industry : + copyright protections in +} + +The reasoning behind this balance struck by Congress makes some sense. The justification was that radio was a kind of advertising. The recording artist thus benefited because by playing her music, the radio station was making it more likely that her records would be purchased. Thus, the recording artist got something, even if only indirectly. Probably this reasoning had less to do with the result than with the power of radio stations: Their lobbyists were quite good at stopping any efforts to get Congress to require compensation to the recording artists. + +Enter Internet radio. Like regular radio, Internet radio is a technology to stream content from a broadcaster to a listener. The broadcast travels across the Internet, not across the ether of radio spectrum. Thus, I can "tune in" to an Internet radio station in Berlin while sitting in San Francisco, even though there's no way for me to tune in to a regular radio station much beyond the San Francisco metropolitan area. + +This feature of the architecture of Internet radio means that there are potentially an unlimited number of radio stations that a user could tune in to using her computer, whereas under the existing architecture for broadcast radio, there is an obvious limit to the number of broadcasters and clear broadcast frequencies. Internet radio could therefore be more competitive than regular radio; it could provide a wider range of selections. And because the potential audience for Internet radio is the whole world, niche stations could easily develop and market their content to a relatively large number of users worldwide. According to some estimates, more than eighty million users worldwide have tuned in to this new form of radio. + +Internet radio is thus to radio what FM was to AM. It is an improvement potentially vastly more significant than the FM improvement over AM, since not only is the technology better, so, too, is the competition. Indeed, there is a direct parallel between the fight to establish FM radio and the fight to protect Internet radio. As one author describes Howard Armstrong's struggle to enable FM radio, +={ Armstrong, Edwin Howard +2 ; + FM radio +2 ; + radio : + FM spectrum of +2 +} + +``` quote +An almost unlimited number of FM stations was possible in the shortwaves, thus ending the unnatural restrictions imposed on radio in the crowded longwaves. If FM were freely developed, the number of stations would be limited only by economics and competition rather than by technical restrictions. ... Armstrong likened the situation that had grown up in radio to that following the invention of the printing press, when governments and ruling interests attempted to control this new instrument of mass communications by imposing restrictive licenses on it. This tyranny was broken only when it became possible for men freely to acquire printing presses and freely to run them. FM in this sense was as great an invention as the printing presses, for it gave radio the opportunity to strike off its shackles.~{ Lessing, 239. }~ +``` + +This potential for FM radio was never realized - not because Armstrong was wrong about the technology, but because he underestimated the power of "vested interests, habits, customs and legislation"~{ Ibid., 229. }~ to retard the growth of this competing technology. + +Now the very same claim could be made about Internet radio. For again, there is no technical limitation that could restrict the number of Internet radio stations. The only restrictions on Internet radio are those imposed by the law. Copyright law is one such law. So the first question we should ask is, what copyright rules would govern Internet radio? + +But here the power of the lobbyists is reversed. Internet radio is a new industry. The recording artists, on the other hand, have a very powerful lobby, the RIAA. Thus when Congress considered the phenomenon of Internet radio in 1995, the lobbyists had primed Congress to adopt a different rule for Internet radio than the rule that applies to terrestrial radio. While terrestrial radio does not have to pay our hypothetical Marilyn Monroe when it plays her hypothetical recording of "Happy Birthday" on the air, /{Internet radio does}/. Not only is the law not neutral toward Internet radio - the law actually burdens Internet radio more than it burdens terrestrial radio. +={ artists : + recording industry payments to +1 ; + Congress, U.S. : + on copyright laws ; + Congress, U.S. : + on radio | on recording industry ; + recording industry : + artist remuneration in +1 ; + recording industry : + radio broadcast and +1 | Internet radio hampered by +9 ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + on Internet radio fees +1 | lobbying power of +1 +} + +This financial burden is not slight. As Harvard law professor William Fisher estimates, if an Internet radio station distributed ad-free popular music to (on average) ten thousand listeners, twenty-four hours a day, the total artist fees that radio station would owe would be over $1 million a year.~{ This example was derived from fees set by the original Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) proceedings, and is drawn from an example offered by Professor William Fisher. Conference Proceedings, iLaw (Stanford), 3 July 2003, on file with author. Professors Fisher and Zittrain submitted testimony in the CARP proceeding that was ultimately rejected. See Jonathan Zittrain, Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings and Ephemeral Recordings, Docket No. 2000- 9, CARP DTRA 1 and 2, available at link #45. For an excellent analysis making a similar point, see Randal C. Picker, "Copyright as Entry Policy: The Case of Digital Distribution," /{Antitrust Bulletin}/ (Summer/Fall 2002): 461: "This was not confusion, these are just old- fashioned entry barriers. Analog radio stations are protected from digital entrants, reducing entry in radio and diversity. Yes, this is done in the name of getting royalties to copyright holders, but, absent the play of powerful interests, that could have been done in a media-neutral way." }~ A regular radio station broadcasting the same content would pay no equivalent fee. +={ Fisher, William } + +The burden is not financial only. Under the original rules that were proposed, an Internet radio station (but not a terrestrial radio station) would have to collect the following data from /{every listening transaction}/: + +group{ + + 1. name of the service; + + 2. channel of the program (AM/FM stations use station ID); + + 3. type of program (archived/looped/live); + + 4. date of transmission; + + 5. time of transmission; + + 6. time zone of origination of transmission; + + 7. numeric designation of the place of the sound recording within the program; + + 8. duration of transmission (to nearest second); + + 9. sound recording title; + + 10. ISRC code of the recording; + + 11. release year of the album per copyright notice and in the case of compilation albums, the release year of the album and copyright date of the track; + + 12. featured recording artist; + + 13. retail album title; + + 14. recording label; + + 15. UPC code of the retail album; + + 16. catalog number; + + 17. copyright owner information; + + 18. musical genre of the channel or program (station format); + + 19. name of the service or entity; + + 20. channel or program; + + 21. date and time that the user logged in (in the user's time zone); + + 22. date and time that the user logged out (in the user's time zone); + + 23. time zone where the signal was received (user); + + 24. Unique User identifier; + + 25. the country in which the user received the transmissions. + +}group + +The Librarian of Congress eventually suspended these reporting requirements, pending further study. And he also changed the original rates set by the arbitration panel charged with setting rates. But the basic difference between Internet radio and terrestrial radio remains: Internet radio has to pay a /{type of copyright fee}/ that terrestrial radio does not. +={ Library of Congress } + +Why? What justifies this difference? Was there any study of the economic consequences from Internet radio that would justify these differences? Was the motive to protect artists against piracy? + +In a rare bit of candor, one RIAA expert admitted what seemed obvious to everyone at the time. As Alex Alben, vice president for Public Policy at Real Networks, told me, +={ Alben, Alex +2 ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + on Internet radio fees +2 ; + artists : + recording industry payments to +2 ; + recording industry : + artist remuneration in +2 +} + +``` quote +The RIAA, which was representing the record labels, presented some testimony about what they thought a willing buyer would pay to a willing seller, and it was much higher. It was ten times higher than what radio stations pay to perform the same songs for the same period of time. And so the attorneys representing the webcasters asked the RIAA, ... "How do you come up with a rate that's so much higher? Why is it worth more than radio? Because here we have hundreds of thousands of webcasters who want to pay, and that should establish the market rate, and if you set the rate so high, you're going to drive the small webcasters out of business. ..." + +And the RIAA experts said, "Well, we don't really model this as an industry with thousands of webcasters, /{we think it should be an industry with, you know, five or seven big players who can pay a high rate and it's a stable, predictable market.}/" (Emphasis added.) +``` + +Translation: The aim is to use the law to eliminate competition, so that this platform of potentially immense competition, which would cause the diversity and range of content available to explode, would not cause pain to the dinosaurs of old. There is no one, on either the right or the left, who should endorse this use of the law. And yet there is practically no one, on either the right or the left, who is doing anything effective to prevent it. + +2~ Corrupting Citizens +={ copyright law : + illegal behavior as broad response to +33 ; + law : + citizen respect for +33 ; + prohibition, citizen rebellion against +33 ; + regulation : + rule of law degraded by excess of +33 +} + +Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables. + +In addition to these important harms, there is one more that was important to our forebears, but seems forgotten today. Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law. + +The war that is being waged today is a war of prohibition. As with every war of prohibition, it is targeted against the behavior of a very large number of citizens. According to /{The New York Times}/, 43 million Americans downloaded music in May 2002.~{ Mike Graziano and Lee Rainie, "The Music Downloading Deluge," Pew Internet and American Life Project (24 April 2001), available at link #46. The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that 37 million Americans had downloaded music files from the Internet by early 2001. }~ According to the RIAA, the behavior of those 43 million Americans is a felony. We thus have a set of rules that transform 20 percent of America into criminals. As the RIAA launches lawsuits against not only the Napsters and Kazaas of the world, but against students building search engines, and increasingly against ordinary users downloading content, the technologies for sharing will advance to further protect and hide illegal use. It is an arms race or a civil war, with the extremes of one side inviting a more extreme response by the other. +={ Internet : + music files downloaded from ; + copyright infringement lawsuits : + individual defendants intimidated by +1 | in recording industry +1 ; + recording industry : + copyright infringement lawsuits of +1 ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + copyright infringement lawsuits filed by +1 | intimidation tactics of +1 +} + +The content industry's tactics exploit the failings of the American legal system. When the RIAA brought suit against Jesse Jordan, it knew that in Jordan it had found a scapegoat, not a defendant. The threat of having to pay either all the money in the world in damages ($15,000,000) or almost all the money in the world to defend against paying all the money in the world in damages ($250,000 in legal fees) led Jordan to choose to pay all the money he had in the world ($12,000) to make the suit go away. The same strategy animates the RIAA's suits against individual users. In September 2003, the RIAA sued 261 individuals - including a twelve-year-old girl living in public housing and a seventy-year-old man who had no idea what file sharing was.~{ Alex Pham, "The Labels Strike Back: N.Y. Girl Settles RIAA Case," /{Los Angeles Times,}/ 10 September 2003, Business. }~ As these scapegoats discovered, it will always cost more to defend against these suits than it would cost to simply settle. (The twelve year old, for example, like Jesse Jordan, paid her life savings of $2,000 to settle the case.) Our law is an awful system for defending rights. It is an embarrassment to our tradition. And the consequence of our law as it is, is that those with the power can use the law to quash any rights they oppose. +={ Jordan, Jesse } + +Wars of prohibition are nothing new in America. This one is just something more extreme than anything we've seen before. We experimented with alcohol prohibition, at a time when the per capita consumption of alcohol was 1.5 gallons per capita per year. The war against drinking initially reduced that consumption to just 30 percent of its preprohibition levels, but by the end of prohibition, consumption was up to 70 percent of the preprohibition level. Americans were drinking just about as much, but now, a vast number were criminals.~{ Jeffrey A. Miron and Jeffrey Zwiebel, "Alcohol Consumption During Prohibition," /{American Economic Review}/ 81, no. 2 (1991): 242. }~ We have launched a war on drugs aimed at reducing the consumption of regulated narcotics that 7 percent (or 16 million) Americans now use.~{ National Drug Control Policy: Hearing Before the House Government Reform Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (5 March 2003) (statement of John P. Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy). }~ That is a drop from the high (so to speak) in 1979 of 14 percent of the population. We regulate automobiles to the point where the vast majority of Americans violate the law every day. We run such a complex tax system that a majority of cash businesses regularly cheat.~{ See James Andreoni, Brian Erard, and Jonathon Feinstein, "Tax Compliance," /{Journal of Economic Literature}/ 36 (1998): 818 (survey of compliance literature). }~ We pride ourselves on our "free society," but an endless array of ordinary behavior is regulated within our society. And as a result, a huge proportion of Americans regularly violate at least some law. +={ alcohol prohibition +1 ; + drugs : + illegal +1 ; + tax system +1 +} + +This state of affairs is not without consequence. It is a particularly salient issue for teachers like me, whose job it is to teach law students about the importance of "ethics." As my colleague Charlie Nesson told a class at Stanford, each year law schools admit thousands of students who have illegally downloaded music, illegally consumed alcohol and sometimes drugs, illegally worked without paying taxes, illegally driven cars. These are kids for whom behaving illegally is increasingly the norm. And then we, as law professors, are supposed to teach them how to behave ethically - how to say no to bribes, or keep client funds separate, or honor a demand to disclose a document that will mean that your case is over. Generations of Americans - more significantly in some parts of America than in others, but still, everywhere in America today - can't live their lives both normally and legally, since "normally" entails a certain degree of illegality. +={ ethics ; + law schools ; + Nesson, Charlie +} + +The response to this general illegality is either to enforce the law more severely or to change the law. We, as a society, have to learn how to make that choice more rationally. Whether a law makes sense depends, in part, at least, upon whether the costs of the law, both intended and collateral, outweigh the benefits. If the costs, intended and collateral, do outweigh the benefits, then the law ought to be changed. Alternatively, if the costs of the existing system are much greater than the costs of an alternative, then we have a good reason to consider the alternative. + +My point is not the idiotic one: Just because people violate a law, we should therefore repeal it. Obviously, we could reduce murder statistics dramatically by legalizing murder on Wednesdays and Fridays. But that wouldn't make any sense, since murder is wrong every day of the week. A society is right to ban murder always and everywhere. + +My point is instead one that democracies understood for generations, but that we recently have learned to forget. The rule of law depends upon people obeying the law. The more often, and more repeatedly, we as citizens experience violating the law, the less we respect the law. Obviously, in most cases, the important issue is the law, not respect for the law. I don't care whether the rapist respects the law or not; I want to catch and incarcerate the rapist. But I do care whether my students respect the law. And I do care if the rules of law sow increasing disrespect because of the extreme of regulation they impose. Twenty million Americans have come of age since the Internet introduced this different idea of "sharing." We need to be able to call these twenty million Americans "citizens," not "felons." + +When at least forty-three million citizens download content from the Internet, and when they use tools to combine that content in ways unauthorized by copyright holders, the first question we should be asking is not how best to involve the FBI. The first question should be whether this particular prohibition is really necessary in order to achieve the proper ends that copyright law serves. Is there another way to assure that artists get paid without transforming forty-three million Americans into felons? Does it make sense if there are other ways to assure that artists get paid without transforming America into a nation of felons? + +This abstract point can be made more clear with a particular example. + +We all own CDs. Many of us still own phonograph records. These pieces of plastic encode music that in a certain sense we have bought. The law protects our right to buy and sell that plastic: It is not a copyright infringement for me to sell all my classical records at a used record store and buy jazz records to replace them. That "use" of the recordings is free. + +But as the MP3 craze has demonstrated, there is another use of phonograph records that is effectively free. Because these recordings were made without copy-protection technologies, I am "free" to copy, or "rip," music from my records onto a computer hard disk. Indeed, Apple Corporation went so far as to suggest that "freedom" was a right: In a series of commercials, Apple endorsed the "Rip, Mix, Burn" capacities of digital technologies. +={ Apple Corporation +1 ; + Rip, Mix, Burn technologies +1 ; + technology : + cut-and-paste culture enabled by +} + +This "use" of my records is certainly valuable. I have begun a large process at home of ripping all of my and my wife's CDs, and storing them in one archive. Then, using Apple's iTunes, or a wonderful program called Andromeda, we can build different play lists of our music: Bach, Baroque, Love Songs, Love Songs of Significant Others - the potential is endless. And by reducing the costs of mixing play lists, these technologies help build a creativity with play lists that is itself independently valuable. Compilations of songs are creative and meaningful in their own right. +={ Andromeda } + +This use is enabled by unprotected media - either CDs or records. But unprotected media also enable file sharing. File sharing threatens (or so the content industry believes) the ability of creators to earn a fair return from their creativity. And thus, many are beginning to experiment with technologies to eliminate unprotected media. These technologies, for example, would enable CDs that could not be ripped. Or they might enable spy programs to identify ripped content on people's machines. +={ CDs : + mix technology and +1 ; + technology : + copyright enforcement controlled by +1 ; + copyright law : + technology as automatic enforcer of +} + +If these technologies took off, then the building of large archives of your own music would become quite difficult. You might hang in hacker circles, and get technology to disable the technologies that protect the content. Trading in those technologies is illegal, but maybe that doesn't bother you much. In any case, for the vast majority of people, these protection technologies would effectively destroy the archiving use of CDs. The technology, in other words, would force us all back to the world where we either listened to music by manipulating pieces of plastic or were part of a massively complex "digital rights management" system. + +If the only way to assure that artists get paid were the elimination of the ability to freely move content, then these technologies to interfere with the freedom to move content would be justifiable. But what if there were another way to assure that artists are paid, without locking down any content? What if, in other words, a different system could assure compensation to artists while also preserving the freedom to move content easily? + +My point just now is not to prove that there is such a system. I offer a version of such a system in the last chapter of this book. For now, the only point is the relatively uncontroversial one: If a different system achieved the same legitimate objectives that the existing copyright system achieved, but left consumers and creators much more free, then we'd have a very good reason to pursue this alternative - namely, freedom. The choice, in other words, would not be between property and piracy; the choice would be between different property systems and the freedoms each allowed. +={ copyright law : + commercial creativity as primary purpose of +1 | as protection of creators +1 +} + +I believe there is a way to assure that artists are paid without turning forty-three million Americans into felons. But the salient feature of this alternative is that it would lead to a very different market for producing and distributing creativity. The dominant few, who today control the vast majority of the distribution of content in the world, would no longer exercise this extreme of control. Rather, they would go the way of the horse-drawn buggy. + +Except that this generation's buggy manufacturers have already saddled Congress, and are riding the law to protect themselves against this new form of competition. For them the choice is between forty-three million Americans as criminals and their own survival. + +It is understandable why they choose as they do. It is not understandable why we as a democracy continue to choose as we do. Jack Valenti is charming; but not so charming as to justify giving up a tradition as deep and important as our tradition of free culture. +={ Valenti, Jack } + +!_ There's one more +aspect to this corruption that is particularly important to civil liberties, and follows directly from any war of prohibition. As Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Fred von Lohmann describes, this is the "collateral damage" that "arises whenever you turn a very large percentage of the population into criminals." This is the collateral damage to civil liberties generally. +={ civil liberties +11 ; + Electronic Frontier Foundation ; + von Lohmann, Fred +2 +} + +"If you can treat someone as a putative lawbreaker," von Lohmann explains, + +``` quote +then all of a sudden a lot of basic civil liberty protections evaporate to one degree or another. ... If you're a copyright infringer, how can you hope to have any privacy rights? If you're a copyright infringer, how can you hope to be secure against seizures of your computer? How can you hope to continue to receive Internet access? ... Our sensibilities change as soon as we think, "Oh, well, but that person's a criminal, a lawbreaker." Well, what this campaign against file sharing has done is turn a remarkable percentage of the American Internet-using population into "law-breakers." +``` +={ privacy rights +3 } + +And the consequence of this transformation of the American public into criminals is that it becomes trivial, as a matter of due process, to effectively erase much of the privacy most would presume. + +Users of the Internet began to see this generally in 2003 as the RIAA launched its campaign to force Internet service providers to turn over the names of customers who the RIAA believed were violating copyright law. Verizon fought that demand and lost. With a simple request to a judge, and without any notice to the customer at all, the identity of an Internet user is revealed. +={ Internet : + user identities released by service providers of +4 ; + ISPs (Internet service providers), user identities revealed by +4 ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + ISP user identities sought by +4 ; + Verizon Internet Services +} + +The RIAA then expanded this campaign, by announcing a general strategy to sue individual users of the Internet who are alleged to have downloaded copyrighted music from file-sharing systems. But as we've seen, the potential damages from these suits are astronomical: If a family's computer is used to download a single CD's worth of music, the family could be liable for $2 million in damages. That didn't stop the RIAA from suing a number of these families, just as they had sued Jesse Jordan.~{ See Frank Ahrens, "RIAA's Lawsuits Meet Surprised Targets; Single Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl in N.Y. Among Defendants," /{Washington Post,}/ 10 September 2003, E1; Chris Cobbs, "Worried Parents Pull Plug on File 'Stealing'; With the Music Industry Cracking Down on File Swapping, Parents are Yanking Software from Home PCs to Avoid Being Sued," /{Orlando Sentinel Tribune,}/ 30 August 2003, C1; Jefferson Graham, "Recording Industry Sues Parents," /{USA Today,}/ 15 September 2003, 4D; John Schwartz, "She Says She's No Music Pirate. No Snoop Fan, Either," /{New York Times,}/ 25 September 2003, C1; Margo Varadi, "Is Brianna a Criminal?" /{Toronto Star,}/ 18 September 2003, P7. }~ +={ Jordan, Jesse ; + copyright infringement lawsuits : + exaggerated claims of +3 ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + regulatory balance lost in +6 ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + intimidation tactics of +3 +} + +Even this understates the espionage that is being waged by the RIAA. A report from CNN late last summer described a strategy the RIAA had adopted to track Napster users.~{ See "Revealed: How RIAA Tracks Downloaders: Music Industry Discloses Some Methods Used," CNN.com, available at link #47. }~ Using a sophisticated hashing algorithm, the RIAA took what is in effect a fingerprint of every song in the Napster catalog. Any copy of one of those MP3s will have the same "fingerprint." +={ Napster : + recording industry tracking users of +2 +} + +So imagine the following not-implausible scenario: Imagine a friend gives a CD to your daughter - a collection of songs just like the cassettes you used to make as a kid. You don't know, and neither does your daughter, where these songs came from. But she copies these songs onto her computer. She then takes her computer to college and connects it to a college network, and if the college network is "cooperating" with the RIAA's espionage, and she hasn't properly protected her content from the network (do you know how to do that yourself ?), then the RIAA will be able to identify your daughter as a "criminal." And under the rules that universities are beginning to deploy,~{ See Jeff Adler, "Cambridge: On Campus, Pirates Are Not Penitent," /{Boston Globe,}/ 18 May 2003, City Weekly, 1; Frank Ahrens, "Four Students Sued over Music Sites; Industry Group Targets File Sharing at Colleges," /{Washington Post,}/ 4 April 2003, E1; Elizabeth Armstrong, "Students 'Rip, Mix, Burn' at Their Own Risk," /{Christian Science Monitor,}/ 2 September 2003, 20; Robert Becker and Angela Rozas, "Music Pirate Hunt Turns to Loyola; Two Students Names Are Handed Over; Lawsuit Possible," /{Chicago Tribune,}/ 16 July 2003, 1C; Beth Cox, "RIAA Trains Antipiracy Guns on Universities," /{Internet News,}/ 30 January 2003, available at link #48; Benny Evangelista, "Download Warning 101: Freshman Orientation This Fall to Include Record Industry Warnings Against File Sharing," /{San Francisco Chronicle,}/ 11 August 2003, E11; "Raid, Letters Are Weapons at Universities," /{USA Today,}/ 26 September 2000, 3D. }~ your daughter can lose the right to use the university's computer network. She can, in some cases, be expelled. +={ university computer networks, p2p sharing on +1 } + +Now, of course, she'll have the right to defend herself. You can hire a lawyer for her (at $300 per hour, if you're lucky), and she can plead that she didn't know anything about the source of the songs or that they came from Napster. And it may well be that the university believes her. But the university might not believe her. It might treat this "contraband" as presumptive of guilt. And as any number of college students have already learned, our presumptions about innocence disappear in the middle of wars of prohibition. This war is no different. + +Says von Lohmann, +={ von Lohmann, Fred +1 } + +``` quote +So when we're talking about numbers like forty to sixty million Americans that are essentially copyright infringers, you create a situation where the civil liberties of those people are very much in peril in a general matter. [I don't] think [there is any] analog where you could randomly choose any person off the street and be confident that they were committing an unlawful act that could put them on the hook for potential felony liability or hundreds of millions of dollars of civil liability. Certainly we all speed, but speeding isn't the kind of an act for which we routinely forfeit civil liberties. Some people use drugs, and I think that's the closest analog, [but] many have noted that the war against drugs has eroded all of our civil liberties because it's treated so many Americans as criminals. Well, I think it's fair to say that file sharing is an order of magnitude larger number of Americans than drug use. ... If forty to sixty million Americans have become lawbreakers, then we're really on a slippery slope to lose a lot of civil liberties for all forty to sixty million of them." +``` +={ driving speed, constraints on ; + speeding, constraints on ; + drugs : + illegal +} + +When forty to sixty million Americans are considered "criminals" under the law, and when the law could achieve the same objective - securing rights to authors - without these millions being considered "criminals," who is the villain? Americans or the law? Which is American, a constant war on our own people or a concerted effort through our democracy to change our law? + +:B~ BALANCES + +1~intro_balances [Intro]-# + +!_ So here's +the picture: You're standing at the side of the road. Your car is on fire. You are angry and upset because in part you helped start the fire. Now you don't know how to put it out. Next to you is a bucket, filled with gasoline. Obviously, gasoline won't put the fire out. + +As you ponder the mess, someone else comes along. In a panic, she grabs the bucket. Before you have a chance to tell her to stop - or before she understands just why she should stop - the bucket is in the air. The gasoline is about to hit the blazing car. And the fire that gasoline will ignite is about to ignite everything around. + +!_ A war +about copyright rages all around - and we're all focusing on the wrong thing. No doubt, current technologies threaten existing businesses. No doubt they may threaten artists. But technologies change. The industry and technologists have plenty of ways to use technology to protect themselves against the current threats of the Internet. This is a fire that if let alone would burn itself out. + +Yet policy makers are not willing to leave this fire to itself. Primed with plenty of lobbyists' money, they are keen to intervene to eliminate the problem they perceive. But the problem they perceive is not the real threat this culture faces. For while we watch this small fire in the corner, there is a massive change in the way culture is made that is happening all around. + +Somehow we have to find a way to turn attention to this more important and fundamental issue. Somehow we have to find a way to avoid pouring gasoline onto this fire. + +We have not found that way yet. Instead, we seem trapped in a simpler, binary view. However much many people push to frame this debate more broadly, it is the simple, binary view that remains. We rubberneck to look at the fire when we should be keeping our eyes on the road. + +This challenge has been my life these last few years. It has also been my failure. In the two chapters that follow, I describe one small brace of efforts, so far failed, to find a way to refocus this debate. We must understand these failures if we're to understand what success will require. + +1~ Chapter Thirteen: Eldred +={ Eldred, Eric +10 } + +!_ In 1995, +a father was frustrated that his daughters didn't seem to like Hawthorne. No doubt there was more than one such father, but at least one did something about it. Eric Eldred, a retired computer programmer living in New Hampshire, decided to put Hawthorne on the Web. An electronic version, Eldred thought, with links to pictures and explanatory text, would make this nineteenth-century author's work come alive. +={ Hawthorne, Nathaniel +3 } + +It didn't work - at least for his daughters. They didn't find Hawthorne any more interesting than before. But Eldred's experiment gave birth to a hobby, and his hobby begat a cause: Eldred would build a library of public domain works by scanning these works and making them available for free. +={ libraries : + of public-domain literature +4 ; + public domain : + library of works derived from +4 +} + +Eldred's library was not simply a copy of certain public domain works, though even a copy would have been of great value to people across the world who can't get access to printed versions of these works. Instead, Eldred was producing derivative works from these public domain works. Just as Disney turned Grimm into stories more accessible to the twentieth century, Eldred transformed Hawthorne, and many others, into a form more accessible - technically accessible - today. +={ Disney, Walt +1 ; + Grimm fairy tales +} + +Eldred's freedom to do this with Hawthorne's work grew from the same source as Disney's. Hawthorne's /{Scarlet Letter}/ had passed into the public domain in 1907. It was free for anyone to take without the permission of the Hawthorne estate or anyone else. Some, such as Dover Press and Penguin Classics, take works from the public domain and produce printed editions, which they sell in bookstores across the country. Others, such as Disney, take these stories and turn them into animated cartoons, sometimes successfully (/{Cinderella}/), sometimes not (/{The Hunchback of Notre Dame}/, /{Treasure Planet}/). These are all commercial publications of public domain works. +={ Scarlet Letter, The (Hawthorne) } + +The Internet created the possibility of noncommercial publications of public domain works. Eldred's is just one example. There are literally thousands of others. Hundreds of thousands from across the world have discovered this platform of expression and now use it to share works that are, by law, free for the taking. This has produced what we might call the "noncommercial publishing industry," which before the Internet was limited to people with large egos or with political or social causes. But with the Internet, it includes a wide range of individuals and groups dedicated to spreading culture generally.~{ There's a parallel here with pornography that is a bit hard to describe, but it's a strong one. One phenomenon that the Internet created was a world of noncommercial pornographers - people who were distributing porn but were not making money directly or indirectly from that distribution. Such a class didn't exist before the Internet came into being because the costs of distributing porn were so high. Yet this new class of distributors got special attention in the Supreme Court, when the Court struck down the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It was partly because of the burden on noncommercial speakers that the statute was found to exceed Congress's power. The same point could have been made about noncommercial publishers after the advent of the Internet. The Eric Eldreds of the world before the Internet were extremely few. Yet one would think it at least as important to protect the Eldreds of the world as to protect noncommercial pornographers. }~ + +As I said, Eldred lives in New Hampshire. In 1998, Robert Frost's collection of poems /{New Hampshire}/ was slated to pass into the public domain. Eldred wanted to post that collection in his free public library. But Congress got in the way. As I described in chapter 10, in 1998, for the eleventh time in forty years, Congress extended the terms of existing copyrights - this time by twenty years. Eldred would not be free to add any works more recent than 1923 to his collection until 2019. Indeed, no copyrighted work would pass into the public domain until that year (and not even then, if Congress extends the term again). By contrast, in the same period, more than 1 million patents will pass into the public domain. +={ Congress, U.S. : + copyright terms extended by +23 ; + copyright : + duration of +23 ; + copyright law : + term extensions in +23 ; + Frost, Robert ; + New Hampshire (Frost) ; + patents : + in public domain | future patents vs. future copyrights in +1 +} + +This was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), enacted in memory of the congressman and former musician Sonny Bono, who, his widow, Mary Bono, says, believed that "copyrights should be forever."~{ The full text is: "Sonny [Bono] wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal for a term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress," 144 Cong. Rec. H9946, 9951-2 (October 7, 1998). }~ +={ Bono, Mary ; + Bono, Sonny ; + copyright : + in perpetuity +5 ; + Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) +1 +} + +Eldred decided to fight this law. He first resolved to fight it through civil disobedience. In a series of interviews, Eldred announced that he would publish as planned, CTEA notwithstanding. But because of a second law passed in 1998, the NET (No Electronic Theft) Act, his act of publishing would make Eldred a felon - whether or not anyone complained. This was a dangerous strategy for a disabled programmer to undertake. +={ copyright law : + felony punishment for infringement of ; + NET (No Electronic Theft) Act (1988) ; + No Electronic Theft (NET) Act (1988) ; + peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + felony punishments for +} + +It was here that I became involved in Eldred's battle. I was a constitutional scholar whose first passion was constitutional interpretation. And though constitutional law courses never focus upon the Progress Clause of the Constitution, it had always struck me as importantly different. As you know, the Constitution says, +={ Congress : + constitutional powers of +3 ; + Constitution, U.S. : + Progress Clause of +2 ; + Progress Clause +2 ; + Lessig, Lawrence : + Eldred case involvement of +2 +} + +``` quote +Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science ... by securing for limited Times to Authors ... exclusive Right to their ... Writings. ..." +``` + +As I've described, this clause is unique within the power-granting clause of Article I, section 8 of our Constitution. Every other clause granting power to Congress simply says Congress has the power to do something - for example, to regulate "commerce among the several states" or "declare War." But here, the "something" is something quite specific - to "promote ... Progress" - through means that are also specific - by "securing" "exclusive Rights" (i.e., copyrights) "for limited Times." + +In the past forty years, Congress has gotten into the practice of extending existing terms of copyright protection. What puzzled me about this was, if Congress has the power to extend existing terms, then the Constitution's requirement that terms be "limited" will have no practical effect. If every time a copyright is about to expire, Congress has the power to extend its term, then Congress can achieve what the Constitution plainly forbids - perpetual terms "on the installment plan," as Professor Peter Jaszi so nicely put it. +={ Jaszi, Peter } + +As an academic, my first response was to hit the books. I remember sitting late at the office, scouring on-line databases for any serious consideration of the question. No one had ever challenged Congress's practice of extending existing terms. That failure may in part be why Congress seemed so untroubled in its habit. That, and the fact that the practice had become so lucrative for Congress. Congress knows that copyright owners will be willing to pay a great deal of money to see their copyright terms extended. And so Congress is quite happy to keep this gravy train going. +={ Lessig, Lawrence : + Eldred case involvement of +} + +For this is the core of the corruption in our present system of government."Corruption" not in the sense that representatives are bribed. Rather, "corruption" in the sense that the system induces the beneficiaries of Congress's acts to raise and give money to Congress to induce it to act. There's only so much time; there's only so much Congress can do. Why not limit its actions to those things it must do - and those things that pay? Extending copyright terms pays. + +If that's not obvious to you, consider the following: Say you're one of the very few lucky copyright owners whose copyright continues to make money one hundred years after it was created. The Estate of Robert Frost is a good example. Frost died in 1963. His poetry continues to be extraordinarily valuable. Thus the Robert Frost estate benefits greatly from any extension of copyright, since no publisher would pay the estate any money if the poems Frost wrote could be published by anyone for free. +={ Frost, Robert +12 } + +So imagine the Robert Frost estate is earning $100,000 a year from three of Frost's poems. And imagine the copyright for those poems is about to expire. You sit on the board of the Robert Frost estate. Your financial adviser comes to your board meeting with a very grim report: + +"Next year," the adviser announces, "our copyrights in works A, B, and C will expire. That means that after next year, we will no longer be receiving the annual royalty check of $100,000 from the publishers of those works. + +"There's a proposal in Congress, however," she continues, "that could change this. A few congressmen are floating a bill to extend the terms of copyright by twenty years. That bill would be extraordinarily valuable to us. So we should hope this bill passes." + +"Hope?" a fellow board member says. "Can't we be doing something about it?" + +"Well, obviously, yes," the adviser responds. "We could contribute to the campaigns of a number of representatives to try to assure that they support the bill." +={ Congress, U.S. : + lobbying of +8 } + +You hate politics. You hate contributing to campaigns. So you want to know whether this disgusting practice is worth it. "How much would we get if this extension were passed?" you ask the adviser. "How much is it worth?" + +"Well," the adviser says, "if you're confident that you will continue to get at least $100,000 a year from these copyrights, and you use the 'discount rate' that we use to evaluate estate investments (6 percent), then this law would be worth $1,146,000 to the estate." + +You're a bit shocked by the number, but you quickly come to the correct conclusion: + +"So you're saying it would be worth it for us to pay more than $1,000,000 in campaign contributions if we were confident those contributions would assure that the bill was passed?" + +"Absolutely," the adviser responds. "It is worth it to you to contribute up to the 'present value' of the income you expect from these copyrights. Which for us means over $1,000,000." + +You quickly get the point - you as the member of the board and, I trust, you the reader. Each time copyrights are about to expire, every beneficiary in the position of the Robert Frost estate faces the same choice: If they can contribute to get a law passed to extend copyrights, they will benefit greatly from that extension. And so each time copyrights are about to expire, there is a massive amount of lobbying to get the copyright term extended. + +Thus a congressional perpetual motion machine: So long as legislation can be bought (albeit indirectly), there will be all the incentive in the world to buy further extensions of copyright. + +In the lobbying that led to the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, this "theory" about incentives was proved real. Ten of the thirteen original sponsors of the act in the House received the maximum contribution from Disney's political action committee; in the Senate, eight of the twelve sponsors received contributions.~{ Associated Press, "Disney Lobbying for Copyright Extension No Mickey Mouse Effort; Congress OKs Bill Granting Creators 20 More Years," /{Chicago Tribune,}/ 17 October 1998, 22. }~ The RIAA and the MPAA are estimated to have spent over $1.5 million lobbying in the 1998 election cycle. They paid out more than $200,000 in campaign contributions.~{ See Nick Brown, "Fair Use No More?: Copyright in the Information Age," available at link #49. }~ Disney is estimated to have contributed more than $800,000 to reelection campaigns in the 1998 cycle.~{ Alan K. Ota, "Disney in Washington: The Mouse That Roars," /{Congressional Quarterly This Week,}/ 8 August 1990, available at link #50. }~ +={ Disney, Inc. ; + film industry : + trade association of ; + Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + lobbying power of ; + Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) ; + Congress, U.S. : + copyright terms extended by +13 +} + +!_ Constitutional law +is not oblivious to the obvious. Or at least, it need not be. So when I was considering Eldred's complaint, this reality about the never-ending incentives to increase the copyright term was central to my thinking. In my view, a pragmatic court committed to interpreting and applying the Constitution of our framers would see that if Congress has the power to extend existing terms, then there would be no effective constitutional requirement that terms be "limited." If they could extend it once, they would extend it again and again and again. +={ Lessig, Lawrence : + Eldred case involvement of +1 ; + Constitution, U.S. : + Progress Clause of ; + Eldred, Eric ; + copyright law : + term extensions in +12 +} + +It was also my judgment that /{this}/ Supreme Court would not allow Congress to extend existing terms. As anyone close to the Supreme Court's work knows, this Court has increasingly restricted the power of Congress when it has viewed Congress's actions as exceeding the power granted to it by the Constitution. Among constitutional scholars, the most famous example of this trend was the Supreme Court's decision in 1995 to strike down a law that banned the possession of guns near schools. +={ Congress, U.S. : + Supreme Court restraint on +6 ; + copyright law : + Supreme Court case on term extension of +5 ; + Supreme Court, U.S. : + congressional actions restrained by +5 | on copyright term extensions ; + guns +2 ; + schools, gun possession near +2 +} + +Since 1937, the Supreme Court had interpreted Congress's granted powers very broadly; so, while the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate only "commerce among the several states" (aka "interstate commerce"), the Supreme Court had interpreted that power to include the power to regulate any activity that merely affected interstate commerce. +={ commerce, interstate +3 ; + Congress, U.S. : + constitutional powers of +5 ; + interstate commerce +4 +} + +As the economy grew, this standard increasingly meant that there was no limit to Congress's power to regulate, since just about every activity, when considered on a national scale, affects interstate commerce. A Constitution designed to limit Congress's power was instead interpreted to impose no limit. + +The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Rehnquist's command, changed that in /{United States v. Lopez}/. The government had argued that possessing guns near schools affected interstate commerce. Guns near schools increase crime, crime lowers property values, and so on. In the oral argument, the Chief Justice asked the government whether there was any activity that would not affect interstate commerce under the reasoning the government advanced. The government said there was not; if Congress says an activity affects interstate commerce, then that activity affects interstate commerce. The Supreme Court, the government said, was not in the position to second-guess Congress. +={ Rehnquist, William H. +1 ; + United States v. Lopez +1 +} + +"We pause to consider the implications of the government's arguments," the Chief Justice wrote.~{ /{United States v. Lopez,}/ 514 U.S. 549, 564 (1995). }~ If anything Congress says is interstate commerce must therefore be considered interstate commerce, then there would be no limit to Congress's power. The decision in /{Lopez}/ was reaffirmed five years later in /{United States v. Morrison}/.~{ /{United States v. Morrison,}/ 529 U.S. 598 (2000). }~ +={ United States v. Morrison } + +If a principle were at work here, then it should apply to the Progress Clause as much as the Commerce Clause.~{ If it is a principle about enumerated powers, then the principle carries from one enumerated power to another. The animating point in the context of the Commerce Clause was that the interpretation offered by the government would allow the government unending power to regulate commerce - the limitation to interstate commerce notwithstanding. The same point is true in the context of the Copyright Clause. Here, too, the government's interpretation would allow the government unending power to regulate copyrights - the limitation to "limited times" notwithstanding. }~ And if it is applied to the Progress Clause, the principle should yield the conclusion that Congress can't extend an existing term. If Congress could extend an existing term, then there would be no "stopping point" to Congress's power over terms, though the Constitution expressly states that there is such a limit. Thus, the same principle applied to the power to grant copyrights should entail that Congress is not allowed to extend the term of existing copyrights. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + Progress Clause of | Commerce Clause of ; + copyright : + duration of ; + Supreme Court, U.S. : + congressional actions restrained by +2 +} + +/{If}/, that is, the principle announced in /{Lopez}/ stood for a principle. Many believed the decision in /{Lopez}/ stood for politics - a conservative Supreme Court, which believed in states' rights, using its power over Congress to advance its own personal political preferences. But I rejected that view of the Supreme Court's decision. Indeed, shortly after the decision, I wrote an article demonstrating the "fidelity" in such an interpretation of the Constitution. The idea that the Supreme Court decides cases based upon its politics struck me as extraordinarily boring. I was not going to devote my life to teaching constitutional law if these nine Justices were going to be petty politicians. +={ Congress, U.S. : + Supreme Court restraint on +3 ; + United States v. Lopez +} + +!_ Now let's pause +for a moment to make sure we understand what the argument in /{Eldred}/ was not about. By insisting on the Constitution's limits to copyright, obviously Eldred was not endorsing piracy. Indeed, in an obvious sense, he was fighting a kind of piracy - piracy of the public domain. When Robert Frost wrote his work and when Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, the maximum copyright term was just fifty-six years. Because of interim changes, Frost and Disney had already enjoyed a seventy-five-year monopoly for their work. They had gotten the benefit of the bargain that the Constitution envisions: In exchange for a monopoly protected for fifty-six years, they created new work. But now these entities were using their power - expressed through the power of lobbyists' money - to get another twenty-year dollop of monopoly. That twenty-year dollop would be taken from the public domain. Eric Eldred was fighting a piracy that affects us all. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + copyright purpose established in ; + copyright : + constitutional purpose of | duration of ; + Disney, Walt ; + Eldred, Eric +2 ; + Frost, Robert ; + Mickey Mouse ; + public domain : + protection of +2 +} + +Some people view the public domain with contempt. In their brief before the Supreme Court, the Nashville Songwriters Association wrote that the public domain is nothing more than "legal piracy."~{ Brief of the Nashville Songwriters Association, /{Eldred v. Ashcroft,}/ 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01-618), n.10, available at link #51. }~ But it is not piracy when the law allows it; and in our constitutional system, our law requires it. Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter. +={ Eldred v. Ashcroft ; + Constitution, U.S. : + copyright purpose established in +1 ; + copyright : + constitutional purpose of +1 ; + Nashville Songwriters Association +} + +As we've seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture. Yet, as Eric Eldred discovered, we have set up a system that assures that copyright terms will be repeatedly extended, and extended, and extended. We have created the perfect storm for the public domain. Copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again. +={ Eldred, Eric ; + copyright : + duration of +2 +} + +!_ It is valuable +copyrights that are responsible for terms being extended. Mickey Mouse and "Rhapsody in Blue." These works are too valuable for copyright owners to ignore. But the real harm to our society from copyright extensions is not that Mickey Mouse remains Disney's. Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert Frost. Forget all the works from the 1920s and 1930s that have continuing commercial value. The real harm of term extension comes not from these famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result. +={ Mickey Mouse ; + Rhapsody in Blue (Gershwin) ; + Frost, Robert +} + +% added this Frost index reference + +If you look at the work created in the first twenty years (1923 to 1942) affected by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, 2 percent of that work has any continuing commercial value. It was the copyright holders for that 2 percent who pushed the CTEA through. But the law and its effect were not limited to that 2 percent. The law extended the terms of copyright generally.~{ The figure of 2 percent is an extrapolation from the study by the Congressional Research Service, in light of the estimated renewal ranges. See Brief of Petitioners, /{Eldred v. Ashcroft,}/ 7, available at link #52. }~ +={ Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) } + +Think practically about the consequence of this extension - practically, as a businessperson, and not as a lawyer eager for more legal work. In 1930, 10,047 books were published. In 2000, 174 of those books were still in print. Let's say you were Brewster Kahle, and you wanted to make available to the world in your iArchive project the remaining 9,873. What would you have to do? +={ Kahle, Brewster ; + archives, digital ; + Internet Archive +} + +Well, first, you'd have to determine which of the 9,873 books were still under copyright. That requires going to a library (these data are not on-line) and paging through tomes of books, cross-checking the titles and authors of the 9,873 books with the copyright registration and renewal records for works published in 1930. That will produce a list of books still under copyright. + +Then for the books still under copyright, you would need to locate the current copyright owners. How would you do that? + +Most people think that there must be a list of these copyright owners somewhere. Practical people think this way. How could there be thousands and thousands of government monopolies without there being at least a list? +={ copyright : + no registration of works +5 +} + +But there is no list. There may be a name from 1930, and then in 1959, of the person who registered the copyright. But just think practically about how impossibly difficult it would be to track down thousands of such records - especially since the person who registered is not necessarily the current owner. And we're just talking about 1930! + +"But there isn't a list of who owns property generally," the apologists for the system respond. "Why should there be a list of copyright owners?" + +Well, actually, if you think about it, there /{are}/ plenty of lists of who owns what property. Think about deeds on houses, or titles to cars. And where there isn't a list, the code of real space is pretty good at suggesting who the owner of a bit of property is. (A swing set in your backyard is probably yours.) So formally or informally, we have a pretty good way to know who owns what tangible property. + +So: You walk down a street and see a house. You can know who owns the house by looking it up in the courthouse registry. If you see a car, there is ordinarily a license plate that will link the owner to the car. If you see a bunch of children's toys sitting on the front lawn of a house, it's fairly easy to determine who owns the toys. And if you happen to see a baseball lying in a gutter on the side of the road, look around for a second for some kids playing ball. If you don't see any kids, then okay: Here's a bit of property whose owner we can't easily determine. It is the exception that proves the rule: that we ordinarily know quite well who owns what property. + +Compare this story to intangible property. You go into a library. The library owns the books. But who owns the copyrights? As I've already described, there's no list of copyright owners. There are authors' names, of course, but their copyrights could have been assigned, or passed down in an estate like Grandma's old jewelry. To know who owns what, you would have to hire a private detective. The bottom line: The owner cannot easily be located. And in a regime like ours, in which it is a felony to use such property without the property owner's permission, the property isn't going to be used. +={ copyright law : + felony for infringement of +} + +The consequence with respect to old books is that they won't be digitized, and hence will simply rot away on shelves. But the consequence for other creative works is much more dire. + +Consider the story of Michael Agee, chairman of Hal Roach Studios, which owns the copyrights for the Laurel and Hardy films. Agee is a direct beneficiary of the Bono Act. The Laurel and Hardy films were made between 1921 and 1951. Only one of these films, /{The Lucky Dog}/, is currently out of copyright. But for the CTEA, films made after 1923 would have begun entering the public domain. Because Agee controls the exclusive rights for these popular films, he makes a great deal of money. According to one estimate, "Roach has sold about 60,000 videocassettes and 50,000 DVDs of the duo's silent films."~{ See David G. Savage, "High Court Scene of Showdown on Copyright Law," /{Los Angeles Times,}/ 6 October 2002; David Streitfeld, "Classic Movies, Songs, Books at Stake; Supreme Court Hears Arguments Today on Striking Down Copyright Extension," /{Orlando Sentinel Tribune,}/ 9 October 2002. }~ +={ Agee, Michael +2 ; + films : + in public domain +12 ; + Hal Roach Studios ; + Laurel and Hardy films ; + Lucky Dog, The ; + public domain : + films in +12 +} + +Yet Agee opposed the CTEA. His reasons demonstrate a rare virtue in this culture: selflessness. He argued in a brief before the Supreme Court that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act will, if left standing, destroy a whole generation of American film. +={ Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) } + +His argument is straightforward. A tiny fraction of this work has any continuing commercial value. The rest - to the extent it survives at all - sits in vaults gathering dust. It may be that some of this work not now commercially valuable will be deemed to be valuable by the owners of the vaults. For this to occur, however, the commercial benefit from the work must exceed the costs of making the work available for distribution. + +We can't know the benefits, but we do know a lot about the costs. For most of the history of film, the costs of restoring film were very high; digital technology has lowered these costs substantially. While it cost more than $10,000 to restore a ninety-minute black-and-white film in 1993, it can now cost as little as $100 to digitize one hour of 8 mm film.~{ Brief of Hal Roach Studios and Michael Agee as Amicus Curiae Supporting the Petitoners, /{Eldred v. Ashcroft,}/ 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01- 618), 12. See also Brief of Amicus Curiae filed on behalf of Petitioners by the Internet Archive, /{Eldred v. Ashcroft,}/ available at link #53. }~ +={ films : + restoration of +4 +} + +Restoration technology is not the only cost, nor the most important. Lawyers, too, are a cost, and increasingly, a very important one. In addition to preserving the film, a distributor needs to secure the rights. And to secure the rights for a film that is under copyright, you need to locate the copyright owner. +={ films : + multiple copyrights associated with +1 +} + +Or more accurately, /{owners}/. As we've seen, there isn't only a single copyright associated with a film; there are many. There isn't a single person whom you can contact about those copyrights; there are as many as can hold the rights, which turns out to be an extremely large number. Thus the costs of clearing the rights to these films is exceptionally high. + +"But can't you just restore the film, distribute it, and then pay the copyright owner when she shows up?" Sure, if you want to commit a felony. And even if you're not worried about committing a felony, when she does show up, she'll have the right to sue you for all the profits you have made. So, if you're successful, you can be fairly confident you'll be getting a call from someone's lawyer. And if you're not successful, you won't make enough to cover the costs of your own lawyer. Either way, you have to talk to a lawyer. And as is too often the case, saying you have to talk to a lawyer is the same as saying you won't make any money. + +For some films, the benefit of releasing the film may well exceed these costs. But for the vast majority of them, there is no way the benefit would outweigh the legal costs. Thus, for the vast majority of old films, Agee argued, the film will not be restored and distributed until the copyright expires. +={ Agee, Michael } + +But by the time the copyright for these films expires, the film will have expired. These films were produced on nitrate-based stock, and nitrate stock dissolves over time. They will be gone, and the metal canisters in which they are now stored will be filled with nothing more than dust. + +!_ Of all the +creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. For that tiny fraction, the copyright creates incentives to produce and distribute the creative work. For that tiny fraction, the copyright acts as an "engine of free expression." + +But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative work has a commercial life is extremely short. As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends. +={ culture : + commercial vs. noncommercial +1 +} + +Yet that doesn't mean the life of the creative work ends. We don't keep libraries of books in order to compete with Barnes & Noble, and we don't have archives of films because we expect people to choose between spending Friday night watching new movies and spending Friday night watching a 1930 news documentary. The noncommercial life of culture is important and valuable - for entertainment but also, and more importantly, for knowledge. To understand who we are, and where we came from, and how we have made the mistakes that we have, we need to have access to this history. + +Copyrights in this context do not drive an engine of free expression. In this context, there is no need for an exclusive right. Copyrights in this context do no good. + +Yet, for most of our history, they also did little harm. For most of our history, when a work ended its commercial life, there was no /{copyright-related use}/ that would be inhibited by an exclusive right. When a book went out of print, you could not buy it from a publisher. But you could still buy it from a used book store, and when a used book store sells it, in America, at least, there is no need to pay the copyright owner anything. Thus, the ordinary use of a book after its commercial life ended was a use that was independent of copyright law. + +The same was effectively true of film. Because the costs of restoring a film - the real economic costs, not the lawyer costs - were so high, it was never at all feasible to preserve or restore film. Like the remains of a great dinner, when it's over, it's over. Once a film passed out of its commercial life, it may have been archived for a bit, but that was the end of its life so long as the market didn't have more to offer. +={ films : + restoration of +} + +In other words, though copyright has been relatively short for most of our history, long copyrights wouldn't have mattered for the works that lost their commercial value. Long copyrights for these works would not have interfered with anything. + +But this situation has now changed. + +One crucially important consequence of the emergence of digital technologies is to enable the archive that Brewster Kahle dreams of. Digital technologies now make it possible to preserve and give access to all sorts of knowledge. Once a book goes out of print, we can now imagine digitizing it and making it available to everyone, forever. Once a film goes out of distribution, we could digitize it and make it available to everyone, forever. Digital technologies give new life to copyrighted material after it passes out of its commercial life. It is now possible to preserve and assure universal access to this knowledge and culture, whereas before it was not. +={ Kahle, Brewster +3 ; + archives, digital +4 ; + culture : + archives of +4 +} + +And now copyright law does get in the way. Every step of producing this digital archive of our culture infringes on the exclusive right of copyright. To digitize a book is to copy it. To do that requires permission of the copyright owner. The same with music, film, or any other aspect of our culture protected by copyright. The effort to make these things available to history, or to researchers, or to those who just want to explore, is now inhibited by a set of rules that were written for a radically different context. + +Here is the core of the harm that comes from extending terms: Now that technology enables us to rebuild the library of Alexandria, the law gets in the way. And it doesn't get in the way for any useful /{copyright}/ purpose, for the purpose of copyright is to enable the commercial market that spreads culture. No, we are talking about culture after it has lived its commercial life. In this context, copyright is serving no purpose /{at all}/ related to the spread of knowledge. In this context, copyright is not an engine of free expression. Copyright is a brake. +={ libraries : + archival function of +2 +} + +You may well ask, "But if digital technologies lower the costs for Brewster Kahle, then they will lower the costs for Random House, too. So won't Random House do as well as Brewster Kahle in spreading culture widely?" + +Maybe. Someday. But there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that publishers would be as complete as libraries. If Barnes & Noble offered to lend books from its stores for a low price, would that eliminate the need for libraries? Only if you think that the only role of a library is to serve what "the market" would demand. But if you think the role of a library is bigger than this - if you think its role is to archive culture, whether there's a demand for any particular bit of that culture or not - then we can't count on the commercial market to do our library work for us. + +I would be the first to agree that it should do as much as it can: We should rely upon the market as much as possible to spread and enable culture. My message is absolutely not antimarket. But where we see the market is not doing the job, then we should allow nonmarket forces the freedom to fill the gaps. As one researcher calculated for American culture, 94 percent of the films, books, and music produced between 1923 and 1946 is not commercially available. However much you love the commercial market, if access is a value, then 6 percent is a failure to provide that value.~{ Jason Schultz, "The Myth of the 1976 Copyright 'Chaos' Theory," 20 December 2002, available at link #54. }~ + +!_ In January 1999, +we filed a lawsuit on Eric Eldred's behalf in federal district court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to declare the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act unconstitutional. The two central claims that we made were (1) that extending existing terms violated the Constitution's "limited Times" requirement, and (2) that extending terms by another twenty years violated the First Amendment. +={ Eldred v. Ashcroft +126 ; + Lessig, Lawrence : + Eldred case involvement of +126 ; + Congress, U.S. : + copyright terms extended by +2 ; + Constitution, U.S. : + First Amendment to ; + First Amendment : + copyright extension as violation of ; + Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) : + Supreme Court challenge of +7 ; + Supreme Court, U.S. : + on copyright term extensions +126 ; + copyright law : + Supreme Court case on term extension of +126 | term extensions in +126 +} + +The district court dismissed our claims without even hearing an argument. A panel of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also dismissed our claims, though after hearing an extensive argument. But that decision at least had a dissent, by one of the most conservative judges on that court. That dissent gave our claims life. + +Judge David Sentelle said the CTEA violated the requirement that copyrights be for "limited Times" only. His argument was as elegant as it was simple: If Congress can extend existing terms, then there is no "stopping point" to Congress's power under the Copyright Clause. The power to extend existing terms means Congress is not required to grant terms that are "limited." Thus, Judge Sentelle argued, the court had to interpret the term "limited Times" to give it meaning. And the best interpretation, Judge Sentelle argued, would be to deny Congress the power to extend existing terms. +={ Congress, U.S. : + challenge of CTEA legislation of +124 ; + Sentelle, David +2 +} + +We asked the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as a whole to hear the case. Cases are ordinarily heard in panels of three, except for important cases or cases that raise issues specific to the circuit as a whole, where the court will sit "en banc" to hear the case. +={ Court of Appeals : + D.C. Circuit +1 ; + D.C. Court of Appeals +1 +} + +The Court of Appeals rejected our request to hear the case en banc. This time, Judge Sentelle was joined by the most liberal member of the D.C. Circuit, Judge David Tatel. Both the most conservative and the most liberal judges in the D.C. Circuit believed Congress had over-stepped its bounds. +={ Tatel, David } + +It was here that most expected /{Eldred v. Ashcroft}/ would die, for the Supreme Court rarely reviews any decision by a court of appeals. (It hears about one hundred cases a year, out of more than five thousand appeals.) And it practically never reviews a decision that upholds a statute when no other court has yet reviewed the statute. +={ Supreme Court, U.S. : + annual docket of +} + +But in February 2002, the Supreme Court surprised the world by granting our petition to review the D.C. Circuit opinion. Argument was set for October of 2002. The summer would be spent writing briefs and preparing for argument. + +!_ It is over +a year later as I write these words. It is still astonishingly hard. If you know anything at all about this story, you know that we lost the appeal. And if you know something more than just the minimum, you probably think there was no way this case could have been won. After our defeat, I received literally thousands of missives by well-wishers and supporters, thanking me for my work on behalf of this noble but doomed cause. And none from this pile was more significant to me than the e-mail from my client, Eric Eldred. +={ Eldred, Eric } + +But my client and these friends were wrong. This case could have been won. It should have been won. And no matter how hard I try to retell this story to myself, I can never escape believing that my own mistake lost it. + +!_ The mistake +was made early, though it became obvious only at the very end. Our case had been supported from the very beginning by an extraordinary lawyer, Geoffrey Stewart, and by the law firm he had moved to, Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. Jones Day took a great deal of heat from its copyright-protectionist clients for supporting us. They ignored this pressure (something that few law firms today would ever do), and throughout the case, they gave it everything they could. +={ Stewart, Gordon +1 ; + Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue (Jones Day) +1 +} + +There were three key lawyers on the case from Jones Day. Geoff Stewart was the first, but then Dan Bromberg and Don Ayer became quite involved. Bromberg and Ayer in particular had a common view about how this case would be won: We would only win, they repeatedly told me, if we could make the issue seem "important" to the Supreme Court. It had to seem as if dramatic harm were being done to free speech and free culture; otherwise, they would never vote against "the most powerful media companies in the world." +={ Ayer, Don ; + Bromberg, Dan +} + +I hate this view of the law. Of course I thought the Sonny Bono Act was a dramatic harm to free speech and free culture. Of course I still think it is. But the idea that the Supreme Court decides the law based on how important they believe the issues are is just wrong. It might be "right" as in "true," I thought, but it is "wrong" as in "it just shouldn't be that way." As I believed that any faithful interpretation of what the framers of our Constitution did would yield the conclusion that the CTEA was unconstitutional, and as I believed that any faithful interpretation of what the First Amendment means would yield the conclusion that the power to extend existing copyright terms is unconstitutional, I was not persuaded that we had to sell our case like soap. Just as a law that bans the swastika is unconstitutional not because the Court likes Nazis but because such a law would violate the Constitution, so too, in my view, would the Court decide whether Congress's law was constitutional based on the Constitution, not based on whether they liked the values that the framers put in the Constitution. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + First Amendment to ; + First Amendment : + copyright extension as violation of ; + Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) : + Supreme Court challenge of +} + +In any case, I thought, the Court must already see the danger and the harm caused by this sort of law. Why else would they grant review? There was no reason to hear the case in the Supreme Court if they weren't convinced that this regulation was harmful. So in my view, we didn't need to persuade them that this law was bad, we needed to show why it was unconstitutional. + +There was one way, however, in which I felt politics would matter and in which I thought a response was appropriate. I was convinced that the Court would not hear our arguments if it thought these were just the arguments of a group of lefty loons. This Supreme Court was not about to launch into a new field of judicial review if it seemed that this field of review was simply the preference of a small political minority. Although my focus in the case was not to demonstrate how bad the Sonny Bono Act was but to demonstrate that it was unconstitutional, my hope was to make this argument against a background of briefs that covered the full range of political views. To show that this claim against the CTEA was grounded in /{law}/ and not politics, then, we tried to gather the widest range of credible critics - credible not because they were rich and famous, but because they, in the aggregate, demonstrated that this law was unconstitutional regardless of one's politics. +={ Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) : + Supreme Court challenge of +} + +The first step happened all by itself. Phyllis Schlafly's organization, Eagle Forum, had been an opponent of the CTEA from the very beginning. Mrs. Schlafly viewed the CTEA as a sellout by Congress. In November 1998, she wrote a stinging editorial attacking the Republican Congress for allowing the law to pass. As she wrote, "Do you sometimes wonder why bills that create a financial windfall to narrow special interests slide easily through the intricate legislative process, while bills that benefit the general public seem to get bogged down?" The answer, as the editorial documented, was the power of money. Schlafly enumerated Disney's contributions to the key players on the committees. It was money, not justice, that gave Mickey Mouse twenty more years in Disney's control, Schlafly argued. +={ Disney, Inc. ; + Eagle Forum +2 ; + Mickey Mouse ; + Schlafy, Phyllis +} + +In the Court of Appeals, Eagle Forum was eager to file a brief supporting our position. Their brief made the argument that became the core claim in the Supreme Court: If Congress can extend the term of existing copyrights, there is no limit to Congress's power to set terms. That strong conservative argument persuaded a strong conservative judge, Judge Sentelle. +={ Court of Appeals : + D.C. Circuit ; + D.C. Court of Appeals ; + Sentelle, David +} + +In the Supreme Court, the briefs on our side were about as diverse as it gets. They included an extraordinary historical brief by the Free Software Foundation (home of the GNU project that made GNU/ Linux possible). They included a powerful brief about the costs of uncertainty by Intel. There were two law professors' briefs, one by copyright scholars and one by First Amendment scholars. There was an exhaustive and uncontroverted brief by the world's experts in the history of the Progress Clause. And of course, there was a new brief by Eagle Forum, repeating and strengthening its arguments. +={ Free Software Foundation ; + GNU/Linux operating system ; + Linux operating system ; + Intel ; + Constitution, U.S. : + Progress Clause of ; + Progress Clause +} + +Those briefs framed a legal argument. Then to support the legal argument, there were a number of powerful briefs by libraries and archives, including the Internet Archive, the American Association of Law Libraries, and the National Writers Union. +={ American Association of Law Libraries ; + Internet Archive ; + National Writers Union +} + +But two briefs captured the policy argument best. One made the argument I've already described: A brief by Hal Roach Studios argued that unless the law was struck, a whole generation of American film would disappear. The other made the economic argument absolutely clear. +={ Hal Roach Studios } + +This economists' brief was signed by seventeen economists, including five Nobel Prize winners, including Ronald Coase, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Kenneth Arrow, and George Akerlof. The economists, as the list of Nobel winners demonstrates, spanned the political spectrum. Their conclusions were powerful: There was no plausible claim that extending the terms of existing copyrights would do anything to increase incentives to create. Such extensions were nothing more than "rent-seeking" - the fancy term economists use to describe special- interest legislation gone wild. +={ Akerlof, George ; + Arrow, Kenneth ; + Buchanan, James ; + Coase, Ronald ; + Fridman, Milton +2 +} + +The same effort at balance was reflected in the legal team we gathered to write our briefs in the case. The Jones Day lawyers had been with us from the start. But when the case got to the Supreme Court, we added three lawyers to help us frame this argument to this Court: Alan Morrison, a lawyer from Public Citizen, a Washington group that had made constitutional history with a series of seminal victories in the Supreme Court defending individual rights; my colleague and dean, Kathleen Sullivan, who had argued many cases in the Court, and who had advised us early on about a First Amendment strategy; and finally, former solicitor general Charles Fried. +={ Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue (Jones Day) ; + Morrison, Alan ; + Sullivan, Kathleen ; + Fried, Charles +1 ; + Public Citizen +} + +Fried was a special victory for our side. Every other former solicitor general was hired by the other side to defend Congress's power to give media companies the special favor of extended copyright terms. Fried was the only one who turned down that lucrative assignment to stand up for something he believed in. He had been Ronald Reagan's chief lawyer in the Supreme Court. He had helped craft the line of cases that limited Congress's power in the context of the Commerce Clause. And while he had argued many positions in the Supreme Court that I personally disagreed with, his joining the cause was a vote of confidence in our argument. +={ Reagan, Ronald ; + Congress, U.S. : + constitutional powers of ; + Constitution, U.S. : + Commerce Clause of +} + +The government, in defending the statute, had its collection of friends, as well. Significantly, however, none of these "friends" included historians or economists. The briefs on the other side of the case were written exclusively by major media companies, congressmen, and copyright holders. + +The media companies were not surprising. They had the most to gain from the law. The congressmen were not surprising either - they were defending their power and, indirectly, the gravy train of contributions such power induced. And of course it was not surprising that the copyright holders would defend the idea that they should continue to have the right to control who did what with content they wanted to control. + +Dr. Seuss's representatives, for example, argued that it was better for the Dr. Seuss estate to control what happened to Dr. Seuss's work - better than allowing it to fall into the public domain - because if this creativity were in the public domain, then people could use it to "glorify drugs or to create pornography."~{ Brief of Amici Dr. Seuss Enterprise et al., /{Eldred v. Ashcroft,}/ 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01-618), 19. }~ That was also the motive of the Gershwin estate, which defended its "protection" of the work of George Gershwin. They refuse, for example, to license /{Porgy and Bess}/ to anyone who refuses to use African Americans in the cast.~{ Dinitia Smith, "Immortal Words, Immortal Royalties? Even Mickey Mouse Joins the Fray," /{New York Times,}/ 28 March 1998, B7. }~ That's their view of how this part of American culture should be controlled, and they wanted this law to help them effect that control. +={ Gershwin, George +1 ; + Porgy and Bess ; + pornography ; + Seuss, Dr. +1 +} + +This argument made clear a theme that is rarely noticed in this debate. When Congress decides to extend the term of existing copyrights, Congress is making a choice about which speakers it will favor. Famous and beloved copyright owners, such as the Gershwin estate and Dr. Seuss, come to Congress and say, "Give us twenty years to control the speech about these icons of American culture. We'll do better with them than anyone else." Congress of course likes to reward the popular and famous by giving them what they want. But when Congress gives people an exclusive right to speak in a certain way, that's just what the First Amendment is traditionally meant to block. +={ First Amendment : + copyright extension as violation of ; + Constitution, U.S. : + First Amendment to +} + +We argued as much in a final brief. Not only would upholding the CTEA mean that there was no limit to the power of Congress to extend copyrights - extensions that would further concentrate the market; it would also mean that there was no limit to Congress's power to play favorites, through copyright, with who has the right to speak. +={ Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) : + Supreme Court challenge of +64 ; + Congress, U.S. : + constitutional powers of +8 +} + +!_ Between February +and October, there was little I did beyond preparing for this case. Early on, as I said, I set the strategy. + +The Supreme Court was divided into two important camps. One camp we called "the Conservatives." The other we called "the Rest." The Conservatives included Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O'Connor, Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas. These five had been the most consistent in limiting Congress's power. They were the five who had supported the /{Lopez/Morrison}/ line of cases that said that an enumerated power had to be interpreted to assure that Congress's powers had limits. +={ Kennedy, Anthony ; + O'Connor, Sandra Day ; + Rehnquist, William H. ; + Thomas, Clarence ; + United States v. Lopez ; + United States v. Morrison ; + Scalia, Antonin ; + Congress, U.S. : + Supreme Court restraint on ; + Supreme Court, U.S. : + congressional actions restrained by | factions of +3 +} + +The Rest were the four Justices who had strongly opposed limits on Congress's power. These four - Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer - had repeatedly argued that the Constitution gives Congress broad discretion to decide how best to implement its powers. In case after case, these justices had argued that the Court's role should be one of deference. Though the votes of these four justices were the votes that I personally had most consistently agreed with, they were also the votes that we were least likely to get. +={ Breyer, Stephen ; + Ginsburg, Ruth Bader ; + Stevens, John Paul ; + Souter, David +} + +In particular, the least likely was Justice Ginsburg's. In addition to her general view about deference to Congress (except where issues of gender are involved), she had been particularly deferential in the context of intellectual property protections. She and her daughter (an excellent and well-known intellectual property scholar) were cut from the same intellectual property cloth. We expected she would agree with the writings of her daughter: that Congress had the power in this context to do as it wished, even if what Congress wished made little sense. + +Close behind Justice Ginsburg were two justices whom we also viewed as unlikely allies, though possible surprises. Justice Souter strongly favored deference to Congress, as did Justice Breyer. But both were also very sensitive to free speech concerns. And as we strongly believed, there was a very important free speech argument against these retrospective extensions. +={ Breyer, Stephen ; + Ginsburg, Ruth Bader ; + Souter, David +} + +The only vote we could be confident about was that of Justice Stevens. History will record Justice Stevens as one of the greatest judges on this Court. His votes are consistently eclectic, which just means that no simple ideology explains where he will stand. But he had consistently argued for limits in the context of intellectual property generally. We were fairly confident he would recognize limits here. +={ Stevens, John Paul } + +This analysis of "the Rest" showed most clearly where our focus had to be: on the Conservatives. To win this case, we had to crack open these five and get at least a majority to go our way.Thus, the single overriding argument that animated our claim rested on the Conservatives' most important jurisprudential innovation - the argument that Judge Sentelle had relied upon in the Court of Appeals, that Congress's power must be interpreted so that its enumerated powers have limits. +={ Court of Appeals : + D.C. Circuit ; + D.C. Court of Appeals ; + Sentelle, David +} + +This then was the core of our strategy - a strategy for which I am responsible. We would get the Court to see that just as with the /{Lopez}/ case, under the government's argument here, Congress would always have unlimited power to extend existing terms. If anything was plain about Congress's power under the Progress Clause, it was that this power was supposed to be "limited." Our aim would be to get the Court to reconcile /{Eldred}/ with /{Lopez:}/ If Congress's power to regulate commerce was limited, then so, too, must Congress's power to regulate copyright be limited. +={ United States v. Lopez ; + commerce, interstate ; + interstate commerce ; + Congress, U.S. : + in constitutional Progress Clause ; + Progress Clause ; + Congress, U.S. : + copyright terms extended by +3 ; + Constitution, U.S. : + Progress Clause of +} + +!_ The argument +on the government's side came down to this: Congress has done it before. It should be allowed to do it again. The government claimed that from the very beginning, Congress has been extending the term of existing copyrights. So, the government argued, the Court should not now say that practice is unconstitutional. + +There was some truth to the government's claim, but not much. We certainly agreed that Congress had extended existing terms in 1831 and in 1909. And of course, in 1962, Congress began extending existing terms regularly - eleven times in forty years. + +But this "consistency" should be kept in perspective. Congress extended existing terms once in the first hundred years of the Republic. It then extended existing terms once again in the next fifty. Those rare extensions are in contrast to the now regular practice of extending existing terms. Whatever restraint Congress had had in the past, that restraint was now gone. Congress was now in a cycle of extensions; there was no reason to expect that cycle would end. This Court had not hesitated to intervene where Congress was in a similar cycle of extension. There was no reason it couldn't intervene here. + +!_ Oral argument +was scheduled for the first week in October. I arrived in D.C. two weeks before the argument. During those two weeks, I was repeatedly "mooted" by lawyers who had volunteered to help in the case. Such "moots" are basically practice rounds, where wannabe justices fire questions at wannabe winners. + +I was convinced that to win, I had to keep the Court focused on a single point: that if this extension is permitted, then there is no limit to the power to set terms. Going with the government would mean that terms would be effectively unlimited; going with us would give Congress a clear line to follow: Don't extend existing terms. The moots were an effective practice; I found ways to take every question back to this central idea. + +One moot was before the lawyers at Jones Day. Don Ayer was the skeptic. He had served in the Reagan Justice Department with Solicitor General Charles Fried. He had argued many cases before the Supreme Court. And in his review of the moot, he let his concern speak: +={ Ayer, Don +2 ; + Fried, Charles ; + Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue (Jones Day) ; + Reagan, Ronald +} + +"I'm just afraid that unless they really see the harm, they won't be willing to upset this practice that the government says has been a consistent practice for two hundred years. You have to make them see the harm - passionately get them to see the harm. For if they don't see that, then we haven't any chance of winning." + +He may have argued many cases before this Court, I thought, but he didn't understand its soul. As a clerk, I had seen the Justices do the right thing - not because of politics but because it was right. As a law professor, I had spent my life teaching my students that this Court does the right thing - not because of politics but because it is right. As I listened to Ayer's plea for passion in pressing politics, I understood his point, and I rejected it. Our argument was right. That was enough. Let the politicians learn to see that it was also good. + +!_ The night before +the argument, a line of people began to form in front of the Supreme Court. The case had become a focus of the press and of the movement to free culture. Hundreds stood in line for the chance to see the proceedings. Scores spent the night on the Supreme Court steps so that they would be assured a seat. + +Not everyone has to wait in line. People who know the Justices can ask for seats they control. (I asked Justice Scalia's chambers for seats for my parents, for example.) Members of the Supreme Court bar can get a seat in a special section reserved for them. And senators and congressmen have a special place where they get to sit, too. And finally, of course, the press has a gallery, as do clerks working for the Justices on the Court. As we entered that morning, there was no place that was not taken. This was an argument about intellectual property law, yet the halls were filled. As I walked in to take my seat at the front of the Court, I saw my parents sitting on the left. As I sat down at the table, I saw Jack Valenti sitting in the special section ordinarily reserved for family of the Justices. +={ Scalia, Antonin ; + Valenti, Jack +} + +When the Chief Justice called me to begin my argument, I began where I intended to stay: on the question of the limits on Congress's power. This was a case about enumerated powers, I said, and whether those enumerated powers had any limit. +={ Congress, U.S. : + constitutional powers of +3 +} + +Justice O'Connor stopped me within one minute of my opening. The history was bothering her. +={ O'Connor, Sandra Day +1 } + +``` quote +JUSTICE O'CONNOR: Congress has extended the term so often through the years, and if you are right, don't we run the risk of upsetting previous extensions of time? I mean, this seems to be a practice that began with the very first act." +``` + +She was quite willing to concede "that this flies directly in the face of what the framers had in mind." But my response again and again was to emphasize limits on Congress's power. + +``` quote +MR. LESSIG: Well, if it flies in the face of what the framers had in mind, then the question is, is there a way of interpreting their words that gives effect to what they had in mind, and the answer is yes." +``` + +There were two points in this argument when I should have seen where the Court was going. The first was a question by Justice Kennedy, who observed, +={ Kennedy, Anthony +1 } + +``` quote +JUSTICE KENNEDY: Well, I suppose implicit in the argument that the '76 act, too, should have been declared void, and that we might leave it alone because of the disruption, is that for all these years the act has impeded progress in science and the useful arts. I just don't see any empirical evidence for that. +``` + +Here follows my clear mistake. Like a professor correcting a student, I answered, + +``` quote +MR. LESSIG: Justice, we are not making an empirical claim at all. Nothing in our Copyright Clause claim hangs upon the empirical assertion about impeding progress. Our only argument is this is a structural limit necessary to assure that what would be an effectively perpetual term not be permitted under the copyright laws." +``` + +That was a correct answer, but it wasn't the right answer. The right answer was instead that there was an obvious and profound harm. Any number of briefs had been written about it. He wanted to hear it. And here was the place Don Ayer's advice should have mattered. This was a softball; my answer was a swing and a miss. +={ Ayer, Don } + +The second came from the Chief, for whom the whole case had been crafted. For the Chief Justice had crafted the /{Lopez}/ ruling, and we hoped that he would see this case as its second cousin. +={ United States v. Lopez } + +It was clear a second into his question that he wasn't at all sympathetic. To him, we were a bunch of anarchists. As he asked: + +``` quote +CHIEF JUSTICE: Well, but you want more than that. You want the right to copy verbatim other people's books, don't you? +={ Rehnquist, William H. } + +MR. LESSIG: We want the right to copy verbatim works that should be in the public domain and would be in the public domain but for a statute that cannot be justified under ordinary First Amendment analysis or under a proper reading of the limits built into the Copyright Clause." +``` + +Things went better for us when the government gave its argument; for now the Court picked up on the core of our claim. As Justice Scalia asked Solicitor General Olson, +={ Olson, Theodore B. +2 ; + Scalia, Antonin +1 +} + +``` quote +JUSTICE SCALIA: You say that the functional equivalent of an unlimited time would be a violation [of the Constitution], but that's precisely the argument that's being made by petitioners here, that a limited time which is extendable is the functional equivalent of an unlimited time." +``` + +When Olson was finished, it was my turn to give a closing rebuttal. Olson's flailing had revived my anger. But my anger still was directed to the academic, not the practical. The government was arguing as if this were the first case ever to consider limits on Congress's Copyright and Patent Clause power. Ever the professor and not the advocate, I closed by pointing out the long history of the Court imposing limits on Congress's power in the name of the Copyright and Patent Clause - indeed, the very first case striking a law of Congress as exceeding a specific enumerated power was based upon the Copyright and Patent Clause. All true. But it wasn't going to move the Court to my side. +={ Congress, U.S. : + constitutional powers of +2 +} + +!_ As I left +the court that day, I knew there were a hundred points I wished I could remake. There were a hundred questions I wished I had answered differently. But one way of thinking about this case left me optimistic. + +The government had been asked over and over again, what is the limit? Over and over again, it had answered there is no limit. This was precisely the answer I wanted the Court to hear. For I could not imagine how the Court could understand that the government believed Congress's power was unlimited under the terms of the Copyright Clause, and sustain the government's argument. The solicitor general had made my argument for me. No matter how often I tried, I could not understand how the Court could find that Congress's power under the Commerce Clause was limited, but under the Copyright Clause, unlimited. In those rare moments when I let myself believe that we may have prevailed, it was because I felt this Court - in particular, the Conservatives - would feel itself constrained by the rule of law that it had established elsewhere. + +!_ The morning +of January 15, 2003, I was five minutes late to the office and missed the 7:00 A.M.call from the Supreme Court clerk. Listening to the message, I could tell in an instant that she had bad news to report.The Supreme Court had affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals. Seven justices had voted in the majority. There were two dissents. + +A few seconds later, the opinions arrived by e-mail. I took the phone off the hook, posted an announcement to our blog, and sat down to see where I had been wrong in my reasoning. + +My /{reasoning}/. Here was a case that pitted all the money in the world against /{reasoning}/. And here was the last naïve law professor, scouring the pages, looking for reasoning. + +I first scoured the opinion, looking for how the Court would distinguish the principle in this case from the principle in /{Lopez}/. The argument was nowhere to be found. The case was not even cited. The argument that was the core argument of our case did not even appear in the Court's opinion. +={ United States v. Lopez +3 } + +Justice Ginsburg simply ignored the enumerated powers argument. Consistent with her view that Congress's power was not limited generally, she had found Congress's power not limited here. +={ Ginsburg, Ruth Bader } + +Her opinion was perfectly reasonable - for her, and for Justice Souter. Neither believes in /{Lopez}/. It would be too much to expect them to write an opinion that recognized, much less explained, the doctrine they had worked so hard to defeat. +={ Souter, David } + +But as I realized what had happened, I couldn't quite believe what I was reading. I had said there was no way this Court could reconcile limited powers with the Commerce Clause and unlimited powers with the Progress Clause. It had never even occurred to me that they could reconcile the two simply /{by not addressing the argument}/. There was no inconsistency because they would not talk about the two together. There was therefore no principle that followed from the /{Lopez}/ case: In that context, Congress's power would be limited, but in this context it would not. + +Yet by what right did they get to choose which of the framers' values they would respect? By what right did they - the silent five - get to select the part of the Constitution they would enforce based on the values they thought important? We were right back to the argument that I said I hated at the start: I had failed to convince them that the issue here was important, and I had failed to recognize that however much I might hate a system in which the Court gets to pick the constitutional values that it will respect, that is the system we have. + +Justices Breyer and Stevens wrote very strong dissents. Stevens's opinion was crafted internal to the law: He argued that the tradition of intellectual property law should not support this unjustified extension of terms. He based his argument on a parallel analysis that had governed in the context of patents (so had we). But the rest of the Court discounted the parallel - without explaining how the very same words in the Progress Clause could come to mean totally different things depending upon whether the words were about patents or copyrights. The Court let Justice Stevens's charge go unanswered. +={ Breyer, Stephen +1 ; + patents : + duration of ; + Stevens, John Paul +} + +Justice Breyer's opinion, perhaps the best opinion he has ever written, was external to the Constitution. He argued that the term of copyrights has become so long as to be effectively unlimited. We had said that under the current term, a copyright gave an author 99.8 percent of the value of a perpetual term. Breyer said we were wrong, that the actual number was 99.9997 percent of a perpetual term. Either way, the point was clear: If the Constitution said a term had to be "limited," and the existing term was so long as to be effectively unlimited, then it was unconstitutional. +={ copyright : + in perpetuity +} + +These two justices understood all the arguments we had made. But because neither believed in the /{Lopez}/ case, neither was willing to push it as a reason to reject this extension. The case was decided without anyone having addressed the argument that we had carried from Judge Sentelle. It was /{Hamlet}/ without the Prince. +={ Setnelle, David ; + United States v. Lopez +2 +} + +!_ Defeat brings depression. +They say it is a sign of health when depression gives way to anger. My anger came quickly, but it didn't cure the depression. This anger was of two sorts. + +It was first anger with the five "Conservatives." It would have been one thing for them to have explained why the principle of /{Lopez}/ didn't apply in this case. That wouldn't have been a very convincing argument, I don't believe, having read it made by others, and having tried to make it myself. But it at least would have been an act of integrity. These justices in particular have repeatedly said that the proper mode of interpreting the Constitution is "originalism" - to first understand the framers' text, interpreted in their context, in light of the structure of the Constitution. That method had produced /{Lopez}/ and many other "originalist" rulings. Where was their "originalism" now? +={ Constitution, U.S. : + originalist interpretation of ; + originalism +} + +Here, they had joined an opinion that never once tried to explain what the framers had meant by crafting the Progress Clause as they did; they joined an opinion that never once tried to explain how the structure of that clause would affect the interpretation of Congress's power. And they joined an opinion that didn't even try to explain why this grant of power could be unlimited, whereas the Commerce Clause would be limited. In short, they had joined an opinion that did not apply to, and was inconsistent with, their own method for interpreting the Constitution. This opinion may well have yielded a result that they liked. It did not produce a reason that was consistent with their own principles. +={ Constitution, U.S. : + Progress Clause of ; + Progress Clause ; + Constitution, U.S. : + Commerce Clause of +} + +My anger with the Conservatives quickly yielded to anger with myself. For I had let a view of the law that I liked interfere with a view of the law as it is. + +Most lawyers, and most law professors, have little patience for idealism about courts in general and this Supreme Court in particular. Most have a much more pragmatic view. When Don Ayer said that this case would be won based on whether I could convince the Justices that the framers' values were important, I fought the idea, because I didn't want to believe that that is how this Court decides. I insisted on arguing this case as if it were a simple application of a set of principles. I had an argument that followed in logic. I didn't need to waste my time showing it should also follow in popularity. +={ Ayer, Don } + +As I read back over the transcript from that argument in October, I can see a hundred places where the answers could have taken the conversation in different directions, where the truth about the harm that this unchecked power will cause could have been made clear to this Court. Justice Kennedy in good faith wanted to be shown. I, idiotically, corrected his question. Justice Souter in good faith wanted to be shown the First Amendment harms. I, like a math teacher, reframed the question to make the logical point. I had shown them how they could strike this law of Congress if they wanted to. There were a hundred places where I could have helped them want to, yet my stubbornness, my refusal to give in, stopped me. I have stood before hundreds of audiences trying to persuade; I have used passion in that effort to persuade; but I refused to stand before this audience and try to persuade with the passion I had used elsewhere. It was not the basis on which a court should decide the issue. +={ Souter, David ; + Kennedy, Anthony ; + Constitution, U.S. : + First Amendment to ; + First Amendment : + copyright extension as violation of +} + +Would it have been different if I had argued it differently? Would it have been different if Don Ayer had argued it? Or Charles Fried? Or Kathleen Sullivan? + +My friends huddled around me to insist it would not. The Court was not ready, my friends insisted. This was a loss that was destined. It would take a great deal more to show our society why our framers were right. And when we do that, we will be able to show that Court. + +Maybe, but I doubt it. These Justices have no financial interest in doing anything except the right thing. They are not lobbied. They have little reason to resist doing right. I can't help but think that if I had stepped down from this pretty picture of dispassionate justice, I could have persuaded. + +And even if I couldn't, then that doesn't excuse what happened in January. For at the start of this case, one of America's leading intellectual property professors stated publicly that my bringing this case was a mistake. "The Court is not ready," Peter Jaszi said; this issue should not be raised until it is. +={ Jaszi, Peter } + +After the argument and after the decision, Peter said to me, and publicly, that he was wrong. But if indeed that Court could not have been persuaded, then that is all the evidence that's needed to know that here again Peter was right. Either I was not ready to argue this case in a way that would do some good or they were not ready to hear this case in a way that would do some good. Either way, the decision to bring this case - a decision I had made four years before - was wrong. + +!_ While the reaction +to the Sonny Bono Act itself was almost unanimously negative, the reaction to the Court's decision was mixed. No one, at least in the press, tried to say that extending the term of copyright was a good idea. We had won that battle over ideas. Where the decision was praised, it was praised by papers that had been skeptical of the Court's activism in other cases. Deference was a good thing, even if it left standing a silly law. But where the decision was attacked, it was attacked because it left standing a silly and harmful law. /{The New York Times}/ wrote in its editorial, + +``` quote +In effect, the Supreme Court's decision makes it likely that we are seeing the beginning of the end of public domain and the birth of copyright perpetuity. The public domain has been a grand experiment, one that should not be allowed to die. The ability to draw freely on the entire creative output of humanity is one of the reasons we live in a time of such fruitful creative ferment." +``` +={ copyright : + in perpetuity +} + +The best responses were in the cartoons. There was a gaggle of hilarious images" of Mickey in jail and the like. The best, from my view of the case, was Ruben Bolling's, reproduced on the next page. The "powerful and wealthy" line is a bit unfair. But the punch in the face felt exactly like that. +={ Bolling, Ruben +2 } + +The image that will always stick in my head is that evoked by the quote from /{The New York Times}/. That "grand experiment" we call the "public domain" is over? When I can make light of it, I think, "Honey, I shrunk the Constitution." But I can rarely make light of it. We had in our Constitution a commitment to free culture. In the case that I fathered, the Supreme Court effectively renounced that commitment. A better lawyer would have made them see differently. + +{freeculture18.png 550x720 }http://www.free-culture.cc/ +={ Scalia, Antonin } + +1~ Chapter Fourteen: Eldred II + +!_ The day +/{Eldred}/ was decided, fate would have it that I was to travel to Washington, D.C. (The day the rehearing petition in /{Eldred}/ was denied - meaning the case was really finally over - fate would have it that I was giving a speech to technologists at Disney World.) This was a particularly long flight to my least favorite city. The drive into the city from Dulles was delayed because of traffic, so I opened up my computer and wrote an op-ed piece. + +It was an act of contrition. During the whole of the flight from San Francisco to Washington, I had heard over and over again in my head the same advice from Don Ayer: You need to make them see why it is important. And alternating with that command was the question of Justice Kennedy: "For all these years the act has impeded progress in science and the useful arts. I just don't see any empirical evidence for that." And so, having failed in the argument of constitutional principle, finally, I turned to an argument of politics. +={ Ayer, Don ; + Kennedy, Anthony +} + +/{The New York Times}/ published the piece. In it, I proposed a simple fix: Fifty years after a work has been published, the copyright owner would be required to register the work and pay a small fee. If he paid the fee, he got the benefit of the full term of copyright. If he did not, the work passed into the public domain. +={ copyright law : + registration requirement of +23 +} + +We called this the Eldred Act, but that was just to give it a name. Eric Eldred was kind enough to let his name be used once again, but as he said early on, it won't get passed unless it has another name. +={ Eldred, Eric ; + Eldred Act +23 +} + +Or another two names. For depending upon your perspective, this is either the "Public Domain Enhancement Act" or the "Copyright Term Deregulation Act." Either way, the essence of the idea is clear and obvious: Remove copyright where it is doing nothing except blocking access and the spread of knowledge. Leave it for as long as Congress allows for those works where its worth is at least $1. But for everything else, let the content go. + +The reaction to this idea was amazingly strong. Steve Forbes endorsed it in an editorial. I received an avalanche of e-mail and letters expressing support. When you focus the issue on lost creativity, people can see the copyright system makes no sense. As a good Republican might say, here government regulation is simply getting in the way of innovation and creativity. And as a good Democrat might say, here the government is blocking access and the spread of knowledge for no good reason. Indeed, there is no real difference between Democrats and Republicans on this issue. Anyone can recognize the stupid harm of the present system. +={ Democratic Party ; + Republican Party ; + Forbes, Steve +} + +Indeed, many recognized the obvious benefit of the registration requirement. For one of the hardest things about the current system for people who want to license content is that there is no obvious place to look for the current copyright owners. Since registration is not required, since marking content is not required, since no formality at all is required, it is often impossibly hard to locate copyright owners to ask permission to use or license their work. This system would lower these costs, by establishing at least one registry where copyright owners could be identified. +={ copyright : + no registration of works +} + +As I described in chapter 10, formalities in copyright law were removed in 1976, when Congress followed the Europeans by abandoning any formal requirement before a copyright is granted.~{ Until the 1908 Berlin Act of the Berne Convention, national copyright legislation sometimes made protection depend upon compliance with formalities such as registration, deposit, and affixation of notice of the author's claim of copyright. However, starting with the 1908 act, every text of the Convention has provided that "the enjoyment and the exercise" of rights guaranteed by the Convention "shall not be subject to any formality." The prohibition against formalities is presently embodied in Article 5(2) of the Paris Text of the Berne Convention. Many countries continue to impose some form of deposit or registration requirement, albeit not as a condition of copyright. French law, for example, requires the deposit of copies of works in national repositories, principally the National Museum. Copies of books published in the United Kingdom must be deposited in the British Library. The German Copyright Act provides for a Registrar of Authors where the author's true name can be filed in the case of anonymous or pseudonymous works. Paul Goldstein, /{International Intellectual Property Law, Cases and Materials}/ (New York: Foundation Press, 2001), 153-54. }~ The Europeans are said to view copyright as a "natural right." Natural rights don't need forms to exist. Traditions, like the Anglo-American tradition that required copyright owners to follow form if their rights were to be protected, did not, the Europeans thought, properly respect the dignity of the author. My right as a creator turns on my creativity, not upon the special favor of the government. +={ copyright law : + European +} + +That's great rhetoric. It sounds wonderfully romantic. But it is absurd copyright policy. It is absurd especially for authors, because a world without formalities harms the creator. The ability to spread "Walt Disney creativity" is destroyed when there is no simple way to know what's protected and what's not. + +The fight against formalities achieved its first real victory in Berlin in 1908. International copyright lawyers amended the Berne Convention in 1908, to require copyright terms of life plus fifty years, as well as the abolition of copyright formalities. The formalities were hated because the stories of inadvertent loss were increasingly common. It was as if a Charles Dickens character ran all copyright offices, and the failure to dot an /{i}/ or cross a /{t}/ resulted in the loss of widows' only income. +={ Berne Convention (1908) } + +These complaints were real and sensible. And the strictness of the formalities, especially in the United States, was absurd. The law should always have ways of forgiving innocent mistakes. There is no reason copyright law couldn't, as well. Rather than abandoning formalities totally, the response in Berlin should have been to embrace a more equitable system of registration. + +Even that would have been resisted, however, because registration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was still expensive. It was also a hassle. The abolishment of formalities promised not only to save the starving widows, but also to lighten an unnecessary regulatory burden imposed upon creators. + +In addition to the practical complaint of authors in 1908, there was a moral claim as well. There was no reason that creative property should be a second-class form of property. If a carpenter builds a table, his rights over the table don't depend upon filing a form with the government. He has a property right over the table "naturally," and he can assert that right against anyone who would steal the table, whether or not he has informed the government of his ownership of the table. + +This argument is correct, but its implications are misleading. For the argument in favor of formalities does not depend upon creative property being second-class property. The argument in favor of formalities turns upon the special problems that creative property presents. The law of formalities responds to the special physics of creative property, to assure that it can be efficiently and fairly spread. + +No one thinks, for example, that land is second-class property just because you have to register a deed with a court if your sale of land is to be effective. And few would think a car is second-class property just because you must register the car with the state and tag it with a license. In both of those cases, everyone sees that there is an important reason to secure registration" both because it makes the markets more efficient and because it better secures the rights of the owner. Without a registration system for land, landowners would perpetually have to guard their property. With registration, they can simply point the police to a deed. Without a registration system for cars, auto theft would be much easier. With a registration system, the thief has a high burden to sell a stolen car. A slight burden is placed on the property owner, but those burdens produce a much better system of protection for property generally. + +It is similarly special physics that makes formalities important in copyright law. Unlike a carpenter's table, there's nothing in nature that makes it relatively obvious who might own a particular bit of creative property. A recording of Lyle Lovett's latest album can exist in a billion places without anything necessarily linking it back to a particular owner. And like a car, there's no way to buy and sell creative property with confidence unless there is some simple way to authenticate who is the author and what rights he has. Simple transactions are destroyed in a world without formalities. Complex, expensive, /{lawyer}/ transactions take their place. + +This was the understanding of the problem with the Sonny Bono Act that we tried to demonstrate to the Court. This was the part it didn't "get." Because we live in a system without formalities, there is no way easily to build upon or use culture from our past. If copyright terms were, as Justice Story said they would be, "short," then this wouldn't matter much. For fourteen years, under the framers' system, a work would be presumptively controlled. After fourteen years, it would be presumptively uncontrolled. +={ Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) : + Supreme Court challenge of ; + Story, Joseph +} + +But now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process. If the only way a library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before /{because there are no formalities}/. + +The Eldred Act was designed to respond to exactly this problem. If it is worth $1 to you, then register your work and you can get the longer term. Others will know how to contact you and, therefore, how to get your permission if they want to use your work. And you will get the benefit of an extended copyright term. + +If it isn't worth it to you to register to get the benefit of an extended term, then it shouldn't be worth it for the government to defend your monopoly over that work either. The work should pass into the public domain where anyone can copy it, or build archives with it, or create a movie based on it. It should become free if it is not worth $1 to you. + +Some worry about the burden on authors. Won't the burden of registering the work mean that the $1 is really misleading? Isn't the hassle worth more than $1? Isn't that the real problem with registration? + +It is. The hassle is terrible. The system that exists now is awful. I completely agree that the Copyright Office has done a terrible job (no doubt because they are terribly funded) in enabling simple and cheap registrations. Any real solution to the problem of formalities must address the real problem of /{governments}/ standing at the core of any system of formalities. In this book, I offer such a solution. That solution essentially remakes the Copyright Office. For now, assume it was Amazon that ran the registration system. Assume it was one-click registration. The Eldred Act would propose a simple, one-click registration fifty years after a work was published. Based upon historical data, that system would move up to 98 percent of commercial work, commercial work that no longer had a commercial life, into the public domain within fifty years. What do you think? +={ Copyright Office ; + public domain : + content industry opposition to +15 +} + +!_ When Steve Forbes +endorsed the idea, some in Washington began to pay attention. Many people contacted me pointing to representatives who might be willing to introduce the Eldred Act. And I had a few who directly suggested that they might be willing to take the first step. +={ Forbes, Steve } + +One representative, Zoe Lofgren of California, went so far as to get the bill drafted. The draft solved any problem with international law. It imposed the simplest requirement upon copyright owners possible. In May 2003, it looked as if the bill would be introduced. On May 16, I posted on the Eldred Act blog, "we are close." There was a general reaction in the blog community that something good might happen here. +={ Lofgren, Zoe } + +But at this stage, the lobbyists began to intervene. Jack Valenti and the MPAA general counsel came to the congresswoman's office to give the view of the MPAA. Aided by his lawyer, as Valenti told me, Valenti informed the congresswoman that the MPAA would oppose the Eldred Act. The reasons are embarrassingly thin. More importantly, their thinness shows something clear about what this debate is really about. +={ Valenti, Jack : + Eldred Act opposed by ; + film industry : + trade association of +2 ; + Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) +2 +} + +The MPAA argued first that Congress had "firmly rejected the central concept in the proposed bill" - that copyrights be renewed. That was true, but irrelevant, as Congress's "firm rejection" had occurred long before the Internet made subsequent uses much more likely. Second, they argued that the proposal would harm poor copyright owners - apparently those who could not afford the $1 fee. Third, they argued that Congress had determined that extending a copyright term would encourage restoration work. Maybe in the case of the small percentage of work covered by copyright law that is still commercially valuable, but again this was irrelevant, as the proposal would not cut off the extended term unless the $1 fee was not paid. Fourth, the MPAA argued that the bill would impose "enormous" costs, since a registration system is not free. True enough, but those costs are certainly less than the costs of clearing the rights for a copyright whose owner is not known. Fifth, they worried about the risks if the copyright to a story underlying a film were to pass into the public domain. But what risk is that? If it is in the public domain, then the film is a valid derivative use. +={ films : + in public domain ; + public domain : + films in +} + +Finally, the MPAA argued that existing law enabled copyright owners to do this if they wanted. But the whole point is that there are thousands of copyright owners who don't even know they have a copyright to give. Whether they are free to give away their copyright or not - a controversial claim in any case - unless they know about a copyright, they're not likely to. + +!_ At the beginning +of this book, I told two stories about the law reacting to changes in technology. In the one, common sense prevailed. In the other, common sense was delayed. The difference between the two stories was the power of the opposition - the power of the side that fought to defend the status quo. In both cases, a new technology threatened old interests. But in only one case did those interest's have the power to protect themselves against this new competitive threat. + +I used these two cases as a way to frame the war that this book has been about. For here, too, a new technology is forcing the law to react. And here, too, we should ask, is the law following or resisting common sense? If common sense supports the law, what explains this common sense? + +When the issue is piracy, it is right for the law to back the copyright owners. The commercial piracy that I described is wrong and harmful, and the law should work to eliminate it. When the issue is p2p sharing, it is easy to understand why the law backs the owners still: Much of this sharing is wrong, even if much is harmless. When the issue is copyright terms for the Mickey Mouses of the world, it is possible still to understand why the law favors Hollywood: Most people don't recognize the reasons for limiting copyright terms; it is thus still possible to see good faith within the resistance. + +But when the copyright owners oppose a proposal such as the Eldred Act, then, finally, there is an example that lays bare the naked self-interest driving this war. This act would free an extraordinary range of content that is otherwise unused. It wouldn't interfere with any copyright owner's desire to exercise continued control over his content. It would simply liberate what Kevin Kelly calls the "Dark Content" that fills archives around the world. So when the warriors oppose a change like this, we should ask one simple question: +={ Eldred Act +3 ; + Kelly, Kevin +} + +What does this industry really want? + +With very little effort, the warriors could protect their content. So the effort to block something like the Eldred Act is not really about protecting /{their}/ content. The effort to block the Eldred Act is an effort to assure that nothing more passes into the public domain. It is another step to assure that the public domain will never compete, that there will be no use of content that is not commercially controlled, and that there will be no commercial use of content that doesn't require /{their}/ permission first. + +The opposition to the Eldred Act reveals how extreme the other side is. The most powerful and sexy and well loved of lobbies really has as its aim not the protection of "property" but the rejection of a tradition. Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. /{Their aim is to assure that all there is is what is theirs}/. + +It is not hard to understand why the warriors take this view. It is not hard to see why it would benefit them if the competition of the public domain tied to the Internet could somehow be quashed. Just as RCA feared the competition of FM, they fear the competition of a public domain connected to a public that now has the means to create with it and to share its own creation. +={ radio : + FM spectrum of ; + FM radio ; + RCA +} + +What is hard to understand is why the public takes this view. It is as if the law made airplanes trespassers. The MPAA stands with the Causbys and demands that their remote and useless property rights be respected, so that these remote and forgotten copyright holders might block the progress of others. +={ Causby, Thomas Lee ; + Causby, Tinie ; + film industry : + trade association of ; + Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) +} + +All this seems to follow easily from this untroubled acceptance of the "property" in intellectual property. Common sense supports it, and so long as it does, the assaults will rain down upon the technologies of the Internet. The consequence will be an increasing "permission society." The past can be cultivated only if you can identify the owner and gain permission to build upon his work. The future will be controlled by this dead (and often unfindable) hand of the past. + +:B~ CONCLUSION + +1~conclusion [Conclusion]-# + +!_ There are more +than 35 million people with the AIDS virus worldwide. Twenty-five million of them live in sub-Saharan Africa. Seventeen million have already died. Seventeen million Africans is proportional percentage-wise to seven million Americans. More importantly, it is seventeen million Africans. +={ Africa, medications for HIV patients in +15 ; + AIDS medications +15 ; + antiretroviral drugs +15 ; + developing countries, foreign patent costs in +15 ; + drugs : + pharmaceutical +15 ; + HIV/AIDS therapies +15 +} + +There is no cure for AIDS, but there are drugs to slow its progression. These antiretroviral therapies are still experimental, but they have already had a dramatic effect. In the United States, AIDS patients who regularly take a cocktail of these drugs increase their life expectancy by ten to twenty years. For some, the drugs make the disease almost invisible. + +These drugs are expensive. When they were first introduced in the United States, they cost between $10,000 and $15,000 per person per year. Today, some cost $25,000 per year. At these prices, of course, no African nation can afford the drugs for the vast majority of its population: $15,000 is thirty times the per capita gross national product of Zimbabwe. At these prices, the drugs are totally unavailable.~{ Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, "Final Report: Integrating Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy" (London, 2002), available at link #55. According to a World Health Organization press release issued 9 July 2002, only 230,000 of the 6 million who need drugs in the developing world receive them - and half of them are in Brazuil. }~ + +These prices are not high because the ingredients of the drugs are expensive. These prices are high because the drugs are protected by patents. The drug companies that produced these life-saving mixes enjoy at least a twenty-year monopoly for their inventions. They use that monopoly power to extract the most they can from the market. That power is in turn used to keep the prices high. +={ patents : + on pharmaceuticals +14 ; + pharmaceutical patents +14 +} + +There are many who are skeptical of patents, especially drug patents. I am not. Indeed, of all the areas of research that might be supported by patents, drug research is, in my view, the clearest case where patents are needed. The patent gives the drug company some assurance that if it is successful in inventing a new drug to treat a disease, it will be able to earn back its investment and more. This is socially an extremely valuable incentive. I am the last person who would argue that the law should abolish it, at least without other changes. + +But it is one thing to support patents, even drug patents. It is another thing to determine how best to deal with a crisis. And as African leaders began to recognize the devastation that AIDS was bringing, they started looking for ways to import HIV treatments at costs significantly below the market price. + +In 1997, South Africa tried one tack. It passed a law to allow the importation of patented medicines that had been produced or sold in another nation's market with the consent of the patent owner. For example, if the drug was sold in India, it could be imported into Africa from India. This is called "parallel importation," and it is generally permitted under international trade law and is specifically permitted within the European Union.~{ See Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, /{Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?}/ (New York: The New Press, 2003), 37. }~ +={ international law +11 ; + parallel importation +1 ; + South Africa, Republic of, pharmaceutical imports by +5 +} + +However, the United States government opposed the bill. Indeed, more than opposed. As the International Intellectual Property Association characterized it, "The U.S. government pressured South Africa ... not to permit compulsory licensing or parallel imports."~{ International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), /{Patent Protection and Access to HIV/AIDS Pharmaceuticals in Sub-Saharan Africa, a Report Prepared for the World Intellectual Property Organization}/ (Washington, D.C., 2000), 14, available at link #56. For a firsthand account of the struggle over South Africa, see Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, House Committee on Government Reform, H. Rep., 1st sess., Ser. No. 106-126 (22 July 1999), 150-57 (statement of James Love). }~ Through the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the government asked South Africa to change the law - and to add pressure to that request, in 1998, the USTR listed South Africa for possible trade sanctions. That same year, more than forty pharmaceutical companies began proceedings in the South African courts to challenge the govern-ment's actions. The United States was then joined by other governments from the EU. Their claim, and the claim of the pharmaceutical companies, was that South Africa was violating its obligations under international law by discriminating against a particular kind of patent - pharmaceutical patents. The demand of these governments, with the United States in the lead, was that South Africa respect these patents as it respects any other patent, regardless of any effect on the treatment of AIDS within South Africa.~{ International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), /{Patent Protection and Access to HIV/AIDS Pharmaceuticals in Sub-Saharan Africa, a Report Prepared for the World Intellectual Property Organization}/ (Washington, D.C., 2000), 15. }~ +={ United States Trade Representative (USTR) } + +We should place the intervention by the United States in context. No doubt patents are not the most important reason that Africans don't have access to drugs. Poverty and the total absence of an effective health care infrastructure matter more. But whether patents are the most important reason or not, the price of drugs has an effect on their demand, and patents affect price. And so, whether massive or marginal, there was an effect from our government's intervention to stop the flow of medications into Africa. + +By stopping the flow of HIV treatment into Africa, the United States government was not saving drugs for United States citizens. This is not like wheat (if they eat it, we can't); instead, the flow that the United States intervened to stop was, in effect, a flow of knowledge: information about how to take chemicals that exist within Africa, and turn those chemicals into drugs that would save 15 to 30 million lives. + +Nor was the intervention by the United States going to protect the profits of United States drug companies - at least, not substantially. It was not as if these countries were in the position to buy the drugs for the prices the drug companies were charging. Again, the Africans are wildly too poor to afford these drugs at the offered prices. Stopping the parallel import of these drugs would not substantially increase the sales by U.S. companies. + +Instead, the argument in favor of restricting this flow of information, which was needed to save the lives of millions, was an argument about the sanctity of property.~{ See Sabin Russell, "New Crusade to Lower AIDS Drug Costs: Africa's Needs at Odds with Firms' Profit Motive," /{San Francisco Chronicle,}/ 24 May 1999, A1, available at link #57 ("compulsory licenses and gray markets pose a threat to the entire system of intellectual property protection"); Robert Weissman, "AIDS and Developing Countries: Democratizing Access to Essential Medicines," /{Foreign Policy in Focus}/ 4:23 (August 1999), available at link #58 (describing U.S. policy); John A. Harrelson, "TRIPS, Pharmaceutical Patents, and the HIV/AIDS Crisis: Finding the Proper Balance Between Intellectual Property Rights and Compassion, a Synopsis," /{Widener Law Symposium Journal}/ (Spring 2001): 175. }~ It was because "intellectual property" would be violated that these drugs should not flow into Africa. It was a principle about the importance of "intellectual property" that led these government actors to intervene against the South African response to AIDS. + +Now just step back for a moment. There will be a time thirty years from now when our children look back at us and ask, how could we have let this happen? How could we allow a policy to be pursued whose direct cost would be to speed the death of 15 to 30 million Africans, and whose only real benefit would be to uphold the "sanctity" of an idea? What possible justification could there ever be for a policy that results in so many deaths? What exactly is the insanity that would allow so many to die for such an abstraction? + +Some blame the drug companies. I don't. They are corporations. Their managers are ordered by law to make money for the corporation. They push a certain patent policy not because of ideals, but because it is the policy that makes them the most money. And it only makes them the most money because of a certain corruption within our political system - a corruption the drug companies are certainly not responsible for. +={ corporations : + in pharmaceutical industry +2 +} + +The corruption is our own politicians' failure of integrity. For the drug companies would love - they say, and I believe them - to sell their drugs as cheaply as they can to countries in Africa and elsewhere. There are issues they'd have to resolve to make sure the drugs didn't get back into the United States, but those are mere problems of technology. They could be overcome. + +A different problem, however, could not be overcome. This is the fear of the grandstanding politician who would call the presidents of the drug companies before a Senate or House hearing, and ask, "How is it you can sell this HIV drug in Africa for only $1 a pill, but the same drug would cost an American $1,500?" Because there is no "sound bite" answer to that question, its effect would be to induce regulation of prices in America. The drug companies thus avoid this spiral by avoiding the first step. They reinforce the idea that property should be sacred. They adopt a rational strategy in an irrational context, with the unintended consequence that perhaps millions die. And that rational strategy thus becomes framed in terms of this ideal - the sanctity of an idea called "intellectual property." +={ intellectual property rights : + of drug patents +3 +} + +So when the common sense of your child confronts you, what will you say? When the common sense of a generation finally revolts against what we have done, how will we justify what we have done? What is the argument? + +A sensible patent policy could endorse and strongly support the patent system without having to reach everyone everywhere in exactly the same way. Just as a sensible copyright policy could endorse and strongly support a copyright system without having to regulate the spread of culture perfectly and forever, a sensible patent policy could endorse and strongly support a patent system without having to block the spread of drugs to a country not rich enough to afford market prices in any case. A sensible policy, in other words, could be a balanced policy. For most of our history, both copyright and patent policies were balanced in just this sense. + +But we as a culture have lost this sense of balance. We have lost the critical eye that helps us see the difference between truth and extremism. A certain property fundamentalism, having no connection to our tradition, now reigns in this culture - bizarrely, and with consequences more grave to the spread of ideas and culture than almost any other single policy decision that we as a democracy will make. + +!_ A simple idea +blinds us, and under the cover of darkness, much happens that most of us would reject if any of us looked. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we don't even notice how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are dying without them. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically. Blindness becomes our common sense. And the challenge for anyone who would reclaim the right to cultivate our culture is to find a way to make this common sense open its eyes. + +So far, common sense sleeps. There is no revolt. Common sense does not yet see what there could be to revolt about. The extremism that now dominates this debate fits with ideas that seem natural, and that fit is reinforced by the RCAs of our day. They wage a frantic war to fight "piracy," and devastate a culture for creativity. They defend the idea of "creative property," while transforming real creators into modern-day sharecroppers. They are insulted by the idea that rights should be balanced, even though each of the major players in this content war was itself a beneficiary of a more balanced ideal. The hypocrisy reeks. Yet in a city like Washington, hypocrisy is not even noticed. Powerful lobbies, complex issues, and MTV attention spans produce the "perfect storm" for free culture. + +!_ In August 2003, +a fight broke out in the United States about a decision by the World Intellectual Property Organization to cancel a meeting.~{ Jonathan Krim, "The Quiet War over Open-Source," /{Washington Post,}/ 21 August 2003, E1, available at link #59; William New, "Global Group's Shift on 'Open Source' Meeting Spurs Stir," National Journal's Technology Daily, 19 August 2003, available at link #60; William New, "U.S. Official Opposes 'Open Source' Talks at WIPO," /{National Journal's Technology Daily,}/ 19 August 2003, available at link #61. }~ At the request of a wide range of interests, WIPO had decided to hold a meeting to discuss "open and collaborative projects to create public goods." These are projects that have been successful in producing public goods without relying exclusively upon a proprietary use of intellectual property. Examples include the Internet and the World Wide Web, both of which were developed on the basis of protocols in the public domain. It included an emerging trend to support open academic journals, including the Public Library of Science project that I describe in the Afterword. It included a project to develop single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are thought to have great significance in biomedical research. (That nonprofit project comprised a consortium of the Wellcome Trust and pharmaceutical and technological companies, including Amersham Biosciences, AstraZeneca, Aventis, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Hoffmann-La Roche, Glaxo- SmithKline, IBM, Motorola, Novartis, Pfizer, and Searle.) It included the Global Positioning System, which Ronald Reagan set free in the early 1980s. And it included "open source and free software." +={ academic journals ; + biomedical research ; + intellectual property rights : + international organization on issues of +4 ; + Internet : + development of ; + PLoS (Public Library of Science) ; + Public Library of Science (PLoS) ; + public domain : + public projects in ; + single nucleotied polymorphisms (SNPs) ; + Wellcome Trust ; + World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) +4 ; + World Wide Web ; + Global Positioning System ; + Reagan, Ronald +} + +The aim of the meeting was to consider this wide range of projects from one common perspective: that none of these projects relied upon intellectual property extremism. Instead, in all of them, intellectual property was balanced by agreements to keep access open or to impose limitations on the way in which proprietary claims might be used. + +From the perspective of this book, then, the conference was ideal.~{ I should disclose that I was one of the people who asked WIPO for the meeting. }~ The projects within its scope included both commercial and noncommercial work. They primarily involved science, but from many perspectives. And WIPO was an ideal venue for this discussion, since WIPO is the preeminent international body dealing with intellectual property issues. +={ Lessig, Lawrence : + in international debate on intellectual property +4 +} + +Indeed, I was once publicly scolded for not recognizing this fact about WIPO. In February 2003, I delivered a keynote address to a preparatory conference for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). At a press conference before the address, I was asked what I would say. I responded that I would be talking a little about the importance of balance in intellectual property for the development of an information society. The moderator for the event then promptly interrupted to inform me and the assembled reporters that no question about intellectual property would be discussed by WSIS, since those questions were the exclusive domain of WIPO. In the talk that I had prepared, I had actually made the issue of intellectual property relatively minor. But after this astonishing statement, I made intellectual property the sole focus of my talk. There was no way to talk about an "Information Society" unless one also talked about the range of information and culture that would be free. My talk did not make my immoderate moderator very happy. And she was no doubt correct that the scope of intellectual property protections was ordinarily the stuff of WIPO. But in my view, there couldn't be too much of a conversation about how much intellectual property is needed, since in my view, the very idea of balance in intellectual property had been lost. +={ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) +1 } + +So whether or not WSIS can discuss balance in intellectual property, I had thought it was taken for granted that WIPO could and should. And thus the meeting about "open and collaborative projects to create public goods" seemed perfectly appropriate within the WIPO agenda. + +But there is one project within that list that is highly controversial, at least among lobbyists. That project is "open source and free software." Microsoft in particular is wary of discussion of the subject. From its perspective, a conference to discuss open source and free software would be like a conference to discuss Apple's operating system. Both open source and free software compete with Microsoft's software. And internationally, many governments have begun to explore requirements that they use open source or free software, rather than "proprietary software," for their own internal uses. +={ free software/open-source software (FS/OSS) +7 ; + Apple Corporation ; + Microsoft : + on free software +4 +} + +I don't mean to enter that debate here. It is important only to make clear that the distinction is not between commercial and noncommercial software. There are many important companies that depend fundamentally upon open source and free software, IBM being the most prominent. IBM is increasingly shifting its focus to the GNU/Linux operating system, the most famous bit of "free software" - and IBM is emphatically a commercial entity. Thus, to support "open source and free software" is not to oppose commercial entities. It is, instead, to support a mode of software development that is different from Microsoft's.~{ Microsoft's position about free and open source software is more sophisticated. As it has repeatedly asserted, it has no problem with "open source" software or software in the public domain. Microsoft's principal opposition is to "free software" licensed under a "copyleft" license, meaning a license that requires the licensee to adopt the same terms on any derivative work. See Bradford L. Smith, "The Future of Software: Enabling the Marketplace to Decide," /{Government Policy Toward Open Source Software}/ (Washington, D.C.: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2002), 69, available at link #62. See also Craig Mundie, Microsoft senior vice president, /{The Commercial Software Model,}/ discussion at New York University Stern School of Business (3 May 2001), available at link #63. }~ +={ GNU/Linux operating system ; + Linux operating system ; + IBM +} + +More important for our purposes, to support "open source and free software" is not to oppose copyright. "Open source and free software" is not software in the public domain. Instead, like Microsoft's software, the copyright owners of free and open source software insist quite strongly that the terms of their software license be respected by adopters of free and open source software. The terms of that license are no doubt different from the terms of a proprietary software license. Free software licensed under the General Public License (GPL), for example, requires that the source code for the software be made available by anyone who modifies and redistributes the software. But that requirement is effective only if copyright governs software. If copyright did not govern software, then free software could not impose the same kind of requirements on its adopters. It thus depends upon copyright law just as Microsoft does. +={ General Public License (GPL) ; + GPL (General Public License) +} + +It is therefore understandable that as a proprietary software developer, Microsoft would oppose this WIPO meeting, and understandable that it would use its lobbyists to get the United States government to oppose it, as well. And indeed, that is just what was reported to have happened. According to Jonathan Krim of the /{Washington Post}/, Microsoft's lobbyists succeeded in getting the United States government to veto the meeting.~{ Krim, "The Quiet War over Open-Source," available at link #64. }~ And without U.S. backing, the meeting was canceled. +={ intellectual property rights : + international organization on issues of +11 ; + World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) +11 ; + Krim, Jonathan +2 ; + Microsoft : + WIPO meeting opposed by +} + +I don't blame Microsoft for doing what it can to advance its own interests, consistent with the law. And lobbying governments is plainly consistent with the law. There was nothing surprising about its lobbying here, and nothing terribly surprising about the most powerful software producer in the United States having succeeded in its lobbying efforts. + +What was surprising was the United States government's reason for opposing the meeting. Again, as reported by Krim, Lois Boland, acting director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, explained that "open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights." She is quoted as saying, "To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of WIPO." +={ Boland, Lois +10 ; + Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. +15 ; + intellectual property rights : + U.S. Patent Office on private control of +15 +} + +% PTO range not properly identified, recheck + +These statements are astonishing on a number of levels. + +First, they are just flat wrong. As I described, most open source and free software relies fundamentally upon the intellectual property right called "copyright." Without it, restrictions imposed by those licenses wouldn't work. Thus, to say it "runs counter" to the mission of promoting intellectual property rights reveals an extraordinary gap in under- standing - the sort of mistake that is excusable in a first-year law student, but an embarrassment from a high government official dealing with intellectual property issues. + +Second, who ever said that WIPO's exclusive aim was to "promote" intellectual property maximally? As I had been scolded at the preparatory conference of WSIS, WIPO is to consider not only how best to protect intellectual property, but also what the best balance of intellectual property is. As every economist and lawyer knows, the hard question in intellectual property law is to find that balance. But that there should be limits is, I had thought, uncontested. One wants to ask Ms. Boland, are generic drugs (drugs based on drugs whose patent has expired) contrary to the WIPO mission? Does the public domain weaken intellectual property? Would it have been better if the protocols of the Internet had been patented? +={ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) ; + drugs : + pharmaceutical ; + generic drugs ; + patents : + on pharmaceuticals +} + +Third, even if one believed that the purpose of WIPO was to maximize intellectual property rights, in our tradition, intellectual property rights are held by individuals and corporations. They get to decide what to do with those rights because, again, they are /{their}/ rights. If they want to "waive" or "disclaim" their rights, that is, within our tradition, totally appropriate. When Bill Gates gives away more than $20 billion to do good in the world, that is not inconsistent with the objectives of the property system. That is, on the contrary, just what a property system is supposed to be about: giving individuals the right to decide what to do with /{their}/ property. +={ Gates, Bill } + +When Ms. Boland says that there is something wrong with a meeting "which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights," she's saying that WIPO has an interest in interfering with the choices of the individuals who own intellectual property rights. That somehow, WIPO's objective should be to stop an individual from "waiving" or "dis-claiming" an intellectual property right. That the interest of WIPO is not just that intellectual property rights be maximized, but that they also should be exercised in the most extreme and restrictive way possible. + +There is a history of just such a property system that is well known in the Anglo-American tradition. It is called "feudalism." Under feudalism, not only was property held by a relatively small number of individuals and entities. And not only were the rights that ran with that property powerful and extensive. But the feudal system had a strong interest in assuring that property holders within that system not weaken feudalism by liberating people or property within their control to the free market. Feudalism depended upon maximum control and concentration. It fought any freedom that might interfere with that control. +={ feudal system +1 ; + property rights : + feudal system of +1 +} + +As Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite relate, this is precisely the choice we are now making about intellectual property.~{ See Drahos with Braithwaite, /{Information Feudalism,}/ 210-20. }~ We will have an information society. That much is certain. Our only choice now is whether that information society will be /{free}/ or /{feudal}/. The trend is toward the feudal. +={ Braithwait, John ; + Drahos, Peter +} + +When this battle broke, I blogged it. A spirited debate within the comment section ensued. Ms. Boland had a number of supporters who tried to show why her comments made sense. But there was one comment that was particularly depressing for me. An anonymous poster wrote, +={ Lessig, Lawrence : + in international debate on intellectual property +5 } + +``` quote +George, you misunderstand Lessig: He's only talking about the world as it should be ("the goal of WIPO, and the goal of any government, should be to promote the right balance of intellectual- property rights, not simply to promote intellectual property rights"), not as it is. If we were talking about the world as it is, then of course Boland didn't say anything wrong. But in the world as Lessig would have it, then of course she did. Always pay attention to the distinction between Lessig's world and ours." +``` + +I missed the irony the first time I read it. I read it quickly and thought the poster was supporting the idea that seeking balance was what our government should be doing. (Of course, my criticism of Ms. Boland was not about whether she was seeking balance or not; my criticism was that her comments betrayed a first-year law student's mistake. I have no illusion about the extremism of our government, whether Republican or Democrat. My only illusion apparently is about whether our government should speak the truth or not.) + +Obviously, however, the poster was not supporting that idea. Instead, the poster was ridiculing the very idea that in the real world, the "goal" of a government should be "to promote the right balance" of intellectual property. That was obviously silly to him. And it obviously betrayed, he believed, my own silly utopianism. "Typical for an academic," the poster might well have continued. + +I understand criticism of academic utopianism. I think utopianism is silly, too, and I'd be the first to poke fun at the absurdly unrealistic ideals of academics throughout history (and not just in our own country's history). + +But when it has become silly to suppose that the role of our government should be to "seek balance," then count me with the silly, for that means that this has become quite serious indeed. If it should be obvious to everyone that the government does not seek balance, that the government is simply the tool of the most powerful lobbyists, that the idea of holding the government to a different standard is absurd, that the idea of demanding of the government that it speak truth and not lies is just naïve, then who have we, the most powerful democracy in the world, become? + +It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our tradition for most of our history - free culture. + +If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon. + +!_ There are moments +of hope in this struggle. And moments that surprise. When the FCC was considering relaxing ownership rules, which would thereby further increase the concentration in media ownership, an extraordinary bipartisan coalition formed to fight this change. For perhaps the first time in history, interests as diverse as the NRA, the ACLU, Moveon.org, William Safire, Ted Turner, and CodePink Women for Peace organized to oppose this change in FCC policy. An astonishing 700,000 letters were sent to the FCC, demanding more hearings and a different result. +={ CodePink Women for Peace ; + FCC : + media ownership regulated by +1 ; + media : + ownership concentration in +6 ; + Safire, William ; + Turner, Ted +} + +This activism did not stop the FCC, but soon after, a broad coalition in the Senate voted to reverse the FCC decision. The hostile hearings leading up to that vote revealed just how powerful this movement had become. There was no substantial support for the FCC's decision, and there was broad and sustained support for fighting further concentration in the media. +={ Senate, U.S. : + FCC media ownership rules reversed by +} + +But even this movement misses an important piece of the puzzle. Largeness as such is not bad. Freedom is not threatened just because some become very rich, or because there are only a handful of big players. The poor quality of Big Macs or Quarter Pounders does not mean that you can't get a good hamburger from somewhere else. + +The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the change in copyright, produces. It is not just that there are a few powerful companies that control an ever expanding slice of the media. It is that this concentration can call upon an equally bloated range of rights - property rights of a historically extreme form - that makes their bigness bad. + +It is therefore significant that so many would rally to demand competition and increased diversity. Still, if the rally is understood as being about bigness alone, it is not terribly surprising. We Americans have a long history of fighting "big," wisely or not. That we could be motivated to fight "big" again is not something new. + +It would be something new, and something very important, if an equal number could be rallied to fight the increasing extremism built within the idea of "intellectual property." Not because balance is alien to our tradition; indeed, as I've argued, balance is our tradition. But because the muscle to think critically about the scope of anything called "property" is not well exercised within this tradition anymore. + +If we were Achilles, this would be our heel. This would be the place of our tragedy. + +!_ As I write +these final words, the news is filled with stories about the RIAA lawsuits against almost three hundred individuals.~{ John Borland, "RIAA Sues 261 File Swappers," CNET News.com, 8 September 2003, available at link #65; Paul R. La Monica, "Music Industry Sues Swappers," CNN/Money, 8 September 2003, available at link #66; Soni Sangha and Phyllis Furman with Robert Gearty, "Sued for a Song, N.Y.C. 12-Yr-Old Among 261 Cited as Sharers," /{New York Daily News,}/ 9 September 2003, 3; Frank Ahrens, "RIAA's Lawsuits Meet Surprised Targets; Single Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl in N.Y. Among Defendants," /{Washington Post,}/ 10 September 2003, E1; Katie Dean, "Schoolgirl Settles with RIAA," /{Wired News,}/ 10 September 2003, available at link #67. }~ Eminem has just been sued for "sampling" someone else's music.~{ Jon Wiederhorn, "Eminem Gets Sued ... by a Little Old Lady," mtv.com, 17 September 2003, available at link #68. }~ The story about Bob Dylan "stealing" from a Japanese author has just finished making the rounds.~{ Kenji Hall, Associated Press, "Japanese Book May Be Inspiration for Dylan Songs," Kansascity.com, 9 July 2003, available at link #69. }~ An insider from Hollywood - who insists he must remain anonymous - reports "an amazing conversation with these studio guys. They've got extraordinary [old] content that they'd love to use but can't because they can't begin to clear the rights. They've got scores of kids who could do amazing things with the content, but it would take scores of lawyers to clean it first." Congressmen are talking about deputizing computer viruses to bring down computers thought to violate the law. Universities are threatening expulsion for kids who use a computer to share content. +={ Dylan, Bob ; + Eminem ; + university computer networks, p2p sharing on ; + copyright infringement lawsuits : + individual defendants intimidated by | in recording industry ; + recording industry : + copyright infringement lawsuits of ; + Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) : + copyright infringement lawsuits filed by +} + +Yet on the other side of the Atlantic, the BBC has just announced that it will build a "Creative Archive," from which British citizens can download BBC content, and rip, mix, and burn it.~{ "BBC Plans to Open Up Its Archive to the Public," BBC press release, 24 August 2003, available at link #70. }~ And in Brazil, the culture minister, Gilberto Gil, himself a folk hero of Brazilian music, has joined with Creative Commons to release content and free licenses in that Latin American country.~{ "Creative Commons and Brazil," Creative Commons Weblog, 6 August 2003, available at link #71. }~ +={ BBC ; + Brazil, free culture in ; + Creative Commons ; + Gil, Gilberto ; + United Kingdom : + public creative archive in +} + +I've told a dark story. The truth is more mixed. A technology has given us a new freedom. Slowly, some begin to understand that this freedom need not mean anarchy. We can carry a free culture into the twenty-first century, without artists losing and without the potential of digital technology being destroyed. It will take some thought, and more importantly, it will take some will to transform the RCAs of our day into the Causbys. + +Common sense must revolt. It must act to free culture. Soon, if this potential is ever to be realized. + +:B~ AFTERWORD + +1~intro_afterword [Intro]-# + +!_ At least some +who have read this far will agree with me that something must be done to change where we are heading. The balance of this book maps what might be done. +={ copyright : + voluntary reform efforts on +3 +} + +I divide this map into two parts: that which anyone can do now, and that which requires the help of lawmakers. If there is one lesson that we can draw from the history of remaking common sense, it is that it requires remaking how many people think about the very same issue. + +That means this movement must begin in the streets. It must recruit a significant number of parents, teachers, librarians, creators, authors, musicians, filmmakers, scientists - all to tell this story in their own words, and to tell their neighbors why this battle is so important. + +Once this movement has its effect in the streets, it has some hope of having an effect in Washington. We are still a democracy. What people think matters. Not as much as it should, at least when an RCA stands opposed, but still, it matters. And thus, in the second part below, I sketch changes that Congress could make to better secure a free culture. +={ RCA } + +1~us US, NOW +={ copyright : + voluntary reform efforts on +45 +} + +!_ Common sense +is with the copyright warriors because the debate so far has been framed at the extremes - as a grand either/or: either property or anarchy, either total control or artists won't be paid. If that really is the choice, then the warriors should win. + +The mistake here is the error of the excluded middle. There are extremes in this debate, but the extremes are not all that there is. There are those who believe in maximal copyright - "All Rights Reserved" - and those who reject copyright - "No Rights Reserved." The "All Rights Reserved" sorts believe that you should ask permission before you "use" a copyrighted work in any way. The "No Rights Reserved" sorts believe you should be able to do with content as you wish, regardless of whether you have permission or not. + +When the Internet was first born, its initial architecture effectively tilted in the "no rights reserved" direction. Content could be copied perfectly and cheaply; rights could not easily be controlled. Thus, regardless of anyone's desire, the effective regime of copyright under the original design of the Internet was "no rights reserved." Content was "taken" regardless of the rights. Any rights were effectively unprotected. +={ Internet : + development of +1 | initial free character of +1 +} + +This initial character produced a reaction (opposite, but not quite equal) by copyright owners. That reaction has been the topic of this book. Through legislation, litigation, and changes to the network's design, copyright holders have been able to change the essential character of the environment of the original Internet. If the original architecture made the effective default "no rights reserved," the future architecture will make the effective default "all rights reserved." The architecture and law that surround the Internet's design will increasingly produce an environment where all use of content requires permission. The "cut and paste" world that defines the Internet today will become a "get permission to cut and paste" world that is a creator's nightmare. + +What's needed is a way to say something in the middle - neither "all rights reserved" nor "no rights reserved" but "some rights reserved" - and thus a way to respect copyrights but enable creators to free content as they see fit. In other words, we need a way to restore a set of freedoms that we could just take for granted before. + +2~ Rebuilding Freedoms Previously Presumed: Examples +={ free culture : + restoration efforts on previous aspects of +22 +} + +If you step back from the battle I've been describing here, you will recognize this problem from other contexts. Think about privacy. Before the Internet, most of us didn't have to worry much about data about our lives that we broadcast to the world. If you walked into a bookstore and browsed through some of the works of Karl Marx, you didn't need to worry about explaining your browsing habits to your neighbors or boss. The "privacy" of your browsing habits was assured. +={ browsing +4 ; + privacy rights +5 +} + +What made it assured? + +Well, if we think in terms of the modalities I described in chapter 10, your privacy was assured because of an inefficient architecture for gathering data and hence a market constraint (cost) on anyone who wanted to gather that data. If you were a suspected spy for North Korea, working for the CIA, no doubt your privacy would not be assured. But that's because the CIA would (we hope) find it valuable enough to spend the thousands required to track you. But for most of us (again, we can hope), spying doesn't pay. The highly inefficient architecture of real space means we all enjoy a fairly robust amount of privacy. That privacy is guaranteed to us by friction. Not by law (there is no law protecting "privacy" in public places), and in many places, not by norms (snooping and gossip are just fun), but instead, by the costs that friction imposes on anyone who would want to spy. + +Enter the Internet, where the cost of tracking browsing in particular has become quite tiny. If you're a customer at Amazon, then as you browse the pages, Amazon collects the data about what you've looked at. You know this because at the side of the page, there's a list of "recently viewed" pages. Now, because of the architecture of the Net and the function of cookies on the Net, it is easier to collect the data than not. The friction has disappeared, and hence any "privacy" protected by the friction disappears, too. +={ Amazon +1 ; + cookies, Internet ; + Internet : + privacy protection on +2 +} + +Amazon, of course, is not the problem. But we might begin to worry about libraries. If you're one of those crazy lefties who thinks that people should have the "right" to browse in a library without the government knowing which books you look at (I'm one of those lefties, too), then this change in the technology of monitoring might concern you. If it becomes simple to gather and sort who does what in electronic spaces, then the friction-induced privacy of yesterday disappears. +={ libraries : + privacy rights in use of +} + +It is this reality that explains the push of many to define "privacy" on the Internet. It is the recognition that technology can remove what friction before gave us that leads many to push for laws to do what friction did.~{ See, for example, Marc Rotenberg, "Fair Information Practices and the Architecture of Privacy (What Larry Doesn't Get)," /{Stanford Technology Law Review}/ 1 (2001): par. 6-18, available at link #72 (describing examples in which technology defines privacy policy). See also Jeffrey Rosen, /{The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age}/ (New York: Random House, 2004) (mapping tradeoffs between technology and privacy). }~ And whether you're in favor of those laws or not, it is the pattern that is important here. We must take affirmative steps to secure a kind of freedom that was passively provided before. A change in technology now forces those who believe in privacy to affirmatively act where, before, privacy was given by default. + +A similar story could be told about the birth of the free software movement. When computers with software were first made available commercially, the software - both the source code and the binaries - was free. You couldn't run a program written for a Data General machine on an IBM machine, so Data General and IBM didn't care much about controlling their software. +={ Data General ; + IBM ; + free software/open-source software (FS/OSS) +7 +} + +That was the world Richard Stallman was born into, and while he was a researcher at MIT, he grew to love the community that developed when one was free to explore and tinker with the software that ran on machines. Being a smart sort himself, and a talented programmer, Stallman grew to depend upon the freedom to add to or modify other people's work. +={ Stallman, Richard +6 } + +In an academic setting, at least, that's not a terribly radical idea. In a math department, anyone would be free to tinker with a proof that someone offered. If you thought you had a better way to prove a theorem, you could take what someone else did and change it. In a classics department, if you believed a colleague's translation of a recently discovered text was flawed, you were free to improve it. Thus, to Stallman, it seemed obvious that you should be free to tinker with and improve the code that ran a machine. This, too, was knowledge. Why shouldn't it be open for criticism like anything else? + +No one answered that question. Instead, the architecture of revenue for computing changed. As it became possible to import programs from one system to another, it became economically attractive (at least in the view of some) to hide the code of your program. So, too, as companies started selling peripherals for mainframe systems. If I could just take your printer driver and copy it, then that would make it easier for me to sell a printer to the market than it was for you. +={ proprietary code +1 } + +Thus, the practice of proprietary code began to spread, and by the early 1980s, Stallman found himself surrounded by proprietary code. The world of free software had been erased by a change in the economics of computing. And as he believed, if he did nothing about it, then the freedom to change and share software would be fundamentally weakened. + +Therefore, in 1984, Stallman began a project to build a free operating system, so that at least a strain of free software would survive. That was the birth of the GNU project, into which Linus Torvalds's "Linux" kernel was added to produce the GNU/Linux operating system. +={ Torvalds, Linus ; + GNU/Linux operating system ; + Linux operating system +} + +Stallman's technique was to use copyright law to build a world of software that must be kept free. Software licensed under the Free Software Foundation's GPL cannot be modified and distributed unless the source code for that software is made available as well. Thus, anyone building upon GPL'd software would have to make their buildings free as well. This would assure, Stallman believed, that an ecology of code would develop that remained free for others to build upon. His fundamental goal was freedom; innovative creative code was a byproduct. +={ Free Software Foundation ; + General Public License (GPL) ; + GPL (General Public License) +} + +Stallman was thus doing for software what privacy advocates now do for privacy. He was seeking a way to rebuild a kind of freedom that was taken for granted before. Through the affirmative use of licenses that bind copyrighted code, Stallman was affirmatively reclaiming a space where free software would survive. He was actively protecting what before had been passively guaranteed. + +Finally, consider a very recent example that more directly resonates with the story of this book. This is the shift in the way academic and scientific journals are produced. +={ academic journals +7 ; + scientific journals +7 +} + +As digital technologies develop, it is becoming obvious to many that printing thousands of copies of journals every month and sending them to libraries is perhaps not the most efficient way to distribute knowledge. Instead, journals are increasingly becoming electronic, and libraries and their users are given access to these electronic journals through password-protected sites. Something similar to this has been happening in law for almost thirty years: Lexis and Westlaw have had electronic versions of case reports available to subscribers to their service. Although a Supreme Court opinion is not copyrighted, and anyone is free to go to a library and read it, Lexis and Westlaw are also free to charge users for the privilege of gaining access to that Supreme Court opinion through their respective services. +={ Lexis and Westlaw +1 ; + law : + databases of case reports in +1 ; + libraries : + journals in ; + Supreme Court, U.S. : + access to opinions of +} + +There's nothing wrong in general with this, and indeed, the ability to charge for access to even public domain materials is a good incentive for people to develop new and innovative ways to spread knowledge. The law has agreed, which is why Lexis and Westlaw have been allowed to flourish. And if there's nothing wrong with selling the public domain, then there could be nothing wrong, in principle, with selling access to material that is not in the public domain. +={ public domain : + access fees for material in | license system for rebuilding of +22 +} + +But what if the only way to get access to social and scientific data was through proprietary services? What if no one had the ability to browse this data except by paying for a subscription? + +As many are beginning to notice, this is increasingly the reality with scientific journals. When these journals were distributed in paper form, libraries could make the journals available to anyone who had access to the library. Thus, patients with cancer could become cancer experts because the library gave them access. Or patients trying to understand the risks of a certain treatment could research those risks by reading all available articles about that treatment. This freedom was therefore a function of the institution of libraries (norms) and the technology of paper journals (architecture) - namely, that it was very hard to control access to a paper journal. +={ libraries : + journals in +2 +} + +As journals become electronic, however, the publishers are demanding that libraries not give the general public access to the journals. This means that the freedoms provided by print journals in public libraries begin to disappear. Thus, as with privacy and with software, a changing technology and market shrink a freedom taken for granted before. + +This shrinking freedom has led many to take affirmative steps to restore the freedom that has been lost. The Public Library of Science (PLoS), for example, is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making scientific research available to anyone with a Web connection. Authors of scientific work submit that work to the Public Library of Science. That work is then subject to peer review. If accepted, the work is then deposited in a public, electronic archive and made permanently available for free. PLoS also sells a print version of its work, but the copyright for the print journal does not inhibit the right of anyone to redistribute the work for free. +={ PLoS (Public Library of Science) ; + Public Library of Science (PLoS) +} + +This is one of many such efforts to restore a freedom taken for granted before, but now threatened by changing technology and markets. There's no doubt that this alternative competes with the traditional publishers and their efforts to make money from the exclusive distribution of content. But competition in our tradition is presumptively a good - especially when it helps spread knowledge and science. + +2~ Rebuilding Free Culture: One Idea +={ free culture : + Creative Commons license for recreation of +16 ; + copyright : + Creative Commons licenses for material in +16 ; + Creative Commons +16 +} + +The same strategy could be applied to culture, as a response to the increasing control effected through law and technology. + +Enter the Creative Commons. The Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation established in Massachusetts, but with its home at Stanford University. Its aim is to build a layer of /{reasonable}/ copyright on top of the extremes that now reign. It does this by making it easy for people to build upon other people's work, by making it simple for creators to express the freedom for others to take and build upon their work. Simple tags, tied to human-readable descriptions, tied to bullet-proof licenses, make this possible. +={ Stanford University } + +/{Simple}/ - which means without a middleman, or without a lawyer. By developing a free set of licenses that people can attach to their content, Creative Commons aims to mark a range of content that can easily, and reliably, be built upon. These tags are then linked to machine-readable versions of the license that enable computers automatically to identify content that can easily be shared. These three expressions together - a legal license, a human-readable description, and machine-readable tags - constitute a Creative Commons license. A Creative Commons license constitutes a grant of freedom to anyone who accesses the license, and more importantly, an expression of the ideal that the person associated with the license believes in something different than the "All" or "No" extremes. Content is marked with the CC mark, which does not mean that copyright is waived, but that certain freedoms are given. + +These freedoms are beyond the freedoms promised by fair use. Their precise contours depend upon the choices the creator makes. The creator can choose a license that permits any use, so long as attribution is given. She can choose a license that permits only noncommercial use. She can choose a license that permits any use so long as the same freedoms are given to other uses ("share and share alike"). Or any use so long as no derivative use is made. Or any use at all within developing nations. Or any sampling use, so long as full copies are not made. Or lastly, any educational use. +={ copyright law : + fair use and +1 ; + fair use : + creative Commons license vs. +1 +} + +These choices thus establish a range of freedoms beyond the default of copyright law. They also enable freedoms that go beyond traditional fair use. And most importantly, they express these freedoms in a way that subsequent users can use and rely upon without the need to hire a lawyer. Creative Commons thus aims to build a layer of content, governed by a layer of reasonable copyright law, that others can build upon. Voluntary choice of individuals and creators will make this content available. And that content will in turn enable us to rebuild a public domain. + +This is just one project among many within the Creative Commons. And of course, Creative Commons is not the only organization pursuing such freedoms. But the point that distinguishes the Creative Commons from many is that we are not interested only in talking about a public domain or in getting legislators to help build a public domain. Our aim is to build a movement of consumers and producers of content ("content conducers," as attorney Mia Garlick calls them) who help build the public domain and, by their work, demonstrate the importance of the public domain to other creativity. +={ Garlick, Mia } + +The aim is not to fight the "All Rights Reserved" sorts. The aim is to complement them. The problems that the law creates for us as a culture are produced by insane and unintended consequences of laws written centuries ago, applied to a technology that only Jefferson could have imagined. The rules may well have made sense against a background of technologies from centuries ago, but they do not make sense against the background of digital technologies. New rules - with different freedoms, expressed in ways so that humans without lawyers can use them - are needed. Creative Commons gives people a way effectively to begin to build those rules. +={ Jefferson, Thomas } + +Why would creators participate in giving up total control? Some participate to better spread their content. Cory Doctorow, for example, is a science fiction author. His first novel, /{Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom}/, was released on- line and for free, under a Creative Commons license, on the same day that it went on sale in bookstores. +={ Doctorow, Cory ; + Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Doctorow) +} + +Why would a publisher ever agree to this? I suspect his publisher reasoned like this: There are two groups of people out there: (1) those who will buy Cory's book whether or not it's on the Internet, and (2) those who may never hear of Cory's book, if it isn't made available for free on the Internet. Some part of (1) will download Cory's book instead of buying it. Call them bad-(1)s. Some part of (2) will download Cory's book, like it, and then decide to buy it. Call them (2)-goods. If there are more (2)-goods than bad-(1)s, the strategy of releasing Cory's book free on-line will probably /{increase}/ sales of Cory's book. +={ books : + free on-line releases of +2 ; + Internet : + books on +2 +} + +Indeed, the experience of his publisher clearly supports that conclusion. The book's first printing was exhausted months before the publisher had expected. This first novel of a science fiction author was a total success. + +The idea that free content might increase the value of nonfree content was confirmed by the experience of another author. Peter Wayner, who wrote a book about the free software movement titled /{Free for All}/, made an electronic version of his book free on-line under a Creative Commons license after the book went out of print. He then monitored used book store prices for the book. As predicted, as the number of downloads increased, the used book price for his book increased, as well. +={ Wayner, Peter ; + Free for All (Wayner) +} + +These are examples of using the Commons to better spread proprietary content. I believe that is a wonderful and common use of the Commons. There are others who use Creative Commons licenses for other reasons. Many who use the "sampling license" do so because anything else would be hypocritical. The sampling license says that others are free, for commercial or noncommercial purposes, to sample content from the licensed work; they are just not free to make full copies of the licensed work available to others. This is consistent with their own art - they, too, sample from others. Because the /{legal}/ costs of sampling are so high (Walter Leaphart, manager of the rap group Public Enemy, which was born sampling the music of others, has stated that he does not "allow" Public Enemy to sample anymore, because the legal costs are so high~{ /{Willful Infringement: A Report from the Front Lines of the Real Culture Wars}/ (2003), produced by Jed Horovitz, directed by Greg Hittelman, a Fiat Lucre production, available at link #72. }~), these artists release into the creative environment content that others can build upon, so that their form of creativity might grow. +={ Leaphart, Walter ; + Public Enemy +} + +Finally, there are many who mark their content with a Creative Commons license just because they want to express to others the importance of balance in this debate. If you just go along with the system as it is, you are effectively saying you believe in the "All Rights Reserved" model. Good for you, but many do not. Many believe that however appropriate that rule is for Hollywood and freaks, it is not an appropriate description of how most creators view the rights associated with their content. The Creative Commons license expresses this notion of "Some Rights Reserved," and gives many the chance to say it to others. + +In the first six months of the Creative Commons experiment, over 1 million objects were licensed with these free-culture licenses. The next step is partnerships with middleware content providers to help them build into their technologies simple ways for users to mark their content with Creative Commons freedoms. Then the next step is to watch and celebrate creators who build content based upon content set free. + +These are first steps to rebuilding a public domain. They are not mere arguments; they are action. Building a public domain is the first step to showing people how important that domain is to creativity and innovation. Creative Commons relies upon voluntary steps to achieve this rebuilding. They will lead to a world in which more than voluntary steps are possible. + +Creative Commons is just one example of voluntary efforts by individuals and creators to change the mix of rights that now govern the creative field. The project does not compete with copyright; it complements it. Its aim is not to defeat the rights of authors, but to make it easier for authors and creators to exercise their rights more flexibly and cheaply. That difference, we believe, will enable creativity to spread more easily. + +1~them THEM, SOON +={ copyright law : + government reforms proposed on +102 +} + +!_ We will +not reclaim a free culture by individual action alone. It will also take important reforms of laws. We have a long way to go before the politicians will listen to these ideas and implement these reforms. But that also means that we have time to build awareness around the changes that we need. + +In this chapter, I outline five kinds of changes: four that are general, and one that's specific to the most heated battle of the day, music. Each is a step, not an end. But any of these steps would carry us a long way to our end. + +2~1 1. More Formalities +={ copyright law : + formalities reinstated in +13 ; + formalities +13 +} + +If you buy a house, you have to record the sale in a deed. If you buy land upon which to build a house, you have to record the purchase in a deed. If you buy a car, you get a bill of sale and register the car. If you buy an airplane ticket, it has your name on it. +={ property rights : + formalities associated with +1 +} + +These are all formalities associated with property. They are requirements that we all must bear if we want our property to be protected. + +In contrast, under current copyright law, you automatically get a copyright, regardless of whether you comply with any formality. You don't have to register. You don't even have to mark your content. The default is control, and "formalities" are banished. +={ copyright : + marking of +5 +} + +Why? + +As I suggested in chapter 10, the motivation to abolish formalities was a good one. In the world before digital technologies, formalities imposed a burden on copyright holders without much benefit. Thus, it was progress when the law relaxed the formal requirements that a copyright owner must bear to protect and secure his work. Those formalities were getting in the way. + +But the Internet changes all this. Formalities today need not be a burden. Rather, the world without formalities is the world that burdens creativity. Today, there is no simple way to know who owns what, or with whom one must deal in order to use or build upon the creative work of others. There are no records, there is no system to trace - there is no simple way to know how to get permission. Yet given the massive increase in the scope of copyright's rule, getting permission is a necessary step for any work that builds upon our past. And thus, the /{lack}/ of formalities forces many into silence where they otherwise could speak. + +The law should therefore change this requirement~{ The proposal I am advancing here would apply to American works only. Obviously, I believe it would be beneficial for the same idea to be adopted by other countries as well. }~ - but it should not change it by going back to the old, broken system. We should require formalities, but we should establish a system that will create the incentives to minimize the burden of these formalities. + +The important formalities are three: marking copyrighted work, registering copyrights, and renewing the claim to copyright. Traditionally, the first of these three was something the copyright owner did; the second two were something the government did. But a revised system of formalities would banish the government from the process, except for the sole purpose of approving standards developed by others. +={ copyright law : + registration requirement of +} + +3~ Registration and Renewal +={ copyright : + renewability of +4 ; + copyright law : + registration requirement of +4 +} + +Under the old system, a copyright owner had to file a registration with the Copyright Office to register or renew a copyright. When filing that registration, the copyright owner paid a fee. As with most government agencies, the Copyright Office had little incentive to minimize the burden of registration; it also had little incentive to minimize the fee. And as the Copyright Office is not a main target of government policy- making, the office has historically been terribly underfunded. Thus, when people who know something about the process hear this idea about formalities, their first reaction is panic - nothing could be worse than forcing people to deal with the mess that is the Copyright Office. +={ Copyright Office } + +Yet it is always astonishing to me that we, who come from a tradition of extraordinary innovation in governmental design, can no longer think innovatively about how governmental functions can be designed. Just because there is a public purpose to a government role, it doesn't follow that the government must actually administer the role. Instead, we should be creating incentives for private parties to serve the public, subject to standards that the government sets. + +In the context of registration, one obvious model is the Internet. There are at least 32 million Web sites registered around the world. Domain name owners for these Web sites have to pay a fee to keep their registration alive. In the main top-level domains (.com, .org, .net), there is a central registry. The actual registrations are, however, performed by many competing registrars. That competition drives the cost of registering down, and more importantly, it drives the ease with which registration occurs up. +={ domain names ; + Internet : + domain name registration on ; + Web sites, domain name registration of +} + +We should adopt a similar model for the registration and renewal of copyrights. The Copyright Office may well serve as the central registry, but it should not be in the registrar business. Instead, it should establish a database, and a set of standards for registrars. It should approve registrars that meet its standards. Those registrars would then compete with one another to deliver the cheapest and simplest systems for registering and renewing copyrights. That competition would substantially lower the burden of this formality - while producing a database of registrations that would facilitate the licensing of content. +={ Copyright Office } + +3~ Marking +={ copyright : + marking of +9 +} + +It used to be that the failure to include a copyright notice on a creative work meant that the copyright was forfeited. That was a harsh punishment for failing to comply with a regulatory rule - akin to imposing the death penalty for a parking ticket in the world of creative rights. Here again, there is no reason that a marking requirement needs to be enforced in this way. And more importantly, there is no reason a marking requirement needs to be enforced uniformly across all media. + +The aim of marking is to signal to the public that this work is copyrighted and that the author wants to enforce his rights. The mark also makes it easy to locate a copyright owner to secure permission to use the work. + +One of the problems the copyright system confronted early on was that different copyrighted works had to be differently marked. It wasn't clear how or where a statue was to be marked, or a record, or a film. A new marking requirement could solve these problems by recognizing the differences in media, and by allowing the system of marking to evolve as technologies enable it to. The system could enable a special signal from the failure to mark - not the loss of the copyright, but the loss of the right to punish someone for failing to get permission first. + +Let's start with the last point. If a copyright owner allows his work to be published without a copyright notice, the consequence of that failure need not be that the copyright is lost. The consequence could instead be that anyone has the right to use this work, until the copyright owner complains and demonstrates that it is his work and he doesn't give permission.~{ There would be a complication with derivative works that I have not solved here. In my view, the law of derivatives creates a more complicated system than is justified by the marginal incentive it creates. }~ The meaning of an unmarked work would therefore be "use unless someone complains." If someone does complain, then the obligation would be to stop using the work in any new work from then on though no penalty would attach for existing uses. This would create a strong incentive for copyright owners to mark their work. + +That in turn raises the question about how work should best be marked. Here again, the system needs to adjust as the technologies evolve. The best way to ensure that the system evolves is to limit the Copyright Office's role to that of approving standards for marking content that have been crafted elsewhere. +={ Copyright Office +1 } + +For example, if a recording industry association devises a method for marking CDs, it would propose that to the Copyright Office. The Copyright Office would hold a hearing, at which other proposals could be made. The Copyright Office would then select the proposal that it judged preferable, and it would base that choice /{solely}/ upon the consideration of which method could best be integrated into the registration and renewal system. We would not count on the government to innovate; but we would count on the government to keep the product of innovation in line with its other important functions. +={ CDs : + copyright marking of ; + copyright law : + on music recordings | registration requirement of +3 ; + recording industry : + copyright protections in +} + +Finally, marking content clearly would simplify registration requirements. If photographs were marked by author and year, there would be little reason not to allow a photographer to reregister, for example, all photographs taken in a particular year in one quick step. The aim of the formality is not to burden the creator; the system itself should be kept as simple as possible. + +The objective of formalities is to make things clear. The existing system does nothing to make things clear. Indeed, it seems designed to make things unclear. + +If formalities such as registration were reinstated, one of the most difficult aspects of relying upon the public domain would be removed. It would be simple to identify what content is presumptively free; it would be simple to identify who controls the rights for a particular kind of content; it would be simple to assert those rights, and to renew that assertion at the appropriate time. + +2~2 2. Shorter Terms +={ copyright : + duration of +9 +} + +The term of copyright has gone from fourteen years to ninety-five years for corporate authors, and life of the author plus seventy years for natural authors. + +In /{The Future of Ideas}/, I proposed a seventy-five-year term, granted in five- year increments with a requirement of renewal every five years. That seemed radical enough at the time. But after we lost /{Eldred v. Ashcroft}/, the proposals became even more radical. /{The Economist}/ endorsed a proposal for a fourteen-year copyright term.~{ "A Radical Rethink," /{Economist,}/ 366:8308 (25 January 2003): 15, available at link #74. }~ Others have proposed tying the term to the term for patents. +={ Eldred v. Ashcroft ; + Future of Ideas, The (Lessig) ; + Lessig, Lawrence +7 ; + copyright : + renewability of +} + +I agree with those who believe that we need a radical change in copyright's term. But whether fourteen years or seventy-five, there are four principles that are important to keep in mind about copyright terms. + +_1 (1) /{Keep it short:}/ The term should be as long as necessary to give incentives to create, but no longer. If it were tied to very strong protections for authors (so authors were able to reclaim rights from publishers), rights to the same work (not derivative works) might be extended further. The key is not to tie the work up with legal regulations when it no longer benefits an author. + +_1 (2) /{Keep it simple:}/ The line between the public domain and protected content must be kept clear. Lawyers like the fuzziness of "fair use," and the distinction between "ideas" and "expression." That kind of law gives them lots of work. But our framers had a simpler idea in mind: protected versus unprotected. The value of short terms is that there is little need to build exceptions into copyright when the term itself is kept short. A clear and active "lawyer-free zone" makes the complexities of "fair use" and "idea/expression" less necessary to navigate. +={ copyright law : + fair use and | lawyers as detriment to ; + lawyers : + copyright cultural balance impeded by ; + fair use : + fuzziness of +} + +_1 (3) /{Keep it alive:}/ Copyright should have to be renewed. Especially if the maximum term is long, the copyright owner should be required to signal periodically that he wants the protection continued. This need not be an onerous burden, but there is no reason this monopoly protection has to be granted for free. On average, it takes ninety minutes for a veteran to apply for a pension. ~{ Department of Veterans Affairs, Veteran's Application for Compensation and/or Pension, VA Form 21-526 (OMB Approved No. 2900-0001), available at link #75. }~ If we make veterans suffer that burden, I don't see why we couldn't require authors to spend ten minutes every fifty years to file a single form. +={ veterans' pensions ; + copyright : + renewability of +} + +_1 (4) /{Keep it prospective:}/ Whatever the term of copyright should be, the clearest lesson that economists teach is that a term once given should not be extended. It might have been a mistake in 1923 for the law to offer authors only a fifty-six-year term. I don't think so, but it's possible. If it was a mistake, then the consequence was that we got fewer authors to create in 1923 than we otherwise would have. But we can't correct that mistake today by increasing the term. No matter what we do today, we will not increase the number of authors who wrote in 1923. Of course, we can increase the reward that those who write now get (or alternatively, increase the copyright burden that smothers many works that are today invisible). But increasing their reward will not increase their creativity in 1923. What's not done is not done, and there's nothing we can do about that now. + +These changes together should produce an /{average}/ copyright term that is much shorter than the current term. Until 1976, the average term was just 32.2 years. We should be aiming for the same. + +No doubt the extremists will call these ideas "radical." (After all, I call them "extremists.") But again, the term I recommended was longer than the term under Richard Nixon. How "radical" can it be to ask for a more generous copyright law than Richard Nixon presided over? +={ Nixon, Richard } + +2~3 3. Free Use Vs. Fair Use +={ copyright law : + on republishing vs. transformation of original work +11 +} + +As I observed at the beginning of this book, property law originally granted property owners the right to control their property from the ground to the heavens. The airplane came along. The scope of property rights quickly changed. There was no fuss, no constitutional challenge. It made no sense anymore to grant that much control, given the emergence of that new technology. +={ property rights : + air traffic vs. ; + land ownership, air traffic and +} + +Our Constitution gives Congress the power to give authors "exclusive right" to "their writings." Congress has given authors an exclusive right to "their writings" plus any derivative writings (made by others) that are sufficiently close to the author's original work. Thus, if I write a book, and you base a movie on that book, I have the power to deny you the right to release that movie, even though that movie is not "my writing." +={ derivative works : + reform copyright term and scope on +8 ; + Congress, U.S. : + on derivative rights +1 | on copyright laws +1 +} + +Congress granted the beginnings of this right in 1870, when it expanded the exclusive right of copyright to include a right to control translations and dramatizations of a work.~{ Benjamin Kaplan, /{An Unhurried View of Copyright}/ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 32. }~ The courts have expanded it slowly through judicial interpretation ever since. This expansion has been commented upon by one of the law's greatest judges, Judge Benjamin Kaplan. +={ Kaplan, Benjamin } + +``` quote +So inured have we become to the extension of the monopoly to a large range of so-called derivative works, that we no longer sense the oddity of accepting such an enlargement of copyright while yet intoning the abracadabra of idea and expression."~{ Ibid., 56. }~ +``` + +I think it's time to recognize that there are airplanes in this field and the expansiveness of these rights of derivative use no longer make sense. More precisely, they don't make sense for the period of time that a copyright runs. And they don't make sense as an amorphous grant. Consider each limitation in turn. +={ property rights : + air traffic vs. ; + copyright : + duration of +1 +} + +/{Term:}/ If Congress wants to grant a derivative right, then that right should be for a much shorter term. It makes sense to protect John Grisham's right to sell the movie rights to his latest novel (or at least I'm willing to assume it does); but it does not make sense for that right to run for the same term as the underlying copyright. The derivative right could be important in inducing creativity; it is not important long after the creative work is done. +={ Grisham, John ; + Congress, U.S. : + on derivative rights | on copyright laws +} + +/{Scope:}/ Likewise should the scope of derivative rights be narrowed. Again, there are some cases in which derivative rights are important. Those should be specified. But the law should draw clear lines around regulated and unregulated uses of copyrighted material. When all "reuse" of creative material was within the control of businesses, perhaps it made sense to require lawyers to negotiate the lines. It no longer makes sense for lawyers to negotiate the lines. Think about all the creative possibilities that digital technologies enable; now imagine pouring molasses into the machines. That's what this general requirement of permission does to the creative process. Smothers it. +={ copyright : + scope of +} + +This was the point that Alben made when describing the making of the Clint Eastwood CD. While it makes sense to require negotiation for foreseeable derivative rights - turning a book into a movie, or a poem into a musical score - it doesn't make sense to require negotiation for the unforeseeable. Here, a statutory right would make much more sense. +={ Alben, Alex ; + Eastwood, Clint ; + copyright : + statutory licenses in +} + +In each of these cases, the law should mark the uses that are protected, and the presumption should be that other uses are not protected. This is the reverse of the recommendation of my colleague Paul Goldstein.~{ Paul Goldstein, /{Copyright's Highway: From Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox}/ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 187-216. }~ His view is that the law should be written so that expanded protections follow expanded uses. +={ Goldstein, Paul } + +Goldstein's analysis would make perfect sense if the cost of the legal system were small. But as we are currently seeing in the context of the Internet, the uncertainty about the scope of protection, and the incentives to protect existing architectures of revenue, combined with a strong copyright, weaken the process of innovation. + +The law could remedy this problem either by removing protection beyond the part explicitly drawn or by granting reuse rights upon certain statutory conditions. Either way, the effect would be to free a great deal of culture to others to cultivate. And under a statutory rights regime, that reuse would earn artists more income. +={ copyright : + statutory licenses in ; + statutory licenses +} + +2~4 4. Liberate the Music - Again +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + reform proposals of copyright restraints on +41 +} + +The battle that got this whole war going was about music, so it wouldn't be fair to end this book without addressing the issue that is, to most people, most pressing - music. There is no other policy issue that better teaches the lessons of this book than the battles around the sharing of music. + +The appeal of file-sharing music was the crack cocaine of the Inter-net's growth. It drove demand for access to the Internet more powerfully than any other single application. It was the Internet's killer app-possibly in two senses of that word. It no doubt was the application that drove demand for bandwidth. It may well be the application that drives demand for regulations that in the end kill innovation on the network. + +The aim of copyright, with respect to content in general and music in particular, is to create the incentives for music to be composed, performed, and, most importantly, spread. The law does this by giving an exclusive right to a composer to control public performances of his work, and to a performing artist to control copies of her performance. + +File-sharing networks complicate this model by enabling the spread of content for which the performer has not been paid. But of course, that's not all the file-sharing networks do. As I described in chapter 5, they enable four different kinds of sharing: +={ peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing : + four types of +5 +} + +_1 A. There are some who are using sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing CDs. + +_1 B. There are also some who are using sharing networks to sample, on the way to purchasing CDs. + +_1 C. There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content that is no longer sold but is still under copyright or that would have been too cumbersome to buy off the Net. + +_1 D. There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or to get access that the copyright owner plainly endorses. + +Any reform of the law needs to keep these different uses in focus. It must avoid burdening type D even if it aims to eliminate type A. The eagerness with which the law aims to eliminate type A, moreover, should depend upon the magnitude of type B. As with VCRs, if the net effect of sharing is actually not very harmful, the need for regulation is significantly weakened. +={ cassette recording : + VCRs ; + VCRs +} + +As I said in chapter 5, the actual harm caused by sharing is controversial. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I assume the harm is real. I assume, in other words, that type A sharing is significantly greater than type B, and is the dominant use of sharing networks. + +Nonetheless, there is a crucial fact about the current technological context that we must keep in mind if we are to understand how the law should respond. + +Today, file sharing is addictive. In ten years, it won't be. It is addictive today because it is the easiest way to gain access to a broad range of content. It won't be the easiest way to get access to a broad range of content in ten years. Today, access to the Internet is cumbersome and slow - we in the United States are lucky to have broadband service at 1.5 MBs, and very rarely do we get service at that speed both up and down. Although wireless access is growing, most of us still get access across wires. Most only gain access through a machine with a keyboard. The idea of the always on, always connected Internet is mainly just an idea. +={ Internet : + speed of access +3 +} + +But it will become a reality, and that means the way we get access to the Internet today is a technology in transition. Policy makers should not make policy on the basis of technology in transition. They should make policy on the basis of where the technology is going. The question should not be, how should the law regulate sharing in this world? The question should be, what law will we require when the network becomes the network it is clearly becoming? That network is one in which every machine with electricity is essentially on the Net; where everywhere you are - except maybe the desert or the Rockies - you can instantaneously be connected to the Internet. Imagine the Internet as ubiquitous as the best cell-phone service, where with the flip of a device, you are connected. + +In that world, it will be extremely easy to connect to services that give you access to content on the fly - such as Internet radio, content that is streamed to the user when the user demands. Here, then, is the critical point: When it is /{extremely}/ easy to connect to services that give access to content, it will be /{easier}/ to connect to services that give you access to content than it will be to download and store content /on the many devices you will have for playing content/. It will be easier, in other words, to subscribe than it will be to be a database manager, as everyone in the download-sharing world of Napster-like technologies essentially is. Content services will compete with content sharing, even if the services charge money for the content they give access to. Already cell-phone services in Japan offer music (for a fee) streamed over cell phones (enhanced with plugs for headphones). The Japanese are paying for this content even though "free" content is available in the form of MP3s across the Web.~{ See, for example, "Music Media Watch," The J@pan Inc. Newsletter, 3 April 2002, available at link #76. }~ +={ cell phones, music streamed over } + +This point about the future is meant to suggest a perspective on the present: It is emphatically temporary. The "problem" with file sharing - to the extent there is a real problem - is a problem that will increasingly disappear as it becomes easier to connect to the Internet. And thus it is an extraordinary mistake for policy makers today to be "solving" this problem in light of a technology that will be gone tomorrow. The question should not be how to regulate the Internet to eliminate file sharing (the Net will evolve that problem away). The question instead should be how to assure that artists get paid, during this transition between twentieth-century models for doing business and twenty-first-century technologies. + +The answer begins with recognizing that there are different "problems" here to solve. Let's start with type D content - uncopyrighted content or copyrighted content that the artist wants shared. The "problem" with this content is to make sure that the technology that would enable this kind of sharing is not rendered illegal. You can think of it this way: Pay phones are used to deliver ransom demands, no doubt. But there are many who need to use pay phones who have nothing to do with ransoms. It would be wrong to ban pay phones in order to eliminate kidnapping. + +Type C content raises a different "problem." This is content that was, at one time, published and is no longer available. It may be unavailable because the artist is no longer valuable enough for the record label he signed with to carry his work. Or it may be unavailable because the work is forgotten. Either way, the aim of the law should be to facilitate the access to this content, ideally in a way that returns something to the artist. + +Again, the model here is the used book store. Once a book goes out of print, it may still be available in libraries and used book stores. But libraries and used book stores don't pay the copyright owner when someone reads or buys an out-of- print book. That makes total sense, of course, since any other system would be so burdensome as to eliminate the possibility of used book stores' existing. But from the author's perspective, this "sharing" of his content without his being compensated is less than ideal. +={ books : + out of print | resales of +} + +The model of used book stores suggests that the law could simply deem out-of-print music fair game. If the publisher does not make copies of the music available for sale, then commercial and noncommercial providers would be free, under this rule, to "share" that content, even though the sharing involved making a copy. The copy here would be incidental to the trade; in a context where commercial publishing has ended, trading music should be as free as trading books. + +Alternatively, the law could create a statutory license that would ensure that artists get something from the trade of their work. For example, if the law set a low statutory rate for the commercial sharing of content that was not offered for sale by a commercial publisher, and if that rate were automatically transferred to a trust for the benefit of the artist, then businesses could develop around the idea of trading this content, and artists would benefit from this trade. +={ copyright infringement lawsuits : + statutory licenses in +1 ; + statutory licenses +1 +} + +This system would also create an incentive for publishers to keep works available commercially. Works that are available commercially would not be subject to this license. Thus, publishers could protect the right to charge whatever they want for content if they kept the work commercially available. But if they don't keep it available, and instead, the computer hard disks of fans around the world keep it alive, then any royalty owed for such copying should be much less than the amount owed a commercial publisher. + +The hard case is content of types A and B, and again, this case is hard only because the extent of the problem will change over time, as the technologies for gaining access to content change. The law's solution should be as flexible as the problem is, understanding that we are in the middle of a radical transformation in the technology for delivering and accessing content. + +So here's a solution that will at first seem very strange to both sides in this war, but which upon reflection, I suggest, should make some sense. + +Stripped of the rhetoric about the sanctity of property, the basic claim of the content industry is this: A new technology (the Internet) has harmed a set of rights that secure copyright. If those rights are to be protected, then the content industry should be compensated for that harm. Just as the technology of tobacco harmed the health of millions of Americans, or the technology of asbestos caused grave illness to thousands of miners, so, too, has the technology of digital networks harmed the interests of the content industry. + +I love the Internet, and so I don't like likening it to tobacco or asbestos. But the analogy is a fair one from the perspective of the law. And it suggests a fair response: Rather than seeking to destroy the Internet, or the p2p technologies that are currently harming content providers on the Internet, we should find a relatively simple way to compensate those who are harmed. +={ recording industry : + artist remuneration in +4 ; + artists : + recording industry payments to +} + +The idea would be a modification of a proposal that has been floated by Harvard law professor William Fisher.~{ William Fisher, /{Digital Music: Problems and Possibilities}/ (last revised: 10 October 2000), available at link #77; William Fisher, /{Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment}/ (forthcoming) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), ch. 6, available at link #78. Professor Netanel has proposed a related idea that would exempt noncommercial sharing from the reach of copyright and would establish compensation to artists to balance any loss. See Neil Weinstock Netanel, "Impose a Noncommercial Use Levy to Allow Free P2P File Sharing," available at link #79. For other proposals, see Lawrence Lessig, "Who's Holding Back Broadband?" /{Washington Post,}/ 8 January 2002, A17; Philip S. Corwin on behalf of Sharman Networks, A Letter to Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 26 February 2002, available at link #80; Serguei Osokine, /{A Quick Case for Intellectual Property Use Fee (IPUF),}/ 3 March 2002, available at link #81; Jefferson Graham, "Kazaa, Verizon Propose to Pay Artists Directly," /{USA Today,}/ 13 May 2002, available at link #82; Steven M. Cherry, "Getting Copyright Right," IEEE Spectrum Online, 1 July 2002, available at link #83; Declan Mc-Cullagh, "Verizon's Copyright Campaign," CNET News.com, 27 August 2002, available at link #84. Fisher's proposal is very similar to Richard Stallman's proposal for DAT. Unlike Fisher's, Stallman's proposal would not pay artists directly proportionally, though more popular artists would get more than the less popular. As is typical with Stallman, his proposal predates the current debate by about a decade. See link #85. }~ Fisher suggests a very clever way around the current impasse of the Internet. Under his plan, all content capable of digital transmission would (1) be marked with a digital watermark (don't worry about how easy it is to evade these marks; as you'll see, there's no incentive to evade them). Once the content is marked, then entrepreneurs would develop (2) systems to monitor how many items of each content were distributed. On the basis of those numbers, then (3) artists would be compensated. The compensation would be paid for by (4) an appropriate tax. +={ Fisher, William +2 ; + Promises to Keep (Fisher) +1 +} + +Fisher's proposal is careful and comprehensive. It raises a million questions, most of which he answers well in his upcoming book, /{Promises to Keep}/. The modification that I would make is relatively simple: Fisher imagines his proposal replacing the existing copyright system. I imagine it complementing the existing system. The aim of the proposal would be to facilitate compensation to the extent that harm could be shown. This compensation would be temporary, aimed at facilitating a transition between regimes. And it would require renewal after a period of years. If it continues to make sense to facilitate free exchange of content, supported through a taxation system, then it can be continued. If this form of protection is no longer necessary, then the system could lapse into the old system of controlling access. + +Fisher would balk at the idea of allowing the system to lapse. His aim is not just to ensure that artists are paid, but also to ensure that the system supports the widest range of "semiotic democracy" possible. But the aims of semiotic democracy would be satisfied if the other changes I described were accomplished - in particular, the limits on derivative uses. A system that simply charges for access would not greatly burden semiotic democracy if there were few limitations on what one was allowed to do with the content itself. +={ semiotic democracy ; + democracy : + semiotic +} + +No doubt it would be difficult to calculate the proper measure of "harm" to an industry. But the difficulty of making that calculation would be outweighed by the benefit of facilitating innovation. This background system to compensate would also not need to interfere with innovative proposals such as Apple's MusicStore. As experts predicted when Apple launched the MusicStore, it could beat "free" by being easier than free is. This has proven correct: Apple has sold millions of songs at even the very high price of 99 cents a song. (At 99 cents, the cost is the equivalent of a per-song CD price, though the labels have none of the costs of a CD to pay.) Apple's move was countered by Real Networks, offering music at just 79 cents a song. And no doubt there will be a great deal of competition to offer and sell music on-line. +={ Apple Corporation ; + MusicStore ; + Real Networks ; + CDs : + prices of +} + +This competition has already occurred against the background of "free" music from p2p systems. As the sellers of cable television have known for thirty years, and the sellers of bottled water for much more than that, there is nothing impossible at all about "competing with free." Indeed, if anything, the competition spurs the competitors to offer new and better products. This is precisely what the competitive market was to be about. Thus in Singapore, though piracy is rampant, movie theaters are often luxurious - with "first class" seats, and meals served while you watch a movie - as they struggle and succeed in finding ways to compete with "free." +={ cable television ; + television : + cable vs. broadcast ; + Asia, commercial piracy in ; + piracy : + in Asia ; + film industry : + luxury theatres vs. video piracy in +} + +This regime of competition, with a backstop to assure that artists don't lose, would facilitate a great deal of innovation in the delivery of content. That competition would continue to shrink type A sharing. It would inspire an extraordinary range of new innovators - ones who would have a right to the content, and would no longer fear the uncertain and barbarically severe punishments of the law. + +In summary, then, my proposal is this: + +The Internet is in transition. We should not be regulating a technology in transition. We should instead be regulating to minimize the harm to interests affected by this technological change, while enabling, and encouraging, the most efficient technology we can create. + +We can minimize that harm while maximizing the benefit to innovation by + +_1 1. guaranteeing the right to engage in type D sharing; + +_1 2. permitting noncommercial type C sharing without liability, and commercial type C sharing at a low and fixed rate set by statute; + +_1 3. while in this transition, taxing and compensating for type A sharing, to the extent actual harm is demonstrated. + +But what if "piracy" doesn't disappear? What if there is a competitive market providing content at a low cost, but a significant number of consumers continue to "take" content for nothing? Should the law do something then? + +Yes, it should. But, again, what it should do depends upon how the facts develop. These changes may not eliminate type A sharing. But the real issue is not whether it eliminates sharing in the abstract. The real issue is its effect on the market. Is it better (a) to have a technology that is 95 percent secure and produces a market of size /{x}/, or (b) to have a technology that is 50 percent secure but produces a market of five times /{x}/? Less secure might produce more unauthorized sharing, but it is likely to also produce a much bigger market in authorized sharing. The most important thing is to assure artists' compensation without breaking the Internet. Once that's assured, then it may well be appropriate to find ways to track down the petty pirates. + +But we're a long way away from whittling the problem down to this subset of type A sharers. And our focus until we're there should not be on finding ways to break the Internet. Our focus until we're there should be on how to make sure the artists are paid, while protecting the space for innovation and creativity that the Internet is. + +2~5 5. Fire Lots of Lawyers +={ copyright law : + lawyers as detriment to +12 ; + lawyers : + copyright cultural balance impeded by +12 ; + legal system, attorney costs in +12 +} + +I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living. I believe in the law. I believe in the law of copyright. Indeed, I have devoted my life to working in law, not because there are big bucks at the end but because there are ideals at the end that I would love to live. + +Yet much of this book has been a criticism of lawyers, or the role lawyers have played in this debate. The law speaks to ideals, but it is my view that our profession has become too attuned to the client. And in a world where the rich clients have one strong view, the unwillingness of the profession to question or counter that one strong view queers the law. + +The evidence of this bending is compelling. I'm attacked as a "radical" by many within the profession, yet the positions that I am advocating are precisely the positions of some of the most moderate and significant figures in the history of this branch of the law. Many, for example, thought crazy the challenge that we brought to the Copyright Term Extension Act. Yet just thirty years ago, the dominant scholar and practitioner in the field of copyright, Melville Nimmer, thought it obvious.~{ Lawrence Lessig, "Copyright's First Amendment" (Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture), /{UCLA Law Review}/ 48 (2001): 1057, 1069-70. }~ +={ Nimmer, Melville ; + Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998) : + Supreme Court challenge of +} + +However, my criticism of the role that lawyers have played in this debate is not just about a professional bias. It is more importantly about our failure to actually reckon the costs of the law. + +Economists are supposed to be good at reckoning costs and benefits. But more often than not, economists, with no clue about how the legal system actually functions, simply assume that the transaction costs of the legal system are slight.~{ A good example is the work of Professor Stan Liebowitz. Liebowitz is to be commended for his careful review of data about infringement, leading him to question his own publicly stated position - twice. He initially predicted that downloading would substantially harm the industry. He then revised his view in light of the data, and he has since revised his view again. Compare Stan J. Liebowitz, /{Rethinking the Network Economy: The True Forces That Drive the Digital Marketplace}/ (New York: Amacom, 2002), 173 (reviewing his original view but expressing skepticism) with Stan J. Liebowitz, "Will MP3s Annihilate the Record Industry?" working paper, June 2003, available at link #86. Liebowitz's careful analysis is extremely valuable in estimating the effect of file-sharing technology. In my view, however, he underestimates the costs of the legal system. See, for example, /{Rethinking,}/ 174-76. }~ They see a system that has been around for hundreds of years, and they assume it works the way their elementary school civics class taught them it works. + +But the legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done. + +These costs distort free culture in many ways. A lawyer's time is billed at the largest firms at more than $400 per hour. How much time should such a lawyer spend reading cases carefully, or researching obscure strands of authority? The answer is the increasing reality: very little. The law depended upon the careful articulation and development of doctrine, but the careful articulation and development of legal doctrine depends upon careful work. Yet that careful work costs too much, except in the most high-profile and costly cases. + +The costliness and clumsiness and randomness of this system mock our tradition. And lawyers, as well as academics, should consider it their duty to change the way the law works - or better, to change the law so that it works. It is wrong that the system works well only for the top 1 percent of the clients. It could be made radically more efficient, and inexpensive, and hence radically more just. + +But until that reform is complete, we as a society should keep the law away from areas that we know it will only harm. And that is precisely what the law will too often do if too much of our culture is left to its review. + +Think about the amazing things your kid could do or make with digital technology - the film, the music, the Web page, the blog. Or think about the amazing things your community could facilitate with digital technology - a wiki, a barn raising, activism to change something. Think about all those creative things, and then imagine cold molasses poured onto the machines. This is what any regime that requires permission produces. Again, this is the reality of Brezhnev's Russia. + +The law should regulate in certain areas of culture - but it should regulate culture only where that regulation does good. Yet lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: "Will it do good?" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, "Why not?" + +We should ask, "Why?" Show me why your regulation of culture is needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your lawyers away. + +:B~ NOTES + +1~webnotes Notes~# + +Throughout this text, there are references to links on the World Wide Web. As anyone who has tried to use the Web knows, these links can be highly unstable. I have tried to remedy the instability by redirecting readers to the original source through the Web site associated with this book. For each link below, you can go to http://free-culture.cc/notes and locate the original source by clicking on the number after the # sign. If the original link remains alive, you will be redirected to that link. If the original link has disappeared, you will be redirected to an appropriate reference for the material. + +:B~ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS + +1~acknowledgements [Acknowledgments]-# + +This book is the product of a long and as yet unsuccessful struggle that began when I read of Eric Eldred's war to keep books free. Eldred's work helped launch a movement, the free culture movement, and it is to him that this book is dedicated. I received guidance in various places from friends and academics, including Glenn Brown, Peter DiCola, Jennifer Mnookin, Richard Posner, Mark Rose, and Kathleen Sullivan. And I received correction and guidance from many amazing students at Stanford Law School and Stanford University. They included Andrew B. Coan, John Eden, James P. Fellers, Christopher Guzelian, Erica Goldberg, Robert Hall- man, Andrew Harris, Matthew Kahn, Brian Link, Ohad Mayblum, Alina Ng, and Erica Platt. I am particularly grateful to Catherine Crump and Harry Surden, who helped direct their research, and to Laura Lynch, who brilliantly managed the army that they assembled, and provided her own critical eye on much of this. Yuko Noguchi helped me to understand the laws of Japan as well as its culture. I am thankful to her, and to the many in Japan who helped me prepare this book: Joi Ito, Takayuki Matsutani, Naoto Misaki, Michihiro Sasaki, Hiromichi Tanaka, Hiroo Yamagata, and Yoshihiro Yonezawa. I am thankful as well as to Professor Nobuhiro Nakayama, and the Tokyo University Business Law Center, for giving me the chance to spend time in Japan, and to Tadashi Shiraishi and Kiyokazu Yamagami for their generous help while I was there. These are the traditional sorts of help that academics regularly draw upon. But in addition to them, the Internet has made it possible to receive advice and correction from many whom I have never even met. Among those who have responded with extremely helpful advice to requests on my blog about the book are Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, David Gerstein, and Peter DiMauro, as well as a long list of those who had specific ideas about ways to develop my argument. They included Richard Bondi, Steven Cherry, David Coe, Nik Cubrilovic, Bob Devine, Charles Eicher, Thomas Guida, Elihu M. Gerson, Jeremy Hunsinger, Vaughn Iverson, John Karabaic, Jeff Keltner, James Lindenschmidt, K. L. Mann, Mark Manning, Nora McCauley, Jeffrey McHugh, Evan McMullen, Fred Norton, John Pormann, Pedro A. D. Rezende, Shabbir Safdar, Saul Schleimer, Clay Shirky, Adam Shostack, Kragen Sitaker, Chris Smith, Bruce Steinberg, Andrzej Jan Taramina, Sean Walsh, Matt Wasserman, Miljenko Williams, "Wink," Roger Wood, "Ximmbo da Jazz," and Richard Yanco. (I apologize if I have missed anyone; with computers come glitches, and a crash of my e-mail system meant I lost a bunch of great replies.) Richard Stallman and Michael Carroll each read the whole book in draft, and each provided extremely helpful correction and advice. Michael helped me to see more clearly the significance of the regulation of derivitive works. And Richard corrected an embarrassingly large number of errors. While my work is in part inspired by Stallman's, he does not agree with me in important places throughout this book. Finally, and forever, I am thankful to Bettina, who has always insisted that there would be unending happiness away from these battles, and who has always been right. This slow learner is, as ever, grateful for her perpetual patience and love. + +1~about ABOUT THE AUTHOR + +{lessig.jpg 151x227 "Lawrence Lessig" }http://www.lessig.org/ + +LAWRENCE LESSIG ( http://www.lessig.org ), professor of law and a John A. Wilson Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, is founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and is chairman of the Creative Commons ( http://creativecommons.org ). The author of The Future of Ideas (Random House, 2001) and Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace (Basic Books, 1999), Lessig is a member of the boards of the Public Library of Science, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge. He was the winner of the Free Software Foundation's Award for the Advancement of Free Software, twice listed in BusinessWeek's "e.biz 25," and named one of Scientific American's "50 visionaries." A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School, Lessig clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. + +1~misc Other Works and REVIEWS of FreeCulture + +http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001840.shtml + +http://www.free-culture.cc/reviews/ + +1~jacket JACKET + +"FREE CULTURE is an entertaining and important look at the past and future of the cold war between the media industry and new technologies." + +-- Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape + +"The twenty-first century could be the century of unprecedented creativity, but only if we embrace the brilliantly articulated messages in Lawrence Lessig's FREE CULTURE. This book is beautifully written, crisply argued, and deeply provocative. Please read it!" + +-- John Seely Brown, coauthor of THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INFORMATION and former Chief Scientist, Xerox PARC + +"America needs a national conversation about the way in which so-called 'intellectual property rights' have come to dominate the rights of scholars, researchers, and everyday citizens. A copyright cartel, bidding for absolute control over digital worlds, music, and movies, now has a veto over technological innovation and has halted most contributions to the public domain from which so many have benefited. The patent system has spun out of control, giving enormous power to entrenched interests, and even trademarks are being misused. Lawrence Lessig's latest book is essential reading for anyone who want to join this conversation. He explains how technology and the law are robbing us of the public domain; but for all his educated pessimism, Professor Lessig offers some solutions, too, because he recognizes that technology can be the catalyst for freedom. If you care about the future of innovation, read this book." + +-- Dan Gillmor, author of MAKING THE NEWS, an upcoming book on the collision of media and technology + +"FREE CULTURE goes beyond illuminating the catastrophe to our culture of increasing regulation to show examples of how we can make a different future. These new-style heroes and examples are rooted in the traditions of the founding fathers in ways that seem obvious after reading this book. Recommended reading to those trying to unravel the shrill hype around 'intellectual property.'" + +-- Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive + +%% SiSU markup sample Notes: +% SiSU http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu +% SiSU markup for 0.16 and later: +% 0.20.4 header 0~links +% 0.22 may drop image dimensions (rmagick) +% 0.23 utf-8 ß +% 0.38 or later, may use alternative notation for headers, e.g. @title: (instead of 0~title) +% 0.38 document structure alternative markup, experimental (rad) A,B,C,1,2,3 maps to 1,2,3,4,5,6 +% Output: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/free_culture.lawrence_lessig/sisu_manifest.html +% SiSU 0.38 experimental (alternative structure) markup used for this document diff --git a/markup/non-pod-samples/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift.starter.non-pod-sample.sst b/markup/non-pod-samples/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift.starter.non-pod-sample.sst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ffe241 --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/non-pod-samples/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift.starter.non-pod-sample.sst @@ -0,0 +1,1367 @@ +# SiSU 8.0 + +title: "Gulliver's Travels" + +creator: + author: "Swift, Jonathan" + prepared_by: "David Price" + +classify: + topic_register: "SiSU markup sample:book:novel;book:novel:fiction:fantasy" + +rights: + copyright: "Jonathan Swift" + license: "Public Domain" + +date: + published: "1726" + created: "1726" + issued: "1726" + available: "1726" + modified: "1735" + added_to_site: "2005-10-30" + +links: [ + "{ Gulliver's Travels }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullivers_travels", + "{ Johnathan Swift }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift" + ] + +make: + doc_type: "book" + headings: "PART; none; none; CHAPTER;" + breaks: "new=:B; break=1" + +A~ @title-author-date + +:B~ Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World + +1~publisher_to_reader THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER. + +[As given in the original edition.] + +The author of these Travels, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, is my ancient and intimate friend; there is likewise some relation between us on the mother's side. About three years ago, Mr. Gulliver growing weary of the concourse of curious people coming to him at his house in Redriff, made a small purchase of land, with a convenient house, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, his native country; where he now lives retired, yet in good esteem among his neighbours. + +Although Mr. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, where his father dwelt, yet I have heard him say his family came from Oxfordshire; to confirm which, I have observed in the churchyard at Banbury in that county, several tombs and monuments of the Gullivers. + +Before he quitted Redriff, he left the custody of the following papers in my hands, with the liberty to dispose of them as I should think fit. I have carefully perused them three times. The style is very plain and simple; and the only fault I find is, that the author, after the manner of travellers, is a little too circumstantial. There is an air of truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbours at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say, it was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had spoken it. + +By the advice of several worthy persons, to whom, with the author's permission, I communicated these papers, I now venture to send them into the world, hoping they may be, at least for some time, a better entertainment to our young noblemen, than the common scribbles of politics and party. + +This volume would have been at least twice as large, if I had not made bold to strike out innumerable passages relating to the winds and tides, as well as to the variations and bearings in the several voyages, together with the minute descriptions of the management of the ship in storms, in the style of sailors; likewise the account of longitudes and latitudes; wherein I have reason to apprehend, that Mr. Gulliver may be a little dissatisfied. But I was resolved to fit the work as much as possible to the general capacity of readers. However, if my own ignorance in sea affairs shall have led me to commit some mistakes, I alone am answerable for them. And if any traveller hath a curiosity to see the whole work at large, as it came from the hands of the author, I will be ready to gratify him. + +As for any further particulars relating to the author, the reader will receive satisfaction from the first pages of the book. + +RICHARD SYMPSON. + +1~gulliver-to-cousin A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON. + +WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1727. + +I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called "A Voyage round the world." But I do not remember I gave you power to consent that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any thing should be inserted; therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a paragraph about her majesty Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious memory; although I did reverence and esteem her more than any of human species. But you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered, that it was not my inclination, so was it not decent to praise any animal of our composition before my master Houyhnhnm: And besides, the fact was altogether false; for to my knowledge, being in England during some part of her majesty's reign, she did govern by a chief minister; nay even by two successively, the first whereof was the lord of Godolphin, and the second the lord of Oxford; so that you have made me say the thing that was not. Likewise in the account of the academy of projectors, and several passages of my discourse to my master Houyhnhnm, you have either omitted some material circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a manner, that I do hardly know my own work. When I formerly hinted to you something of this in a letter, you were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving offence; that people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt not only to interpret, but to punish every thing which looked like an innuendo (as I think you call it). But, pray how could that which I spoke so many years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in another reign, be applied to any of the Yahoos, who now are said to govern the herd; especially at a time when I little thought, or feared, the unhappiness of living under them? Have not I the most reason to complain, when I see these very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms in a vehicle, as if they were brutes, and those the rational creatures? And indeed to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one principal motive of my retirement hither. + +Thus much I thought proper to tell you in relation to yourself, and to the trust I reposed in you. + +I do, in the next place, complain of my own great want of judgment, in being prevailed upon by the entreaties and false reasoning of you and some others, very much against my own opinion, to suffer my travels to be published. Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insisted on the motive of public good, that the Yahoos were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or example: and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect; behold, after above six months warning, I cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according to my intentions. I desired you would let me know, by a letter, when party and faction were extinguished; judges learned and upright; pleaders honest and modest, with some tincture of common sense, and Smithfield blazing with pyramids of law books; the young nobility's education entirely changed; the physicians banished; the female Yahoos abounding in virtue, honour, truth, and good sense; courts and levees of great ministers thoroughly weeded and swept; wit, merit, and learning rewarded; all disgracers of the press in prose and verse condemned to eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their thirst with their own ink. These, and a thousand other reformations, I firmly counted upon by your encouragement; as indeed they were plainly deducible from the precepts delivered in my book. And it must be owned, that seven months were a sufficient time to correct every vice and folly to which Yahoos are subject, if their natures had been capable of the least disposition to virtue or wisdom. Yet, so far have you been from answering my expectation in any of your letters; that on the contrary you are loading our carrier every week with libels, and keys, and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts; wherein I see myself accused of reflecting upon great state folk; of degrading human nature (for so they have still the confidence to style it), and of abusing the female sex. I find likewise that the writers of those bundles are not agreed among themselves; for some of them will not allow me to be the author of my own travels; and others make me author of books to which I am wholly a stranger. + +I find likewise that your printer has been so careless as to confound the times, and mistake the dates, of my several voyages and returns; neither assigning the true year, nor the true month, nor day of the month: and I hear the original manuscript is all destroyed since the publication of my book; neither have I any copy left: however, I have sent you some corrections, which you may insert, if ever there should be a second edition: and yet I cannot stand to them; but shall leave that matter to my judicious and candid readers to adjust it as they please. + +I hear some of our sea Yahoos find fault with my sea-language, as not proper in many parts, nor now in use. I cannot help it. In my first voyages, while I was young, I was instructed by the oldest mariners, and learned to speak as they did. But I have since found that the sea Yahoos are apt, like the land ones, to become new- fangled in their words, which the latter change every year; insomuch, as I remember upon each return to my own country their old dialect was so altered, that I could hardly understand the new. And I observe, when any Yahoo comes from London out of curiosity to visit me at my house, we neither of us are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other. + +If the censure of the Yahoos could any way affect me, I should have great reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as to think my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain, and have gone so far as to drop hints, that the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos have no more existence than the inhabitants of Utopia. + +Indeed I must confess, that as to the people of Lilliput, Brobdingrag (for so the word should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobdingnag), and Laputa, I have never yet heard of any Yahoo so presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts I have related concerning them; because the truth immediately strikes every reader with conviction. And is there less probability in my account of the Houyhnhnms or Yahoos, when it is manifest as to the latter, there are so many thousands even in this country, who only differ from their brother brutes in Houyhnhnmland, because they use a sort of jabber, and do not go naked? I wrote for their amendment, and not their approbation. The united praise of the whole race would be of less consequence to me, than the neighing of those two degenerate Houyhnhnms I keep in my stable; because from these, degenerate as they are, I still improve in some virtues without any mixture of vice. + +Do these miserable animals presume to think, that I am so degenerated as to defend my veracity? Yahoo as I am, it is well known through all Houyhnhnmland, that, by the instructions and example of my illustrious master, I was able in the compass of two years (although I confess with the utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very souls of all my species; especially the Europeans. + +I have other complaints to make upon this vexatious occasion; but I forbear troubling myself or you any further. I must freely confess, that since my last return, some corruptions of my Yahoo nature have revived in me by conversing with a few of your species, and particularly those of my own family, by an unavoidable necessity; else I should never have attempted so absurd a project as that of reforming the Yahoo race in this kingdom: But I have now done with all such visionary schemes for ever. + +April 2, 1727 + +PART I--A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT. + +CHAPTER I. + +[The author gives some account of himself and family. His first inducements to travel. He is shipwrecked, and swims for his life. Gets safe on shore in the country of Lilliput; is made a prisoner, and carried up the country.] + +My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years. My father now and then sending me small sums of money, I laid them out in learning navigation, and other parts of the mathematics, useful to those who intend to travel, as I always believed it would be, some time or other, my fortune to do. When I left Mr. Bates, I went down to my father: where, by the assistance of him and my uncle John, and some other relations, I got forty pounds, and a promise of thirty pounds a year to maintain me at Leyden: there I studied physic two years and seven months, knowing it would be useful in long voyages. + +Soon after my return from Leyden, I was recommended by my good master, Mr. Bates, to be surgeon to the Swallow, Captain Abraham Pannel, commander; with whom I continued three years and a half, making a voyage or two into the Levant, and some other parts. When I came back I resolved to settle in London; to which Mr. Bates, my master, encouraged me, and by him I was recommended to several patients. I took part of a small house in the Old Jewry; and being advised to alter my condition, I married Mrs. Mary Burton, second daughter to Mr. Edmund Burton, hosier, in Newgate-street, with whom I received four hundred pounds for a portion. + +But my good master Bates dying in two years after, and I having few friends, my business began to fail; for my conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad practice of too many among my brethren. Having therefore consulted with my wife, and some of my acquaintance, I determined to go again to sea. I was surgeon successively in two ships, and made several voyages, for six years, to the East and West Indies, by which I got some addition to my fortune. My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books; and when I was ashore, in observing the manners and dispositions of the people, as well as learning their language; wherein I had a great facility, by the strength of my memory. + +The last of these voyages not proving very fortunate, I grew weary of the sea, and intended to stay at home with my wife and family. I removed from the Old Jewry to Fetter Lane, and from thence to Wapping, hoping to get business among the sailors; but it would not turn to account. After three years expectation that things would mend, I accepted an advantageous offer from Captain William Prichard, master of the Antelope, who was making a voyage to the South Sea. We set sail from Bristol, May 4, 1699, and our voyage was at first very prosperous. + +It would not be proper, for some reasons, to trouble the reader with the particulars of our adventures in those seas; let it suffice to inform him, that in our passage from thence to the East Indies, we were driven by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen's Land. By an observation, we found ourselves in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes south. Twelve of our crew were dead by immoderate labour and ill food; the rest were in a very weak condition. On the 5th of November, which was the beginning of summer in those parts, the weather being very hazy, the seamen spied a rock within half a cable's length of the ship; but the wind was so strong, that we were driven directly upon it, and immediately split. Six of the crew, of whom I was one, having let down the boat into the sea, made a shift to get clear of the ship and the rock. We rowed, by my computation, about three leagues, till we were able to work no longer, being already spent with labour while we were in the ship. We therefore trusted ourselves to the mercy of the waves, and in about half an hour the boat was overset by a sudden flurry from the north. What became of my companions in the boat, as well as of those who escaped on the rock, or were left in the vessel, I cannot tell; but conclude they were all lost. For my own part, I swam as fortune directed me, and was pushed forward by wind and tide. I often let my legs drop, and could feel no bottom; but when I was almost gone, and able to struggle no longer, I found myself within my depth; and by this time the storm was much abated. The declivity was so small, that I walked near a mile before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was about eight o'clock in the evening. I then advanced forward near half a mile, but could not discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at least I was in so weak a condition, that I did not observe them. I was extremely tired, and with that, and the heat of the weather, and about half a pint of brandy that I drank as I left the ship, I found myself much inclined to sleep. I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner. I likewise felt several slender ligatures across my body, from my arm-pits to my thighs. I could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me; but in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back. In the mean time, I felt at least forty more of the same kind (as I conjectured) following the first. I was in the utmost astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground. However, they soon returned, and one of them, who ventured so far as to get a full sight of my face, lifting up his hands and eyes by way of admiration, cried out in a shrill but distinct voice, Hekinah degul: the others repeated the same words several times, but then I knew not what they meant. I lay all this while, as the reader may believe, in great uneasiness. At length, struggling to get loose, I had the fortune to break the strings, and wrench out the pegs that fastened my left arm to the ground; for, by lifting it up to my face, I discovered the methods they had taken to bind me, and at the same time with a violent pull, which gave me excessive pain, I a little loosened the strings that tied down my hair on the left side, so that I was just able to turn my head about two inches. But the creatures ran off a second time, before I could seize them; whereupon there was a great shout in a very shrill accent, and after it ceased I heard one of them cry aloud Tolgo phonac; when in an instant I felt above a hundred arrows discharged on my left hand, which, pricked me like so many needles; and besides, they shot another flight into the air, as we do bombs in Europe, whereof many, I suppose, fell on my body, (though I felt them not), and some on my face, which I immediately covered with my left hand. When this shower of arrows was over, I fell a groaning with grief and pain; and then striving again to get loose, they discharged another volley larger than the first, and some of them attempted with spears to stick me in the sides; but by good luck I had on a buff jerkin, which they could not pierce. I thought it the most prudent method to lie still, and my design was to continue so till night, when, my left hand being already loose, I could easily free myself: and as for the inhabitants, I had reason to believe I might be a match for the greatest army they could bring against me, if they were all of the same size with him that I saw. But fortune disposed otherwise of me. When the people observed I was quiet, they discharged no more arrows; but, by the noise I heard, I knew their numbers increased; and about four yards from me, over against my right ear, I heard a knocking for above an hour, like that of people at work; when turning my head that way, as well as the pegs and strings would permit me, I saw a stage erected about a foot and a half from the ground, capable of holding four of the inhabitants, with two or three ladders to mount it: from whence one of them, who seemed to be a person of quality, made me a long speech, whereof I understood not one syllable. But I should have mentioned, that before the principal person began his oration, he cried out three times, Langro dehul san (these words and the former were afterwards repeated and explained to me); whereupon, immediately, about fifty of the inhabitants came and cut the strings that fastened the left side of my head, which gave me the liberty of turning it to the right, and of observing the person and gesture of him that was to speak. He appeared to be of a middle age, and taller than any of the other three who attended him, whereof one was a page that held up his train, and seemed to be somewhat longer than my middle finger; the other two stood one on each side to support him. He acted every part of an orator, and I could observe many periods of threatenings, and others of promises, pity, and kindness. I answered in a few words, but in the most submissive manner, lifting up my left hand, and both my eyes to the sun, as calling him for a witness; and being almost famished with hunger, having not eaten a morsel for some hours before I left the ship, I found the demands of nature so strong upon me, that I could not forbear showing my impatience (perhaps against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger frequently to my mouth, to signify that I wanted food. The hurgo (for so they call a great lord, as I afterwards learnt) understood me very well. He descended from the stage, and commanded that several ladders should be applied to my sides, on which above a hundred of the inhabitants mounted and walked towards my mouth, laden with baskets full of meat, which had been provided and sent thither by the king's orders, upon the first intelligence he received of me. I observed there was the flesh of several animals, but could not distinguish them by the taste. There were shoulders, legs, and loins, shaped like those of mutton, and very well dressed, but smaller than the wings of a lark. I ate them by two or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a time, about the bigness of musket bullets. They supplied me as fast as they could, showing a thousand marks of wonder and astonishment at my bulk and appetite. I then made another sign, that I wanted drink. They found by my eating that a small quantity would not suffice me; and being a most ingenious people, they slung up, with great dexterity, one of their largest hogsheads, then rolled it towards my hand, and beat out the top; I drank it off at a draught, which I might well do, for it did not hold half a pint, and tasted like a small wine of Burgundy, but much more delicious. They brought me a second hogshead, which I drank in the same manner, and made signs for more; but they had none to give me. When I had performed these wonders, they shouted for joy, and danced upon my breast, repeating several times as they did at first, Hekinah degul. They made me a sign that I should throw down the two hogsheads, but first warning the people below to stand out of the way, crying aloud, Borach mevolah; and when they saw the vessels in the air, there was a universal shout of Hekinah degul. I confess I was often tempted, while they were passing backwards and forwards on my body, to seize forty or fifty of the first that came in my reach, and dash them against the ground. But the remembrance of what I had felt, which probably might not be the worst they could do, and the promise of honour I made them--for so I interpreted my submissive behaviour-- soon drove out these imaginations. Besides, I now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence. However, in my thoughts I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who durst venture to mount and walk upon my body, while one of my hands was at liberty, without trembling at the very sight of so prodigious a creature as I must appear to them. After some time, when they observed that I made no more demands for meat, there appeared before me a person of high rank from his imperial majesty. His excellency, having mounted on the small of my right leg, advanced forwards up to my face, with about a dozen of his retinue; and producing his credentials under the signet royal, which he applied close to my eyes, spoke about ten minutes without any signs of anger, but with a kind of determinate resolution, often pointing forwards, which, as I afterwards found, was towards the capital city, about half a mile distant; whither it was agreed by his majesty in council that I must be conveyed. I answered in few words, but to no purpose, and made a sign with my hand that was loose, putting it to the other (but over his excellency's head for fear of hurting him or his train) and then to my own head and body, to signify that I desired my liberty. It appeared that he understood me well enough, for he shook his head by way of disapprobation, and held his hand in a posture to show that I must be carried as a prisoner. However, he made other signs to let me understand that I should have meat and drink enough, and very good treatment. Whereupon I once more thought of attempting to break my bonds; but again, when I felt the smart of their arrows upon my face and hands, which were all in blisters, and many of the darts still sticking in them, and observing likewise that the number of my enemies increased, I gave tokens to let them know that they might do with me what they pleased. Upon this, the hurgo and his train withdrew, with much civility and cheerful countenances. Soon after I heard a general shout, with frequent repetitions of the words Peplom selan; and I felt great numbers of people on my left side relaxing the cords to such a degree, that I was able to turn upon my right, and to ease myself with making water; which I very plentifully did, to the great astonishment of the people; who, conjecturing by my motion what I was going to do, immediately opened to the right and left on that side, to avoid the torrent, which fell with such noise and violence from me. But before this, they had daubed my face and both my hands with a sort of ointment, very pleasant to the smell, which, in a few minutes, removed all the smart of their arrows. These circumstances, added to the refreshment I had received by their victuals and drink, which were very nourishing, disposed me to sleep. I slept about eight hours, as I was afterwards assured; and it was no wonder, for the physicians, by the emperor's order, had mingled a sleepy potion in the hogsheads of wine. + +It seems, that upon the first moment I was discovered sleeping on the ground, after my landing, the emperor had early notice of it by an express; and determined in council, that I should be tied in the manner I have related, (which was done in the night while I slept;) that plenty of meat and drink should be sent to me, and a machine prepared to carry me to the capital city. + +This resolution perhaps may appear very bold and dangerous, and I am confident would not be imitated by any prince in Europe on the like occasion. However, in my opinion, it was extremely prudent, as well as generous: for, supposing these people had endeavoured to kill me with their spears and arrows, while I was asleep, I should certainly have awaked with the first sense of smart, which might so far have roused my rage and strength, as to have enabled me to break the strings wherewith I was tied; after which, as they were not able to make resistance, so they could expect no mercy. + +These people are most excellent mathematicians, and arrived to a great perfection in mechanics, by the countenance and encouragement of the emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning. This prince has several machines fixed on wheels, for the carriage of trees and other great weights. He often builds his largest men of war, whereof some are nine feet long, in the woods where the timber grows, and has them carried on these engines three or four hundred yards to the sea. Five hundred carpenters and engineers were immediately set at work to prepare the greatest engine they had. It was a frame of wood raised three inches from the ground, about seven feet long, and four wide, moving upon twenty-two wheels. The shout I heard was upon the arrival of this engine, which, it seems, set out in four hours after my landing. It was brought parallel to me, as I lay. But the principal difficulty was to raise and place me in this vehicle. Eighty poles, each of one foot high, were erected for this purpose, and very strong cords, of the bigness of packthread, were fastened by hooks to many bandages, which the workmen had girt round my neck, my hands, my body, and my legs. Nine hundred of the strongest men were employed to draw up these cords, by many pulleys fastened on the poles; and thus, in less than three hours, I was raised and slung into the engine, and there tied fast. All this I was told; for, while the operation was performing, I lay in a profound sleep, by the force of that soporiferous medicine infused into my liquor. Fifteen hundred of the emperor's largest horses, each about four inches and a half high, were employed to draw me towards the metropolis, which, as I said, was half a mile distant. + +About four hours after we began our journey, I awaked by a very ridiculous accident; for the carriage being stopped a while, to adjust something that was out of order, two or three of the young natives had the curiosity to see how I looked when I was asleep; they climbed up into the engine, and advancing very softly to my face, one of them, an officer in the guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike a good way up into my left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and made me sneeze violently; whereupon they stole off unperceived, and it was three weeks before I knew the cause of my waking so suddenly. We made a long march the remaining part of the day, and, rested at night with five hundred guards on each side of me, half with torches, and half with bows and arrows, ready to shoot me if I should offer to stir. The next morning at sun-rise we continued our march, and arrived within two hundred yards of the city gates about noon. The emperor, and all his court, came out to meet us; but his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on my body. + +At the place where the carriage stopped there stood an ancient temple, esteemed to be the largest in the whole kingdom; which, having been polluted some years before by an unnatural murder, was, according to the zeal of those people, looked upon as profane, and therefore had been applied to common use, and all the ornaments and furniture carried away. In this edifice it was determined I should lodge. The great gate fronting to the north was about four feet high, and almost two feet wide, through which I could easily creep. On each side of the gate was a small window, not above six inches from the ground: into that on the left side, the king's smith conveyed fourscore and eleven chains, like those that hang to a lady's watch in Europe, and almost as large, which were locked to my left leg with six-and-thirty padlocks. Over against this temple, on the other side of the great highway, at twenty feet distance, there was a turret at least five feet high. Here the emperor ascended, with many principal lords of his court, to have an opportunity of viewing me, as I was told, for I could not see them. It was reckoned that above a hundred thousand inhabitants came out of the town upon the same errand; and, in spite of my guards, I believe there could not be fewer than ten thousand at several times, who mounted my body by the help of ladders. But a proclamation was soon issued, to forbid it upon pain of death. When the workmen found it was impossible for me to break loose, they cut all the strings that bound me; whereupon I rose up, with as melancholy a disposition as ever I had in my life. But the noise and astonishment of the people, at seeing me rise and walk, are not to be expressed. The chains that held my left leg were about two yards long, and gave me not only the liberty of walking backwards and forwards in a semicircle, but, being fixed within four inches of the gate, allowed me to creep in, and lie at my full length in the temple. + +CHAPTER II. + +[The emperor of Lilliput, attended by several of the nobility, comes to see the author in his confinement. The emperor's person and habit described. Learned men appointed to teach the author their language. He gains favour by his mild disposition. His pockets are searched, and his sword and pistols taken from him.] + +When I found myself on my feet, I looked about me, and must confess I never beheld a more entertaining prospect. The country around appeared like a continued garden, and the enclosed fields, which were generally forty feet square, resembled so many beds of flowers. These fields were intermingled with woods of half a stang,~{ A stang is a pole or perch; sixteen feet and a half. }~ and the tallest trees, as I could judge, appeared to be seven feet high. I viewed the town on my left hand, which looked like the painted scene of a city in a theatre. + +I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of nature; which was no wonder, it being almost two days since I had last disburdened myself. I was under great difficulties between urgency and shame. The best expedient I could think of, was to creep into my house, which I accordingly did; and shutting the gate after me, I went as far as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my body of that uneasy load. But this was the only time I was ever guilty of so uncleanly an action; for which I cannot but hope the candid reader will give some allowance, after he has maturely and impartially considered my case, and the distress I was in. From this time my constant practice was, as soon as I rose, to perform that business in open air, at the full extent of my chain; and due care was taken every morning before company came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in wheel-barrows, by two servants appointed for that purpose. I would not have dwelt so long upon a circumstance that, perhaps, at first sight, may appear not very momentous, if I had not thought it necessary to justify my character, in point of cleanliness, to the world; which, I am told, some of my maligners have been pleased, upon this and other occasions, to call in question. + +When this adventure was at an end, I came back out of my house, having occasion for fresh air. The emperor was already descended from the tower, and advancing on horseback towards me, which had like to have cost him dear; for the beast, though very well trained, yet wholly unused to such a sight, which appeared as if a mountain moved before him, reared up on its hinder feet: but that prince, who is an excellent horseman, kept his seat, till his attendants ran in, and held the bridle, while his majesty had time to dismount. When he alighted, he surveyed me round with great admiration; but kept beyond the length of my chain. He ordered his cooks and butlers, who were already prepared, to give me victuals and drink, which they pushed forward in a sort of vehicles upon wheels, till I could reach them. I took these vehicles and soon emptied them all; twenty of them were filled with meat, and ten with liquor; each of the former afforded me two or three good mouthfuls; and I emptied the liquor of ten vessels, which was contained in earthen vials, into one vehicle, drinking it off at a draught; and so I did with the rest. The empress, and young princes of the blood of both sexes, attended by many ladies, sat at some distance in their chairs; but upon the accident that happened to the emperor's horse, they alighted, and came near his person, which I am now going to describe. He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court; which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders. His features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment majestic. He was then past his prime, being twenty-eight years and three quarters old, of which he had reigned about seven in great felicity, and generally victorious. For the better convenience of beholding him, I lay on my side, so that my face was parallel to his, and he stood but three yards off: however, I have had him since many times in my hand, and therefore cannot be deceived in the description. His dress was very plain and simple, and the fashion of it between the Asiatic and the European; but he had on his head a light helmet of gold, adorned with jewels, and a plume on the crest. He held his sword drawn in his hand to defend himself, if I should happen to break loose; it was almost three inches long; the hilt and scabbard were gold enriched with diamonds. His voice was shrill, but very clear and articulate; and I could distinctly hear it when I stood up. The ladies and courtiers were all most magnificently clad; so that the spot they stood upon seemed to resemble a petticoat spread upon the ground, embroidered with figures of gold and silver. His imperial majesty spoke often to me, and I returned answers: but neither of us could understand a syllable. There were several of his priests and lawyers present (as I conjectured by their habits), who were commanded to address themselves to me; and I spoke to them in as many languages as I had the least smattering of, which were High and Low Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Lingua Franca, but all to no purpose. After about two hours the court retired, and I was left with a strong guard, to prevent the impertinence, and probably the malice of the rabble, who were very impatient to crowd about me as near as they durst; and some of them had the impudence to shoot their arrows at me, as I sat on the ground by the door of my house, whereof one very narrowly missed my left eye. But the colonel ordered six of the ringleaders to be seized, and thought no punishment so proper as to deliver them bound into my hands; which some of his soldiers accordingly did, pushing them forward with the butt-ends of their pikes into my reach. I took them all in my right hand, put five of them into my coat-pocket; and as to the sixth, I made a countenance as if I would eat him alive. The poor man squalled terribly, and the colonel and his officers were in much pain, especially when they saw me take out my penknife: but I soon put them out of fear; for, looking mildly, and immediately cutting the strings he was bound with, I set him gently on the ground, and away he ran. I treated the rest in the same manner, taking them one by one out of my pocket; and I observed both the soldiers and people were highly delighted at this mark of my clemency, which was represented very much to my advantage at court. + +Towards night I got with some difficulty into my house, where I lay on the ground, and continued to do so about a fortnight; during which time, the emperor gave orders to have a bed prepared for me. Six hundred beds of the common measure were brought in carriages, and worked up in my house; a hundred and fifty of their beds, sewn together, made up the breadth and length; and these were four double: which, however, kept me but very indifferently from the hardness of the floor, that was of smooth stone. By the same computation, they provided me with sheets, blankets, and coverlets, tolerable enough for one who had been so long inured to hardships. + +As the news of my arrival spread through the kingdom, it brought prodigious numbers of rich, idle, and curious people to see me; so that the villages were almost emptied; and great neglect of tillage and household affairs must have ensued, if his imperial majesty had not provided, by several proclamations and orders of state, against this inconveniency. He directed that those who had already beheld me should return home, and not presume to come within fifty yards of my house, without license from the court; whereby the secretaries of state got considerable fees. + +In the mean time the emperor held frequent councils, to debate what course should be taken with me; and I was afterwards assured by a particular friend, a person of great quality, who was as much in the secret as any, that the court was under many difficulties concerning me. They apprehended my breaking loose; that my diet would be very expensive, and might cause a famine. Sometimes they determined to starve me; or at least to shoot me in the face and hands with poisoned arrows, which would soon despatch me; but again they considered, that the stench of so large a carcass might produce a plague in the metropolis, and probably spread through the whole kingdom. In the midst of these consultations, several officers of the army went to the door of the great council-chamber, and two of them being admitted, gave an account of my behaviour to the six criminals above-mentioned; which made so favourable an impression in the breast of his majesty and the whole board, in my behalf, that an imperial commission was issued out, obliging all the villages, nine hundred yards round the city, to deliver in every morning six beeves, forty sheep, and other victuals for my sustenance; together with a proportionable quantity of bread, and wine, and other liquors; for the due payment of which, his majesty gave assignments upon his treasury:- for this prince lives chiefly upon his own demesnes; seldom, except upon great occasions, raising any subsidies upon his subjects, who are bound to attend him in his wars at their own expense. An establishment was also made of six hundred persons to be my domestics, who had board-wages allowed for their maintenance, and tents built for them very conveniently on each side of my door. It was likewise ordered, that three hundred tailors should make me a suit of clothes, after the fashion of the country; that six of his majesty's greatest scholars should be employed to instruct me in their language; and lastly, that the emperor's horses, and those of the nobility and troops of guards, should be frequently exercised in my sight, to accustom themselves to me. All these orders were duly put in execution; and in about three weeks I made a great progress in learning their language; during which time the emperor frequently honoured me with his visits, and was pleased to assist my masters in teaching me. We began already to converse together in some sort; and the first words I learnt, were to express my desire "that he would please give me my liberty;" which I every day repeated on my knees. His answer, as I could comprehend it, was, "that this must be a work of time, not to be thought on without the advice of his council, and that first I must lumos kelmin pesso desmar lon emposo;" that is, swear a peace with him and his kingdom. However, that I should be used with all kindness. And he advised me to "acquire, by my patience and discreet behaviour, the good opinion of himself and his subjects." He desired "I would not take it ill, if he gave orders to certain proper officers to search me; for probably I might carry about me several weapons, which must needs be dangerous things, if they answered the bulk of so prodigious a person." I said, "His majesty should be satisfied; for I was ready to strip myself, and turn up my pockets before him." This I delivered part in words, and part in signs. He replied, "that, by the laws of the kingdom, I must be searched by two of his officers; that he knew this could not be done without my consent and assistance; and he had so good an opinion of my generosity and justice, as to trust their persons in my hands; that whatever they took from me, should be returned when I left the country, or paid for at the rate which I would set upon them." I took up the two officers in my hands, put them first into my coat-pockets, and then into every other pocket about me, except my two fobs, and another secret pocket, which I had no mind should be searched, wherein I had some little necessaries that were of no consequence to any but myself. In one of my fobs there was a silver watch, and in the other a small quantity of gold in a purse. These gentlemen, having pen, ink, and paper, about them, made an exact inventory of every thing they saw; and when they had done, desired I would set them down, that they might deliver it to the emperor. This inventory I afterwards translated into English, and is, word for word, as follows: + +"Imprimis: In the right coat-pocket of the great man-mountain" (for so I interpret the words quinbus flestrin,) "after the strictest search, we found only one great piece of coarse-cloth, large enough to be a foot-cloth for your majesty's chief room of state. In the left pocket we saw a huge silver chest, with a cover of the same metal, which we, the searchers, were not able to lift. We desired it should be opened, and one of us stepping into it, found himself up to the mid leg in a sort of dust, some part whereof flying up to our faces set us both a sneezing for several times together. In his right waistcoat-pocket we found a prodigious bundle of white thin substances, folded one over another, about the bigness of three men, tied with a strong cable, and marked with black figures; which we humbly conceive to be writings, every letter almost half as large as the palm of our hands. In the left there was a sort of engine, from the back of which were extended twenty long poles, resembling the pallisados before your majesty's court: wherewith we conjecture the man- mountain combs his head; for we did not always trouble him with questions, because we found it a great difficulty to make him understand us. In the large pocket, on the right side of his middle cover" (so I translate the word ranfulo, by which they meant my breeches,) "we saw a hollow pillar of iron, about the length of a man, fastened to a strong piece of timber larger than the pillar; and upon one side of the pillar, were huge pieces of iron sticking out, cut into strange figures, which we know not what to make of. In the left pocket, another engine of the same kind. In the smaller pocket on the right side, were several round flat pieces of white and red metal, of different bulk; some of the white, which seemed to be silver, were so large and heavy, that my comrade and I could hardly lift them. In the left pocket were two black pillars irregularly shaped: we could not, without difficulty, reach the top of them, as we stood at the bottom of his pocket. One of them was covered, and seemed all of a piece: but at the upper end of the other there appeared a white round substance, about twice the bigness of our heads. Within each of these was enclosed a prodigious plate of steel; which, by our orders, we obliged him to show us, because we apprehended they might be dangerous engines. He took them out of their cases, and told us, that in his own country his practice was to shave his beard with one of these, and cut his meat with the other. There were two pockets which we could not enter: these he called his fobs; they were two large slits cut into the top of his middle cover, but squeezed close by the pressure of his belly. Out of the right fob hung a great silver chain, with a wonderful kind of engine at the bottom. We directed him to draw out whatever was at the end of that chain; which appeared to be a globe, half silver, and half of some transparent metal; for, on the transparent side, we saw certain strange figures circularly drawn, and thought we could touch them, till we found our fingers stopped by the lucid substance. He put this engine into our ears, which made an incessant noise, like that of a water- mill: and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us, (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly) that he seldom did any thing without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the time for every action of his life. From the left fob he took out a net almost large enough for a fisherman, but contrived to open and shut like a purse, and served him for the same use: we found therein several massy pieces of yellow metal, which, if they be real gold, must be of immense value. + +"Having thus, in obedience to your majesty's commands, diligently searched all his pockets, we observed a girdle about his waist made of the hide of some prodigious animal, from which, on the left side, hung a sword of the length of five men; and on the right, a bag or pouch divided into two cells, each cell capable of holding three of your majesty's subjects. In one of these cells were several globes, or balls, of a most ponderous metal, about the bigness of our heads, and requiring a strong hand to lift them: the other cell contained a heap of certain black grains, but of no great bulk or weight, for we could hold above fifty of them in the palms of our hands. + +"This is an exact inventory of what we found about the body of the man-mountain, who used us with great civility, and due respect to your majesty's commission. Signed and sealed on the fourth day of the eighty-ninth moon of your majesty's auspicious reign. + +CLEFRIN FRELOCK, MARSI FRELOCK." + +When this inventory was read over to the emperor, he directed me, although in very gentle terms, to deliver up the several particulars. He first called for my scimitar, which I took out, scabbard and all. In the mean time he ordered three thousand of his choicest troops (who then attended him) to surround me at a distance, with their bows and arrows just ready to discharge; but I did not observe it, for mine eyes were wholly fixed upon his majesty. He then desired me to draw my scimitar, which, although it had got some rust by the sea water, was, in most parts, exceeding bright. I did so, and immediately all the troops gave a shout between terror and surprise; for the sun shone clear, and the reflection dazzled their eyes, as I waved the scimitar to and fro in my hand. His majesty, who is a most magnanimous prince, was less daunted than I could expect: he ordered me to return it into the scabbard, and cast it on the ground as gently as I could, about six feet from the end of my chain. The next thing he demanded was one of the hollow iron pillars; by which he meant my pocket pistols. I drew it out, and at his desire, as well as I could, expressed to him the use of it; and charging it only with powder, which, by the closeness of my pouch, happened to escape wetting in the sea (an inconvenience against which all prudent mariners take special care to provide,) I first cautioned the emperor not to be afraid, and then I let it off in the air. The astonishment here was much greater than at the sight of my scimitar. Hundreds fell down as if they had been struck dead; and even the emperor, although he stood his ground, could not recover himself for some time. I delivered up both my pistols in the same manner as I had done my scimitar, and then my pouch of powder and bullets; begging him that the former might be kept from fire, for it would kindle with the smallest spark, and blow up his imperial palace into the air. I likewise delivered up my watch, which the emperor was very curious to see, and commanded two of his tallest yeomen of the guards to bear it on a pole upon their shoulders, as draymen in England do a barrel of ale. He was amazed at the continual noise it made, and the motion of the minute-hand, which he could easily discern; for their sight is much more acute than ours: he asked the opinions of his learned men about it, which were various and remote, as the reader may well imagine without my repeating; although indeed I could not very perfectly understand them. I then gave up my silver and copper money, my purse, with nine large pieces of gold, and some smaller ones; my knife and razor, my comb and silver snuff-box, my handkerchief and journal-book. My scimitar, pistols, and pouch, were conveyed in carriages to his majesty's stores; but the rest of my goods were returned me. + +I had as I before observed, one private pocket, which escaped their search, wherein there was a pair of spectacles (which I sometimes use for the weakness of mine eyes,) a pocket perspective, and some other little conveniences; which, being of no consequence to the emperor, I did not think myself bound in honour to discover, and I apprehended they might be lost or spoiled if I ventured them out of my possession. + +CHAPTER III. + +[The author diverts the emperor, and his nobility of both sexes, in a very uncommon manner. The diversions of the court of Lilliput described. The author has his liberty granted him upon certain conditions.] + +My gentleness and good behaviour had gained so far on the emperor and his court, and indeed upon the army and people in general, that I began to conceive hopes of getting my liberty in a short time. I took all possible methods to cultivate this favourable disposition. The natives came, by degrees, to be less apprehensive of any danger from me. I would sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my hand; and at last the boys and girls would venture to come and play at hide-and-seek in my hair. I had now made a good progress in understanding and speaking the language. The emperor had a mind one day to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they exceed all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence. I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread, extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground. Upon which I shall desire liberty, with the reader's patience, to enlarge a little. + +This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers are much upon a par. + +These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great numbers are on record. I myself have seen two or three candidates break a limb. But the danger is much greater, when the ministers themselves are commanded to show their dexterity; for, by contending to excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is hardly one of them who has not received a fall, and some of them two or three. I was assured that, a year or two before my arrival, Flimnap would infallibly have broke his neck, if one of the king's cushions, that accidentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the force of his fall. + +There is likewise another diversion, which is only shown before the emperor and empress, and first minister, upon particular occasions. The emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads of six inches long; one is blue, the other red, and the third green. These threads are proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor has a mind to distinguish by a peculiar mark of his favour. The ceremony is performed in his majesty's great chamber of state, where the candidates are to undergo a trial of dexterity very different from the former, and such as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the new or old world. The emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates advancing, one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it, backward and forward, several times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed. Sometimes the emperor holds one end of the stick, and his first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it entirely to himself. Whoever performs his part with most agility, and holds out the longest in leaping and creeping, is rewarded with the blue- coloured silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the third, which they all wear girt twice round about the middle; and you see few great persons about this court who are not adorned with one of these girdles. + +The horses of the army, and those of the royal stables, having been daily led before me, were no longer shy, but would come up to my very feet without starting. The riders would leap them over my hand, as I held it on the ground; and one of the emperor's huntsmen, upon a large courser, took my foot, shoe and all; which was indeed a prodigious leap. I had the good fortune to divert the emperor one day after a very extraordinary manner. I desired he would order several sticks of two feet high, and the thickness of an ordinary cane, to be brought me; whereupon his majesty commanded the master of his woods to give directions accordingly; and the next morning six woodmen arrived with as many carriages, drawn by eight horses to each. I took nine of these sticks, and fixing them firmly in the ground in a quadrangular figure, two feet and a half square, I took four other sticks, and tied them parallel at each corner, about two feet from the ground; then I fastened my handkerchief to the nine sticks that stood erect; and extended it on all sides, till it was tight as the top of a drum; and the four parallel sticks, rising about five inches higher than the handkerchief, served as ledges on each side. When I had finished my work, I desired the emperor to let a troop of his best horses twenty-four in number, come and exercise upon this plain. His majesty approved of the proposal, and I took them up, one by one, in my hands, ready mounted and armed, with the proper officers to exercise them. As soon as they got into order they divided into two parties, performed mock skirmishes, discharged blunt arrows, drew their swords, fled and pursued, attacked and retired, and in short discovered the best military discipline I ever beheld. The parallel sticks secured them and their horses from falling over the stage; and the emperor was so much delighted, that he ordered this entertainment to be repeated several days, and once was pleased to be lifted up and give the word of command; and with great difficulty persuaded even the empress herself to let me hold her in her close chair within two yards of the stage, when she was able to take a full view of the whole performance. It was my good fortune, that no ill accident happened in these entertainments; only once a fiery horse, that belonged to one of the captains, pawing with his hoof, struck a hole in my handkerchief, and his foot slipping, he overthrew his rider and himself; but I immediately relieved them both, and covering the hole with one hand, I set down the troop with the other, in the same manner as I took them up. The horse that fell was strained in the left shoulder, but the rider got no hurt; and I repaired my handkerchief as well as I could: however, I would not trust to the strength of it any more, in such dangerous enterprises. + +About two or three days before I was set at liberty, as I was entertaining the court with this kind of feat, there arrived an express to inform his majesty, that some of his subjects, riding near the place where I was first taken up, had seen a great black substance lying on the around, very oddly shaped, extending its edges round, as wide as his majesty's bedchamber, and rising up in the middle as high as a man; that it was no living creature, as they at first apprehended, for it lay on the grass without motion; and some of them had walked round it several times; that, by mounting upon each other's shoulders, they had got to the top, which was flat and even, and, stamping upon it, they found that it was hollow within; that they humbly conceived it might be something belonging to the man-mountain; and if his majesty pleased, they would undertake to bring it with only five horses. I presently knew what they meant, and was glad at heart to receive this intelligence. It seems, upon my first reaching the shore after our shipwreck, I was in such confusion, that before I came to the place where I went to sleep, my hat, which I had fastened with a string to my head while I was rowing, and had stuck on all the time I was swimming, fell off after I came to land; the string, as I conjecture, breaking by some accident, which I never observed, but thought my hat had been lost at sea. I entreated his imperial majesty to give orders it might be brought to me as soon as possible, describing to him the use and the nature of it: and the next day the waggoners arrived with it, but not in a very good condition; they had bored two holes in the brim, within an inch and half of the edge, and fastened two hooks in the holes; these hooks were tied by a long cord to the harness, and thus my hat was dragged along for above half an English mile; but, the ground in that country being extremely smooth and level, it received less damage than I expected. + +Two days after this adventure, the emperor, having ordered that part of his army which quarters in and about his metropolis, to be in readiness, took a fancy of diverting himself in a very singular manner. He desired I would stand like a Colossus, with my legs as far asunder as I conveniently could. He then commanded his general (who was an old experienced leader, and a great patron of mine) to draw up the troops in close order, and march them under me; the foot by twenty-four abreast, and the horse by sixteen, with drums beating, colours flying, and pikes advanced. This body consisted of three thousand foot, and a thousand horse. His majesty gave orders, upon pain of death, that every soldier in his march should observe the strictest decency with regard to my person; which however could not prevent some of the younger officers from turning up their eyes as they passed under me: and, to confess the truth, my breeches were at that time in so ill a condition, that they afforded some opportunities for laughter and admiration. + +I had sent so many memorials and petitions for my liberty, that his majesty at length mentioned the matter, first in the cabinet, and then in a full council; where it was opposed by none, except Skyresh Bolgolam, who was pleased, without any provocation, to be my mortal enemy. But it was carried against him by the whole board, and confirmed by the emperor. That minister was galbet, or admiral of the realm, very much in his master's confidence, and a person well versed in affairs, but of a morose and sour complexion. However, he was at length persuaded to comply; but prevailed that the articles and conditions upon which I should be set free, and to which I must swear, should be drawn up by himself. These articles were brought to me by Skyresh Bolgolam in person attended by two under-secretaries, and several persons of distinction. After they were read, I was demanded to swear to the performance of them; first in the manner of my own country, and afterwards in the method prescribed by their laws; which was, to hold my right foot in my left hand, and to place the middle finger of my right hand on the crown of my head, and my thumb on the tip of my right ear. But because the reader may be curious to have some idea of the style and manner of expression peculiar to that people, as well as to know the article upon which I recovered my liberty, I have made a translation of the whole instrument, word for word, as near as I was able, which I here offer to the public. + +"Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty Emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions extend five thousand blustrugs (about twelve miles in circumference) to the extremities of the globe; monarch of all monarchs, taller than the sons of men; whose feet press down to the centre, and whose head strikes against the sun; at whose nod the princes of the earth shake their knees; pleasant as the spring, comfortable as the summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as winter: his most sublime majesty proposes to the man-mountain, lately arrived at our celestial dominions, the following articles, which, by a solemn oath, he shall be obliged to perform:- + +"1st, The man-mountain shall not depart from our dominions, without our license under our great seal. + +"2d, He shall not presume to come into our metropolis, without our express order; at which time, the inhabitants shall have two hours warning to keep within doors. + +"3d, The said man-mountain shall confine his walks to our principal high roads, and not offer to walk, or lie down, in a meadow or field of corn. + +"4th, As he walks the said roads, he shall take the utmost care not to trample upon the bodies of any of our loving subjects, their horses, or carriages, nor take any of our subjects into his hands without their own consent. + +"5th, If an express requires extraordinary despatch, the man- mountain shall be obliged to carry, in his pocket, the messenger and horse a six days journey, once in every moon, and return the said messenger back (if so required) safe to our imperial presence. + +"6th, He shall be our ally against our enemies in the island of Blefuscu, and do his utmost to destroy their fleet, which is now preparing to invade us. + +"7th, That the said man-mountain shall, at his times of leisure, be aiding and assisting to our workmen, in helping to raise certain great stones, towards covering the wall of the principal park, and other our royal buildings. + +"8th, That the said man-mountain shall, in two moons' time, deliver in an exact survey of the circumference of our dominions, by a computation of his own paces round the coast. + +"Lastly, That, upon his solemn oath to observe all the above articles, the said man-mountain shall have a daily allowance of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1724 of our subjects, with free access to our royal person, and other marks of our favour. Given at our palace at Belfaborac, the twelfth day of the ninety-first moon of our reign." + +I swore and subscribed to these articles with great cheerfulness and content, although some of them were not so honourable as I could have wished; which proceeded wholly from the malice of Skyresh Bolgolam, the high-admiral: whereupon my chains were immediately unlocked, and I was at full liberty. The emperor himself, in person, did me the honour to be by at the whole ceremony. I made my acknowledgements by prostrating myself at his majesty's feet: but he commanded me to rise; and after many gracious expressions, which, to avoid the censure of vanity, I shall not repeat, he added, "that he hoped I should prove a useful servant, and well deserve all the favours he had already conferred upon me, or might do for the future." + +The reader may please to observe, that, in the last article of the recovery of my liberty, the emperor stipulates to allow me a quantity of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1724 Lilliputians. Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number, he told me that his majesty's mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians. By which the reader may conceive an idea of the ingenuity of that people, as well as the prudent and exact economy of so great a prince. + +CHAPTER IV. + +[Mildendo, the metropolis of Lilliput, described, together with the emperor's palace. A conversation between the author and a principal secretary, concerning the affairs of that empire. The author's offers to serve the emperor in his wars.] + +The first request I made, after I had obtained my liberty, was, that I might have license to see Mildendo, the metropolis; which the emperor easily granted me, but with a special charge to do no hurt either to the inhabitants or their houses. The people had notice, by proclamation, of my design to visit the town. The wall which encompassed it is two feet and a half high, and at least eleven inches broad, so that a coach and horses may be driven very safely round it; and it is flanked with strong towers at ten feet distance. I stepped over the great western gate, and passed very gently, and sidling, through the two principal streets, only in my short waistcoat, for fear of damaging the roofs and eaves of the houses with the skirts of my coat. I walked with the utmost circumspection, to avoid treading on any stragglers who might remain in the streets, although the orders were very strict, that all people should keep in their houses, at their own peril. The garret windows and tops of houses were so crowded with spectators, that I thought in all my travels I had not seen a more populous place. The city is an exact square, each side of the wall being five hundred feet long. The two great streets, which run across and divide it into four quarters, are five feet wide. The lanes and alleys, which I could not enter, but only view them as I passed, are from twelve to eighteen inches. The town is capable of holding five hundred thousand souls: the houses are from three to five stories: the shops and markets well provided. + +The emperor's palace is in the centre of the city where the two great streets meet. It is enclosed by a wall of two feet high, and twenty feet distance from the buildings. I had his majesty's permission to step over this wall; and, the space being so wide between that and the palace, I could easily view it on every side. The outward court is a square of forty feet, and includes two other courts: in the inmost are the royal apartments, which I was very desirous to see, but found it extremely difficult; for the great gates, from one square into another, were but eighteen inches high, and seven inches wide. Now the buildings of the outer court were at least five feet high, and it was impossible for me to stride over them without infinite damage to the pile, though the walls were strongly built of hewn stone, and four inches thick. At the same time the emperor had a great desire that I should see the magnificence of his palace; but this I was not able to do till three days after, which I spent in cutting down with my knife some of the largest trees in the royal park, about a hundred yards distant from the city. Of these trees I made two stools, each about three feet high, and strong enough to bear my weight. The people having received notice a second time, I went again through the city to the palace with my two stools in my hands. When I came to the side of the outer court, I stood upon one stool, and took the other in my hand; this I lifted over the roof, and gently set it down on the space between the first and second court, which was eight feet wide. I then stept over the building very conveniently from one stool to the other, and drew up the first after me with a hooked stick. By this contrivance I got into the inmost court; and, lying down upon my side, I applied my face to the windows of the middle stories, which were left open on purpose, and discovered the most splendid apartments that can be imagined. There I saw the empress and the young princes, in their several lodgings, with their chief attendants about them. Her imperial majesty was pleased to smile very graciously upon me, and gave me out of the window her hand to kiss. + +But I shall not anticipate the reader with further descriptions of this kind, because I reserve them for a greater work, which is now almost ready for the press; containing a general description of this empire, from its first erection, through along series of princes; with a particular account of their wars and politics, laws, learning, and religion; their plants and animals; their peculiar manners and customs, with other matters very curious and useful; my chief design at present being only to relate such events and transactions as happened to the public or to myself during a residence of about nine months in that empire. + +One morning, about a fortnight after I had obtained my liberty, Reldresal, principal secretary (as they style him) for private affairs, came to my house attended only by one servant. He ordered his coach to wait at a distance, and desired I would give him an hours audience; which I readily consented to, on account of his quality and personal merits, as well as of the many good offices he had done me during my solicitations at court. I offered to lie down that he might the more conveniently reach my ear, but he chose rather to let me hold him in my hand during our conversation. He began with compliments on my liberty; said "he might pretend to some merit in it;" but, however, added, "that if it had not been for the present situation of things at court, perhaps I might not have obtained it so soon. For," said he, "as flourishing a condition as we may appear to be in to foreigners, we labour under two mighty evils: a violent faction at home, and the danger of an invasion, by a most potent enemy, from abroad. As to the first, you are to understand, that for about seventy moons past there have been two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan, from the high and low heels of their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves. It is alleged, indeed, that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution; but, however this be, his majesty has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of the government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot but observe; and particularly that his majesty's imperial heels are lower at least by a drurr than any of his court (drurr is a measure about the fourteenth part of an inch). The animosities between these two parties run so high, that they will neither eat, nor drink, nor talk with each other. We compute the Tramecksan, or high heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is wholly on our side. We apprehend his imperial highness, the heir to the crown, to have some tendency towards the high heels; at least we can plainly discover that one of his heels is higher than the other, which gives him a hobble in his gait. Now, in the midst of these intestine disquiets, we are threatened with an invasion from the island of Blefuscu, which is the other great empire of the universe, almost as large and powerful as this of his majesty. For as to what we have heard you affirm, that there are other kingdoms and states in the world inhabited by human creatures as large as yourself, our philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropped from the moon, or one of the stars; because it is certain, that a hundred mortals of your bulk would in a short time destroy all the fruits and cattle of his majesty's dominions: besides, our histories of six thousand moons make no mention of any other regions than the two great empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu. Which two mighty powers have, as I was going to tell you, been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons past. It began upon the following occasion. It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger end; but his present majesty's grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs. The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one emperor lost his life, and another his crown. These civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire. It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. Many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the Big- endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments. During the course of these troubles, the emperors of Blefusca did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Blundecral (which is their Alcoran). This, however, is thought to be a mere strain upon the text; for the words are these: 'that all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.' And which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion to be left to every man's conscience, or at least in the power of the chief magistrate to determine. Now, the Big-endian exiles have found so much credit in the emperor of Blefuscu's court, and so much private assistance and encouragement from their party here at home, that a bloody war has been carried on between the two empires for six-and-thirty moons, with various success; during which time we have lost forty capital ships, and a much a greater number of smaller vessels, together with thirty thousand of our best seamen and soldiers; and the damage received by the enemy is reckoned to be somewhat greater than ours. However, they have now equipped a numerous fleet, and are just preparing to make a descent upon us; and his imperial majesty, placing great confidence in your valour and strength, has commanded me to lay this account of his affairs before you." + +I desired the secretary to present my humble duty to the emperor; and to let him know, "that I thought it would not become me, who was a foreigner, to interfere with parties; but I was ready, with the hazard of my life, to defend his person and state against all invaders." + +CHAPTER V. + +[The author, by an extraordinary stratagem, prevents an invasion. A high title of honour is conferred upon him. Ambassadors arrive from the emperor of Blefuscu, and sue for peace. The empress's apartment on fire by an accident; the author instrumental in saving the rest of the palace.] + +The empire of Blefuscu is an island situated to the north-east of Lilliput, from which it is parted only by a channel of eight hundred yards wide. I had not yet seen it, and upon this notice of an intended invasion, I avoided appearing on that side of the coast, for fear of being discovered, by some of the enemy's ships, who had received no intelligence of me; all intercourse between the two empires having been strictly forbidden during the war, upon pain of death, and an embargo laid by our emperor upon all vessels whatsoever. I communicated to his majesty a project I had formed of seizing the enemy's whole fleet; which, as our scouts assured us, lay at anchor in the harbour, ready to sail with the first fair wind. I consulted the most experienced seamen upon the depth of the channel, which they had often plumbed; who told me, that in the middle, at high-water, it was seventy glumgluffs deep, which is about six feet of European measure; and the rest of it fifty glumgluffs at most. I walked towards the north-east coast, over against Blefuscu, where, lying down behind a hillock, I took out my small perspective glass, and viewed the enemy's fleet at anchor, consisting of about fifty men of war, and a great number of transports: I then came back to my house, and gave orders (for which I had a warrant) for a great quantity of the strongest cable and bars of iron. The cable was about as thick as packthread and the bars of the length and size of a knitting-needle. I trebled the cable to make it stronger, and for the same reason I twisted three of the iron bars together, bending the extremities into a hook. Having thus fixed fifty hooks to as many cables, I went back to the north-east coast, and putting off my coat, shoes, and stockings, walked into the sea, in my leathern jerkin, about half an hour before high water. I waded with what haste I could, and swam in the middle about thirty yards, till I felt ground. I arrived at the fleet in less than half an hour. The enemy was so frightened when they saw me, that they leaped out of their ships, and swam to shore, where there could not be fewer than thirty thousand souls. I then took my tackling, and, fastening a hook to the hole at the prow of each, I tied all the cords together at the end. While I was thus employed, the enemy discharged several thousand arrows, many of which stuck in my hands and face, and, beside the excessive smart, gave me much disturbance in my work. My greatest apprehension was for mine eyes, which I should have infallibly lost, if I had not suddenly thought of an expedient. I kept, among other little necessaries, a pair of spectacles in a private pocket, which, as I observed before, had escaped the emperor's searchers. These I took out and fastened as strongly as I could upon my nose, and thus armed, went on boldly with my work, in spite of the enemy's arrows, many of which struck against the glasses of my spectacles, but without any other effect, further than a little to discompose them. I had now fastened all the hooks, and, taking the knot in my hand, began to pull; but not a ship would stir, for they were all too fast held by their anchors, so that the boldest part of my enterprise remained. I therefore let go the cord, and leaving the looks fixed to the ships, I resolutely cut with my knife the cables that fastened the anchors, receiving about two hundred shots in my face and hands; then I took up the knotted end of the cables, to which my hooks were tied, and with great ease drew fifty of the enemy's largest men of war after me. + +The Blefuscudians, who had not the least imagination of what I intended, were at first confounded with astonishment. They had seen me cut the cables, and thought my design was only to let the ships run adrift or fall foul on each other: but when they perceived the whole fleet moving in order, and saw me pulling at the end, they set up such a scream of grief and despair as it is almost impossible to describe or conceive. When I had got out of danger, I stopped awhile to pick out the arrows that stuck in my hands and face; and rubbed on some of the same ointment that was given me at my first arrival, as I have formerly mentioned. I then took off my spectacles, and waiting about an hour, till the tide was a little fallen, I waded through the middle with my cargo, and arrived safe at the royal port of Lilliput. + +The emperor and his whole court stood on the shore, expecting the issue of this great adventure. They saw the ships move forward in a large half-moon, but could not discern me, who was up to my breast in water. When I advanced to the middle of the channel, they were yet more in pain, because I was under water to my neck. The emperor concluded me to be drowned, and that the enemy's fleet was approaching in a hostile manner: but he was soon eased of his fears; for the channel growing shallower every step I made, I came in a short time within hearing, and holding up the end of the cable, by which the fleet was fastened, I cried in a loud voice, "Long live the most puissant king of Lilliput!" This great prince received me at my landing with all possible encomiums, and created me a nardac upon the spot, which is the highest title of honour among them. + +His majesty desired I would take some other opportunity of bringing all the rest of his enemy's ships into his ports. And so unmeasureable is the ambition of princes, that he seemed to think of nothing less than reducing the whole empire of Blefuscu into a province, and governing it, by a viceroy; of destroying the Big- endian exiles, and compelling that people to break the smaller end of their eggs, by which he would remain the sole monarch of the whole world. But I endeavoured to divert him from this design, by many arguments drawn from the topics of policy as well as justice; and I plainly protested, "that I would never be an instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery." And, when the matter was debated in council, the wisest part of the ministry were of my opinion. + +This open bold declaration of mine was so opposite to the schemes and politics of his imperial majesty, that he could never forgive me. He mentioned it in a very artful manner at council, where I was told that some of the wisest appeared, at least by their silence, to be of my opinion; but others, who were my secret enemies, could not forbear some expressions which, by a side-wind, reflected on me. And from this time began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers, maliciously bent against me, which broke out in less than two months, and had like to have ended in my utter destruction. Of so little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance with a refusal to gratify their passions. + +About three weeks after this exploit, there arrived a solemn embassy from Blefuscu, with humble offers of a peace, which was soon concluded, upon conditions very advantageous to our emperor, wherewith I shall not trouble the reader. There were six ambassadors, with a train of about five hundred persons, and their entry was very magnificent, suitable to the grandeur of their master, and the importance of their business. When their treaty was finished, wherein I did them several good offices by the credit I now had, or at least appeared to have, at court, their excellencies, who were privately told how much I had been their friend, made me a visit in form. They began with many compliments upon my valour and generosity, invited me to that kingdom in the emperor their master's name, and desired me to show them some proofs of my prodigious strength, of which they had heard so many wonders; wherein I readily obliged them, but shall not trouble the reader with the particulars. + +When I had for some time entertained their excellencies, to their infinite satisfaction and surprise, I desired they would do me the honour to present my most humble respects to the emperor their master, the renown of whose virtues had so justly filled the whole world with admiration, and whose royal person I resolved to attend, before I returned to my own country. Accordingly, the next time I had the honour to see our emperor, I desired his general license to wait on the Blefuscudian monarch, which he was pleased to grant me, as I could perceive, in a very cold manner; but could not guess the reason, till I had a whisper from a certain person, "that Flimnap and Bolgolam had represented my intercourse with those ambassadors as a mark of disaffection;" from which I am sure my heart was wholly free. And this was the first time I began to conceive some imperfect idea of courts and ministers. + +It is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me, by an interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each other as any two in Europe, and each nation priding itself upon the antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongue, with an avowed contempt for that of their neighbour; yet our emperor, standing upon the advantage he had got by the seizure of their fleet, obliged them to deliver their credentials, and make their speech, in the Lilliputian tongue. And it must be confessed, that from the great intercourse of trade and commerce between both realms, from the continual reception of exiles which is mutual among them, and from the custom, in each empire, to send their young nobility and richer gentry to the other, in order to polish themselves by seeing the world, and understanding men and manners; there are few persons of distinction, or merchants, or seamen, who dwell in the maritime parts, but what can hold conversation in both tongues; as I found some weeks after, when I went to pay my respects to the emperor of Blefuscu, which, in the midst of great misfortunes, through the malice of my enemies, proved a very happy adventure to me, as I shall relate in its proper place. + +The reader may remember, that when I signed those articles upon which I recovered my liberty, there were some which I disliked, upon account of their being too servile; neither could anything but an extreme necessity have forced me to submit. But being now a nardac of the highest rank in that empire, such offices were looked upon as below my dignity, and the emperor (to do him justice), never once mentioned them to me. However, it was not long before I had an opportunity of doing his majesty, at least as I then thought, a most signal service. I was alarmed at midnight with the cries of many hundred people at my door; by which, being suddenly awaked, I was in some kind of terror. I heard the word Burglum repeated incessantly: several of the emperor's court, making their way through the crowd, entreated me to come immediately to the palace, where her imperial majesty's apartment was on fire, by the carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while she was reading a romance. I got up in an instant; and orders being given to clear the way before me, and it being likewise a moonshine night, I made a shift to get to the palace without trampling on any of the people. I found they had already applied ladders to the walls of the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the water was at some distance. These buckets were about the size of large thimbles, and the poor people supplied me with them as fast as they could: but the flame was so violent that they did little good. I might easily have stifled it with my coat, which I unfortunately left behind me for haste, and came away only in my leathern jerkin. The case seemed wholly desperate and deplorable; and this magnificent palace would have infallibly been burnt down to the ground, if, by a presence of mind unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient. I had, the evening before, drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine called glimigrim, (the Blefuscudians call it flunec, but ours is esteemed the better sort,) which is very diuretic. By the luckiest chance in the world, I had not discharged myself of any part of it. The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction. + +It was now day-light, and I returned to my house without waiting to congratulate with the emperor: because, although I had done a very eminent piece of service, yet I could not tell how his majesty might resent the manner by which I had performed it: for, by the fundamental laws of the realm, it is capital in any person, of what quality soever, to make water within the precincts of the palace. But I was a little comforted by a message from his majesty, "that he would give orders to the grand justiciary for passing my pardon in form:" which, however, I could not obtain; and I was privately assured, "that the empress, conceiving the greatest abhorrence of what I had done, removed to the most distant side of the court, firmly resolved that those buildings should never be repaired for her use: and, in the presence of her chief confidents could not forbear vowing revenge." + +CHAPTER VI. + +[Of the inhabitants of Lilliput; their learning, laws, and customs; the manner of educating their children. The author's way of living in that country. His vindication of a great lady.] + +Although I intend to leave the description of this empire to a particular treatise, yet, in the mean time, I am content to gratify the curious reader with some general ideas. As the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees: for instance, the tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches in height, the sheep an inch and half, more or less: their geese about the bigness of a sparrow, and so the several gradations downwards till you come to the smallest, which to my sight, were almost invisible; but nature has adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper for their view: they see with great exactness, but at no great distance. And, to show the sharpness of their sight towards objects that are near, I have been much pleased with observing a cook pulling a lark, which was not so large as a common fly; and a young girl threading an invisible needle with invisible silk. Their tallest trees are about seven feet high: I mean some of those in the great royal park, the tops whereof I could but just reach with my fist clenched. The other vegetables are in the same proportion; but this I leave to the reader's imagination. + +I shall say but little at present of their learning, which, for many ages, has flourished in all its branches among them: but their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like the Europeans, nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians, nor from up to down, like the Chinese, but aslant, from one corner of the paper to the other, like ladies in England. + +They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing on their feet. The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine; but the practice still continues, in compliance to the vulgar. + +There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I should be tempted to say a little in their justification. It is only to be wished they were as well executed. The first I shall mention, relates to informers. All crimes against the state, are punished here with the utmost severity; but, if the person accused makes his innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favour, and proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city. + +They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was once interceding with the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was heartily ashamed.~{ An act of parliament has been since passed by which some breaches of trust have been made capital. }~ + +Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon which all government turns, yet I could never observe this maxim to be put in practice by any nation except that of Lilliput. Whoever can there bring sufficient proof, that he has strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons, has a claim to certain privileges, according to his quality or condition of life, with a proportionable sum of money out of a fund appropriated for that use: he likewise acquires the title of snilpall, or legal, which is added to his name, but does not descend to his posterity. And these people thought it a prodigious defect of policy among us, when I told them that our laws were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward. It is upon this account that the image of Justice, in their courts of judicature, is formed with six eyes, two before, as many behind, and on each side one, to signify circumspection; with a bag of gold open in her right hand, and a sword sheathed in her left, to show she is more disposed to reward than to punish. + +In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age: but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man's power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and, at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as the practices of a man, whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions. + +In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts. + +In relating these and the following laws, I would only be understood to mean the original institutions, and not the most scandalous corruptions, into which these people are fallen by the degenerate nature of man. For, as to that infamous practice of acquiring great employments by dancing on the ropes, or badges of favour and distinction by leaping over sticks and creeping under them, the reader is to observe, that they were first introduced by the grandfather of the emperor now reigning, and grew to the present height by the gradual increase of party and faction. + +Ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and therefore such a man is not fit to live. + +Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ extremely from ours. For, since the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love encounters, were otherwise employed. Upon these, and the like reasonings, their opinion is, that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the education of their own children; and therefore they have in every town public nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared and educated, when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time they are supposed to have some rudiments of docility. These schools are of several kinds, suited to different qualities, and both sexes. They have certain professors well skilled in preparing children for such a condition of life as befits the rank of their parents, and their own capacities, as well as inclinations. I shall first say something of the male nurseries, and then of the female. + +The nurseries for males of noble or eminent birth, are provided with grave and learned professors, and their several deputies. The clothes and food of the children are plain and simple. They are bred up in the principles of honour, justice, courage, modesty, clemency, religion, and love of their country; they are always employed in some business, except in the times of eating and sleeping, which are very short, and two hours for diversions consisting of bodily exercises. They are dressed by men till four years of age, and then are obliged to dress themselves, although their quality be ever so great; and the women attendant, who are aged proportionably to ours at fifty, perform only the most menial offices. They are never suffered to converse with servants, but go together in smaller or greater numbers to take their diversions, and always in the presence of a professor, or one of his deputies; whereby they avoid those early bad impressions of folly and vice, to which our children are subject. Their parents are suffered to see them only twice a year; the visit is to last but an hour; they are allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting; but a professor, who always stands by on those occasions, will not suffer them to whisper, or use any fondling expressions, or bring any presents of toys, sweetmeats, and the like. + +The pension from each family for the education and entertainment of a child, upon failure of due payment, is levied by the emperor's officers. + +The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders, and handicrafts, are managed proportionably after the same manner; only those designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old, whereas those of persons of quality continue in their exercises till fifteen, which answers to twenty-one with us: but the confinement is gradually lessened for the last three years. + +In the female nurseries, the young girls of quality are educated much like the males, only they are dressed by orderly servants of their own sex; but always in the presence of a professor or deputy, till they come to dress themselves, which is at five years old. And if it be found that these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies practised by chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the country. Thus the young ladies are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments, beyond decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their education made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of the females were not altogether so robust; and that some rules were given them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning was enjoined them: for their maxim is, that among peoples of quality, a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young. When the girls are twelve years old, which among them is the marriageable age, their parents or guardians take them home, with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of the young lady and her companions. + +In the nurseries of females of the meaner sort, the children are instructed in all kinds of works proper for their sex, and their several degrees: those intended for apprentices are dismissed at seven years old, the rest are kept to eleven. + +The meaner families who have children at these nurseries, are obliged, besides their annual pension, which is as low as possible, to return to the steward of the nursery a small monthly share of their gettings, to be a portion for the child; and therefore all parents are limited in their expenses by the law. For the Lilliputians think nothing can be more unjust, than for people, in subservience to their own appetites, to bring children into the world, and leave the burthen of supporting them on the public. As to persons of quality, they give security to appropriate a certain sum for each child, suitable to their condition; and these funds are always managed with good husbandry and the most exact justice. + +The cottagers and labourers keep their children at home, their business being only to till and cultivate the earth, and therefore their education is of little consequence to the public: but the old and diseased among them, are supported by hospitals; for begging is a trade unknown in this empire. + +And here it may, perhaps, divert the curious reader, to give some account of my domestics, and my manner of living in this country, during a residence of nine months, and thirteen days. Having a head mechanically turned, and being likewise forced by necessity, I had made for myself a table and chair convenient enough, out of the largest trees in the royal park. Two hundred sempstresses were employed to make me shirts, and linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and coarsest kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in several folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than lawn. Their linen is usually three inches wide, and three feet make a piece. The sempstresses took my measure as I lay on the ground, one standing at my neck, and another at my mid-leg, with a strong cord extended, that each held by the end, while a third measured the length of the cord with a rule of an inch long. Then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for by a mathematical computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so on to the neck and the waist, and by the help of my old shirt, which I displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat: but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been able to hold them), they looked like the patch-work made by the ladies in England, only that mine were all of a colour. + +I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient huts built about my house, where they and their families lived, and prepared me two dishes a-piece. I took up twenty waiters in my hand, and placed them on the table: a hundred more attended below on the ground, some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and other liquors slung on their shoulders; all which the waiters above drew up, as I wanted, in a very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we draw the bucket up a well in Europe. A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel of their liquor a reasonable draught. Their mutton yields to ours, but their beef is excellent. I have had a sirloin so large, that I have been forced to make three bites of it; but this is rare. My servants were astonished to see me eat it, bones and all, as in our country we do the leg of a lark. Their geese and turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and I confess they far exceed ours. Of their smaller fowl I could take up twenty or thirty at the end of my knife. + +One day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living, desired "that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness," as he was pleased to call it, "of dining with me." They came accordingly, and I placed them in chairs of state, upon my table, just over against me, with their guards about them. Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, attended there likewise with his white staff; and I observed he often looked on me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard, but ate more than usual, in honour to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with admiration. I have some private reasons to believe, that this visit from his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his master. That minister had always been my secret enemy, though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature. He represented to the emperor "the low condition of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that exchequer bills would not circulate under nine per cent. below par; that I had cost his majesty above a million and a half of sprugs" (their greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle) "and, upon the whole, that it would be advisable in the emperor to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me." + +I am here obliged to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady, who was an innocent sufferer upon my account. The treasurer took a fancy to be jealous of his wife, from the malice of some evil tongues, who informed him that her grace had taken a violent affection for my person; and the court scandal ran for some time, that she once came privately to my lodging. This I solemnly declare to be a most infamous falsehood, without any grounds, further than that her grace was pleased to treat me with all innocent marks of freedom and friendship. I own she came often to my house, but always publicly, nor ever without three more in the coach, who were usually her sister and young daughter, and some particular acquaintance; but this was common to many other ladies of the court. And I still appeal to my servants round, whether they at any time saw a coach at my door, without knowing what persons were in it. On those occasions, when a servant had given me notice, my custom was to go immediately to the door, and, after paying my respects, to take up the coach and two horses very carefully in my hands (for, if there were six horses, the postillion always unharnessed four,) and place them on a table, where I had fixed a movable rim quite round, of five inches high, to prevent accidents. And I have often had four coaches and horses at once on my table, full of company, while I sat in my chair, leaning my face towards them; and when I was engaged with one set, the coachmen would gently drive the others round my table. I have passed many an afternoon very agreeably in these conversations. But I defy the treasurer, or his two informers (I will name them, and let them make the best of it) Clustril and Drunlo, to prove that any person ever came to me incognito, except the secretary Reldresal, who was sent by express command of his imperial majesty, as I have before related. I should not have dwelt so long upon this particular, if it had not been a point wherein the reputation of a great lady is so nearly concerned, to say nothing of my own; though I then had the honour to be a nardac, which the treasurer himself is not; for all the world knows, that he is only a glumglum, a title inferior by one degree, as that of a marquis is to a duke in England; yet I allow he preceded me in right of his post. These false informations, which I afterwards came to the knowledge of by an accident not proper to mention, made the treasurer show his lady for some time an ill countenance, and me a worse; and although he was at last undeceived and reconciled to her, yet I lost all credit with him, and found my interest decline very fast with the emperor himself, who was, indeed, too much governed by that favourite. + +CHAPTER VII. + +[The author, being informed of a design to accuse him of high- treason, makes his escape to Blefuscu. His reception there.] + +Before I proceed to give an account of my leaving this kingdom, it may be proper to inform the reader of a private intrigue which had been for two months forming against me. + +I had been hitherto, all my life, a stranger to courts, for which I was unqualified by the meanness of my condition. I had indeed heard and read enough of the dispositions of great princes and ministers, but never expected to have found such terrible effects of them, in so remote a country, governed, as I thought, by very different maxims from those in Europe. + +When I was just preparing to pay my attendance on the emperor of Blefuscu, a considerable person at court (to whom I had been very serviceable, at a time when he lay under the highest displeasure of his imperial majesty) came to my house very privately at night, in a close chair, and, without sending his name, desired admittance. The chairmen were dismissed; I put the chair, with his lordship in it, into my coat-pocket: and, giving orders to a trusty servant, to say I was indisposed and gone to sleep, I fastened the door of my house, placed the chair on the table, according to my usual custom, and sat down by it. After the common salutations were over, observing his lordship's countenance full of concern, and inquiring into the reason, he desired "I would hear him with patience, in a matter that highly concerned my honour and my life." His speech was to the following effect, for I took notes of it as soon as he left me:- + +"You are to know," said he, "that several committees of council have been lately called, in the most private manner, on your account; and it is but two days since his majesty came to a full resolution. + +"You are very sensible that Skyresh Bolgolam" (galbet, or high- admiral) "has been your mortal enemy, almost ever since your arrival. His original reasons I know not; but his hatred is increased since your great success against Blefuscu, by which his glory as admiral is much obscured. This lord, in conjunction with Flimnap the high-treasurer, whose enmity against you is notorious on account of his lady, Limtoc the general, Lalcon the chamberlain, and Balmuff the grand justiciary, have prepared articles of impeachment against you, for treason and other capital crimes." + +This preface made me so impatient, being conscious of my own merits and innocence, that I was going to interrupt him; when he entreated me to be silent, and thus proceeded:- + +"Out of gratitude for the favours you have done me, I procured information of the whole proceedings, and a copy of the articles; wherein I venture my head for your service. + +"'Articles of Impeachment against QUINBUS FLESTRIN, (the Man- Mountain.) + +ARTICLE I. + +"'Whereas, by a statute made in the reign of his imperial majesty Calin Deffar Plune, it is enacted, that, whoever shall make water within the precincts of the royal palace, shall be liable to the pains and penalties of high-treason; notwithstanding, the said Quinbus Flestrin, in open breach of the said law, under colour of extinguishing the fire kindled in the apartment of his majesty's most dear imperial consort, did maliciously, traitorously, and devilishly, by discharge of his urine, put out the said fire kindled in the said apartment, lying and being within the precincts of the said royal palace, against the statute in that case provided, etc. against the duty, etc. + +ARTICLE II. + +"'That the said Quinbus Flestrin, having brought the imperial fleet of Blefuscu into the royal port, and being afterwards commanded by his imperial majesty to seize all the other ships of the said empire of Blefuscu, and reduce that empire to a province, to be governed by a viceroy from hence, and to destroy and put to death, not only all the Big-endian exiles, but likewise all the people of that empire who would not immediately forsake the Big-endian heresy, he, the said Flestrin, like a false traitor against his most auspicious, serene, imperial majesty, did petition to be excused from the said service, upon pretence of unwillingness to force the consciences, or destroy the liberties and lives of an innocent people. + +ARTICLE III. + +"'That, whereas certain ambassadors arrived from the Court of Blefuscu, to sue for peace in his majesty's court, he, the said Flestrin, did, like a false traitor, aid, abet, comfort, and divert, the said ambassadors, although he knew them to be servants to a prince who was lately an open enemy to his imperial majesty, and in an open war against his said majesty. + +ARTICLE IV. + +"'That the said Quinbus Flestrin, contrary to the duty of a faithful subject, is now preparing to make a voyage to the court and empire of Blefuscu, for which he has received only verbal license from his imperial majesty; and, under colour of the said license, does falsely and traitorously intend to take the said voyage, and thereby to aid, comfort, and abet the emperor of Blefuscu, so lately an enemy, and in open war with his imperial majesty aforesaid.' + +"There are some other articles; but these are the most important, of which I have read you an abstract. + +"In the several debates upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity; often urging the services you had done him, and endeavouring to extenuate your crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night, and the general was to attend with twenty thousand men, armed with poisoned arrows, to shoot you on the face and hands. Some of your servants were to have private orders to strew a poisonous juice on your shirts and sheets, which would soon make you tear your own flesh, and die in the utmost torture. The general came into the same opinion; so that for a long time there was a majority against you; but his majesty resolving, if possible, to spare your life, at last brought off the chamberlain. + +"Upon this incident, Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, who always approved himself your true friend, was commanded by the emperor to deliver his opinion, which he accordingly did; and therein justified the good thoughts you have of him. He allowed your crimes to be great, but that still there was room for mercy, the most commendable virtue in a prince, and for which his majesty was so justly celebrated. He said, the friendship between you and him was so well known to the world, that perhaps the most honourable board might think him partial; however, in obedience to the command he had received, he would freely offer his sentiments. That if his majesty, in consideration of your services, and pursuant to his own merciful disposition, would please to spare your life, and only give orders to put out both your eyes, he humbly conceived, that by this expedient justice might in some measure be satisfied, and all the world would applaud the lenity of the emperor, as well as the fair and generous proceedings of those who have the honour to be his counsellors. That the loss of your eyes would be no impediment to your bodily strength, by which you might still be useful to his majesty; that blindness is an addition to courage, by concealing dangers from us; that the fear you had for your eyes, was the greatest difficulty in bringing over the enemy's fleet, and it would be sufficient for you to see by the eyes of the ministers, since the greatest princes do no more. + +"This proposal was received with the utmost disapprobation by the whole board. Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but, rising up in fury, said, he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that the services you had performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish the fire by discharge of urine in her majesty's apartment (which he mentioned with horror), might, at another time, raise an inundation by the same means, to drown the whole palace; and the same strength which enabled you to bring over the enemy's fleet, might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back; that he had good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as treason begins in the heart, before it appears in overt-acts, so he accused you as a traitor on that account, and therefore insisted you should be put to death. + +"The treasurer was of the same opinion: he showed to what straits his majesty's revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which would soon grow insupportable; that the secretary's expedient of putting out your eyes, was so far from being a remedy against this evil, that it would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common practice of blinding some kind of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew sooner fat; that his sacred majesty and the council, who are your judges, were, in their own consciences, fully convinced of your guilt, which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death, without the formal proofs required by the strict letter of the law. + +"But his imperial majesty, fully determined against capital punishment, was graciously pleased to say, that since the council thought the loss of your eyes too easy a censure, some other way may be inflicted hereafter. And your friend the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected, concerning the great charge his majesty was at in maintaining you, said, that his excellency, who had the sole disposal of the emperor's revenue, might easily provide against that evil, by gradually lessening your establishment; by which, for want of sufficient for you would grow weak and faint, and lose your appetite, and consequently, decay, and consume in a few months; neither would the stench of your carcass be then so dangerous, when it should become more than half diminished; and immediately upon your death five or six thousand of his majesty's subjects might, in two or three days, cut your flesh from your bones, take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in distant parts, to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to posterity. + +"Thus, by the great friendship of the secretary, the whole affair was compromised. It was strictly enjoined, that the project of starving you by degrees should be kept a secret; but the sentence of putting out your eyes was entered on the books; none dissenting, except Bolgolam the admiral, who, being a creature of the empress, was perpetually instigated by her majesty to insist upon your death, she having borne perpetual malice against you, on account of that infamous and illegal method you took to extinguish the fire in her apartment. + +"In three days your friend the secretary will be directed to come to your house, and read before you the articles of impeachment; and then to signify the great lenity and favour of his majesty and council, whereby you are only condemned to the loss of your eyes, which his majesty does not question you will gratefully and humbly submit to; and twenty of his majesty's surgeons will attend, in order to see the operation well performed, by discharging very sharp-pointed arrows into the balls of your eyes, as you lie on the ground. + +"I leave to your prudence what measures you will take; and to avoid suspicion, I must immediately return in as private a manner as I came." + +His lordship did so; and I remained alone, under many doubts and perplexities of mind. + +It was a custom introduced by this prince and his ministry (very different, as I have been assured, from the practice of former times,) that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, either to gratify the monarch's resentment, or the malice of a favourite, the emperor always made a speech to his whole council, expressing his great lenity and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by all the world. This speech was immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did any thing terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his majesty's mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent. Yet, as to myself, I must confess, having never been designed for a courtier, either by my birth or education, I was so ill a judge of things, that I could not discover the lenity and favour of this sentence, but conceived it (perhaps erroneously) rather to be rigorous than gentle. I sometimes thought of standing my trial, for, although I could not deny the facts alleged in the several articles, yet I hoped they would admit of some extenuation. But having in my life perused many state-trials, which I ever observed to terminate as the judges thought fit to direct, I durst not rely on so dangerous a decision, in so critical a juncture, and against such powerful enemies. Once I was strongly bent upon resistance, for, while I had liberty the whole strength of that empire could hardly subdue me, and I might easily with stones pelt the metropolis to pieces; but I soon rejected that project with horror, by remembering the oath I had made to the emperor, the favours I received from him, and the high title of nardac he conferred upon me. Neither had I so soon learned the gratitude of courtiers, to persuade myself, that his majesty's present seventies acquitted me of all past obligations. + +At last, I fixed upon a resolution, for which it is probable I may incur some censure, and not unjustly; for I confess I owe the preserving of mine eyes, and consequently my liberty, to my own great rashness and want of experience; because, if I had then known the nature of princes and ministers, which I have since observed in many other courts, and their methods of treating criminals less obnoxious than myself, I should, with great alacrity and readiness, have submitted to so easy a punishment. But hurried on by the precipitancy of youth, and having his imperial majesty's license to pay my attendance upon the emperor of Blefuscu, I took this opportunity, before the three days were elapsed, to send a letter to my friend the secretary, signifying my resolution of setting out that morning for Blefuscu, pursuant to the leave I had got; and, without waiting for an answer, I went to that side of the island where our fleet lay. I seized a large man of war, tied a cable to the prow, and, lifting up the anchors, I stripped myself, put my clothes (together with my coverlet, which I carried under my arm) into the vessel, and, drawing it after me, between wading and swimming arrived at the royal port of Blefuscu, where the people had long expected me: they lent me two guides to direct me to the capital city, which is of the same name. I held them in my hands, till I came within two hundred yards of the gate, and desired them "to signify my arrival to one of the secretaries, and let him know, I there waited his majesty's command." I had an answer in about an hour, "that his majesty, attended by the royal family, and great officers of the court, was coming out to receive me." I advanced a hundred yards. The emperor and his train alighted from their horses, the empress and ladies from their coaches, and I did not perceive they were in any fright or concern. I lay on the ground to kiss his majesty's and the empress's hands. I told his majesty, "that I was come according to my promise, and with the license of the emperor my master, to have the honour of seeing so mighty a monarch, and to offer him any service in my power, consistent with my duty to my own prince;" not mentioning a word of my disgrace, because I had hitherto no regular information of it, and might suppose myself wholly ignorant of any such design; neither could I reasonably conceive that the emperor would discover the secret, while I was out of his power; wherein, however, it soon appeared I was deceived. + +I shall not trouble the reader with the particular account of my reception at this court, which was suitable to the generosity of so great a prince; nor of the difficulties I was in for want of a house and bed, being forced to lie on the ground, wrapped up in my coverlet. + +CHAPTER VIII. + +[The author, by a lucky accident, finds means to leave Blefuscu; and, after some difficulties, returns safe to his native country.] + +Three days after my arrival, walking out of curiosity to the north- east coast of the island, I observed, about half a league off in the sea, somewhat that looked like a boat overturned. I pulled off my shoes and stockings, and, wailing two or three hundred yards, I found the object to approach nearer by force of the tide; and then plainly saw it to be a real boat, which I supposed might by some tempest have been driven from a ship. Whereupon, I returned immediately towards the city, and desired his imperial majesty to lend me twenty of the tallest vessels he had left, after the loss of his fleet, and three thousand seamen, under the command of his vice-admiral. This fleet sailed round, while I went back the shortest way to the coast, where I first discovered the boat. I found the tide had driven it still nearer. The seamen were all provided with cordage, which I had beforehand twisted to a sufficient strength. When the ships came up, I stripped myself, and waded till I came within a hundred yards off the boat, after which I was forced to swim till I got up to it. The seamen threw me the end of the cord, which I fastened to a hole in the fore-part of the boat, and the other end to a man of war; but I found all my labour to little purpose; for, being out of my depth, I was not able to work. In this necessity I was forced to swim behind, and push the boat forward, as often as I could, with one of my hands; and the tide favouring me, I advanced so far that I could just hold up my chin and feel the ground. I rested two or three minutes, and then gave the boat another shove, and so on, till the sea was no higher than my arm-pits; and now, the most laborious part being over, I took out my other cables, which were stowed in one of the ships, and fastened them first to the boat, and then to nine of the vessels which attended me; the wind being favourable, the seamen towed, and I shoved, until we arrived within forty yards of the shore; and, waiting till the tide was out, I got dry to the boat, and by the assistance of two thousand men, with ropes and engines, I made a shift to turn it on its bottom, and found it was but little damaged. + +I shall not trouble the reader with the difficulties I was under, by the help of certain paddles, which cost me ten days making, to get my boat to the royal port of Blefuscu, where a mighty concourse of people appeared upon my arrival, full of wonder at the sight of so prodigious a vessel. I told the emperor "that my good fortune had thrown this boat in my way, to carry me to some place whence I might return into my native country; and begged his majesty's orders for getting materials to fit it up, together with his license to depart;" which, after some kind expostulations, he was pleased to grant. + +I did very much wonder, in all this time, not to have heard of any express relating to me from our emperor to the court of Blefuscu. But I was afterward given privately to understand, that his imperial majesty, never imagining I had the least notice of his designs, believed I was only gone to Blefuscu in performance of my promise, according to the license he had given me, which was well known at our court, and would return in a few days, when the ceremony was ended. But he was at last in pain at my long absence; and after consulting with the treasurer and the rest of that cabal, a person of quality was dispatched with the copy of the articles against me. This envoy had instructions to represent to the monarch of Blefuscu, "the great lenity of his master, who was content to punish me no farther than with the loss of mine eyes; that I had fled from justice; and if I did not return in two hours, I should be deprived of my title of nardac, and declared a traitor." The envoy further added, "that in order to maintain the peace and amity between both empires, his master expected that his brother of Blefuscu would give orders to have me sent back to Lilliput, bound hand and foot, to be punished as a traitor." + +The emperor of Blefuscu, having taken three days to consult, returned an answer consisting of many civilities and excuses. He said, "that as for sending me bound, his brother knew it was impossible; that, although I had deprived him of his fleet, yet he owed great obligations to me for many good offices I had done him in making the peace. That, however, both their majesties would soon be made easy; for I had found a prodigious vessel on the shore, able to carry me on the sea, which he had given orders to fit up, with my own assistance and direction; and he hoped, in a few weeks, both empires would be freed from so insupportable an encumbrance." + +With this answer the envoy returned to Lilliput; and the monarch of Blefuscu related to me all that had passed; offering me at the same time (but under the strictest confidence) his gracious protection, if I would continue in his service; wherein, although I believed him sincere, yet I resolved never more to put any confidence in princes or ministers, where I could possibly avoid it; and therefore, with all due acknowledgments for his favourable intentions, I humbly begged to be excused. I told him, "that since fortune, whether good or evil, had thrown a vessel in my way, I was resolved to venture myself on the ocean, rather than be an occasion of difference between two such mighty monarchs." Neither did I find the emperor at all displeased; and I discovered, by a certain accident, that he was very glad of my resolution, and so were most of his ministers. + +These considerations moved me to hasten my departure somewhat sooner than I intended; to which the court, impatient to have me gone, very readily contributed. Five hundred workmen were employed to make two sails to my boat, according to my directions, by quilting thirteen folds of their strongest linen together. I was at the pains of making ropes and cables, by twisting ten, twenty, or thirty of the thickest and strongest of theirs. A great stone that I happened to find, after a long search, by the sea-shore, served me for an anchor. I had the tallow of three hundred cows, for greasing my boat, and other uses. I was at incredible pains in cutting down some of the largest timber-trees, for oars and masts, wherein I was, however, much assisted by his majesty's ship- carpenters, who helped me in smoothing them, after I had done the rough work. + +In about a month, when all was prepared, I sent to receive his majesty's commands, and to take my leave. The emperor and royal family came out of the palace; I lay down on my face to kiss his hand, which he very graciously gave me: so did the empress and young princes of the blood. His majesty presented me with fifty purses of two hundred sprugs a-piece, together with his picture at full length, which I put immediately into one of my gloves, to keep it from being hurt. The ceremonies at my departure were too many to trouble the reader with at this time. + +I stored the boat with the carcases of a hundred oxen, and three hundred sheep, with bread and drink proportionable, and as much meat ready dressed as four hundred cooks could provide. I took with me six cows and two bulls alive, with as many ewes and rams, intending to carry them into my own country, and propagate the breed. And to feed them on board, I had a good bundle of hay, and a bag of corn. I would gladly have taken a dozen of the natives, but this was a thing the emperor would by no means permit; and, besides a diligent search into my pockets, his majesty engaged my honour "not to carry away any of his subjects, although with their own consent and desire." + +Having thus prepared all things as well as I was able, I set sail on the twenty-fourth day of September 1701, at six in the morning; and when I had gone about four-leagues to the northward, the wind being at south-east, at six in the evening I descried a small island, about half a league to the north-west. I advanced forward, and cast anchor on the lee-side of the island, which seemed to be uninhabited. I then took some refreshment, and went to my rest. I slept well, and as I conjectured at least six hours, for I found the day broke in two hours after I awaked. It was a clear night. I ate my breakfast before the sun was up; and heaving anchor, the wind being favourable, I steered the same course that I had done the day before, wherein I was directed by my pocket compass. My intention was to reach, if possible, one of those islands. which I had reason to believe lay to the north-east of Van Diemen's Land. I discovered nothing all that day; but upon the next, about three in the afternoon, when I had by my computation made twenty-four leagues from Blefuscu, I descried a sail steering to the south- east; my course was due east. I hailed her, but could get no answer; yet I found I gained upon her, for the wind slackened. I made all the sail I could, and in half an hour she spied me, then hung out her ancient, and discharged a gun. It is not easy to express the joy I was in, upon the unexpected hope of once more seeing my beloved country, and the dear pledges I left in it. The ship slackened her sails, and I came up with her between five and six in the evening, September 26th; but my heart leaped within me to see her English colours. I put my cows and sheep into my coat- pockets, and got on board with all my little cargo of provisions. The vessel was an English merchantman, returning from Japan by the North and South seas; the captain, Mr. John Biddel, of Deptford, a very civil man, and an excellent sailor. + +We were now in the latitude of 30 degrees south; there were about fifty men in the ship; and here I met an old comrade of mine, one Peter Williams, who gave me a good character to the captain. This gentleman treated me with kindness, and desired I would let him know what place I came from last, and whither I was bound; which I did in a few words, but he thought I was raving, and that the dangers I underwent had disturbed my head; whereupon I took my black cattle and sheep out of my pocket, which, after great astonishment, clearly convinced him of my veracity. I then showed him the gold given me by the emperor of Blefuscu, together with his majesty's picture at full length, and some other rarities of that country. I gave him two purses of two hundreds sprugs each, and promised, when we arrived in England, to make him a present of a cow and a sheep big with young. + +I shall not trouble the reader with a particular account of this voyage, which was very prosperous for the most part. We arrived in the Downs on the 13th of April, 1702. I had only one misfortune, that the rats on board carried away one of my sheep; I found her bones in a hole, picked clean from the flesh. The rest of my cattle I got safe ashore, and set them a-grazing in a bowling-green at Greenwich, where the fineness of the grass made them feed very heartily, though I had always feared the contrary: neither could I possibly have preserved them in so long a voyage, if the captain had not allowed me some of his best biscuit, which, rubbed to powder, and mingled with water, was their constant food. The short time I continued in England, I made a considerable profit by showing my cattle to many persons of quality and others: and before I began my second voyage, I sold them for six hundred pounds. Since my last return I find the breed is considerably increased, especially the sheep, which I hope will prove much to the advantage of the woollen manufacture, by the fineness of the fleeces. + +I stayed but two months with my wife and family, for my insatiable desire of seeing foreign countries, would suffer me to continue no longer. I left fifteen hundred pounds with my wife, and fixed her in a good house at Redriff. My remaining stock I carried with me, part in money and part in goods, in hopes to improve my fortunes. My eldest uncle John had left me an estate in land, near Epping, of about thirty pounds a-year; and I had a long lease of the Black Bull in Fetter-Lane, which yielded me as much more; so that I was not in any danger of leaving my family upon the parish. My son Johnny, named so after his uncle, was at the grammar-school, and a towardly child. My daughter Betty (who is now well married, and has children) was then at her needle-work. I took leave of my wife, and boy and girl, with tears on both sides, and went on board the Adventure, a merchant ship of three hundred tons, bound for Surat, captain John Nicholas, of Liverpool, commander. But my account of this voyage must be referred to the Second Part of my Travels. + +PART II. A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG. + +CHAPTER I. + +[A great storm described; the long boat sent to fetch water; the author goes with it to discover the country. He is left on shore, is seized by one of the natives, and carried to a farmer's house. His reception, with several accidents that happened there. A description of the inhabitants.] + +Having been condemned, by nature and fortune, to active and restless life, in two months after my return, I again left my native country, and took shipping in the Downs, on the 20th day of June, 1702, in the Adventure, Captain John Nicholas, a Cornish man, commander, bound for Surat. We had a very prosperous gale, till we arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, where we landed for fresh water; but discovering a leak, we unshipped our goods and wintered there; for the captain falling sick of an ague, we could not leave the Cape till the end of March. We then set sail, and had a good voyage till we passed the Straits of Madagascar; but having got northward of that island, and to about five degrees south latitude, the winds, which in those seas are observed to blow a constant equal gale between the north and west, from the beginning of December to the beginning of May, on the 19th of April began to blow with much greater violence, and more westerly than usual, continuing so for twenty days together: during which time, we were driven a little to the east of the Molucca Islands, and about three degrees northward of the line, as our captain found by an observation he took the 2nd of May, at which time the wind ceased, and it was a perfect calm, whereat I was not a little rejoiced. But he, being a man well experienced in the navigation of those seas, bid us all prepare against a storm, which accordingly happened the day following: for the southern wind, called the southern monsoon, began to set in. + +Finding it was likely to overblow, we took in our sprit-sail, and stood by to hand the fore-sail; but making foul weather, we looked the guns were all fast, and handed the mizen. The ship lay very broad off, so we thought it better spooning before the sea, than trying or hulling. We reefed the fore-sail and set him, and hauled aft the fore-sheet; the helm was hard a-weather. The ship wore bravely. We belayed the fore down-haul; but the sail was split, and we hauled down the yard, and got the sail into the ship, and unbound all the things clear of it. It was a very fierce storm; the sea broke strange and dangerous. We hauled off upon the laniard of the whip-staff, and helped the man at the helm. We would not get down our topmast, but let all stand, because she scudded before the sea very well, and we knew that the top-mast being aloft, the ship was the wholesomer, and made better way through the sea, seeing we had sea-room. When the storm was over, we set fore-sail and main-sail, and brought the ship to. Then we set the mizen, main-top-sail, and the fore-top-sail. Our course was east-north-east, the wind was at south-west. We got the starboard tacks aboard, we cast off our weather-braces and lifts; we set in the lee-braces, and hauled forward by the weather- bowlings, and hauled them tight, and belayed them, and hauled over the mizen tack to windward, and kept her full and by as near as she would lie. + +During this storm, which was followed by a strong wind west-south- west, we were carried, by my computation, about five hundred leagues to the east, so that the oldest sailor on board could not tell in what part of the world we were. Our provisions held out well, our ship was staunch, and our crew all in good health; but we lay in the utmost distress for water. We thought it best to hold on the same course, rather than turn more northerly, which might have brought us to the north-west part of Great Tartary, and into the Frozen Sea. + +On the 16th day of June, 1703, a boy on the top-mast discovered land. On the 17th, we came in full view of a great island, or continent (for we knew not whether;) on the south side whereof was a small neck of land jutting out into the sea, and a creek too shallow to hold a ship of above one hundred tons. We cast anchor within a league of this creek, and our captain sent a dozen of his men well armed in the long-boat, with vessels for water, if any could be found. I desired his leave to go with them, that I might see the country, and make what discoveries I could. When we came to land we saw no river or spring, nor any sign of inhabitants. Our men therefore wandered on the shore to find out some fresh water near the sea, and I walked alone about a mile on the other side, where I observed the country all barren and rocky. I now began to be weary, and seeing nothing to entertain my curiosity, I returned gently down towards the creek; and the sea being full in my view, I saw our men already got into the boat, and rowing for life to the ship. I was going to holla after them, although it had been to little purpose, when I observed a huge creature walking after them in the sea, as fast as he could: he waded not much deeper than his knees, and took prodigious strides: but our men had the start of him half a league, and, the sea thereabouts being full of sharp-pointed rocks, the monster was not able to overtake the boat. This I was afterwards told, for I durst not stay to see the issue of the adventure; but ran as fast as I could the way I first went, and then climbed up a steep hill, which gave me some prospect of the country. I found it fully cultivated; but that which first surprised me was the length of the grass, which, in those grounds that seemed to be kept for hay, was about twenty feet high. + +I fell into a high road, for so I took it to be, though it served to the inhabitants only as a foot-path through a field of barley. Here I walked on for some time, but could see little on either side, it being now near harvest, and the corn rising at least forty feet. I was an hour walking to the end of this field, which was fenced in with a hedge of at least one hundred and twenty feet high, and the trees so lofty that I could make no computation of their altitude. There was a stile to pass from this field into the next. It had four steps, and a stone to cross over when you came to the uppermost. It was impossible for me to climb this stile, because every step was six-feet high, and the upper stone about twenty. I was endeavouring to find some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing towards the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field on the right hand, and heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than a speaking- trumpet: but the noise was so high in the air, that at first I certainly thought it was thunder. Whereupon seven monsters, like himself, came towards him with reaping-hooks in their hands, each hook about the largeness of six scythes. These people were not so well clad as the first, whose servants or labourers they seemed to be; for, upon some words he spoke, they went to reap the corn in the field where I lay. I kept from them at as great a distance as I could, but was forced to move with extreme difficulty, for the stalks of the corn were sometimes not above a foot distant, so that I could hardly squeeze my body betwixt them. However, I made a shift to go forward, till I came to a part of the field where the corn had been laid by the rain and wind. Here it was impossible for me to advance a step; for the stalks were so interwoven, that I could not creep through, and the beards of the fallen ears so strong and pointed, that they pierced through my clothes into my flesh. At the same time I heard the reapers not a hundred yards behind me. Being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and dispair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there end my days. I bemoaned my desolate widow and fatherless children. I lamented my own folly and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions, which will be recorded for ever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions. I reflected what a mortification it must prove to me, to appear as inconsiderable in this nation, as one single Lilliputian would be among us. But this I conceived was to be the least of my misfortunes; for, as human creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but to be a morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that should happen to seize me? Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have let the Lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me. And who knows but that even this prodigious race of mortals might be equally overmatched in some distant part of the world, whereof we have yet no discovery. + +Scared and confounded as I was, I could not forbear going on with these reflections, when one of the reapers, approaching within ten yards of the ridge where I lay, made me apprehend that with the next step I should be squashed to death under his foot, or cut in two with his reaping-hook. And therefore, when he was again about to move, I screamed as loud as fear could make me: whereupon the huge creature trod short, and, looking round about under him for some time, at last espied me as I lay on the ground. He considered awhile, with the caution of one who endeavours to lay hold on a small dangerous animal in such a manner that it shall not be able either to scratch or bite him, as I myself have sometimes done with a weasel in England. At length he ventured to take me behind, by the middle, between his fore-finger and thumb, and brought me within three yards of his eyes, that he might behold my shape more perfectly. I guessed his meaning, and my good fortune gave me so much presence of mind, that I resolved not to struggle in the least as he held me in the air above sixty feet from the ground, although he grievously pinched my sides, for fear I should slip through his fingers. All I ventured was to raise mine eyes towards the sun, and place my hands together in a supplicating posture, and to speak some words in a humble melancholy tone, suitable to the condition I then was in: for I apprehended every moment that he would dash me against the ground, as we usually do any little hateful animal, which we have a mind to destroy. But my good star would have it, that he appeared pleased with my voice and gestures, and began to look upon me as a curiosity, much wondering to hear me pronounce articulate words, although he could not understand them. In the mean time I was not able to forbear groaning and shedding tears, and turning my head towards my sides; letting him know, as well as I could, how cruelly I was hurt by the pressure of his thumb and finger. He seemed to apprehend my meaning; for, lifting up the lappet of his coat, he put me gently into it, and immediately ran along with me to his master, who was a substantial farmer, and the same person I had first seen in the field. + +The farmer having (as I suppose by their talk) received such an account of me as his servant could give him, took a piece of a small straw, about the size of a walking-staff, and therewith lifted up the lappets of my coat; which it seems he thought to be some kind of covering that nature had given me. He blew my hairs aside to take a better view of my face. He called his hinds about him, and asked them, as I afterwards learned, whether they had ever seen in the fields any little creature that resembled me. He then placed me softly on the ground upon all fours, but I got immediately up, and walked slowly backward and forward, to let those people see I had no intent to run away. They all sat down in a circle about me, the better to observe my motions. I pulled off my hat, and made a low bow towards the farmer. I fell on my knees, and lifted up my hands and eyes, and spoke several words as loud as I could: I took a purse of gold out of my pocket, and humbly presented it to him. He received it on the palm of his hand, then applied it close to his eye to see what it was, and afterwards turned it several times with the point of a pin (which he took out of his sleeve,) but could make nothing of it. Whereupon I made a sign that he should place his hand on the ground. I then took the purse, and, opening it, poured all the gold into his palm. There were six Spanish pieces of four pistoles each, beside twenty or thirty smaller coins. I saw him wet the tip of his little finger upon his tongue, and take up one of my largest pieces, and then another; but he seemed to be wholly ignorant what they were. He made me a sign to put them again into my purse, and the purse again into my pocket, which, after offering it to him several times, I thought it best to do. + +The farmer, by this time, was convinced I must be a rational creature. He spoke often to me; but the sound of his voice pierced my ears like that of a water-mill, yet his words were articulate enough. I answered as loud as I could in several languages, and he often laid his ear within two yards of me: but all in vain, for we were wholly unintelligible to each other. He then sent his servants to their work, and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, he doubled and spread it on his left hand, which he placed flat on the ground with the palm upward, making me a sign to step into it, as I could easily do, for it was not above a foot in thickness. I thought it my part to obey, and, for fear of falling, laid myself at full length upon the handkerchief, with the remainder of which he lapped me up to the head for further security, and in this manner carried me home to his house. There he called his wife, and showed me to her; but she screamed and ran back, as women in England do at the sight of a toad or a spider. However, when she had a while seen my behaviour, and how well I observed the signs her husband made, she was soon reconciled, and by degrees grew extremely tender of me. + +It was about twelve at noon, and a servant brought in dinner. It was only one substantial dish of meat (fit for the plain condition of a husbandman,) in a dish of about four-and-twenty feet diameter. The company were, the farmer and his wife, three children, and an old grandmother. When they were sat down, the farmer placed me at some distance from him on the table, which was thirty feet high from the floor. I was in a terrible fright, and kept as far as I could from the edge, for fear of falling. The wife minced a bit of meat, then crumbled some bread on a trencher, and placed it before me. I made her a low bow, took out my knife and fork, and fell to eat, which gave them exceeding delight. The mistress sent her maid for a small dram cup, which held about two gallons, and filled it with drink; I took up the vessel with much difficulty in both hands, and in a most respectful manner drank to her ladyship's health, expressing the words as loud as I could in English, which made the company laugh so heartily, that I was almost deafened with the noise. This liquor tasted like a small cider, and was not unpleasant. Then the master made me a sign to come to his trencher side; but as I walked on the table, being in great surprise all the time, as the indulgent reader will easily conceive and excuse, I happened to stumble against a crust, and fell flat on my face, but received no hurt. I got up immediately, and observing the good people to be in much concern, I took my hat (which I held under my arm out of good manners,) and waving it over my head, made three huzzas, to show I had got no mischief by my fall. But advancing forward towards my master (as I shall henceforth call him,) his youngest son, who sat next to him, an arch boy of about ten years old, took me up by the legs, and held me so high in the air, that I trembled every limb: but his father snatched me from him, and at the same time gave him such a box on the left ear, as would have felled an European troop of horse to the earth, ordering him to be taken from the table. But being afraid the boy might owe me a spite, and well remembering how mischievous all children among us naturally are to sparrows, rabbits, young kittens, and puppy dogs, I fell on my knees, and pointing to the boy, made my master to understand, as well as I could, that I desired his son might be pardoned. The father complied, and the lad took his seat again, whereupon I went to him, and kissed his hand, which my master took, and made him stroke me gently with it. + +In the midst of dinner, my mistress's favourite cat leaped into her lap. I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen stocking- weavers at work; and turning my head, I found it proceeded from the purring of that animal, who seemed to be three times larger than an ox, as I computed by the view of her head, and one of her paws, while her mistress was feeding and stroking her. The fierceness of this creature's countenance altogether discomposed me; though I stood at the farther end of the table, above fifty feet off; and although my mistress held her fast, for fear she might give a spring, and seize me in her talons. But it happened there was no danger, for the cat took not the least notice of me when my master placed me within three yards of her. And as I have been always told, and found true by experience in my travels, that flying or discovering fear before a fierce animal, is a certain way to make it pursue or attack you, so I resolved, in this dangerous juncture, to show no manner of concern. I walked with intrepidity five or six times before the very head of the cat, and came within half a yard of her; whereupon she drew herself back, as if she were more afraid of me: I had less apprehension concerning the dogs, whereof three or four came into the room, as it is usual in farmers' houses; one of which was a mastiff, equal in bulk to four elephants, and another a greyhound, somewhat taller than the mastiff, but not so large. + +When dinner was almost done, the nurse came in with a child of a year old in her arms, who immediately spied me, and began a squall that you might have heard from London-Bridge to Chelsea, after the usual oratory of infants, to get me for a plaything. The mother, out of pure indulgence, took me up, and put me towards the child, who presently seized me by the middle, and got my head into his mouth, where I roared so loud that the urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should infallibly have broke my neck, if the mother had not held her apron under me. The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable to the child's waist: but all in vain; so that she was forced to apply the last remedy by giving it suck. I must confess no object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast, which I cannot tell what to compare with, so as to give the curious reader an idea of its bulk, shape, and colour. It stood prominent six feet, and could not be less than sixteen in circumference. The nipple was about half the bigness of my head, and the hue both of that and the dug, so varied with spots, pimples, and freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous: for I had a near sight of her, she sitting down, the more conveniently to give suck, and I standing on the table. This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass; where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough, and coarse, and ill-coloured. + +I remember when I was at Lilliput, the complexion of those diminutive people appeared to me the fairest in the world; and talking upon this subject with a person of learning there, who was an intimate friend of mine, he said that my face appeared much fairer and smoother when he looked on me from the ground, than it did upon a nearer view, when I took him up in my hand, and brought him close, which he confessed was at first a very shocking sight. He said, "he could discover great holes in my skin; that the stumps of my beard were ten times stronger than the bristles of a boar, and my complexion made up of several colours altogether disagreeable:" although I must beg leave to say for myself, that I am as fair as most of my sex and country, and very little sunburnt by all my travels. On the other side, discoursing of the ladies in that emperor's court, he used to tell me, "one had freckles; another too wide a mouth; a third too large a nose;" nothing of which I was able to distinguish. I confess this reflection was obvious enough; which, however, I could not forbear, lest the reader might think those vast creatures were actually deformed: for I must do them the justice to say, they are a comely race of people, and particularly the features of my master's countenance, although he was but a farmer, when I beheld him from the height of sixty feet, appeared very well proportioned. + +When dinner was done, my master went out to his labourers, and, as I could discover by his voice and gesture, gave his wife strict charge to take care of me. I was very much tired, and disposed to sleep, which my mistress perceiving, she put me on her own bed, and covered me with a clean white handkerchief, but larger and coarser than the mainsail of a man-of-war. + +I slept about two hours, and dreamt I was at home with my wife and children, which aggravated my sorrows when I awaked, and found myself alone in a vast room, between two and three hundred feet wide, and above two hundred high, lying in a bed twenty yards wide. My mistress was gone about her household affairs, and had locked me in. The bed was eight yards from the floor. Some natural necessities required me to get down; I durst not presume to call; and if I had, it would have been in vain, with such a voice as mine, at so great a distance from the room where I lay to the kitchen where the family kept. While I was under these circumstances, two rats crept up the curtains, and ran smelling backwards and forwards on the bed. One of them came up almost to my face, whereupon I rose in a fright, and drew out my hanger to defend myself. These horrible animals had the boldness to attack me on both sides, and one of them held his fore-feet at my collar; but I had the good fortune to rip up his belly before he could do me any mischief. He fell down at my feet; and the other, seeing the fate of his comrade, made his escape, but not without one good wound on the back, which I gave him as he fled, and made the blood run trickling from him. After this exploit, I walked gently to and fro on the bed, to recover my breath and loss of spirits. These creatures were of the size of a large mastiff, but infinitely more nimble and fierce; so that if I had taken off my belt before I went to sleep, I must have infallibly been torn to pieces and devoured. I measured the tail of the dead rat, and found it to be two yards long, wanting an inch; but it went against my stomach to drag the carcass off the bed, where it lay still bleeding; I observed it had yet some life, but with a strong slash across the neck, I thoroughly despatched it. + +Soon after my mistress came into the room, who seeing me all bloody, ran and took me up in her hand. I pointed to the dead rat, smiling, and making other signs to show I was not hurt; whereat she was extremely rejoiced, calling the maid to take up the dead rat with a pair of tongs, and throw it out of the window. Then she set me on a table, where I showed her my hanger all bloody, and wiping it on the lappet of my coat, returned it to the scabbard. I was pressed to do more than one thing which another could not do for me, and therefore endeavoured to make my mistress understand, that I desired to be set down on the floor; which after she had done, my bashfulness would not suffer me to express myself farther, than by pointing to the door, and bowing several times. The good woman, with much difficulty, at last perceived what I would be at, and taking me up again in her hand, walked into the garden, where she set me down. I went on one side about two hundred yards, and beckoning to her not to look or to follow me, I hid myself between two leaves of sorrel, and there discharged the necessities of nature. + +I hope the gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to groveling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein I have been chiefly studious of truth, without affecting any ornaments of learning or of style. But the whole scene of this voyage made so strong an impression on my mind, and is so deeply fixed in my memory, that, in committing it to paper I did not omit one material circumstance: however, upon a strict review, I blotted out several passages. Of less moment which were in my first copy, for fear of being censured as tedious and trifling, whereof travellers are often, perhaps not without justice, accused. + +CHAPTER II. + +[A description of the farmer's daughter. The author carried to a market-town, and then to the metropolis. The particulars of his journey.] + +My mistress had a daughter of nine years old, a child of towardly parts for her age, very dexterous at her needle, and skilful in dressing her baby. Her mother and she contrived to fit up the baby's cradle for me against night: the cradle was put into a small drawer of a cabinet, and the drawer placed upon a hanging shelf for fear of the rats. This was my bed all the time I staid with those people, though made more convenient by degrees, as I began to learn their language and make my wants known. This young girl was so handy, that after I had once or twice pulled off my clothes before her, she was able to dress and undress me, though I never gave her that trouble when she would let me do either myself. She made me seven shirts, and some other linen, of as fine cloth as could be got, which indeed was coarser than sackcloth; and these she constantly washed for me with her own hands. She was likewise my school-mistress, to teach me the language: when I pointed to any thing, she told me the name of it in her own tongue, so that in a few days I was able to call for whatever I had a mind to. She was very good-natured, and not above forty feet high, being little for her age. She gave me the name of Grildrig, which the family took up, and afterwards the whole kingdom. The word imports what the Latins call nanunculus, the Italians homunceletino, and the English mannikin. To her I chiefly owe my preservation in that country: we never parted while I was there; I called her my Glumdalclitch, or little nurse; and should be guilty of great ingratitude, if I omitted this honourable mention of her care and affection towards me, which I heartily wish it lay in my power to requite as she deserves, instead of being the innocent, but unhappy instrument of her disgrace, as I have too much reason to fear. + +It now began to be known and talked of in the neighbourhood, that my master had found a strange animal in the field, about the bigness of a splacnuck, but exactly shaped in every part like a human creature; which it likewise imitated in all its actions; seemed to speak in a little language of its own, had already learned several words of theirs, went erect upon two legs, was tame and gentle, would come when it was called, do whatever it was bid, had the finest limbs in the world, and a complexion fairer than a nobleman's daughter of three years old. Another farmer, who lived hard by, and was a particular friend of my master, came on a visit on purpose to inquire into the truth of this story. I was immediately produced, and placed upon a table, where I walked as I was commanded, drew my hanger, put it up again, made my reverence to my master's guest, asked him in his own language how he did, and told him HE WAS WELCOME, just as my little nurse had instructed me. This man, who was old and dim-sighted, put on his spectacles to behold me better; at which I could not forbear laughing very heartily, for his eyes appeared like the full moon shining into a chamber at two windows. Our people, who discovered the cause of my mirth, bore me company in laughing, at which the old fellow was fool enough to be angry and out of countenance. He had the character of a great miser; and, to my misfortune, he well deserved it, by the cursed advice he gave my master, to show me as a sight upon a market-day in the next town, which was half an hour's riding, about two-and-twenty miles from our house. I guessed there was some mischief when I observed my master and his friend whispering together, sometimes pointing at me; and my fears made me fancy that I overheard and understood some of their words. But the next morning Glumdalclitch, my little nurse, told me the whole matter, which she had cunningly picked out from her mother. The poor girl laid me on her bosom, and fell a weeping with shame and grief. She apprehended some mischief would happen to me from rude vulgar folks, who might squeeze me to death, or break one of my limbs by taking me in their hands. She had also observed how modest I was in my nature, how nicely I regarded my honour, and what an indignity I should conceive it, to be exposed for money as a public spectacle, to the meanest of the people. She said, her papa and mamma had promised that Grildrig should be hers; but now she found they meant to serve her as they did last year, when they pretended to give her a lamb, and yet, as soon as it was fat, sold it to a butcher. For my own part, I may truly affirm, that I was less concerned than my nurse. I had a strong hope, which never left me, that I should one day recover my liberty: and as to the ignominy of being carried about for a monster, I considered myself to be a perfect stranger in the country, and that such a misfortune could never be charged upon me as a reproach, if ever I should return to England, since the king of Great Britain himself, in my condition, must have undergone the same distress. + +My master, pursuant to the advice of his friend, carried me in a box the next market-day to the neighbouring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him. The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put the quilt of her baby's bed into it, for me to lie down on. However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it was but of half an hour: for the horse went about forty feet at every step and trotted so high, that the agitation was equal to the rising and falling of a ship in a great storm, but much more frequent. Our journey was somewhat farther than from London to St. Alban's. My master alighted at an inn which he used to frequent; and after consulting awhile with the inn-keeper, and making some necessary preparations, he hired the grultrud, or crier, to give notice through the town of a strange creature to be seen at the sign of the Green Eagle, not so big as a splacnuck (an animal in that country very finely shaped, about six feet long,) and in every part of the body resembling a human creature, could speak several words, and perform a hundred diverting tricks. + +I was placed upon a table in the largest room of the inn, which might be near three hundred feet square. My little nurse stood on a low stool close to the table, to take care of me, and direct what I should do. My master, to avoid a crowd, would suffer only thirty people at a time to see me. I walked about on the table as the girl commanded; she asked me questions, as far as she knew my understanding of the language reached, and I answered them as loud as I could. I turned about several times to the company, paid my humble respects, said THEY WERE WELCOME, and used some other speeches I had been taught. I took up a thimble filled with liquor, which Glumdalclitch had given me for a cup, and drank their health, I drew out my hanger, and flourished with it after the manner of fencers in England. My nurse gave me a part of a straw, which I exercised as a pike, having learnt the art in my youth. I was that day shown to twelve sets of company, and as often forced to act over again the same fopperies, till I was half dead with weariness and vexation; for those who had seen me made such wonderful reports, that the people were ready to break down the doors to come in. My master, for his own interest, would not suffer any one to touch me except my nurse; and to prevent danger, benches were set round the table at such a distance as to put me out of every body's reach. However, an unlucky school-boy aimed a hazel nut directly at my head, which very narrowly missed me; otherwise it came with so much violence, that it would have infallibly knocked out my brains, for it was almost as large as a small pumpkin, but I had the satisfaction to see the young rogue well beaten, and turned out of the room. + +My master gave public notice that he would show me again the next market-day; and in the meantime he prepared a convenient vehicle for me, which he had reason enough to do; for I was so tired with my first journey, and with entertaining company for eight hours together, that I could hardly stand upon my legs, or speak a word. It was at least three days before I recovered my strength; and that I might have no rest at home, all the neighbouring gentlemen from a hundred miles round, hearing of my fame, came to see me at my master's own house. There could not be fewer than thirty persons with their wives and children (for the country is very populous;) and my master demanded the rate of a full room whenever he showed me at home, although it were only to a single family; so that for some time I had but little ease every day of the week (except Wednesday, which is their Sabbath,) although I were not carried to the town. + +My master, finding how profitable I was likely to be, resolved to carry me to the most considerable cities of the kingdom. Having therefore provided himself with all things necessary for a long journey, and settled his affairs at home, he took leave of his wife, and upon the 17th of August, 1703, about two months after my arrival, we set out for the metropolis, situate near the middle of that empire, and about three thousand miles distance from our house. My master made his daughter Glumdalclitch ride behind him. She carried me on her lap, in a box tied about her waist. The girl had lined it on all sides with the softest cloth she could get, well quilted underneath, furnished it with her baby's bed, provided me with linen and other necessaries, and made everything as convenient as she could. We had no other company but a boy of the house, who rode after us with the luggage. + +My master's design was to show me in all the towns by the way, and to step out of the road for fifty or a hundred miles, to any village, or person of quality's house, where he might expect custom. We made easy journeys, of not above seven or eight score miles a-day; for Glumdalclitch, on purpose to spare me, complained she was tired with the trotting of the horse. She often took me out of my box, at my own desire, to give me air, and show me the country, but always held me fast by a leading-string. We passed over five or six rivers, many degrees broader and deeper than the Nile or the Ganges: and there was hardly a rivulet so small as the Thames at London-bridge. We were ten weeks in our journey, and I was shown in eighteen large towns, besides many villages, and private families. + +On the 26th day of October we arrived at the metropolis, called in their language Lorbrulgrud, or Pride of the Universe. My master took a lodging in the principal street of the city, not far from the royal palace, and put out bills in the usual form, containing an exact description of my person and parts. He hired a large room between three and four hundred feet wide. He provided a table sixty feet in diameter, upon which I was to act my part, and pallisadoed it round three feet from the edge, and as many high, to prevent my falling over. I was shown ten times a-day, to the wonder and satisfaction of all people. I could now speak the language tolerably well, and perfectly understood every word, that was spoken to me. Besides, I had learnt their alphabet, and could make a shift to explain a sentence here and there; for Glumdalclitch had been my instructor while we were at home, and at leisure hours during our journey. She carried a little book in her pocket, not much larger than a Sanson's Atlas; it was a common treatise for the use of young girls, giving a short account of their religion: out of this she taught me my letters, and interpreted the words. + +CHAPTER III. + +[The author sent for to court. The queen buys him of his master the farmer, and presents him to the king. He disputes with his majesty's great scholars. An apartment at court provided for the author. He is in high favour with the queen. He stands up for the honour of his own country. His quarrels with the queen's dwarf.] + +The frequent labours I underwent every day, made, in a few weeks, a very considerable change in my health: the more my master got by me, the more insatiable he grew. I had quite lost my stomach, and was almost reduced to a skeleton. The farmer observed it, and concluding I must soon die, resolved to make as good a hand of me as he could. While he was thus reasoning and resolving with himself, a sardral, or gentleman-usher, came from court, commanding my master to carry me immediately thither for the diversion of the queen and her ladies. Some of the latter had already been to see me, and reported strange things of my beauty, behaviour, and good sense. Her majesty, and those who attended her, were beyond measure delighted with my demeanour. I fell on my knees, and begged the honour of kissing her imperial foot; but this gracious princess held out her little finger towards me, after I was set on the table, which I embraced in both my arms, and put the tip of it with the utmost respect to my lip. She made me some general questions about my country and my travels, which I answered as distinctly, and in as few words as I could. She asked, "whether I could be content to live at court?" I bowed down to the board of the table, and humbly answered "that I was my master's slave: but, if I were at my own disposal, I should be proud to devote my life to her majesty's service." She then asked my master, "whether he was willing to sell me at a good price?" He, who apprehended I could not live a month, was ready enough to part with me, and demanded a thousand pieces of gold, which were ordered him on the spot, each piece being about the bigness of eight hundred moidores; but allowing for the proportion of all things between that country and Europe, and the high price of gold among them, was hardly so great a sum as a thousand guineas would be in England. I then said to the queen, "since I was now her majesty's most humble creature and vassal, I must beg the favour, that Glumdalclitch, who had always tended me with so much care and kindness, and understood to do it so well, might be admitted into her service, and continue to be my nurse and instructor." + +Her majesty agreed to my petition, and easily got the farmer's consent, who was glad enough to have his daughter preferred at court, and the poor girl herself was not able to hide her joy. My late master withdrew, bidding me farewell, and saying he had left me in a good service; to which I replied not a word, only making him a slight bow. + +The queen observed my coldness; and, when the farmer was gone out of the apartment, asked me the reason. I made bold to tell her majesty, "that I owed no other obligation to my late master, than his not dashing out the brains of a poor harmless creature, found by chance in his fields: which obligation was amply recompensed, by the gain he had made in showing me through half the kingdom, and the price he had now sold me for. That the life I had since led was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times my strength. That my health was much impaired, by the continual drudgery of entertaining the rabble every hour of the day; and that, if my master had not thought my life in danger, her majesty would not have got so cheap a bargain. But as I was out of all fear of being ill-treated under the protection of so great and good an empress, the ornament of nature, the darling of the world, the delight of her subjects, the phoenix of the creation, so I hoped my late master's apprehensions would appear to be groundless; for I already found my spirits revive, by the influence of her most august presence." + +This was the sum of my speech, delivered with great improprieties and hesitation. The latter part was altogether framed in the style peculiar to that people, whereof I learned some phrases from Glumdalclitch, while she was carrying me to court. + +The queen, giving great allowance for my defectiveness in speaking, was, however, surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an animal. She took me in her own hand, and carried me to the king, who was then retired to his cabinet. His majesty, a prince of much gravity and austere countenance, not well observing my shape at first view, asked the queen after a cold manner "how long it was since she grew fond of a splacnuck?" for such it seems he took me to be, as I lay upon my breast in her majesty's right hand. But this princess, who has an infinite deal of wit and humour, set me gently on my feet upon the scrutoire, and commanded me to give his majesty an account of myself, which I did in a very few words: and Glumdalclitch who attended at the cabinet door, and could not endure I should be out of her sight, being admitted, confirmed all that had passed from my arrival at her father's house. + +The king, although he be as learned a person as any in his dominions, had been educated in the study of philosophy, and particularly mathematics; yet when he observed my shape exactly, and saw me walk erect, before I began to speak, conceived I might be a piece of clock-work (which is in that country arrived to a very great perfection) contrived by some ingenious artist. But when he heard my voice, and found what I delivered to be regular and rational, he could not conceal his astonishment. He was by no means satisfied with the relation I gave him of the manner I came into his kingdom, but thought it a story concerted between Glumdalclitch and her father, who had taught me a set of words to make me sell at a better price. Upon this imagination, he put several other questions to me, and still received rational answers: no otherwise defective than by a foreign accent, and an imperfect knowledge in the language, with some rustic phrases which I had learned at the farmer's house, and did not suit the polite style of a court. + +His majesty sent for three great scholars, who were then in their weekly waiting, according to the custom in that country. These gentlemen, after they had a while examined my shape with much nicety, were of different opinions concerning me. They all agreed that I could not be produced according to the regular laws of nature, because I was not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth. They observed by my teeth, which they viewed with great exactness, that I was a carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and field mice, with some others, too nimble, they could not imagine how I should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that I could not possibly do. One of these virtuosi seemed to think that I might be an embryo, or abortive birth. But this opinion was rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished; and that I had lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying glass. They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all degrees of comparison; for the queen's favourite dwarf, the smallest ever known in that kingdom, was near thirty feet high. After much debate, they concluded unanimously, that I was only relplum scalcath, which is interpreted literally lusus naturae; a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human knowledge. + +After this decisive conclusion, I entreated to be heard a word or two. I applied myself to the king, and assured his majesty, "that I came from a country which abounded with several millions of both sexes, and of my own stature; where the animals, trees, and houses, were all in proportion, and where, by consequence, I might be as able to defend myself, and to find sustenance, as any of his majesty's subjects could do here; which I took for a full answer to those gentlemen's arguments." To this they only replied with a smile of contempt, saying, "that the farmer had instructed me very well in my lesson." The king, who had a much better understanding, dismissing his learned men, sent for the farmer, who by good fortune was not yet gone out of town. Having therefore first examined him privately, and then confronted him with me and the young girl, his majesty began to think that what we told him might possibly be true. He desired the queen to order that a particular care should be taken of me; and was of opinion that Glumdalclitch should still continue in her office of tending me, because he observed we had a great affection for each other. A convenient apartment was provided for her at court: she had a sort of governess appointed to take care of her education, a maid to dress her, and two other servants for menial offices; but the care of me was wholly appropriated to herself. The queen commanded her own cabinet-maker to contrive a box, that might serve me for a bedchamber, after the model that Glumdalclitch and I should agree upon. This man was a most ingenious artist, and according to my direction, in three weeks finished for me a wooden chamber of sixteen feet square, and twelve high, with sash-windows, a door, and two closets, like a London bed-chamber. The board, that made the ceiling, was to be lifted up and down by two hinges, to put in a bed ready furnished by her majesty's upholsterer, which Glumdalclitch took out every day to air, made it with her own hands, and letting it down at night, locked up the roof over me. A nice workman, who was famous for little curiosities, undertook to make me two chairs, with backs and frames, of a substance not unlike ivory, and two tables, with a cabinet to put my things in. The room was quilted on all sides, as well as the floor and the ceiling, to prevent any accident from the carelessness of those who carried me, and to break the force of a jolt, when I went in a coach. I desired a lock for my door, to prevent rats and mice from coming in. The smith, after several attempts, made the smallest that ever was seen among them, for I have known a larger at the gate of a gentleman's house in England. I made a shift to keep the key in a pocket of my own, fearing Glumdalclitch might lose it. The queen likewise ordered the thinnest silks that could be gotten, to make me clothes, not much thicker than an English blanket, very cumbersome till I was accustomed to them. They were after the fashion of the kingdom, partly resembling the Persian, and partly the Chinese, and are a very grave and decent habit. + +The queen became so fond of my company, that she could not dine without me. I had a table placed upon the same at which her majesty ate, just at her left elbow, and a chair to sit on. Glumdalclitch stood on a stool on the floor near my table, to assist and take care of me. I had an entire set of silver dishes and plates, and other necessaries, which, in proportion to those of the queen, were not much bigger than what I have seen in a London toy-shop for the furniture of a baby-house: these my little nurse kept in her pocket in a silver box, and gave me at meals as I wanted them, always cleaning them herself. No person dined with the queen but the two princesses royal, the eldest sixteen years old, and the younger at that time thirteen and a month. Her majesty used to put a bit of meat upon one of my dishes, out of which I carved for myself, and her diversion was to see me eat in miniature: for the queen (who had indeed but a weak stomach) took up, at one mouthful, as much as a dozen English farmers could eat at a meal, which to me was for some time a very nauseous sight. She would craunch the wing of a lark, bones and all, between her teeth, although it were nine times as large as that of a full-grown turkey; and put a bit of bread into her mouth as big as two twelve- penny loaves. She drank out of a golden cup, above a hogshead at a draught. Her knives were twice as long as a scythe, set straight upon the handle. The spoons, forks, and other instruments, were all in the same proportion. I remember when Glumdalclitch carried me, out of curiosity, to see some of the tables at court, where ten or a dozen of those enormous knives and forks were lifted up together, I thought I had never till then beheld so terrible a sight. + +It is the custom, that every Wednesday (which, as I have observed, is their Sabbath) the king and queen, with the royal issue of both sexes, dine together in the apartment of his majesty, to whom I was now become a great favourite; and at these times, my little chair and table were placed at his left hand, before one of the salt- cellars. This prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; wherein I gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was so clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise reflections and observations upon all I said. But I confess, that, after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved country, of our trade and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties in the state; the prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he could not forbear taking me up in his right hand, and stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of laughing, asked me, "whether I was a whig or tory?" Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, he observed "how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: and yet," says he, "I dare engage these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray!" And thus he continued on, while my colour came and went several times, with indignation, to hear our noble country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, and truth, the pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated. + +But as I was not in a condition to resent injuries, so upon mature thoughts I began to doubt whether I was injured or no. For, after having been accustomed several months to the sight and converse of this people, and observed every object upon which I cast mine eyes to be of proportionable magnitude, the horror I had at first conceived from their bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if I had then beheld a company of English lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day clothes, acting their several parts in the most courtly manner of strutting, and bowing, and prating, to say the truth, I should have been strongly tempted to laugh as much at them as the king and his grandees did at me. Neither, indeed, could I forbear smiling at myself, when the queen used to place me upon her hand towards a looking-glass, by which both our persons appeared before me in full view together; and there could be nothing more ridiculous than the comparison; so that I really began to imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size. + +Nothing angered and mortified me so much as the queen's dwarf; who being of the lowest stature that was ever in that country (for I verily think he was not full thirty feet high), became so insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger and look big as he passed by me in the queen's antechamber, while I was standing on some table talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against which I could only revenge myself by calling him brother, challenging him to wrestle, and such repartees as are usually in the mouths of court pages. One day, at dinner, this malicious little cub was so nettled with something I had said to him, that, raising himself upon the frame of her majesty's chair, he took me up by the middle, as I was sitting down, not thinking any harm, and let me drop into a large silver bowl of cream, and then ran away as fast as he could. I fell over head and ears, and, if I had not been a good swimmer, it might have gone very hard with me; for Glumdalclitch in that instant happened to be at the other end of the room, and the queen was in such a fright, that she wanted presence of mind to assist me. But my little nurse ran to my relief, and took me out, after I had swallowed above a quart of cream. I was put to bed: however, I received no other damage than the loss of a suit of clothes, which was utterly spoiled. The dwarf was soundly whipt, and as a farther punishment, forced to drink up the bowl of cream into which he had thrown me: neither was he ever restored to favour; for soon after the queen bestowed him on a lady of high quality, so that I saw him no more, to my very great satisfaction; for I could not tell to what extremities such a malicious urchin might have carried his resentment. + +He had before served me a scurvy trick, which set the queen a-laughing, although at the same time she was heartily vexed, and would have immediately cashiered him, if I had not been so generous as to intercede. Her majesty had taken a marrow-bone upon her plate, and, after knocking out the marrow, placed the bone again in the dish erect, as it stood before; the dwarf, watching his opportunity, while Glumdalclitch was gone to the side-board, mounted the stool that she stood on to take care of me at meals, took me up in both hands, and squeezing my legs together, wedged them into the marrow bone above my waist, where I stuck for some time, and made a very ridiculous figure. I believe it was near a minute before any one knew what was become of me; for I thought it below me to cry out. But, as princes seldom get their meat hot, my legs were not scalded, only my stockings and breeches in a sad condition. The dwarf, at my entreaty, had no other punishment than a sound whipping. + +I was frequently rallied by the queen upon account of my fearfulness; and she used to ask me whether the people of my country were as great cowards as myself? The occasion was this: the kingdom is much pestered with flies in summer; and these odious insects, each of them as big as a Dunstable lark, hardly gave me any rest while I sat at dinner, with their continual humming and buzzing about mine ears. They would sometimes alight upon my victuals, and leave their loathsome excrement, or spawn behind, which to me was very visible, though not to the natives of that country, whose large optics were not so acute as mine, in viewing smaller objects. Sometimes they would fix upon my nose, or forehead, where they stung me to the quick, smelling very offensively; and I could easily trace that viscous matter, which, our naturalists tell us, enables those creatures to walk with their feet upwards upon a ceiling. I had much ado to defend myself against these detestable animals, and could not forbear starting when they came on my face. It was the common practice of the dwarf, to catch a number of these insects in his hand, as schoolboys do among us, and let them out suddenly under my nose, on purpose to frighten me, and divert the queen. My remedy was to cut them in pieces with my knife, as they flew in the air, wherein my dexterity was much admired. + +I remember, one morning, when Glumdalclitch had set me in a box upon a window, as she usually did in fair days to give me air (for I durst not venture to let the box be hung on a nail out of the window, as we do with cages in England), after I had lifted up one of my sashes, and sat down at my table to eat a piece of sweet cake for my breakfast, above twenty wasps, allured by the smell, came flying into the room, humming louder than the drones of as many bagpipes. Some of them seized my cake, and carried it piecemeal away; others flew about my head and face, confounding me with the noise, and putting me in the utmost terror of their stings. However, I had the courage to rise and draw my hanger, and attack them in the air. I dispatched four of them, but the rest got away, and I presently shut my window. These insects were as large as partridges: I took out their stings, found them an inch and a half long, and as sharp as needles. I carefully preserved them all; and having since shown them, with some other curiosities, in several parts of Europe, upon my return to England I gave three of them to Gresham College, and kept the fourth for myself. + +CHAPTER IV. + +[The country described. A proposal for correcting modern maps. The king's palace; and some account of the metropolis. The author's way of travelling. The chief temple described.] + +I now intend to give the reader a short description of this country, as far as I travelled in it, which was not above two thousand miles round Lorbrulgrud, the metropolis. For the queen, whom I always attended, never went farther when she accompanied the king in his progresses, and there staid till his majesty returned from viewing his frontiers. The whole extent of this prince's dominions reaches about six thousand miles in length, and from three to five in breadth: whence I cannot but conclude, that our geographers of Europe are in a great error, by supposing nothing but sea between Japan and California; for it was ever my opinion, that there must be a balance of earth to counterpoise the great continent of Tartary; and therefore they ought to correct their maps and charts, by joining this vast tract of land to the north- west parts of America, wherein I shall be ready to lend them my assistance. + +The kingdom is a peninsula, terminated to the north-east by a ridge of mountains thirty miles high, which are altogether impassable, by reason of the volcanoes upon the tops: neither do the most learned know what sort of mortals inhabit beyond those mountains, or whether they be inhabited at all. On the three other sides, it is bounded by the ocean. There is not one seaport in the whole kingdom: and those parts of the coasts into which the rivers issue, are so full of pointed rocks, and the sea generally so rough, that there is no venturing with the smallest of their boats; so that these people are wholly excluded from any commerce with the rest of the world. But the large rivers are full of vessels, and abound with excellent fish; for they seldom get any from the sea, because the sea fish are of the same size with those in Europe, and consequently not worth catching; whereby it is manifest, that nature, in the production of plants and animals of so extraordinary a bulk, is wholly confined to this continent, of which I leave the reasons to be determined by philosophers. However, now and then they take a whale that happens to be dashed against the rocks, which the common people feed on heartily. These whales I have known so large, that a man could hardly carry one upon his shoulders; and sometimes, for curiosity, they are brought in hampers to Lorbrulgrud; I saw one of them in a dish at the king's table, which passed for a rarity, but I did not observe he was fond of it; for I think, indeed, the bigness disgusted him, although I have seen one somewhat larger in Greenland. + +The country is well inhabited, for it contains fifty-one cities, near a hundred walled towns, and a great number of villages. To satisfy my curious reader, it may be sufficient to describe Lorbrulgrud. This city stands upon almost two equal parts, on each side the river that passes through. It contains above eighty thousand houses, and about six hundred thousand inhabitants. It is in length three glomglungs (which make about fifty-four English miles,) and two and a half in breadth; as I measured it myself in the royal map made by the king's order, which was laid on the ground on purpose for me, and extended a hundred feet: I paced the diameter and circumference several times barefoot, and, computing by the scale, measured it pretty exactly. + +The king's palace is no regular edifice, but a heap of buildings, about seven miles round: the chief rooms are generally two hundred and forty feet high, and broad and long in proportion. A coach was allowed to Glumdalclitch and me, wherein her governess frequently took her out to see the town, or go among the shops; and I was always of the party, carried in my box; although the girl, at my own desire, would often take me out, and hold me in her hand, that I might more conveniently view the houses and the people, as we passed along the streets. I reckoned our coach to be about a square of Westminster-hall, but not altogether so high: however, I cannot be very exact. One day the governess ordered our coachman to stop at several shops, where the beggars, watching their opportunity, crowded to the sides of the coach, and gave me the most horrible spectacle that ever a European eye beheld. There was a woman with a cancer in her breast, swelled to a monstrous size, full of holes, in two or three of which I could have easily crept, and covered my whole body. There was a fellow with a wen in his neck, larger than five wool-packs; and another, with a couple of wooden legs, each about twenty feet high. But the most hateful sight of all, was the lice crawling on their clothes. I could see distinctly the limbs of these vermin with my naked eye, much better than those of a European louse through a microscope, and their snouts with which they rooted like swine. They were the first I had ever beheld, and I should have been curious enough to dissect one of them, if I had had proper instruments, which I unluckily left behind me in the ship, although, indeed, the sight was so nauseous, that it perfectly turned my stomach. + +Besides the large box in which I was usually carried, the queen ordered a smaller one to be made for me, of about twelve feet square, and ten high, for the convenience of travelling; because the other was somewhat too large for Glumdalclitch's lap, and cumbersome in the coach; it was made by the same artist, whom I directed in the whole contrivance. This travelling-closet was an exact square, with a window in the middle of three of the squares, and each window was latticed with iron wire on the outside, to prevent accidents in long journeys. On the fourth side, which had no window, two strong staples were fixed, through which the person that carried me, when I had a mind to be on horseback, put a leathern belt, and buckled it about his waist. This was always the office of some grave trusty servant, in whom I could confide, whether I attended the king and queen in their progresses, or were disposed to see the gardens, or pay a visit to some great lady or minister of state in the court, when Glumdalclitch happened to be out of order; for I soon began to be known and esteemed among the greatest officers, I suppose more upon account of their majesties' favour, than any merit of my own. In journeys, when I was weary of the coach, a servant on horseback would buckle on my box, and place it upon a cushion before him; and there I had a full prospect of the country on three sides, from my three windows. I had, in this closet, a field-bed and a hammock, hung from the ceiling, two chairs and a table, neatly screwed to the floor, to prevent being tossed about by the agitation of the horse or the coach. And having been long used to sea-voyages, those motions, although sometimes very violent, did not much discompose me. + +Whenever I had a mind to see the town, it was always in my travelling-closet; which Glumdalclitch held in her lap in a kind of open sedan, after the fashion of the country, borne by four men, and attended by two others in the queen's livery. The people, who had often heard of me, were very curious to crowd about the sedan, and the girl was complaisant enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her hand, that I might be more conveniently seen. + +I was very desirous to see the chief temple, and particularly the tower belonging to it, which is reckoned the highest in the kingdom. Accordingly one day my nurse carried me thither, but I may truly say I came back disappointed; for the height is not above three thousand feet, reckoning from the ground to the highest pinnacle top; which, allowing for the difference between the size of those people and us in Europe, is no great matter for admiration, nor at all equal in proportion (if I rightly remember) to Salisbury steeple. But, not to detract from a nation, to which, during my life, I shall acknowledge myself extremely obliged, it must be allowed, that whatever this famous tower wants in height, is amply made up in beauty and strength: for the walls are near a hundred feet thick, built of hewn stone, whereof each is about forty feet square, and adorned on all sides with statues of gods and emperors, cut in marble, larger than the life, placed in their several niches. I measured a little finger which had fallen down from one of these statues, and lay unperceived among some rubbish, and found it exactly four feet and an inch in length. Glumdalclitch wrapped it up in her handkerchief, and carried it home in her pocket, to keep among other trinkets, of which the girl was very fond, as children at her age usually are. + +The king's kitchen is indeed a noble building, vaulted at top, and about six hundred feet high. The great oven is not so wide, by ten paces, as the cupola at St. Paul's: for I measured the latter on purpose, after my return. But if I should describe the kitchen grate, the prodigious pots and kettles, the joints of meat turning on the spits, with many other particulars, perhaps I should be hardly believed; at least a severe critic would be apt to think I enlarged a little, as travellers are often suspected to do. To avoid which censure I fear I have run too much into the other extreme; and that if this treatise should happen to be translated into the language of Brobdingnag (which is the general name of that kingdom,) and transmitted thither, the king and his people would have reason to complain that I had done them an injury, by a false and diminutive representation. + +His majesty seldom keeps above six hundred horses in his stables: they are generally from fifty-four to sixty feet high. But, when he goes abroad on solemn days, he is attended, for state, by a military guard of five hundred horse, which, indeed, I thought was the most splendid sight that could be ever beheld, till I saw part of his army in battalia, whereof I shall find another occasion to speak. + +CHAPTER V. + +[Several adventurers that happened to the author. The execution of a criminal. The author shows his skill in navigation.] + +I should have lived happy enough in that country, if my littleness had not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents; some of which I shall venture to relate. Glumdalclitch often carried me into the gardens of the court in my smaller box, and would sometimes take me out of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk. I remember, before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close together, near some dwarf apple trees, I must needs show my wit, by a silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their language as it does in ours. Whereupon, the malicious rogue, watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly over my head, by which a dozen apples, each of them near as large as a Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit me on the back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my face; but I received no other hurt, and the dwarf was pardoned at my desire, because I had given the provocation. + +Another day, Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plot to divert myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess. In the meantime, there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was immediately by the force of it, struck to the ground: and when I was down, the hailstones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body, as if I had been pelted with tennis-balls; however, I made a shift to creep on all fours, and shelter myself, by lying flat on my face, on the lee-side of a border of lemon-thyme, but so bruised from head to foot, that I could not go abroad in ten days. Neither is this at all to be wondered at, because nature, in that country, observing the same proportion through all her operations, a hailstone is near eighteen hundred times as large as one in Europe; which I can assert upon experience, having been so curious as to weigh and measure them. + +But a more dangerous accident happened to me in the same garden, when my little nurse, believing she had put me in a secure place (which I often entreated her to do, that I might enjoy my own thoughts,) and having left my box at home, to avoid the trouble of carrying it, went to another part of the garden with her governess and some ladies of her acquaintance. While she was absent, and out of hearing, a small white spaniel that belonged to one of the chief gardeners, having got by accident into the garden, happened to range near the place where I lay: the dog, following the scent, came directly up, and taking me in his mouth, ran straight to his master wagging his tail, and set me gently on the ground. By good fortune he had been so well taught, that I was carried between his teeth without the least hurt, or even tearing my clothes. But the poor gardener, who knew me well, and had a great kindness for me, was in a terrible fright: he gently took me up in both his hands, and asked me how I did? but I was so amazed and out of breath, that I could not speak a word. In a few minutes I came to myself, and he carried me safe to my little nurse, who, by this time, had returned to the place where she left me, and was in cruel agonies when I did not appear, nor answer when she called. She severely reprimanded the gardener on account of his dog. But the thing was hushed up, and never known at court, for the girl was afraid of the queen's anger; and truly, as to myself, I thought it would not be for my reputation, that such a story should go about. + +This accident absolutely determined Glumdalclitch never to trust me abroad for the future out of her sight. I had been long afraid of this resolution, and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky adventures, that happened in those times when I was left by myself. Once a kite, hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me, and if I had not resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he would have certainly carried me away in his talons. Another time, walking to the top of a fresh mole-hill, I fell to my neck in the hole, through which that animal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie, not worth remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my clothes. I likewise broke my right shin against the shell of a snail, which I happened to stumble over, as I was walking alone and thinking on poor England. + +I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mortified to observe, in those solitary walks, that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of me, but would hop about within a yard's distance, looking for worms and other food, with as much indifference and security as if no creature at all were near them. I remember, a thrush had the confidence to snatch out of my hand, with his bill, a of cake that Glumdalclitch had just given me for my breakfast. When I attempted to catch any of these birds, they would boldly turn against me, endeavouring to peck my fingers, which I durst not venture within their reach; and then they would hop back unconcerned, to hunt for worms or snails, as they did before. But one day, I took a thick cudgel, and threw it with all my strength so luckily, at a linnet, that I knocked him down, and seizing him by the neck with both my hands, ran with him in triumph to my nurse. However, the bird, who had only been stunned, recovering himself gave me so many boxes with his wings, on both sides of my head and body, though I held him at arm's-length, and was out of the reach of his claws, that I was twenty times thinking to let him go. But I was soon relieved by one of our servants, who wrung off the bird's neck, and I had him next day for dinner, by the queen's command. This linnet, as near as I can remember, seemed to be somewhat larger than an English swan. + +The maids of honour often invited Glumdalclitch to their apartments, and desired she would bring me along with her, on purpose to have the pleasure of seeing and touching me. They would often strip me naked from top to toe, and lay me at full length in their bosoms; wherewith I was much disgusted because, to say the truth, a very offensive smell came from their skins; which I do not mention, or intend, to the disadvantage of those excellent ladies, for whom I have all manner of respect; but I conceive that my sense was more acute in proportion to my littleness, and that those illustrious persons were no more disagreeable to their lovers, or to each other, than people of the same quality are with us in England. And, after all, I found their natural smell was much more supportable, than when they used perfumes, under which I immediately swooned away. I cannot forget, that an intimate friend of mine in Lilliput, took the freedom in a warm day, when I had used a good deal of exercise, to complain of a strong smell about me, although I am as little faulty that way, as most of my sex: but I suppose his faculty of smelling was as nice with regard to me, as mine was to that of this people. Upon this point, I cannot forbear doing justice to the queen my mistress, and Glumdalclitch my nurse, whose persons were as sweet as those of any lady in England. + +That which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of honour (when my nurse carried me to visit then) was, to see them use me without any manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of consequence: for they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my presence, while I was placed on their toilet, directly before their naked bodies, which I am sure to me was very far from being a tempting sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and disgust: their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously coloured, when I saw them near, with a mole here and there as broad as a trencher, and hairs hanging from it thicker than packthreads, to say nothing farther concerning the rest of their persons. Neither did they at all scruple, while I was by, to discharge what they had drank, to the quantity of at least two hogsheads, in a vessel that held above three tuns. The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant, frolicsome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over particular. But I was so much displeased, that I entreated Glumdalclitch to contrive some excuse for not seeing that young lady any more. + +One day, a young gentleman, who was nephew to my nurse's governess, came and pressed them both to see an execution. It was of a man, who had murdered one of that gentleman's intimate acquaintance. Glumdalclitch was prevailed on to be of the company, very much against her inclination, for she was naturally tender-hearted: and, as for myself, although I abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity tempted me to see something that I thought must be extraordinary. The malefactor was fixed in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that purpose, and his head cut off at one blow, with a sword of about forty feet long. The veins and arteries spouted up such a prodigious quantity of blood, and so high in the air, that the great jet d'eau at Versailles was not equal to it for the time it lasted: and the head, when it fell on the scaffold floor, gave such a bounce as made me start, although I was at least half an English mile distant. + +The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise of rowing might not be convenient for my health? I answered, that I understood both very well: for although my proper employment had been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often, upon a pinch, I was forced to work like a common mariner. But I could not see how this could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to a first-rate man of war among us; and such a boat as I could manage would never live in any of their rivers. Her majesty said, if I would contrive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a place for me to sail in. The fellow was an ingenious workman, and by my instructions, in ten days, finished a pleasure-boat with all its tackling, able conveniently to hold eight Europeans. When it was finished, the queen was so delighted, that she ran with it in her lap to the king, who ordered it to be put into a cistern full of water, with me in it, by way of trial, where I could not manage my two sculls, or little oars, for want of room. But the queen had before contrived another project. She ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor, along the wall, in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half an hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put up my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while the ladies gave me a gale with their fans; and, when they were weary, some of their pages would blow my sail forward with their breath, while I showed my art by steering starboard or larboard as I pleased. When I had done, Glumdalclitch always carried back my boat into her closet, and hung it on a nail to dry. + +In this exercise I once met an accident, which had like to have cost me my life; for, one of the pages having put my boat into the trough, the governess who attended Glumdalclitch very officiously lifted me up, to place me in the boat: but I happened to slip through her fingers, and should infallibly have fallen down forty feet upon the floor, if, by the luckiest chance in the world, I had not been stopped by a corking-pin that stuck in the good gentlewoman's stomacher; the head of the pin passing between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus I was held by the middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch ran to my relief. + +Another time, one of the servants, whose office it was to fill my trough every third day with fresh water, was so careless as to let a huge frog (not perceiving it) slip out of his pail. The frog lay concealed till I was put into my boat, but then, seeing a resting- place, climbed up, and made it lean so much on one side, that I was forced to balance it with all my weight on the other, to prevent overturning. When the frog was got in, it hopped at once half the length of the boat, and then over my head, backward and forward, daubing my face and clothes with its odious slime. The largeness of its features made it appear the most deformed animal that can be conceived. However, I desired Glumdalclitch to let me deal with it alone. I banged it a good while with one of my sculls, and at last forced it to leap out of the boat. + +But the greatest danger I ever underwent in that kingdom, was from a monkey, who belonged to one of the clerks of the kitchen. Glumdalclitch had locked me up in her closet, while she went somewhere upon business, or a visit. The weather being very warm, the closet-window was left open, as well as the windows and the door of my bigger box, in which I usually lived, because of its largeness and conveniency. As I sat quietly meditating at my table, I heard something bounce in at the closet-window, and skip about from one side to the other: whereat, although I was much alarmed, yet I ventured to look out, but not stirring from my seat; and then I saw this frolicsome animal frisking and leaping up and down, till at last he came to my box, which he seemed to view with great pleasure and curiosity, peeping in at the door and every window. I retreated to the farther corner of my room; or box; but the monkey looking in at every side, put me in such a fright, that I wanted presence of mind to conceal myself under the bed, as I might easily have done. After some time spent in peeping, grinning, and chattering, he at last espied me; and reaching one of his paws in at the door, as a cat does when she plays with a mouse, although I often shifted place to avoid him, he at length seized the lappet of my coat (which being made of that country silk, was very thick and strong), and dragged me out. He took me up in his right fore-foot and held me as a nurse does a child she is going to suckle, just as I have seen the same sort of creature do with a kitten in Europe; and when I offered to struggle he squeezed me so hard, that I thought it more prudent to submit. I have good reason to believe, that he took me for a young one of his own species, by his often stroking my face very gently with his other paw. In these diversions he was interrupted by a noise at the closet door, as if somebody were opening it: whereupon he suddenly leaped up to the window at which he had come in, and thence upon the leads and gutters, walking upon three legs, and holding me in the fourth, till he clambered up to a roof that was next to ours. I heard Glumdalclitch give a shriek at the moment he was carrying me out. The poor girl was almost distracted: that quarter of the palace was all in an uproar; the servants ran for ladders; the monkey was seen by hundreds in the court, sitting upon the ridge of a building, holding me like a baby in one of his forepaws, and feeding me with the other, by cramming into my mouth some victuals he had squeezed out of the bag on one side of his chaps, and patting me when I would not eat; whereat many of the rabble below could not forbear laughing; neither do I think they justly ought to be blamed, for, without question, the sight was ridiculous enough to every body but myself. Some of the people threw up stones, hoping to drive the monkey down; but this was strictly forbidden, or else, very probably, my brains had been dashed out. + +The ladders were now applied, and mounted by several men; which the monkey observing, and finding himself almost encompassed, not being able to make speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a ridge tile, and made his escape. Here I sat for some time, five hundred yards from the ground, expecting every moment to be blown down by the wind, or to fall by my own giddiness, and come tumbling over and over from the ridge to the eaves; but an honest lad, one of my nurse's footmen, climbed up, and putting me into his breeches pocket, brought me down safe. + +I was almost choked with the filthy stuff the monkey had crammed down my throat: but my dear little nurse picked it out of my mouth with a small needle, and then I fell a-vomiting, which gave me great relief. Yet I was so weak and bruised in the sides with the squeezes given me by this odious animal, that I was forced to keep my bed a fortnight. The king, queen, and all the court, sent every day to inquire after my health; and her majesty made me several visits during my sickness. The monkey was killed, and an order made, that no such animal should be kept about the palace. + +When I attended the king after my recovery, to return him thanks for his favours, he was pleased to rally me a good deal upon this adventure. He asked me, "what my thoughts and speculations were, while I lay in the monkey's paw; how I liked the victuals he gave me; his manner of feeding; and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpened my stomach." He desired to know, "what I would have done upon such an occasion in my own country." I told his majesty, "that in Europe we had no monkeys, except such as were brought for curiosity from other places, and so small, that I could deal with a dozen of them together, if they presumed to attack me. And as for that monstrous animal with whom I was so lately engaged (it was indeed as large as an elephant), if my fears had suffered me to think so far as to make use of my hanger," (looking fiercely, and clapping my hand on the hilt, as I spoke) "when he poked his paw into my chamber, perhaps I should have given him such a wound, as would have made him glad to withdraw it with more haste than he put it in." This I delivered in a firm tone, like a person who was jealous lest his courage should be called in question. However, my speech produced nothing else beside a laud laughter, which all the respect due to his majesty from those about him could not make them contain. This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavour to do himself honour among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him. And yet I have seen the moral of my own behaviour very frequent in England since my return; where a little contemptible varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or common sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of the kingdom. + +I was every day furnishing the court with some ridiculous story: and Glumdalclitch, although she loved me to excess, yet was arch enough to inform the queen, whenever I committed any folly that she thought would be diverting to her majesty. The girl, who had been out of order, was carried by her governess to take the air about an hour's distance, or thirty miles from town. They alighted out of the coach near a small foot-path in a field, and Glumdalclitch setting down my travelling box, I went out of it to walk. There was a cow-dung in the path, and I must need try my activity by attempting to leap over it. I took a run, but unfortunately jumped short, and found myself just in the middle up to my knees. I waded through with some difficulty, and one of the footmen wiped me as clean as he could with his handkerchief, for I was filthily bemired; and my nurse confined me to my box, till we returned home; where the queen was soon informed of what had passed, and the footmen spread it about the court: so that all the mirth for some days was at my expense. + +CHAPTER VI. + +[Several contrivances of the author to please the king and queen. He shows his skill in music. The king inquires into the state of England, which the author relates to him. The king's observations thereon.] + +I used to attend the king's levee once or twice a week, and had often seen him under the barber's hand, which indeed was at first very terrible to behold; for the razor was almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe. His majesty, according to the custom of the country, was only shaved twice a-week. I once prevailed on the barber to give me some of the suds or lather, out of which I picked forty or fifty of the strongest stumps of hair. I then took a piece of fine wood, and cut it like the back of a comb, making several holes in it at equal distances with as small a needle as I could get from Glumdalclitch. I fixed in the stumps so artificially, scraping and sloping them with my knife toward the points, that I made a very tolerable comb; which was a seasonable supply, my own being so much broken in the teeth, that it was almost useless: neither did I know any artist in that country so nice and exact, as would undertake to make me another. + +And this puts me in mind of an amusement, wherein I spent many of my leisure hours. I desired the queen's woman to save for me the combings of her majesty's hair, whereof in time I got a good quantity; and consulting with my friend the cabinet-maker, who had received general orders to do little jobs for me, I directed him to make two chair-frames, no larger than those I had in my box, and to bore little holes with a fine awl, round those parts where I designed the backs and seats; through these holes I wove the strongest hairs I could pick out, just after the manner of cane chairs in England. When they were finished, I made a present of them to her majesty; who kept them in her cabinet, and used to show them for curiosities, as indeed they were the wonder of every one that beheld them. The queen would have me sit upon one of these chairs, but I absolutely refused to obey her, protesting I would rather die than place a dishonourable part of my body on those precious hairs, that once adorned her majesty's head. Of these hairs (as I had always a mechanical genius) I likewise made a neat little purse, about five feet long, with her majesty's name deciphered in gold letters, which I gave to Glumdalclitch, by the queen's consent. To say the truth, it was more for show than use, being not of strength to bear the weight of the larger coins, and therefore she kept nothing in it but some little toys that girls are fond of. + +The king, who delighted in music, had frequent concerts at court, to which I was sometimes carried, and set in my box on a table to hear them: but the noise was so great that I could hardly distinguish the tunes. I am confident that all the drums and trumpets of a royal army, beating and sounding together just at your ears, could not equal it. My practice was to have my box removed from the place where the performers sat, as far as I could, then to shut the doors and windows of it, and draw the window curtains; after which I found their music not disagreeable. + +I had learned in my youth to play a little upon the spinet. Glumdalclitch kept one in her chamber, and a master attended twice a-week to teach her: I called it a spinet, because it somewhat resembled that instrument, and was played upon in the same manner. A fancy came into my head, that I would entertain the king and queen with an English tune upon this instrument. But this appeared extremely difficult: for the spinet was near sixty feet long, each key being almost a foot wide, so that with my arms extended I could not reach to above five keys, and to press them down required a good smart stroke with my fist, which would be too great a labour, and to no purpose. The method I contrived was this: I prepared two round sticks, about the bigness of common cudgels; they were thicker at one end than the other, and I covered the thicker ends with pieces of a mouse's skin, that by rapping on them I might neither damage the tops of the keys nor interrupt the sound. Before the spinet a bench was placed, about four feet below the keys, and I was put upon the bench. I ran sideling upon it, that way and this, as fast as I could, banging the proper keys with my two sticks, and made a shift to play a jig, to the great satisfaction of both their majesties; but it was the most violent exercise I ever underwent; and yet I could not strike above sixteen keys, nor consequently play the bass and treble together, as other artists do; which was a great disadvantage to my performance. + +The king, who, as I before observed, was a prince of excellent understanding, would frequently order that I should be brought in my box, and set upon the table in his closet: he would then command me to bring one of my chairs out of the box, and sit down within three yards distance upon the top of the cabinet, which brought me almost to a level with his face. In this manner I had several conversations with him. I one day took the freedom to tell his majesty, "that the contempt he discovered towards Europe, and the rest of the world, did not seem answerable to those excellent qualities of mind that he was master of; that reason did not extend itself with the bulk of the body; on the contrary, we observed in our country, that the tallest persons were usually the least provided with it; that among other animals, bees and ants had the reputation of more industry, art, and sagacity, than many of the larger kinds; and that, as inconsiderable as he took me to be, I hoped I might live to do his majesty some signal service." The king heard me with attention, and began to conceive a much better opinion of me than he had ever before. He desired "I would give him as exact an account of the government of England as I possibly could; because, as fond as princes commonly are of their own customs (for so he conjectured of other monarchs, by my former discourses), he should be glad to hear of any thing that might deserve imitation." + +Imagine with thyself, courteous reader, how often I then wished for the tongue of Demosthenes or Cicero, that might have enabled me to celebrate the praise of my own dear native country in a style equal to its merits and felicity. + +I began my discourse by informing his majesty, that our dominions consisted of two islands, which composed three mighty kingdoms, under one sovereign, beside our plantations in America. I dwelt long upon the fertility of our soil, and the temperature of our climate. I then spoke at large upon the constitution of an English parliament; partly made up of an illustrious body called the House of Peers; persons of the noblest blood, and of the most ancient and ample patrimonies. I described that extraordinary care always taken of their education in arts and arms, to qualify them for being counsellors both to the king and kingdom; to have a share in the legislature; to be members of the highest court of judicature, whence there can be no appeal; and to be champions always ready for the defence of their prince and country, by their valour, conduct, and fidelity. That these were the ornament and bulwark of the kingdom, worthy followers of their most renowned ancestors, whose honour had been the reward of their virtue, from which their posterity were never once known to degenerate. To these were joined several holy persons, as part of that assembly, under the title of bishops, whose peculiar business is to take care of religion, and of those who instruct the people therein. These were searched and sought out through the whole nation, by the prince and his wisest counsellors, among such of the priesthood as were most deservedly distinguished by the sanctity of their lives, and the depth of their erudition; who were indeed the spiritual fathers of the clergy and the people. + +That the other part of the parliament consisted of an assembly called the House of Commons, who were all principal gentlemen, freely picked and culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities and love of their country, to represent the wisdom of the whole nation. And that these two bodies made up the most august assembly in Europe; to whom, in conjunction with the prince, the whole legislature is committed. + +I then descended to the courts of justice; over which the judges, those venerable sages and interpreters of the law, presided, for determining the disputed rights and properties of men, as well as for the punishment of vice and protection of innocence. I mentioned the prudent management of our treasury; the valour and achievements of our forces, by sea and land. I computed the number of our people, by reckoning how many millions there might be of each religious sect, or political party among us. I did not omit even our sports and pastimes, or any other particular which I thought might redound to the honour of my country. And I finished all with a brief historical account of affairs and events in England for about a hundred years past. + +This conversation was not ended under five audiences, each of several hours; and the king heard the whole with great attention, frequently taking notes of what I spoke, as well as memorandums of what questions he intended to ask me. + +When I had put an end to these long discources, his majesty, in a sixth audience, consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, queries, and objections, upon every article. He asked, "What methods were used to cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in what kind of business they commonly spent the first and teachable parts of their lives? What course was taken to supply that assembly, when any noble family became extinct? What qualifications were necessary in those who are to be created new lords: whether the humour of the prince, a sum of money to a court lady, or a design of strengthening a party opposite to the public interest, ever happened to be the motive in those advancements? What share of knowledge these lords had in the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort? Whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe, or some other sinister view, could have no place among them? Whether those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters, and the sanctity of their lives; had never been compliers with the times, while they were common priests; or slavish prostitute chaplains to some nobleman, whose opinions they continued servilely to follow, after they were admitted into that assembly?" + +He then desired to know, "What arts were practised in electing those whom I called commoners: whether a stranger, with a strong purse, might not influence the vulgar voters to choose him before their own landlord, or the most considerable gentleman in the neighbourhood? How it came to pass, that people were so violently bent upon getting into this assembly, which I allowed to be a great trouble and expense, often to the ruin of their families, without any salary or pension? because this appeared such an exalted strain of virtue and public spirit, that his majesty seemed to doubt it might possibly not be always sincere." And he desired to know, "Whether such zealous gentlemen could have any views of refunding themselves for the charges and trouble they were at by sacrificing the public good to the designs of a weak and vicious prince, in conjunction with a corrupted ministry?" He multiplied his questions, and sifted me thoroughly upon every part of this head, proposing numberless inquiries and objections, which I think it not prudent or convenient to repeat. + +Upon what I said in relation to our courts of justice, his majesty desired to be satisfied in several points: and this I was the better able to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long suit in chancery, which was decreed for me with costs. He asked, "What time was usually spent in determining between right and wrong, and what degree of expense? Whether advocates and orators had liberty to plead in causes manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive? Whether party, in religion or politics, were observed to be of any weight in the scale of justice? Whether those pleading orators were persons educated in the general knowledge of equity, or only in provincial, national, and other local customs? Whether they or their judges had any part in penning those laws, which they assumed the liberty of interpreting, and glossing upon at their pleasure? Whether they had ever, at different times, pleaded for and against the same cause, and cited precedents to prove contrary opinions? Whether they were a rich or a poor corporation? Whether they received any pecuniary reward for pleading, or delivering their opinions? And particularly, whether they were ever admitted as members in the lower senate?" + +He fell next upon the management of our treasury; and said, "he thought my memory had failed me, because I computed our taxes at about five or six millions a-year, and when I came to mention the issues, he found they sometimes amounted to more than double; for the notes he had taken were very particular in this point, because he hoped, as he told me, that the knowledge of our conduct might be useful to him, and he could not be deceived in his calculations. But, if what I told him were true, he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate, like a private person." He asked me, "who were our creditors; and where we found money to pay them?" He wondered to hear me talk of such chargeable and expensive wars; "that certainly we must be a quarrelsome people, or live among very bad neighbours, and that our generals must needs be richer than our kings." He asked, what business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the score of trade, or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet?" Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army, in the midst of peace, and among a free people. He said, "if we were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion, whether a private man's house might not be better defended by himself, his children, and family, than by half-a-dozen rascals, picked up at a venture in the streets for small wages, who might get a hundred times more by cutting their throats?" + +He laughed at my "odd kind of arithmetic," as he was pleased to call it, "in reckoning the numbers of our people, by a computation drawn from the several sects among us, in religion and politics." He said, "he knew no reason why those, who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public, should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials." + +He observed, "that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I had mentioned gaming: he desired to know at what age this entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes; whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in dependence, as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses they received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon others?" + +He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting "it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce." + +His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: "My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. As for yourself," continued the king, "who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." + +CHAPTER VII. + +[The author's love of his country. He makes a proposal of much advantage to the king, which is rejected. The king's great ignorance in politics. The learning of that country very imperfect and confined. The laws, and military affairs, and parties in the state.] + +Nothing but an extreme love of truth could have hindered me from concealing this part of my story. It was in vain to discover my resentments, which were always turned into ridicule; and I was forced to rest with patience, while my noble and beloved country was so injuriously treated. I am as heartily sorry as any of my readers can possibly be, that such an occasion was given: but this prince happened to be so curious and inquisitive upon every particular, that it could not consist either with gratitude or good manners, to refuse giving him what satisfaction I was able. Yet thus much I may be allowed to say in my own vindication, that I artfully eluded many of his questions, and gave to every point a more favourable turn, by many degrees, than the strictness of truth would allow. For I have always borne that laudable partiality to my own country, which Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with so much justice, recommends to an historian: I would hide the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous light. This was my sincere endeavour in those many discourses I had with that monarch, although it unfortunately failed of success. + +But great allowances should be given to a king, who lives wholly secluded from the rest of the world, and must therefore be altogether unacquainted with the manners and customs that most prevail in other nations: the want of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices, and a certain narrowness of thinking, from which we, and the politer countries of Europe, are wholly exempted. And it would be hard indeed, if so remote a prince's notions of virtue and vice were to be offered as a standard for all mankind. + +To confirm what I have now said, and further to show the miserable effects of a confined education, I shall here insert a passage, which will hardly obtain belief. In hopes to ingratiate myself further into his majesty's favour, I told him of "an invention, discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder. That a proper quantity of this powder rammed into a hollow tube of brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or lead, with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force. That the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the sea, and when linked together by a chain, would cut through masts and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them. That we often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near. That I knew the ingredients very well, which were cheap and common; I understood the manner of compounding them, and could direct his workmen how to make those tubes, of a size proportionable to all other things in his majesty's kingdom, and the largest need not be above a hundred feet long; twenty or thirty of which tubes, charged with the proper quantity of powder and balls, would batter down the walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute commands." This I humbly offered to his majesty, as a small tribute of acknowledgment, in turn for so many marks that I had received, of his royal favour and protection. + +The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. "He was amazed, how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I" (these were his expressions) "could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof," he said, "some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver. As for himself, he protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret; which he commanded me, as I valued any life, never to mention any more." + +A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people! Neither do I say this, with the least intention to detract from the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am sensible, will, on this account, be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader: but I take this defect among them to have risen from their ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as the more acute wits of Europe have done. For, I remember very well, in a discourse one day with the king, when I happened to say, "there were several thousand books among us written upon the art of government," it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very mean opinion of our understandings. He professed both to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state, where an enemy, or some rival nation, were not in the case. He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth considering. And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together." + +The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical arts; so that among us, it would be little esteemed. And as to ideas, entities, abstractions, and transcendentals, I could never drive the least conception into their heads. + +No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty. But indeed few of them extend even to that length. They are expressed in the most plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough to discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon any law, is a capital crime. As to the decision of civil causes, or proceedings against criminals, their precedents are so few, that they have little reason to boast of any extraordinary skill in either. + +They have had the art of printing, as well as the Chinese, time out of mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the king, which is reckoned the largest, does not amount to above a thousand volumes, placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, whence I had liberty to borrow what books I pleased. The queen's joiner had contrived in one of Glumdalclitch's rooms, a kind of wooden machine five-and-twenty feet high, formed like a standing ladder; the steps were each fifty feet long. It was indeed a moveable pair of stairs, the lowest end placed at ten feet distance from the wall of the chamber. The book I had a mind to read, was put up leaning against the wall: I first mounted to the upper step of the ladder, and turning my face towards the book, began at the top of the page, and so walking to the right and left about eight or ten paces, according to the length of the lines, till I had gotten a little below the level of mine eyes, and then descending gradually till I came to the bottom: after which I mounted again, and began the other page in the same manner, and so turned over the leaf, which I could easily do with both my hands, for it was as thick and stiff as a pasteboard, and in the largest folios not above eighteen or twenty feet long. + +Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, or using various expressions. I have perused many of their books, especially those in history and morality. Among the rest, I was much diverted with a little old treatise, which always lay in Glumdalclitch's bed chamber, and belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman, who dealt in writings of morality and devotion. The book treats of the weakness of human kind, and is in little esteem, except among the women and the vulgar. However, I was curious to see what an author of that country could say upon such a subject. This writer went through all the usual topics of European moralists, showing "how diminutive, contemptible, and helpless an animal was man in his own nature; how unable to defend himself from inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts: how much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by another in speed, by a third in foresight, by a fourth in industry." He added, "that nature was degenerated in these latter declining ages of the world, and could now produce only small abortive births, in comparison of those in ancient times." He said "it was very reasonable to think, not only that the species of men were originally much larger, but also that there must have been giants in former ages; which, as it is asserted by history and tradition, so it has been confirmed by huge bones and skulls, casually dug up in several parts of the kingdom, far exceeding the common dwindled race of men in our days." He argued, "that the very laws of nature absolutely required we should have been made, in the beginning of a size more large and robust; not so liable to destruction from every little accident, of a tile falling from a house, or a stone cast from the hand of a boy, or being drowned in a little brook." From this way of reasoning, the author drew several moral applications, useful in the conduct of life, but needless here to repeat. For my own part, I could not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was spread, of drawing lectures in morality, or indeed rather matter of discontent and repining, from the quarrels we raise with nature. And I believe, upon a strict inquiry, those quarrels might be shown as ill-grounded among us as they are among that people. + +As to their military affairs, they boast that the king's army consists of a hundred and seventy-six thousand foot, and thirty-two thousand horse: if that may be called an army, which is made up of tradesmen in the several cities, and farmers in the country, whose commanders are only the nobility and gentry, without pay or reward. They are indeed perfect enough in their exercises, and under very good discipline, wherein I saw no great merit; for how should it be otherwise, where every farmer is under the command of his own landlord, and every citizen under that of the principal men in his own city, chosen after the manner of Venice, by ballot? + +I have often seen the militia of Lorbrulgrud drawn out to exercise, in a great field near the city of twenty miles square. They were in all not above twenty-five thousand foot, and six thousand horse; but it was impossible for me to compute their number, considering the space of ground they took up. A cavalier, mounted on a large steed, might be about ninety feet high. I have seen this whole body of horse, upon a word of command, draw their swords at once, and brandish them in the air. Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and so astonishing! it looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were darting at the same time from every quarter of the sky. + +I was curious to know how this prince, to whose dominions there is no access from any other country, came to think of armies, or to teach his people the practice of military discipline. But I was soon informed, both by conversation and reading their histories; for, in the course of many ages, they have been troubled with the same disease to which the whole race of mankind is subject; the nobility often contending for power, the people for liberty, and the king for absolute dominion. All which, however happily tempered by the laws of that kingdom, have been sometimes violated by each of the three parties, and have more than once occasioned civil wars; the last whereof was happily put an end to by this prince's grand-father, in a general composition; and the militia, then settled with common consent, has been ever since kept in the strictest duty. + +CHAPTER VIII. + +[The king and queen make a progress to the frontiers. The author attends them. The manner in which he leaves the country very particularly related. He returns to England.] + +I had always a strong impulse that I should some time recover my liberty, though it was impossible to conjecture by what means, or to form any project with the least hope of succeeding. The ship in which I sailed, was the first ever known to be driven within sight of that coast, and the king had given strict orders, that if at any time another appeared, it should be taken ashore, and with all its crew and passengers brought in a tumbril to Lorbrulgrud. He was strongly bent to get me a woman of my own size, by whom I might propagate the breed: but I think I should rather have died than undergone the disgrace of leaving a posterity to be kept in cages, like tame canary-birds, and perhaps, in time, sold about the kingdom, to persons of quality, for curiosities. I was indeed treated with much kindness: I was the favourite of a great king and queen, and the delight of the whole court; but it was upon such a foot as ill became the dignity of humankind. I could never forget those domestic pledges I had left behind me. I wanted to be among people, with whom I could converse upon even terms, and walk about the streets and fields without being afraid of being trod to death like a frog or a young puppy. But my deliverance came sooner than I expected, and in a manner not very common; the whole story and circumstances of which I shall faithfully relate. + +I had now been two years in this country; and about the beginning of the third, Glumdalclitch and I attended the king and queen, in a progress to the south coast of the kingdom. I was carried, as usual, in my travelling-box, which as I have already described, was a very convenient closet, of twelve feet wide. And I had ordered a hammock to be fixed, by silken ropes from the four corners at the top, to break the jolts, when a servant carried me before him on horseback, as I sometimes desired; and would often sleep in my hammock, while we were upon the road. On the roof of my closet, not directly over the middle of the hammock, I ordered the joiner to cut out a hole of a foot square, to give me air in hot weather, as I slept; which hole I shut at pleasure with a board that drew backward and forward through a groove. + +When we came to our journey's end, the king thought proper to pass a few days at a palace he has near Flanflasnic, a city within eighteen English miles of the seaside. Glumdalclitch and I were much fatigued: I had gotten a small cold, but the poor girl was so ill as to be confined to her chamber. I longed to see the ocean, which must be the only scene of my escape, if ever it should happen. I pretended to be worse than I really was, and desired leave to take the fresh air of the sea, with a page, whom I was very fond of, and who had sometimes been trusted with me. I shall never forget with what unwillingness Glumdalclitch consented, nor the strict charge she gave the page to be careful of me, bursting at the same time into a flood of tears, as if she had some forboding of what was to happen. The boy took me out in my box, about half an hours walk from the palace, towards the rocks on the sea-shore. I ordered him to set me down, and lifting up one of my sashes, cast many a wistful melancholy look towards the sea. I found myself not very well, and told the page that I had a mind to take a nap in my hammock, which I hoped would do me good. I got in, and the boy shut the window close down, to keep out the cold. I soon fell asleep, and all I can conjecture is, while I slept, the page, thinking no danger could happen, went among the rocks to look for birds' eggs, having before observed him from my window searching about, and picking up one or two in the clefts. Be that as it will, I found myself suddenly awaked with a violent pull upon the ring, which was fastened at the top of my box for the conveniency of carriage. I felt my box raised very high in the air, and then borne forward with prodigious speed. The first jolt had like to have shaken me out of my hammock, but afterward the motion was easy enough. I called out several times, as loud as I could raise my voice, but all to no purpose. I looked towards my windows, and could see nothing but the clouds and sky. I heard a noise just over my head, like the clapping of wings, and then began to perceive the woful condition I was in; that some eagle had got the ring of my box in his beak, with an intent to let it fall on a rock, like a tortoise in a shell, and then pick out my body, and devour it: for the sagacity and smell of this bird enables him to discover his quarry at a great distance, though better concealed than I could be within a two-inch board. + +In a little time, I observed the noise and flutter of wings to increase very fast, and my box was tossed up and down, like a sign in a windy day. I heard several bangs or buffets, as I thought given to the eagle (for such I am certain it must have been that held the ring of my box in his beak), and then, all on a sudden, felt myself falling perpendicularly down, for above a minute, but with such incredible swiftness, that I almost lost my breath. My fall was stopped by a terrible squash, that sounded louder to my ears than the cataract of Niagara; after which, I was quite in the dark for another minute, and then my box began to rise so high, that I could see light from the tops of the windows. I now perceived I was fallen into the sea. My box, by the weight of my body, the goods that were in, and the broad plates of iron fixed for strength at the four corners of the top and bottom, floated about five feet deep in water. I did then, and do now suppose, that the eagle which flew away with my box was pursued by two or three others, and forced to let me drop, while he defended himself against the rest, who hoped to share in the prey. The plates of iron fastened at the bottom of the box (for those were the strongest) preserved the balance while it fell, and hindered it from being broken on the surface of the water. Every joint of it was well grooved; and the door did not move on hinges, but up and down like a sash, which kept my closet so tight that very little water came in. I got with much difficulty out of my hammock, having first ventured to draw back the slip-board on the roof already mentioned, contrived on purpose to let in air, for want of which I found myself almost stifled. + +How often did I then wish myself with my dear Glumdalclitch, from whom one single hour had so far divided me! And I may say with truth, that in the midst of my own misfortunes I could not forbear lamenting my poor nurse, the grief she would suffer for my loss, the displeasure of the queen, and the ruin of her fortune. Perhaps many travellers have not been under greater difficulties and distress than I was at this juncture, expecting every moment to see my box dashed to pieces, or at least overset by the first violent blast, or rising wave. A breach in one single pane of glass would have been immediate death: nor could any thing have preserved the windows, but the strong lattice wires placed on the outside, against accidents in travelling. I saw the water ooze in at several crannies, although the leaks were not considerable, and I endeavoured to stop them as well as I could. I was not able to lift up the roof of my closet, which otherwise I certainly should have done, and sat on the top of it; where I might at least preserve myself some hours longer, than by being shut up (as I may call it) in the hold. Or if I escaped these dangers for a day or two, what could I expect but a miserable death of cold and hunger? I was four hours under these circumstances, expecting, and indeed wishing, every moment to be my last. + +I have already told the reader that there were two strong staples fixed upon that side of my box which had no window, and into which the servant, who used to carry me on horseback, would put a leathern belt, and buckle it about his waist. Being in this disconsolate state, I heard, or at least thought I heard, some kind of grating noise on that side of my box where the staples were fixed; and soon after I began to fancy that the box was pulled or towed along the sea; for I now and then felt a sort of tugging, which made the waves rise near the tops of my windows, leaving me almost in the dark. This gave me some faint hopes of relief, although I was not able to imagine how it could be brought about. I ventured to unscrew one of my chairs, which were always fastened to the floor; and having made a hard shift to screw it down again, directly under the slipping-board that I had lately opened, I mounted on the chair, and putting my mouth as near as I could to the hole, I called for help in a loud voice, and in all the languages I understood. I then fastened my handkerchief to a stick I usually carried, and thrusting it up the hole, waved it several times in the air, that if any boat or ship were near, the seamen might conjecture some unhappy mortal to be shut up in the box. + +I found no effect from all I could do, but plainly perceived my closet to be moved along; and in the space of an hour, or better, that side of the box where the staples were, and had no windows, struck against something that was hard. I apprehended it to be a rock, and found myself tossed more than ever. I plainly heard a noise upon the cover of my closet, like that of a cable, and the grating of it as it passed through the ring. I then found myself hoisted up, by degrees, at least three feet higher than I was before. Whereupon I again thrust up my stick and handkerchief, calling for help till I was almost hoarse. In return to which, I heard a great shout repeated three times, giving me such transports of joy as are not to be conceived but by those who feel them. I now heard a trampling over my head, and somebody calling through the hole with a loud voice, in the English tongue, "If there be any body below, let them speak." I answered, "I was an Englishman, drawn by ill fortune into the greatest calamity that ever any creature underwent, and begged, by all that was moving, to be delivered out of the dungeon I was in." The voice replied, "I was safe, for my box was fastened to their ship; and the carpenter should immediately come and saw a hole in the cover, large enough to pull me out." I answered, "that was needless, and would take up too much time; for there was no more to be done, but let one of the crew put his finger into the ring, and take the box out of the sea into the ship, and so into the captain's cabin." Some of them, upon hearing me talk so wildly, thought I was mad: others laughed; for indeed it never came into my head, that I was now got among people of my own stature and strength. The carpenter came, and in a few minutes sawed a passage about four feet square, then let down a small ladder, upon which I mounted, and thence was taken into the ship in a very weak condition. + +The sailors were all in amazement, and asked me a thousand questions, which I had no inclination to answer. I was equally confounded at the sight of so many pigmies, for such I took them to be, after having so long accustomed mine eyes to the monstrous objects I had left. But the captain, Mr. Thomas Wilcocks, an honest worthy Shropshire man, observing I was ready to faint, took me into his cabin, gave me a cordial to comfort me, and made me turn in upon his own bed, advising me to take a little rest, of which I had great need. Before I went to sleep, I gave him to understand that I had some valuable furniture in my box, too good to be lost: a fine hammock, a handsome field-bed, two chairs, a table, and a cabinet; that my closet was hung on all sides, or rather quilted, with silk and cotton; that if he would let one of the crew bring my closet into his cabin, I would open it there before him, and show him my goods. The captain, hearing me utter these absurdities, concluded I was raving; however (I suppose to pacify me) he promised to give order as I desired, and going upon deck, sent some of his men down into my closet, whence (as I afterwards found) they drew up all my goods, and stripped off the quilting; but the chairs, cabinet, and bedstead, being screwed to the floor, were much damaged by the ignorance of the seamen, who tore them up by force. Then they knocked off some of the boards for the use of the ship, and when they had got all they had a mind for, let the hull drop into the sea, which by reason of many breaches made in the bottom and sides, sunk to rights. And, indeed, I was glad not to have been a spectator of the havoc they made, because I am confident it would have sensibly touched me, by bringing former passages into my mind, which I would rather have forgot. + +I slept some hours, but perpetually disturbed with dreams of the place I had left, and the dangers I had escaped. However, upon waking, I found myself much recovered. It was now about eight o'clock at night, and the captain ordered supper immediately, thinking I had already fasted too long. He entertained me with great kindness, observing me not to look wildly, or talk inconsistently: and, when we were left alone, desired I would give him a relation of my travels, and by what accident I came to be set adrift, in that monstrous wooden chest. He said "that about twelve o'clock at noon, as he was looking through his glass, he spied it at a distance, and thought it was a sail, which he had a mind to make, being not much out of his course, in hopes of buying some biscuit, his own beginning to fall short. That upon coming nearer, and finding his error, he sent out his long-boat to discover what it was; that his men came back in a fright, swearing they had seen a swimming house. That he laughed at their folly, and went himself in the boat, ordering his men to take a strong cable along with them. That the weather being calm, he rowed round me several times, observed my windows and wire lattices that defended them. That he discovered two staples upon one side, which was all of boards, without any passage for light. He then commanded his men to row up to that side, and fastening a cable to one of the staples, ordered them to tow my chest, as they called it, toward the ship. When it was there, he gave directions to fasten another cable to the ring fixed in the cover, and to raise up my chest with pulleys, which all the sailors were not able to do above two or three feet." He said, "they saw my stick and handkerchief thrust out of the hole, and concluded that some unhappy man must be shut up in the cavity." I asked, "whether he or the crew had seen any prodigious birds in the air, about the time he first discovered me." To which he answered, that discoursing this matter with the sailors while I was asleep, one of them said, he had observed three eagles flying towards the north, but remarked nothing of their being larger than the usual size:" which I suppose must be imputed to the great height they were at; and he could not guess the reason of my question. I then asked the captain, "how far he reckoned we might be from land?" He said, "by the best computation he could make, we were at least a hundred leagues." I assured him, "that he must be mistaken by almost half, for I had not left the country whence I came above two hours before I dropped into the sea." Whereupon he began again to think that my brain was disturbed, of which he gave me a hint, and advised me to go to bed in a cabin he had provided. I assured him, "I was well refreshed with his good entertainment and company, and as much in my senses as ever I was in my life." He then grew serious, and desired to ask me freely, "whether I were not troubled in my mind by the consciousness of some enormous crime, for which I was punished, at the command of some prince, by exposing me in that chest; as great criminals, in other countries, have been forced to sea in a leaky vessel, without provisions: for although he should be sorry to have taken so ill a man into his ship, yet he would engage his word to set me safe ashore, in the first port where we arrived." He added, "that his suspicions were much increased by some very absurd speeches I had delivered at first to his sailors, and afterwards to himself, in relation to my closet or chest, as well as by my odd looks and behaviour while I was at supper." + +I begged his patience to hear me tell my story, which I faithfully did, from the last time I left England, to the moment he first discovered me. And, as truth always forces its way into rational minds, so this honest worthy gentleman, who had some tincture of learning, and very good sense, was immediately convinced of my candour and veracity. But further to confirm all I had said, I entreated him to give order that my cabinet should be brought, of which I had the key in my pocket; for he had already informed me how the seamen disposed of my closet. I opened it in his own presence, and showed him the small collection of rarities I made in the country from which I had been so strangely delivered. There was the comb I had contrived out of the stumps of the king's beard, and another of the same materials, but fixed into a paring of her majesty's thumb-nail, which served for the back. There was a collection of needles and pins, from a foot to half a yard long; four wasp stings, like joiner's tacks; some combings of the queen's hair; a gold ring, which one day she made me a present of, in a most obliging manner, taking it from her little finger, and throwing it over my head like a collar. I desired the captain would please to accept this ring in return for his civilities; which he absolutely refused. I showed him a corn that I had cut off with my own hand, from a maid of honour's toe; it was about the bigness of Kentish pippin, and grown so hard, that when I returned England, I got it hollowed into a cup, and set in silver. Lastly, I desired him to see the breeches I had then on, which were made of a mouse's skin. + +I could force nothing on him but a footman's tooth, which I observed him to examine with great curiosity, and found he had a fancy for it. He received it with abundance of thanks, more than such a trifle could deserve. It was drawn by an unskilful surgeon, in a mistake, from one of Glumdalclitch's men, who was afflicted with the tooth-ache, but it was as sound as any in his head. I got it cleaned, and put it into my cabinet. It was about a foot long, and four inches in diameter. + +The captain was very well satisfied with this plain relation I had given him, and said, "he hoped, when we returned to England, I would oblige the world by putting it on paper, and making it public." My answer was, "that we were overstocked with books of travels: that nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary; wherein I doubted some authors less consulted truth, than their own vanity, or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers; that my story could contain little beside common events, without those ornamental descriptions of strange plants, trees, birds, and other animals; or of the barbarous customs and idolatry of savage people, with which most writers abound. However, I thanked him for his good opinion, and promised to take the matter into my thoughts." + +He said "he wondered at one thing very much, which was, to hear me speak so loud;" asking me "whether the king or queen of that country were thick of hearing?" I told him, "it was what I had been used to for above two years past, and that I admired as much at the voices of him and his men, who seemed to me only to whisper, and yet I could hear them well enough. But, when I spoke in that country, it was like a man talking in the streets, to another looking out from the top of a steeple, unless when I was placed on a table, or held in any person's hand." I told him, "I had likewise observed another thing, that, when I first got into the ship, and the sailors stood all about me, I thought they were the most little contemptible creatures I had ever beheld." For indeed, while I was in that prince's country, I could never endure to look in a glass, after mine eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of myself. The captain said, "that while we were at supper, he observed me to look at every thing with a sort of wonder, and that I often seemed hardly able to contain my laughter, which he knew not well how to take, but imputed it to some disorder in my brain." I answered, "it was very true; and I wondered how I could forbear, when I saw his dishes of the size of a silver three-pence, a leg of pork hardly a mouthful, a cup not so big as a nut-shell;" and so I went on, describing the rest of his household-stuff and provisions, after the same manner. For, although he queen had ordered a little equipage of all things necessary for me, while I was in her service, yet my ideas were wholly taken up with what I saw on every side of me, and I winked at my own littleness, as people do at their own faults. The captain understood my raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old English proverb, "that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my belly, for he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all day;" and, continuing in his mirth, protested "he would have gladly given a hundred pounds, to have seen my closet in the eagle's bill, and afterwards in its fall from so great a height into the sea; which would certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have the description of it transmitted to future ages:" and the comparison of Phaeton was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it, although I did not much admire the conceit. + +The captain having been at Tonquin, was, in his return to England, driven north-eastward to the latitude of 44 degrees, and longitude of 143. But meeting a trade-wind two days after I came on board him, we sailed southward a long time, and coasting New Holland, kept our course west-south-west, and then south-south-west, till we doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Our voyage was very prosperous, but I shall not trouble the reader with a journal of it. The captain called in at one or two ports, and sent in his long-boat for provisions and fresh water; but I never went out of the ship till we came into the Downs, which was on the third day of June, 1706, about nine months after my escape. I offered to leave my goods in security for payment of my freight: but the captain protested he would not receive one farthing. We took a kind leave of each other, and I made him promise he would come to see me at my house in Redriff. I hired a horse and guide for five shillings, which I borrowed of the captain. + +As I was on the road, observing the littleness of the houses, the trees, the cattle, and the people, I began to think myself in Lilliput. I was afraid of trampling on every traveller I met, and often called aloud to have them stand out of the way, so that I had like to have gotten one or two broken heads for my impertinence. + +When I came to my own house, for which I was forced to inquire, one of the servants opening the door, I bent down to go in, (like a goose under a gate,) for fear of striking my head. My wife run out to embrace me, but I stooped lower than her knees, thinking she could otherwise never be able to reach my mouth. My daughter kneeled to ask my blessing, but I could not see her till she arose, having been so long used to stand with my head and eyes erect to above sixty feet; and then I went to take her up with one hand by the waist. I looked down upon the servants, and one or two friends who were in the house, as if they had been pigmies and I a giant. I told my wife, "she had been too thrifty, for I found she had starved herself and her daughter to nothing." In short, I behaved myself so unaccountably, that they were all of the captain's opinion when he first saw me, and concluded I had lost my wits. This I mention as an instance of the great power of habit and prejudice. + +In a little time, I and my family and friends came to a right understanding: but my wife protested "I should never go to sea any more;" although my evil destiny so ordered, that she had not power to hinder me, as the reader may know hereafter. In the mean time, I here conclude the second part of my unfortunate voyages. + +PART III. A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB, AND JAPAN. + +CHAPTER I. + +[The author sets out on his third voyage. Is taken by pirates. The malice of a Dutchman. His arrival at an island. He is received into Laputa.] + +I had not been at home above ten days, when Captain William Robinson, a Cornish man, commander of the Hopewell, a stout ship of three hundred tons, came to my house. I had formerly been surgeon of another ship where he was master, and a fourth part owner, in a voyage to the Levant. He had always treated me more like a brother, than an inferior officer; and, hearing of my arrival, made me a visit, as I apprehended only out of friendship, for nothing passed more than what is usual after long absences. But repeating his visits often, expressing his joy to find I me in good health, asking, "whether I were now settled for life?" adding, "that he intended a voyage to the East Indies in two months," at last he plainly invited me, though with some apologies, to be surgeon of the ship; "that I should have another surgeon under me, beside our two mates; that my salary should be double to the usual pay; and that having experienced my knowledge in sea-affairs to be at least equal to his, he would enter into any engagement to follow my advice, as much as if I had shared in the command." + +He said so many other obliging things, and I knew him to be so honest a man, that I could not reject this proposal; the thirst I had of seeing the world, notwithstanding my past misfortunes, continuing as violent as ever. The only difficulty that remained, was to persuade my wife, whose consent however I at last obtained, by the prospect of advantage she proposed to her children. + +We set out the 5th day of August, 1706, and arrived at Fort St. George the 11th of April, 1707. We staid there three weeks to refresh our crew, many of whom were sick. From thence we went to Tonquin, where the captain resolved to continue some time, because many of the goods he intended to buy were not ready, nor could he expect to be dispatched in several months. Therefore, in hopes to defray some of the charges he must be at, he bought a sloop, loaded it with several sorts of goods, wherewith the Tonquinese usually trade to the neighbouring islands, and putting fourteen men on board, whereof three were of the country, he appointed me master of the sloop, and gave me power to traffic, while he transacted his affairs at Tonquin. + +We had not sailed above three days, when a great storm arising, we were driven five days to the north-north-east, and then to the east: after which we had fair weather, but still with a pretty strong gale from the west. Upon the tenth day we were chased by two pirates, who soon overtook us; for my sloop was so deep laden, that she sailed very slow, neither were we in a condition to defend ourselves. + +We were boarded about the same time by both the pirates, who entered furiously at the head of their men; but finding us all prostrate upon our faces (for so I gave order), they pinioned us with strong ropes, and setting guard upon us, went to search the sloop. + +I observed among them a Dutchman, who seemed to be of some authority, though he was not commander of either ship. He knew us by our countenances to be Englishmen, and jabbering to us in his own language, swore we should be tied back to back and thrown into the sea. I spoken Dutch tolerably well; I told him who we were, and begged him, in consideration of our being Christians and Protestants, of neighbouring countries in strict alliance, that he would move the captains to take some pity on us. This inflamed his rage; he repeated his threatenings, and turning to his companions, spoke with great vehemence in the Japanese language, as I suppose, often using the word Christianos. + +The largest of the two pirate ships was commanded by a Japanese captain, who spoke a little Dutch, but very imperfectly. He came up to me, and after several questions, which I answered in great humility, he said, "we should not die." I made the captain a very low bow, and then, turning to the Dutchman, said, "I was sorry to find more mercy in a heathen, than in a brother christian." But I had soon reason to repent those foolish words: for that malicious reprobate, having often endeavoured in vain to persuade both the captains that I might be thrown into the sea (which they would not yield to, after the promise made me that I should not die), however, prevailed so far, as to have a punishment inflicted on me, worse, in all human appearance, than death itself. My men were sent by an equal division into both the pirate ships, and my sloop new manned. As to myself, it was determined that I should be set adrift in a small canoe, with paddles and a sail, and four days' provisions; which last, the Japanese captain was so kind to double out of his own stores, and would permit no man to search me. I got down into the canoe, while the Dutchman, standing upon the deck, loaded me with all the curses and injurious terms his language could afford. + +About an hour before we saw the pirates I had taken an observation, and found we were in the latitude of 46 N. and longitude of 183. When I was at some distance from the pirates, I discovered, by my pocket-glass, several islands to the south-east. I set up my sail, the wind being fair, with a design to reach the nearest of those islands, which I made a shift to do, in about three hours. It was all rocky: however I got many birds' eggs; and, striking fire, I kindled some heath and dry sea-weed, by which I roasted my eggs. I ate no other supper, being resolved to spare my provisions as much as I could. I passed the night under the shelter of a rock, strewing some heath under me, and slept pretty well. + +The next day I sailed to another island, and thence to a third and fourth, sometimes using my sail, and sometimes my paddles. But, not to trouble the reader with a particular account of my distresses, let it suffice, that on the fifth day I arrived at the last island in my sight, which lay south-south-east to the former. + +This island was at a greater distance than I expected, and I did not reach it in less than five hours. I encompassed it almost round, before I could find a convenient place to land in; which was a small creek, about three times the wideness of my canoe. I found the island to be all rocky, only a little intermingled with tufts of grass, and sweet-smelling herbs. I took out my small provisions and after having refreshed myself, I secured the remainder in a cave, whereof there were great numbers; I gathered plenty of eggs upon the rocks, and got a quantity of dry sea-weed, and parched grass, which I designed to kindle the next day, and roast my eggs as well as I could, for I had about me my flint, steel, match, and burning-glass. I lay all night in the cave where I had lodged my provisions. My bed was the same dry grass and sea-weed which I intended for fuel. I slept very little, for the disquiets of my mind prevailed over my weariness, and kept me awake. I considered how impossible it was to preserve my life in so desolate a place, and how miserable my end must be: yet found myself so listless and desponding, that I had not the heart to rise; and before I could get spirits enough to creep out of my cave, the day was far advanced. I walked awhile among the rocks: the sky was perfectly clear, and the sun so hot, that I was forced to turn my face from it: when all on a sudden it became obscure, as I thought, in a manner very different from what happens by the interposition of a cloud. I turned back, and perceived a vast opaque body between me and the sun moving forwards towards the island: it seemed to be about two miles high, and hid the sun six or seven minutes; but I did not observe the air to be much colder, or the sky more darkened, than if I had stood under the shade of a mountain. As it approached nearer over the place where I was, it appeared to be a firm substance, the bottom flat, smooth, and shining very bright, from the reflection of the sea below. I stood upon a height about two hundred yards from the shore, and saw this vast body descending almost to a parallel with me, at less than an English mile distance. I took out my pocket perspective, and could plainly discover numbers of people moving up and down the sides of it, which appeared to be sloping; but what those people where doing I was not able to distinguish. + +The natural love of life gave me some inward motion of joy, and I was ready to entertain a hope that this adventure might, some way or other, help to deliver me from the desolate place and condition I was in. But at the same time the reader can hardly conceive my astonishment, to behold an island in the air, inhabited by men, who were able (as it should seem) to raise or sink, or put it into progressive motion, as they pleased. But not being at that time in a disposition to philosophise upon this phenomenon, I rather chose to observe what course the island would take, because it seemed for awhile to stand still. Yet soon after, it advanced nearer, and I could see the sides of it encompassed with several gradations of galleries, and stairs, at certain intervals, to descend from one to the other. In the lowest gallery, I beheld some people fishing with long angling rods, and others looking on. I waved my cap (for my hat was long since worn out) and my handkerchief toward the island; and upon its nearer approach, I called and shouted with the utmost strength of my voice; and then looking circumspectly, I beheld a crowd gather to that side which was most in my view. I found by their pointing towards me and to each other, that they plainly discovered me, although they made no return to my shouting. But I could see four or five men running in great haste, up the stairs, to the top of the island, who then disappeared. I happened rightly to conjecture, that these were sent for orders to some person in authority upon this occasion. + +The number of people increased, and, in less than half all hour, the island was moved and raised in such a manner, that the lowest gallery appeared in a parallel of less then a hundred yards distance from the height where I stood. I then put myself in the most supplicating posture, and spoke in the humblest accent, but received no answer. Those who stood nearest over against me, seemed to be persons of distinction, as I supposed by their habit. They conferred earnestly with each other, looking often upon me. At length one of them called out in a clear, polite, smooth dialect, not unlike in sound to the Italian: and therefore I returned an answer in that language, hoping at least that the cadence might be more agreeable to his ears. Although neither of us understood the other, yet my meaning was easily known, for the people saw the distress I was in. + +They made signs for me to come down from the rock, and go towards the shore, which I accordingly did; and the flying island being raised to a convenient height, the verge directly over me, a chain was let down from the lowest gallery, with a seat fastened to the bottom, to which I fixed myself, and was drawn up by pulleys. + +CHAPTER II. + +[The humours and dispositions of the Laputians described. An account of their learning. Of the king and his court. The author's reception there. The inhabitants subject to fear and disquietudes. An account of the women.] + +At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those who stood nearest seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me with all the marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was I much in their debt, having never till then seen a race of mortals so singular in their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe. I observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of a stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles, as I was afterwards informed. With these bladders, they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the meaning. It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of this officer is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel. + +It was necessary to give the reader this information, without which he would be at the same loss with me to understand the proceedings of these people, as they conducted me up the stairs to the top of the island, and from thence to the royal palace. While we were ascending, they forgot several times what they were about, and left me to myself, till their memories were again roused by their flappers; for they appeared altogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and countenance, and by the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds were more disengaged. + +At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of presence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on each side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne, was a large table filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of all kinds. His majesty took not the least notice of us, although our entrance was not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of all persons belonging to the court. But he was then deep in a problem; and we attended at least an hour, before he could solve it. There stood by him, on each side, a young page with flaps in their hands, and when they saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, and the other his right ear; at which he startled like one awaked on the sudden, and looking towards me and the company I was in, recollected the occasion of our coming, whereof he had been informed before. He spoke some words, whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came up to my side, and flapped me gently on the right ear; but I made signs, as well as I could, that I had no occasion for such an instrument; which, as I afterwards found, gave his majesty, and the whole court, a very mean opinion of my understanding. The king, as far as I could conjecture, asked me several questions, and I addressed myself to him in all the languages I had. When it was found I could neither understand nor be understood, I was conducted by his order to an apartment in his palace (this prince being distinguished above all his predecessors for his hospitality to strangers), where two servants were appointed to attend me. My dinner was brought, and four persons of quality, whom I remembered to have seen very near the king's person, did me the honour to dine with me. We had two courses, of three dishes each. In the first course, there was a shoulder of mutton cut into an equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboides, and a pudding into a cycloid. The second course was two ducks trussed up in the form of fiddles; sausages and puddings resembling flutes and hautboys, and a breast of veal in the shape of a harp. The servants cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other mathematical figures. + +While we were at dinner, I made bold to ask the names of several things in their language, and those noble persons, by the assistance of their flappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping to raise my admiration of their great abilities if I could be brought to converse with them. I was soon able to call for bread and drink, or whatever else I wanted. + +After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by the king's order, attended by a flapper. He brought with him pen, ink, and paper, and three or four books, giving me to understand by signs, that he was sent to teach me the language. We sat together four hours, in which time I wrote down a great number of words in columns, with the translations over against them; I likewise made a shift to learn several short sentences; for my tutor would order one of my servants to fetch something, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, or to stand, or walk, and the like. Then I took down the sentence in writing. He showed me also, in one of his books, the figures of the sun, moon, and stars, the zodiac, the tropics, and polar circles, together with the denominations of many plains and solids. He gave me the names and descriptions of all the musical instruments, and the general terms of art in playing on each of them. After he had left me, I placed all my words, with their interpretations, in alphabetical order. And thus, in a few days, by the help of a very faithful memory, I got some insight into their language. The word, which I interpret the flying or floating island, is in the original Laputa, whereof I could never learn the true etymology. Lap, in the old obsolete language, signifies high; and untuh, a governor; from which they say, by corruption, was derived Laputa, from Lapuntuh. But I do not approve of this derivation, which seems to be a little strained. I ventured to offer to the learned among them a conjecture of my own, that Laputa was quasi lap outed; lap, signifying properly, the dancing of the sunbeams in the sea, and outed, a wing; which, however, I shall not obtrude, but submit to the judicious reader. + +Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad, ordered a tailor to come next morning, and take measure for a suit of clothes. This operator did his office after a different manner from those of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant, and then, with a rule and compasses, described the dimensions and outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in six days brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my comfort was, that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded. + +During my confinement for want of clothes, and by an indisposition that held me some days longer, I much enlarged my dictionary; and when I went next to court, was able to understand many things the king spoke, and to return him some kind of answers. His majesty had given orders, that the island should move north-east and by east, to the vertical point over Lagado, the metropolis of the whole kingdom below, upon the firm earth. It was about ninety leagues distant, and our voyage lasted four days and a half. I was not in the least sensible of the progressive motion made in the air by the island. On the second morning, about eleven o'clock, the king himself in person, attended by his nobility, courtiers, and officers, having prepared all their musical instruments, played on them for three hours without intermission, so that I was quite stunned with the noise; neither could I possibly guess the meaning, till my tutor informed me. He said that, the people of their island had their ears adapted to hear "the music of the spheres, which always played at certain periods, and the court was now prepared to bear their part, in whatever instrument they most excelled." + +In our journey towards Lagado, the capital city, his majesty ordered that the island should stop over certain towns and villages, from whence he might receive the petitions of his subjects. And to this purpose, several packthreads were let down, with small weights at the bottom. On these packthreads the people strung their petitions, which mounted up directly, like the scraps of paper fastened by school boys at the end of the string that holds their kite. Sometimes we received wine and victuals from below, which were drawn up by pulleys. + +The knowledge I had in mathematics, gave me great assistance in acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science, and music; and in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music, needless here to repeat. I observed in the king's kitchen all sorts of mathematical and musical instruments, after the figures of which they cut up the joints that were served to his majesty's table. + +Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one right angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt they bear to practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic; those instructions they give being too refined for the intellects of their workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes. And although they are dexterous enough upon a piece of paper, in the management of the rule, the pencil, and the divider, yet in the common actions and behaviour of life, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They are very bad reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen to be of the right opinion, which is seldom their case. Imagination, fancy, and invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words in their language, by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole compass of their thoughts and mind being shut up within the two forementioned sciences. + +Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical part, have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are ashamed to own it publicly. But what I chiefly admired, and thought altogether unaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in them towards news and politics, perpetually inquiring into public affairs, giving their judgments in matters of state, and passionately disputing every inch of a party opinion. I have indeed observed the same disposition among most of the mathematicians I have known in Europe, although I could never discover the least analogy between the two sciences; unless those people suppose, that because the smallest circle has as many degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation and management of the world require no more abilities than the handling and turning of a globe; but I rather take this quality to spring from a very common infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be most curious and conceited in matters where we have least concern, and for which we are least adapted by study or nature. + +These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minutes peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which very little affect the rest of mortals. Their apprehensions arise from several changes they dread in the celestial bodies: for instance, that the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards it, must, in course of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up; that the face of the sun, will, by degrees, be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no more light to the world; that the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from the tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for one-and-thirty years hence, will probably destroy us. For if, in its perihelion, it should approach within a certain degree of the sun (as by their calculations they have reason to dread) it will receive a degree of heat ten thousand times more intense than that of red hot glowing iron, and in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen miles long, through which, if the earth should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes: that the sun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from it. + +They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements of life. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first question is about the sun's health, how he looked at his setting and rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching comet. This conversation they are apt to run into with the same temper that boys discover in delighting to hear terrible stories of spirits and hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to bed for fear. + +The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they, contemn their husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is always a considerable number from the continent below, attending at court, either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or their own particular occasions, but are much despised, because they want the same endowments. Among these the ladies choose their gallants: but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side. + +The wives and daughters lament their confinement to the island, although I think it the most delicious spot of ground in the world; and although they live here in the greatest plenty and magnificence, and are allowed to do whatever they please, they long to see the world, and take the diversions of the metropolis, which they are not allowed to do without a particular license from the king; and this is not easy to be obtained, because the people of quality have found, by frequent experience, how hard it is to persuade their women to return from below. I was told that a great court lady, who had several children,--is married to the prime minister, the richest subject in the kingdom, a very graceful person, extremely fond of her, and lives in the finest palace of the island,--went down to Lagado on the pretence of health, there hid herself for several months, till the king sent a warrant to search for her; and she was found in an obscure eating-house all in rags, having pawned her clothes to maintain an old deformed footman, who beat her every day, and in whose company she was taken, much against her will. And although her husband received her with all possible kindness, and without the least reproach, she soon after contrived to steal down again, with all her jewels, to the same gallant, and has not been heard of since. + +This may perhaps pass with the reader rather for an European or English story, than for one of a country so remote. But he may please to consider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited by any climate or nation, and that they are much more uniform, than can be easily imagined. + +In about a month's time, I had made a tolerable proficiency in their language, and was able to answer most of the king's questions, when I had the honour to attend him. His majesty discovered not the least curiosity to inquire into the laws, government, history, religion, or manners of the countries where I had been; but confined his questions to the state of mathematics, and received the account I gave him with great contempt and indifference, though often roused by his flapper on each side. + +CHAPTER III. + +[A phenomenon solved by modern philosophy and astronomy. The Laputians' great improvements in the latter. The king's method of suppressing insurrections.] + +I desired leave of this prince to see the curiosities of the island, which he was graciously pleased to grant, and ordered my tutor to attend me. I chiefly wanted to know, to what cause, in art or in nature, it owed its several motions, whereof I will now give a philosophical account to the reader. + +The flying or floating island is exactly circular, its diameter 7837 yards, or about four miles and a half, and consequently contains ten thousand acres. It is three hundred yards thick. The bottom, or under surface, which appears to those who view it below, is one even regular plate of adamant, shooting up to the height of about two hundred yards. Above it lie the several minerals in their usual order, and over all is a coat of rich mould, ten or twelve feet deep. The declivity of the upper surface, from the circumference to the centre, is the natural cause why all the dews and rains, which fall upon the island, are conveyed in small rivulets toward the middle, where they are emptied into four large basins, each of about half a mile in circuit, and two hundred yards distant from the centre. From these basins the water is continually exhaled by the sun in the daytime, which effectually prevents their overflowing. Besides, as it is in the power of the monarch to raise the island above the region of clouds and vapours, he can prevent the falling of dews and rain whenever he pleases. For the highest clouds cannot rise above two miles, as naturalists agree, at least they were never known to do so in that country. + +At the centre of the island there is a chasm about fifty yards in diameter, whence the astronomers descend into a large dome, which is therefore called flandona gagnole, or the astronomer's cave, situated at the depth of a hundred yards beneath the upper surface of the adamant. In this cave are twenty lamps continually burning, which, from the reflection of the adamant, cast a strong light into every part. The place is stored with great variety of sextants, quadrants, telescopes, astrolabes, and other astronomical instruments. But the greatest curiosity, upon which the fate of the island depends, is a loadstone of a prodigious size, in shape resembling a weaver's shuttle. It is in length six yards, and in the thickest part at least three yards over. This magnet is sustained by a very strong axle of adamant passing through its middle, upon which it plays, and is poised so exactly that the weakest hand can turn it. It is hooped round with a hollow cylinder of adamant, four feet yards in diameter, placed horizontally, and supported by eight adamantine feet, each six yards high. In the middle of the concave side, there is a groove twelve inches deep, in which the extremities of the axle are lodged, and turned round as there is occasion. + +The stone cannot be removed from its place by any force, because the hoop and its feet are one continued piece with that body of adamant which constitutes the bottom of the island. + +By means of this loadstone, the island is made to rise and fall, and move from one place to another. For, with respect to that part of the earth over which the monarch presides, the stone is endued at one of its sides with an attractive power, and at the other with a repulsive. Upon placing the magnet erect, with its attracting end towards the earth, the island descends; but when the repelling extremity points downwards, the island mounts directly upwards. When the position of the stone is oblique, the motion of the island is so too: for in this magnet, the forces always act in lines parallel to its direction. + +By this oblique motion, the island is conveyed to different parts of the monarch's dominions. To explain the manner of its progress, let A B represent a line drawn across the dominions of Balnibarbi, let the line c d represent the loadstone, of which let d be the repelling end, and c the attracting end, the island being over C: let the stone be placed in position c d, with its repelling end downwards; then the island will be driven upwards obliquely towards D. When it is arrived at D, let the stone be turned upon its axle, till its attracting end points towards E, and then the island will be carried obliquely towards E; where, if the stone be again turned upon its axle till it stands in the position E F, with its repelling point downwards, the island will rise obliquely towards F, where, by directing the attracting end towards G, the island may be carried to G, and from G to H, by turning the stone, so as to make its repelling extremity to point directly downward. And thus, by changing the situation of the stone, as often as there is occasion, the island is made to rise and fall by turns in an oblique direction, and by those alternate risings and fallings (the obliquity being not considerable) is conveyed from one part of the dominions to the other. + +But it must be observed, that this island cannot move beyond the extent of the dominions below, nor can it rise above the height of four miles. For which the astronomers (who have written large systems concerning the stone) assign the following reason: that the magnetic virtue does not extend beyond the distance of four miles, and that the mineral, which acts upon the stone in the bowels of the earth, and in the sea about six leagues distant from the shore, is not diffused through the whole globe, but terminated with the limits of the king's dominions; and it was easy, from the great advantage of such a superior situation, for a prince to bring under his obedience whatever country lay within the attraction of that magnet. + +When the stone is put parallel to the plane of the horizon, the island stands still; for in that case the extremities of it, being at equal distance from the earth, act with equal force, the one in drawing downwards, the other in pushing upwards, and consequently no motion can ensue. + +This loadstone is under the care of certain astronomers, who, from time to time, give it such positions as the monarch directs. They spend the greatest part of their lives in observing the celestial bodies, which they do by the assistance of glasses, far excelling ours in goodness. For, although their largest telescopes do not exceed three feet, they magnify much more than those of a hundred with us, and show the stars with greater clearness. This advantage has enabled them to extend their discoveries much further than our astronomers in Europe; for they have made a catalogue of ten thousand fixed stars, whereas the largest of ours do not contain above one third part of that number. They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars; whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost, five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the centre of Mars; which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies. + +They have observed ninety-three different comets, and settled their periods with great exactness. If this be true (and they affirm it with great confidence) it is much to be wished, that their observations were made public, whereby the theory of comets, which at present is very lame and defective, might be brought to the same perfection with other arts of astronomy. + +The king would be the most absolute prince in the universe, if he could but prevail on a ministry to join with him; but these having their estates below on the continent, and considering that the office of a favourite has a very uncertain tenure, would never consent to the enslaving of their country. + +If any town should engage in rebellion or mutiny, fall into violent factions, or refuse to pay the usual tribute, the king has two methods of reducing them to obedience. The first and the mildest course is, by keeping the island hovering over such a town, and the lands about it, whereby he can deprive them of the benefit of the sun and the rain, and consequently afflict the inhabitants with dearth and diseases: and if the crime deserve it, they are at the same time pelted from above with great stones, against which they have no defence but by creeping into cellars or caves, while the roofs of their houses are beaten to pieces. But if they still continue obstinate, or offer to raise insurrections, he proceeds to the last remedy, by letting the island drop directly upon their heads, which makes a universal destruction both of houses and men. However, this is an extremity to which the prince is seldom driven, neither indeed is he willing to put it in execution; nor dare his ministers advise him to an action, which, as it would render them odious to the people, so it would be a great damage to their own estates, which all lie below; for the island is the king's demesne. + +But there is still indeed a more weighty reason, why the kings of this country have been always averse from executing so terrible an action, unless upon the utmost necessity. For, if the town intended to be destroyed should have in it any tall rocks, as it generally falls out in the larger cities, a situation probably chosen at first with a view to prevent such a catastrophe; or if it abound in high spires, or pillars of stone, a sudden fall might endanger the bottom or under surface of the island, which, although it consist, as I have said, of one entire adamant, two hundred yards thick, might happen to crack by too great a shock, or burst by approaching too near the fires from the houses below, as the backs, both of iron and stone, will often do in our chimneys. Of all this the people are well apprised, and understand how far to carry their obstinacy, where their liberty or property is concerned. And the king, when he is highest provoked, and most determined to press a city to rubbish, orders the island to descend with great gentleness, out of a pretence of tenderness to his people, but, indeed, for fear of breaking the adamantine bottom; in which case, it is the opinion of all their philosophers, that the loadstone could no longer hold it up, and the whole mass would fall to the ground. + +By a fundamental law of this realm, neither the king, nor either of his two eldest sons, are permitted to leave the island; nor the queen, till she is past child-bearing. + +CHAPTER IV. + +[The author leaves Laputa; is conveyed to Balnibarbi; arrives at the metropolis. A description of the metropolis, and the country adjoining. The author hospitably received by a great lord. His conversation with that lord.] + +Although I cannot say that I was ill treated in this island, yet I must confess I thought myself too much neglected, not without some degree of contempt; for neither prince nor people appeared to be curious in any part of knowledge, except mathematics and music, wherein I was far their inferior, and upon that account very little regarded. + +On the other side, after having seen all the curiosities of the island, I was very desirous to leave it, being heartily weary of those people. They were indeed excellent in two sciences for which I have great esteem, and wherein I am not unversed; but, at the same time, so abstracted and involved in speculation, that I never met with such disagreeable companions. I conversed only with women, tradesmen, flappers, and court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by which, at last, I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these were the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable answer. + +I had obtained, by hard study, a good degree of knowledge in their language: I was weary of being confined to an island where I received so little countenance, and resolved to leave it with the first opportunity. + +There was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and for that reason alone used with respect. He was universally reckoned the most ignorant and stupid person among them. He had performed many eminent services for the crown, had great natural and acquired parts, adorned with integrity and honour; but so ill an ear for music, that his detractors reported, "he had been often known to beat time in the wrong place;" neither could his tutors, without extreme difficulty, teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the mathematics. He was pleased to show me many marks of favour, often did me the honour of a visit, desired to be informed in the affairs of Europe, the laws and customs, the manners and learning of the several countries where I had travelled. He listened to me with great attention, and made very wise observations on all I spoke. He had two flappers attending him for state, but never made use of them, except at court and in visits of ceremony, and would always command them to withdraw, when we were alone together. + +I entreated this illustrious person, to intercede in my behalf with his majesty, for leave to depart; which he accordingly did, as he was pleased to tell me, with regret: for indeed he had made me several offers very advantageous, which, however, I refused, with expressions of the highest acknowledgment. + +On the 16th of February I took leave of his majesty and the court. The king made me a present to the value of about two hundred pounds English, and my protector, his kinsman, as much more, together with a letter of recommendation to a friend of his in Lagado, the metropolis. The island being then hovering over a mountain about two miles from it, I was let down from the lowest gallery, in the same manner as I had been taken up. + +The continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying island, passes under the general name of Balnibarbi; and the metropolis, as I said before, is called Lagado. I felt some little satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground. I walked to the city without any concern, being clad like one of the natives, and sufficiently instructed to converse with them. I soon found out the person's house to whom I was recommended, presented my letter from his friend the grandee in the island, and was received with much kindness. This great lord, whose name was Munodi, ordered me an apartment in his own house, where I continued during my stay, and was entertained in a most hospitable manner. + +The next morning after my arrival, he took me in his chariot to see the town, which is about half the bigness of London; but the houses very strangely built, and most of them out of repair. The people in the streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally in rags. We passed through one of the town gates, and went about three miles into the country, where I saw many labourers working with several sorts of tools in the ground, but was not able to conjecture what they were about: neither did observe any expectation either of corn or grass, although the soil appeared to be excellent. I could not forbear admiring at these odd appearances, both in town and country; and I made bold to desire my conductor, that he would be pleased to explain to me, what could be meant by so many busy heads, hands, and faces, both in the streets and the fields, because I did not discover any good effects they produced; but, on the contrary, I never knew a soil so unhappily cultivated, houses so ill contrived and so ruinous, or a people whose countenances and habit expressed so much misery and want. + +This lord Munodi was a person of the first rank, and had been some years governor of Lagado; but, by a cabal of ministers, was discharged for insufficiency. However, the king treated him with tenderness, as a well-meaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding. + +When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he made no further answer than by telling me, "that I had not been long enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of the world had different customs;" with other common topics to the same purpose. But, when we returned to his palace, he asked me "how I liked the building, what absurdities I observed, and what quarrel I had with the dress or looks of his domestics?" This he might safely do; because every thing about him was magnificent, regular, and polite. I answered, "that his excellency's prudence, quality, and fortune, had exempted him from those defects, which folly and beggary had produced in others." He said, "if I would go with him to his country-house, about twenty miles distant, where his estate lay, there would be more leisure for this kind of conversation." I told his excellency "that I was entirely at his disposal;" and accordingly we set out next morning. + +During our journey he made me observe the several methods used by farmers in managing their lands, which to me were wholly unaccountable; for, except in some very few places, I could not discover one ear of corn or blade of grass. But, in three hours travelling, the scene was wholly altered; we came into a most beautiful country; farmers' houses, at small distances, neatly built; the fields enclosed, containing vineyards, corn-grounds, and meadows. Neither do I remember to have seen a more delightful prospect. His excellency observed my countenance to clear up; he told me, with a sigh, "that there his estate began, and would continue the same, till we should come to his house: that his countrymen ridiculed and despised him, for managing his affairs no better, and for setting so ill an example to the kingdom; which, however, was followed by very few, such as were old, and wilful, and weak like himself." + +We came at length to the house, which was indeed a noble structure, built according to the best rules of ancient architecture. The fountains, gardens, walks, avenues, and groves, were all disposed with exact judgment and taste. I gave due praises to every thing I saw, whereof his excellency took not the least notice till after supper; when, there being no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy air "that he doubted he must throw down his houses in town and country, to rebuild them after the present mode; destroy all his plantations, and cast others into such a form as modern usage required, and give the same directions to all his tenants, unless he would submit to incur the censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance, caprice, and perhaps increase his majesty's displeasure; that the admiration I appeared to be under would cease or diminish, when he had informed me of some particulars which, probably, I never heard of at court, the people there being too much taken up in their own speculations, to have regard to what passed here below." + +The sum of his discourse was to this effect: "That about forty years ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot. To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair: that as for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit, he was content to go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his ancestors had built, and act as they did, in every part of life, without innovation: that some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art, ignorant, and ill common-wealth's men, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their country." + +His lordship added, "That he would not, by any further particulars, prevent the pleasure I should certainly take in viewing the grand academy, whither he was resolved I should go." He only desired me to observe a ruined building, upon the side of a mountain about three miles distant, of which he gave me this account: "That he had a very convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a current from a large river, and sufficient for his own family, as well as a great number of his tenants; that about seven years ago, a club of those projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill, and build another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge whereof a long canal must be cut, for a repository of water, to be conveyed up by pipes and engines to supply the mill, because the wind and air upon a height agitated the water, and thereby made it fitter for motion, and because the water, descending down a declivity, would turn the mill with half the current of a river whose course is more upon a level." He said, "that being then not very well with the court, and pressed by many of his friends, he complied with the proposal; and after employing a hundred men for two years, the work miscarried, the projectors went off, laying the blame entirely upon him, railing at him ever since, and putting others upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of success, as well as equal disappointment." + +In a few days we came back to town; and his excellency, considering the bad character he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but recommended me to a friend of his, to bear me company thither. My lord was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a person of much curiosity and easy belief; which, indeed, was not without truth; for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger days. + +CHAPTER V. + +[The author permitted to see the grand academy of Lagado. The academy largely described. The arts wherein the professors employ themselves.] + +This academy is not an entire single building, but a continuation of several houses on both sides of a street, which growing waste, was purchased and applied to that use. + +I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms. + +The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them. + +I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in a whisper "to give no offence, which would be highly resented;" and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose. The projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy; his face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was presented to him, he gave me a close embrace, a compliment I could well have excused. His employment, from his first coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance, from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel. + +I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish. + +There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider. + +There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken. This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity. + +In another apartment I was highly pleased with a projector who had found a device of ploughing the ground with hogs, to save the charges of ploughs, cattle, and labour. The method is this: in an acre of ground you bury, at six inches distance and eight deep, a quantity of acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other mast or vegetables, whereof these animals are fondest; then you drive six hundred or more of them into the field, where, in a few days, they will root up the whole ground in search of their food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with their dung: it is true, upon experiment, they found the charge and trouble very great, and they had little or no crop. However it is not doubted, that this invention may be capable of great improvement. + +I went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were all hung round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the artist to go in and out. At my entrance, he called aloud to me, "not to disturb his webs." He lamented "the fatal mistake the world had been so long in, of using silkworms, while we had such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave, as well as spin." And he proposed further, "that by employing spiders, the charge of dyeing silks should be wholly saved;" whereof I was fully convinced, when he showed me a vast number of flies most beautifully coloured, wherewith he fed his spiders, assuring us "that the webs would take a tincture from them; and as he had them of all hues, he hoped to fit everybody's fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the flies, of certain gums, oils, and other glutinous matter, to give a strength and consistence to the threads." + +There was an astronomer, who had undertaken to place a sun-dial upon the great weathercock on the town-house, by adjusting the annual and diurnal motions of the earth and sun, so as to answer and coincide with all accidental turnings of the wind. + +I was complaining of a small fit of the colic, upon which my conductor led me into a room where a great physician resided, who was famous for curing that disease, by contrary operations from the same instrument. He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly against the orifice of then fundament; and this being repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump), and the patient recovered. I saw him try both experiments upon a dog, but could not discern any effect from the former. After the latter the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge as was very offensive to me and my companion. The dog died on the spot, and we left the doctor endeavouring to recover him, by the same operation. + +I visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble my reader with all the curiosities I observed, being studious of brevity. + +I had hitherto seen only one side of the academy, the other being appropriated to the advancers of speculative learning, of whom I shall say something, when I have mentioned one illustrious person more, who is called among them "the universal artist." He told us "he had been thirty years employing his thoughts for the improvement of human life." He had two large rooms full of wonderful curiosities, and fifty men at work. Some were condensing air into a dry tangible substance, by extracting the nitre, and letting the aqueous or fluid particles percolate; others softening marble, for pillows and pin-cushions; others petrifying the hoofs of a living horse, to preserve them from foundering. The artist himself was at that time busy upon two great designs; the first, to sow land with chaff, wherein he affirmed the true seminal virtue to be contained, as he demonstrated by several experiments, which I was not skilful enough to comprehend. The other was, by a certain composition of gums, minerals, and vegetables, outwardly applied, to prevent the growth of wool upon two young lambs; and he hoped, in a reasonable time to propagate the breed of naked sheep, all over the kingdom. + +We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as I have already said, the projectors in speculative learning resided. + +The first professor I saw, was in a very large room, with forty pupils about him. After salutation, observing me to look earnestly upon a frame, which took up the greatest part of both the length and breadth of the room, he said, "Perhaps I might wonder to see him employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge, by practical and mechanical operations. But the world would soon be sensible of its usefulness; and he flattered himself, that a more noble, exalted thought never sprang in any other man's head. Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down. + +Six hours a day the young students were employed in this labour; and the professor showed me several volumes in large folio, already collected, of broken sentences, which he intended to piece together, and out of those rich materials, to give the world a complete body of all arts and sciences; which, however, might be still improved, and much expedited, if the public would raise a fund for making and employing five hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in common their several collections. + +He assured me "that this invention had employed all his thoughts from his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in books between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other parts of speech." + +I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious person, for his great communicativeness; and promised, "if ever I had the good fortune to return to my native country, that I would do him justice, as the sole inventor of this wonderful machine;" the form and contrivance of which I desired leave to delineate on paper, as in the figure here annexed. I told him, "although it were the custom of our learned in Europe to steal inventions from each other, who had thereby at least this advantage, that it became a controversy which was the right owner; yet I would take such caution, that he should have the honour entire, without a rival." + +We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own country. + +The first project was, to shorten discourse, by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality, all things imaginable are but norms. + +The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lunge by corrosion, and, consequently, contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, "that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on." And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people. However, many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things; which has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man's business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave. + +But for short conversations, a man may carry implements in his pockets, and under his arms, enough to supply him; and in his house, he cannot be at a loss. Therefore the room where company meet who practise this art, is full of all things, ready at hand, requisite to furnish matter for this kind of artificial converse. + +Another great advantage proposed by this invention was, that it would serve as a universal language, to be understood in all civilised nations, whose goods and utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their uses might easily be comprehended. And thus ambassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign princes, or ministers of state, to whose tongues they were utter strangers. + +I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his pupils after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The proposition, and demonstration, were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed of a cephalic tincture. This, the student was to swallow upon a fasting stomach, and for three days following, eat nothing but bread and water. As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposition along with it. But the success has not hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum or composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards, before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence, as the prescription requires. + +CHAPTER VI. + +[A further account of the academy. The author proposes some improvements, which are honourably received.] + +In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained; the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses, which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them, with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, "that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational, which some philosophers have not maintained for truth." + +But, however, I shall so far do justice to this part of the Academy, as to acknowledge that all of them were not so visionary. There was a most ingenious doctor, who seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole nature and system of government. This illustrious person had very usefully employed his studies, in finding out effectual remedies for all diseases and corruptions to which the several kinds of public administration are subject, by the vices or infirmities of those who govern, as well as by the licentiousness of those who are to obey. For instance: whereas all writers and reasoners have agreed, that there is a strict universal resemblance between the natural and the political body; can there be any thing more evident, than that the health of both must be preserved, and the diseases cured, by the same prescriptions? It is allowed, that senates and great councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours; with many diseases of the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous tumours, full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations: with canine appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others, needless to mention. This doctor therefore proposed, "that upon the meeting of the senate, certain physicians should attend it the three first days of their sitting, and at the close of each day's debate feel the pulses of every senator; after which, having maturely considered and consulted upon the nature of the several maladies, and the methods of cure, they should on the fourth day return to the senate house, attended by their apothecaries stored with proper medicines; and before the members sat, administer to each of them lenitives, aperitives, abstersives, corrosives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives, cephalalgics, icterics, apophlegmatics, acoustics, as their several cases required; and, according as these medicines should operate, repeat, alter, or omit them, at the next meeting." + +This project could not be of any great expense to the public; and might in my poor opinion, be of much use for the despatch of business, in those countries where senates have any share in the legislative power; beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of the young, and correct the positiveness of the old; rouse the stupid, and damp the pert. + +Again: because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of princes are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor proposed, "that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words, should, at his departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same operation, till the business were done, or absolutely refused." + +He likewise directed, "that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public." + +When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. The method is this: You take a hundred leaders of each party; you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain may be equally divided. Let the occiputs, thus cut off, be interchanged, applying each to the head of his opposite party-man. It seems indeed to be a work that requires some exactness, but the professor assured us, "that if it were dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible." For he argued thus: "that the two half brains being left to debate the matter between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those, who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its motion: and as to the difference of brains, in quantity or quality, among those who are directors in faction, the doctor assured us, from his own knowledge, that "it was a perfect trifle." + +I heard a very warm debate between two professors, about the most commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money, without grieving the subject. The first affirmed, "the justest method would be, to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly; and the sum fixed upon every man to be rated, after the fairest manner, by a jury of his neighbours." The second was of an opinion directly contrary; "to tax those qualities of body and mind, for which men chiefly value themselves; the rate to be more or less, according to the degrees of excelling; the decision whereof should be left entirely to their own breast." The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favourites of the other sex, and the assessments, according to the number and nature of the favours they have received; for which, they are allowed to be their own vouchers. Wit, valour, and politeness, were likewise proposed to be largely taxed, and collected in the same manner, by every person's giving his own word for the quantum of what he possessed. But as to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should not be taxed at all; because they are qualifications of so singular a kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour or value them in himself. + +The women were proposed to be taxed according to their beauty and skill in dressing, wherein they had the same privilege with the men, to be determined by their own judgment. But constancy, chastity, good sense, and good nature, were not rated, because they would not bear the charge of collecting. + +To keep senators in the interest of the crown, it was proposed that the members should raffle for employment; every man first taking an oath, and giving security, that he would vote for the court, whether he won or not; after which, the losers had, in their turn, the liberty of raffling upon the next vacancy. Thus, hope and expectation would be kept alive; none would complain of broken promises, but impute their disappointments wholly to fortune, whose shoulders are broader and stronger than those of a ministry. + +Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for discovering plots and conspiracies against the government. He advised great statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected persons; their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed; with which hand they wipe their posteriors; take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool, which he found by frequent experiment; for, in such conjunctures, when he used, merely as a trial, to consider which was the best way of murdering the king, his ordure would have a tincture of green; but quite different, when he thought only of raising an insurrection, or burning the metropolis. + +The whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing many observations, both curious and useful for politicians; but, as I conceived, not altogether complete. This I ventured to tell the author, and offered, if he pleased, to supply him with some additions. He received my proposition with more compliance than is usual among writers, especially those of the projecting species, professing "he would be glad to receive further information." + +I told him, "that in the kingdom of Tribnia,~{ Britannia.--Sir W. Scott. }~ by the natives called Langdon,~{ London.--Sir W. Scott. }~ where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk of the people consist in a manner wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the colours, the conduct, and the pay of ministers of state, and their deputies. The plots, in that kingdom, are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures; and raise, or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then, effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists, very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables, and letters: for instance, they can discover a close stool, to signify a privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a general; a running sore, the administration.~{ This is the revised text adopted by Dr. Hawksworth (1766). The above paragraph in the original editions (1726) takes another form, commencing:- "I told him that should I happen to live in a kingdom where lots were in vogue," &c. The names Tribnia and Langdon an not mentioned, and the "close stool" and its signification do not occur. }~ + +"When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N, shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; L, a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party. So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend, 'Our brother Tom has just got the piles,' a skilful decipherer would discover, that the same letters which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the following words, 'Resist -, a plot is brought home--The tour.' And this is the anagrammatic method." + +The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his treatise. + +I saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer continuance, and began to think of returning home to England. + +CHAPTER VII. + +[The author leaves Lagado: arrives at Maldonada. No ship ready. He takes a short voyage to Glubbdubdrib. His reception by the governor.] + +The continent, of which this kingdom is apart, extends itself, as I have reason to believe, eastward, to that unknown tract of America westward of California; and north, to the Pacific Ocean, which is not above a hundred and fifty miles from Lagado; where there is a good port, and much commerce with the great island of Luggnagg, situated to the north-west about 29 degrees north latitude, and 140 longitude. This island of Luggnagg stands south-eastward of Japan, about a hundred leagues distant. There is a strict alliance between the Japanese emperor and the king of Luggnagg; which affords frequent opportunities of sailing from one island to the other. I determined therefore to direct my course this way, in order to my return to Europe. I hired two mules, with a guide, to show me the way, and carry my small baggage. I took leave of my noble protector, who had shown me so much favour, and made me a generous present at my departure. + +My journey was without any accident or adventure worth relating. When I arrived at the port of Maldonada (for so it is called) there was no ship in the harbour bound for Luggnagg, nor likely to be in some time. The town is about as large as Portsmouth. I soon fell into some acquaintance, and was very hospitably received. A gentleman of distinction said to me, "that since the ships bound for Luggnagg could not be ready in less than a month, it might be no disagreeable amusement for me to take a trip to the little island of Glubbdubdrib, about five leagues off to the south-west." He offered himself and a friend to accompany me, and that I should be provided with a small convenient bark for the voyage. + +Glubbdubdrib, as nearly as I can interpret the word, signifies the island of sorcerers or magicians. It is about one third as large as the Isle of Wight, and extremely fruitful: it is governed by the head of a certain tribe, who are all magicians. This tribe marries only among each other, and the eldest in succession is prince or governor. He has a noble palace, and a park of about three thousand acres, surrounded by a wall of hewn stone twenty feet high. In this park are several small enclosures for cattle, corn, and gardening. + +The governor and his family are served and attended by domestics of a kind somewhat unusual. By his skill in necromancy he has a power of calling whom he pleases from the dead, and commanding their service for twenty-four hours, but no longer; nor can he call the same persons up again in less than three months, except upon very extraordinary occasions. + +When we arrived at the island, which was about eleven in the morning, one of the gentlemen who accompanied me went to the governor, and desired admittance for a stranger, who came on purpose to have the honour of attending on his highness. This was immediately granted, and we all three entered the gate of the palace between two rows of guards, armed and dressed after a very antic manner, and with something in their countenances that made my flesh creep with a horror I cannot express. We passed through several apartments, between servants of the same sort, ranked on each side as before, till we came to the chamber of presence; where, after three profound obeisances, and a few general questions, we were permitted to sit on three stools, near the lowest step of his highness's throne. He understood the language of Balnibarbi, although it was different from that of this island. He desired me to give him some account of my travels; and, to let me see that I should be treated without ceremony, he dismissed all his attendants with a turn of his finger; at which, to my great astonishment, they vanished in an instant, like visions in a dream when we awake on a sudden. I could not recover myself in some time, till the governor assured me, "that I should receive no hurt:" and observing my two companions to be under no concern, who had been often entertained in the same manner, I began to take courage, and related to his highness a short history of my several adventures; yet not without some hesitation, and frequently looking behind me to the place where I had seen those domestic spectres. I had the honour to dine with the governor, where a new set of ghosts served up the meat, and waited at table. I now observed myself to be less terrified than I had been in the morning. I stayed till sunset, but humbly desired his highness to excuse me for not accepting his invitation of lodging in the palace. My two friends and I lay at a private house in the town adjoining, which is the capital of this little island; and the next morning we returned to pay our duty to the governor, as he was pleased to command us. + +After this manner we continued in the island for ten days, most part of every day with the governor, and at night in our lodging. I soon grew so familiarized to the sight of spirits, that after the third or fourth time they gave me no emotion at all: or, if I had any apprehensions left, my curiosity prevailed over them. For his highness the governor ordered me "to call up whatever persons I would choose to name, and in whatever numbers, among all the dead from the beginning of the world to the present time, and command them to answer any questions I should think fit to ask; with this condition, that my questions must be confined within the compass of the times they lived in. And one thing I might depend upon, that they would certainly tell me the truth, for lying was a talent of no use in the lower world." + +I made my humble acknowledgments to his highness for so great a favour. We were in a chamber, from whence there was a fair prospect into the park. And because my first inclination was to be entertained with scenes of pomp and magnificence, I desired to see Alexander the Great at the head of his army, just after the battle of Arbela: which, upon a motion of the governor's finger, immediately appeared in a large field, under the window where we stood. Alexander was called up into the room: it was with great difficulty that I understood his Greek, and had but little of my own. He assured me upon his honour "that he was not poisoned, but died of a bad fever by excessive drinking." + +Next, I saw Hannibal passing the Alps, who told me "he had not a drop of vinegar in his camp." + +I saw Caesar and Pompey at the head of their troops, just ready to engage. I saw the former, in his last great triumph. I desired that the senate of Rome might appear before me, in one large chamber, and an assembly of somewhat a later age in counterview, in another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwayman, and bullies. + +The governor, at my request, gave the sign for Caesar and Brutus to advance towards us. I was struck with a profound veneration at the sight of Brutus, and could easily discover the most consummate virtue, the greatest intrepidity and firmness of mind, the truest love of his country, and general benevolence for mankind, in every lineament of his countenance. I observed, with much pleasure, that these two persons were in good intelligence with each other; and Caesar freely confessed to me, "that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away." I had the honour to have much conversation with Brutus; and was told, "that his ancestor Junius, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas More, and himself were perpetually together:" a sextumvirate, to which all the ages of the world cannot add a seventh. + +It would be tedious to trouble the reader with relating what vast numbers of illustrious persons were called up to gratify that insatiable desire I had to see the world in every period of antiquity placed before me. I chiefly fed mine eyes with beholding the destroyers of tyrants and usurpers, and the restorers of liberty to oppressed and injured nations. But it is impossible to express the satisfaction I received in my own mind, after such a manner as to make it a suitable entertainment to the reader. + +CHAPTER VIII. + +[A further account of Glubbdubdrib. Ancient and modern history corrected.] + +Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these were so numerous, that some hundreds were forced to attend in the court, and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could distinguish those two heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before; and I had a whisper from a ghost who shall be nameless, "that these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity." I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them, "whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as themselves?" + +I then desired the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi, with whom I prevailed to explain their systems to Aristotle. This great philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be exploded. He predicted the same fate to ATTRACTION, whereof the present learned are such zealous asserters. He said, "that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those, who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined." + +I spent five days in conversing with many others of the ancient learned. I saw most of the first Roman emperors. I prevailed on the governor to call up Heliogabalus's cooks to dress us a dinner, but they could not show us much of their skill, for want of materials. A helot of Agesilaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get down a second spoonful. + +The two gentlemen, who conducted me to the island, were pressed by their private affairs to return in three days, which I employed in seeing some of the modern dead, who had made the greatest figure, for two or three hundred years past, in our own and other countries of Europe; and having been always a great admirer of old illustrious families, I desired the governor would call up a dozen or two of kings, with their ancestors in order for eight or nine generations. But my disappointment was grievous and unexpected. For, instead of a long train with royal diadems, I saw in one family two fiddlers, three spruce courtiers, and an Italian prelate. In another, a barber, an abbot, and two cardinals. I have too great a veneration for crowned heads, to dwell any longer on so nice a subject. But as to counts, marquises, dukes, earls, and the like, I was not so scrupulous. And I confess, it was not without some pleasure, that I found myself able to trace the particular features, by which certain families are distinguished, up to their originals. I could plainly discover whence one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded with knaves for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it came, what Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, Nec vir fortis, nec foemina casta; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew to be characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much as by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house, which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity. Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of lineages, by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers, players, captains, and pickpockets. + +I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions: how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success. + +Here I discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to write anecdotes, or secret history; who send so many kings to their graves with a cup of poison; will repeat the discourse between a prince and chief minister, where no witness was by; unlock the thoughts and cabinets of ambassadors and secretaries of state; and have the perpetual misfortune to be mistaken. Here I discovered the true causes of many great events that have surprised the world; how a whore can govern the back-stairs, the back-stairs a council, and the council a senate. A general confessed, in my presence, "that he got a victory purely by the force of cowardice and ill conduct;" and an admiral, "that, for want of proper intelligence, he beat the enemy, to whom he intended to betray the fleet." Three kings protested to me, "that in their whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake, or treachery of some minister in whom they confided; neither would they do it if they were to live again:" and they showed, with great strength of reason, "that the royal throne could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restiff temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual clog to public business." + +I had the curiosity to inquire in a particular manner, by what methods great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of honour, and prodigious estates; and I confined my inquiry to a very modern period: however, without grating upon present times, because I would be sure to give no offence even to foreigners (for I hope the reader need not be told, that I do not in the least intend my own country, in what I say upon this occasion,) a great number of persons concerned were called up; and, upon a very slight examination, discovered such a scene of infamy, that I cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness. Perjury, oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism, and the like infirmities, were among the most excusable arts they had to mention; and for these I gave, as it was reasonable, great allowance. But when some confessed they owed their greatness and wealth to sodomy, or incest; others, to the prostituting of their own wives and daughters; others, to the betraying of their country or their prince; some, to poisoning; more to the perverting of justice, in order to destroy the innocent, I hope I may be pardoned, if these discoveries inclined me a little to abate of that profound veneration, which I am naturally apt to pay to persons of high rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost respect due to their sublime dignity, by us their inferiors. + +I had often read of some great services done to princes and states, and desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed. Upon inquiry I was told, "that their names were to be found on no record, except a few of them, whom history has represented as the vilest of rogues and traitors." As to the rest, I had never once heard of them. They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit; most of them telling me, "they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a scaffold or a gibbet." + +Among others, there was one person, whose case appeared a little singular. He had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his side. He told me, "he had for many years been commander of a ship; and in the sea fight at Actium had the good fortune to break through the enemy's great line of battle, sink three of their capital ships, and take a fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony's flight, and of the victory that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only son, was killed in the action." He added, "that upon the confidence of some merit, the war being at an end, he went to Rome, and solicited at the court of Augustus to be preferred to a greater ship, whose commander had been killed; but, without any regard to his pretensions, it was given to a boy who had never seen the sea, the son of Libertina, who waited on one of the emperor's mistresses. Returning back to his own vessel, he was charged with neglect of duty, and the ship given to a favourite page of Publicola, the vice-admiral; whereupon he retired to a poor farm at a great distance from Rome, and there ended his life." I was so curious to know the truth of this story, that I desired Agrippa might be called, who was admiral in that fight. He appeared, and confirmed the whole account: but with much more advantage to the captain, whose modesty had extenuated or concealed a great part of his merit. + +I was surprised to find corruption grown so high and so quick in that empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced; which made me less wonder at many parallel cases in other countries, where vices of all kinds have reigned so much longer, and where the whole praise, as well as pillage, has been engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had the least title to either. + +As every person called up made exactly the same appearance he had done in the world, it gave me melancholy reflections to observe how much the race of human kind was degenerated among us within these hundred years past; how the pox, under all its consequences and denominations had altered every lineament of an English countenance; shortened the size of bodies, unbraced the nerves, relaxed the sinews and muscles, introduced a sallow complexion, and rendered the flesh loose and rancid. + +I descended so low, as to desire some English yeoman of the old stamp might be summoned to appear; once so famous for the simplicity of their manners, diet, and dress; for justice in their dealings; for their true spirit of liberty; for their valour, and love of their country. Neither could I be wholly unmoved, after comparing the living with the dead, when I considered how all these pure native virtues were prostituted for a piece of money by their grand-children; who, in selling their votes and managing at elections, have acquired every vice and corruption that can possibly be learned in a court. + +CHAPTER IX. + +[The author returns to Maldonada. Sails to the kingdom of Luggnagg. The author confined. He is sent for to court. The manner of his admittance. The king's great lenity to his subjects.] + +The day of our departure being come, I took leave of his highness, the Governor of Glubbdubdrib, and returned with my two companions to Maldonada, where, after a fortnight's waiting, a ship was ready to sail for Luggnagg. The two gentlemen, and some others, were so generous and kind as to furnish me with provisions, and see me on board. I was a month in this voyage. We had one violent storm, and were under a necessity of steering westward to get into the trade wind, which holds for above sixty leagues. On the 21st of April, 1708, we sailed into the river of Clumegnig, which is a seaport town, at the south-east point of Luggnagg. We cast anchor within a league of the town, and made a signal for a pilot. Two of them came on board in less than half an hour, by whom we were guided between certain shoals and rocks, which are very dangerous in the passage, to a large basin, where a fleet may ride in safety within a cable's length of the town-wall. + +Some of our sailors, whether out of treachery or inadvertence, had informed the pilots "that I was a stranger, and great traveller;" whereof these gave notice to a custom-house officer, by whom I was examined very strictly upon my landing. This officer spoke to me in the language of Balnibarbi, which, by the force of much commerce, is generally understood in that town, especially by seamen and those employed in the customs. I gave him a short account of some particulars, and made my story as plausible and consistent as I could; but I thought it necessary to disguise my country, and call myself a Hollander; because my intentions were for Japan, and I knew the Dutch were the only Europeans permitted to enter into that kingdom. I therefore told the officer, "that having been shipwrecked on the coast of Balnibarbi, and cast on a rock, I was received up into Laputa, or the flying island (of which he had often heard), and was now endeavouring to get to Japan, whence I might find a convenience of returning to my own country." The officer said, "I must be confined till he could receive orders from court, for which he would write immediately, and hoped to receive an answer in a fortnight." I was carried to a convenient lodging with a sentry placed at the door; however, I had the liberty of a large garden, and was treated with humanity enough, being maintained all the time at the king's charge. I was invited by several persons, chiefly out of curiosity, because it was reported that I came from countries very remote, of which they had never heard. + +I hired a young man, who came in the same ship, to be an interpreter; he was a native of Luggnagg, but had lived some years at Maldonada, and was a perfect master of both languages. By his assistance, I was able to hold a conversation with those who came to visit me; but this consisted only of their questions, and my answers. + +The despatch came from court about the time we expected. It contained a warrant for conducting me and my retinue to Traldragdubh, or Trildrogdrib (for it is pronounced both ways as near as I can remember), by a party of ten horse. All my retinue was that poor lad for an interpreter, whom I persuaded into my service, and, at my humble request, we had each of us a mule to ride on. A messenger was despatched half a day's journey before us, to give the king notice of my approach, and to desire, "that his majesty would please to appoint a day and hour, when it would by his gracious pleasure that I might have the honour to lick the dust before his footstool." This is the court style, and I found it to be more than matter of form: for, upon my admittance two days after my arrival, I was commanded to crawl upon my belly, and lick the floor as I advanced; but, on account of my being a stranger, care was taken to have it made so clean, that the dust was not offensive. However, this was a peculiar grace, not allowed to any but persons of the highest rank, when they desire an admittance. Nay, sometimes the floor is strewed with dust on purpose, when the person to be admitted happens to have powerful enemies at court; and I have seen a great lord with his mouth so crammed, that when he had crept to the proper distance from the throne; he was not able to speak a word. Neither is there any remedy; because it is capital for those, who receive an audience to spit or wipe their mouths in his majesty's presence. There is indeed another custom, which I cannot altogether approve of: when the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle indulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewed with a certain brown powder of a deadly composition, which being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours. But in justice to this prince's great clemency, and the care he has of his subjects' lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the Monarchs of Europe would imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour, that strict orders are given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such execution, which, if his domestics neglect, they are in danger of incurring his royal displeasure. I myself heard him give directions, that one of his pages should be whipped, whose turn it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect a young lord of great hopes, coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the king at that time had no design against his life. But this good prince was so gracious as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more, without special orders. + +To return from this digression. When I had crept within four yards of the throne, I raised myself gently upon my knees, and then striking my forehead seven times against the ground, I pronounced the following words, as they had been taught me the night before, Inckpling gloffthrobb squut serummblhiop mlashnalt zwin tnodbalkuffh slhiophad gurdlubh asht. This is the compliment, established by the laws of the land, for all persons admitted to the king's presence. It may be rendered into English thus: "May your celestial majesty outlive the sun, eleven moons and a half!" To this the king returned some answer, which, although I could not understand, yet I replied as I had been directed: Fluft drin yalerick dwuldom prastrad mirpush, which properly signifies, "My tongue is in the mouth of my friend;" and by this expression was meant, that I desired leave to bring my interpreter; whereupon the young man already mentioned was accordingly introduced, by whose intervention I answered as many questions as his majesty could put in above an hour. I spoke in the Balnibarbian tongue, and my interpreter delivered my meaning in that of Luggnagg. + +The king was much delighted with my company, and ordered his bliffmarklub, or high-chamberlain, to appoint a lodging in the court for me and my interpreter; with a daily allowance for my table, and a large purse of gold for my common expenses. + +I staid three months in this country, out of perfect obedience to his majesty; who was pleased highly to favour me, and made me very honourable offers. But I thought it more consistent with prudence and justice to pass the remainder of my days with my wife and family. + +CHAPTER X. + +[The Luggnaggians commended. A particular description of the Struldbrugs, with many conversations between the author and some eminent persons upon that subject.] + +The Luggnaggians are a polite and generous people; and although they are not without some share of that pride which is peculiar to all Eastern countries, yet they show themselves courteous to strangers, especially such who are countenanced by the court. I had many acquaintance, and among persons of the best fashion; and being always attended by my interpreter, the conversation we had was not disagreeable. + +One day, in much good company, I was asked by a person of quality, "whether I had seen any of their struldbrugs, or immortals?" I said, "I had not;" and desired he would explain to me "what he meant by such an appellation, applied to a mortal creature." He told me "that sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family, with a red circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die." The spot, as he described it, "was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of time grew larger, and changed its colour; for at twelve years old it became green, so continued till five and twenty, then turned to a deep blue: at five and forty it grew coal black, and as large as an English shilling; but never admitted any further alteration." He said, "these births were so rare, that he did not believe there could be above eleven hundred struldbrugs, of both sexes, in the whole kingdom; of which he computed about fifty in the metropolis, and, among the rest, a young girl born; about three years ago: that these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a mere effect of chance; and the children of the struldbrugs themselves were equally mortal with the rest of the people." + +I freely own myself to have been struck with inexpressible delight, upon hearing this account: and the person who gave it me happening to understand the Balnibarbian language, which I spoke very well, I could not forbear breaking out into expressions, perhaps a little too extravagant. I cried out, as in a rapture, "Happy nation, where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal! Happy people, who enjoy so many living examples of ancient virtue, and have masters ready to instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages! but happiest, beyond all comparison, are those excellent struldbrugs, who, being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death!" I discovered my admiration that I had not observed any of these illustrious persons at court; the black spot on the forehead being so remarkable a distinction, that I could not have easily overlooked it: and it was impossible that his majesty, a most judicious prince, should not provide himself with a good number of such wise and able counsellors. Yet perhaps the virtue of those reverend sages was too strict for the corrupt and libertine manners of a court: and we often find by experience, that young men are too opinionated and volatile to be guided by the sober dictates of their seniors. However, since the king was pleased to allow me access to his royal person, I was resolved, upon the very first occasion, to deliver my opinion to him on this matter freely and at large, by the help of my interpreter; and whether he would please to take my advice or not, yet in one thing I was determined, that his majesty having frequently offered me an establishment in this country, I would, with great thankfulness, accept the favour, and pass my life here in the conversation of those superior beings the struldbrugs, if they would please to admit me." + +The gentleman to whom I addressed my discourse, because (as I have already observed) he spoke the language of Balnibarbi, said to me, with a sort of a smile which usually arises from pity to the ignorant, "that he was glad of any occasion to keep me among them, and desired my permission to explain to the company what I had spoke." He did so, and they talked together for some time in their own language, whereof I understood not a syllable, neither could I observe by their countenances, what impression my discourse had made on them. After a short silence, the same person told me, "that his friends and mine (so he thought fit to express himself) were very much pleased with the judicious remarks I had made on the great happiness and advantages of immortal life, and they were desirous to know, in a particular manner, what scheme of living I should have formed to myself, if it had fallen to my lot to have been born a struldbrug." + +I answered, "it was easy to be eloquent on so copious and delightful a subject, especially to me, who had been often apt to amuse myself with visions of what I should do, if I were a king, a general, or a great lord: and upon this very case, I had frequently run over the whole system how I should employ myself, and pass the time, if I were sure to live for ever. + +"That, if it had been my good fortune to come into the world a struldbrug, as soon as I could discover my own happiness, by understanding the difference between life and death, I would first resolve, by all arts and methods, whatsoever, to procure myself riches. In the pursuit of which, by thrift and management, I might reasonably expect, in about two hundred years, to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom. In the second place, I would, from my earliest youth, apply myself to the study of arts and sciences, by which I should arrive in time to excel all others in learning. Lastly, I would carefully record every action and event of consequence, that happened in the public, impartially draw the characters of the several successions of princes and great ministers of state, with my own observations on every point. I would exactly set down the several changes in customs, language, fashions of dress, diet, and diversions. By all which acquirements, I should be a living treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and certainly become the oracle of the nation. + +"I would never marry after threescore, but live in a hospitable manner, yet still on the saving side. I would entertain myself in forming and directing the minds of hopeful young men, by convincing them, from my own remembrance, experience, and observation, fortified by numerous examples, of the usefulness of virtue in public and private life. But my choice and constant companions should be a set of my own immortal brotherhood; among whom, I would elect a dozen from the most ancient, down to my own contemporaries. Where any of these wanted fortunes, I would provide them with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have some of them always at my table; only mingling a few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity after the same manner; just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year. + +"These struldbrugs and I would mutually communicate our observations and memorials, through the course of time; remark the several gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in every step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind; which, added to the strong influence of our own example, would probably prevent that continual degeneracy of human nature so justly complained of in all ages. + +"Add to this, the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states and empires; the changes in the lower and upper world; ancient cities in ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings; famous rivers lessening into shallow brooks; the ocean leaving one coast dry, and overwhelming another; the discovery of many countries yet unknown; barbarity overrunning the politest nations, and the most barbarous become civilized. I should then see the discovery of the longitude, the perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other great inventions, brought to the utmost perfection. + +"What wonderful discoveries should we make in astronomy, by outliving and confirming our own predictions; by observing the progress and return of comets, with the changes of motion in the sun, moon, and stars!" + +I enlarged upon many other topics, which the natural desire of endless life, and sublunary happiness, could easily furnish me with. When I had ended, and the sum of my discourse had been interpreted, as before, to the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among them in the language of the country, not without some laughter at my expense. At last, the same gentleman who had been my interpreter, said, "he was desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes, which I had fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon that allowance was less answerable for them. That this breed of struldbrugs was peculiar to their country, for there were no such people either in Balnibarbi or Japan, where he had the honour to be ambassador from his majesty, and found the natives in both those kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible: and it appeared from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me, that I received it as a thing wholly new, and scarcely to be credited. That in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where, during his residence, he had conversed very much, he observed long life to be the universal desire and wish of mankind. That whoever had one foot in the grave was sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could. That the oldest had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as the greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat. Only in this island of Luggnagg the appetite for living was not so eager, from the continual example of the struldbrugs before their eyes. + +"That the system of living contrived by me, was unreasonable and unjust; because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour, which no man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be in his wishes. That the question therefore was not, whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health; but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it. For although few men will avow their desires of being immortal, upon such hard conditions, yet in the two kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibarbi and Japan, he observed that every man desired to put off death some time longer, let it approach ever so late: and he rarely heard of any man who died willingly, except he were incited by the extremity of grief or torture. And he appealed to me, whether in those countries I had travelled, as well as my own, I had not observed the same general disposition." + +After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the struldbrugs among them. He said, "they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others. + +"If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. + +"As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds. + +"At ninety, they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they never can amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect, they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable. + +The language of this country being always upon the flux, the struldbrugs of one age do not understand those of another; neither are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (farther than by a few general words) with their neighbours the mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country." + +This was the account given me of the struldbrugs, as near as I can remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me at several times by some of my friends; but although they were told, "that I was a great traveller, and had seen all the world," they had not the least curiosity to ask me a question; only desired "I would give them slumskudask," or a token of remembrance; which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the law, that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a very scanty allowance. + +They are despised and hated by all sorts of people. When one of them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the usual way of computing how old they are, is by asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting history; for infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old. + +They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld; and the women more horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described; and among half a dozen, I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above a century or two between them. + +The reader will easily believe, that from what I had hear and seen, my keen appetite for perpetuity of life was much abated. I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed; and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure, from such a life. The king heard of all that had passed between me and my friends upon this occasion, and rallied me very pleasantly; wishing I could send a couple of struldbrugs to my own country, to arm our people against the fear of death; but this, it seems, is forbidden by the fundamental laws of the kingdom, or else I should have been well content with the trouble and expense of transporting them. + +I could not but agree, that the laws of this kingdom relative to the struldbrugs were founded upon the strongest reasons, and such as any other country would be under the necessity of enacting, in the like circumstances. Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public. + +CHAPTER XI. + +[The author leaves Luggnagg, and sails to Japan. From thence he returns in a Dutch ship to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to England.] + +I thought this account of the struldbrugs might be some entertainment to the reader, because it seems to be a little out of the common way; at least I do not remember to have met the like in any book of travels that has come to my hands: and if I am deceived, my excuse must be, that it is necessary for travellers who describe the same country, very often to agree in dwelling on the same particulars, without deserving the censure of having borrowed or transcribed from those who wrote before them. + +There is indeed a perpetual commerce between this kingdom and the great empire of Japan; and it is very probable, that the Japanese authors may have given some account of the struldbrugs; but my stay in Japan was so short, and I was so entirely a stranger to the language, that I was not qualified to make any inquiries. But I hope the Dutch, upon this notice, will be curious and able enough to supply my defects. + +His majesty having often pressed me to accept some employment in his court, and finding me absolutely determined to return to my native country, was pleased to give me his license to depart; and honoured me with a letter of recommendation, under his own hand, to the Emperor of Japan. He likewise presented me with four hundred and forty-four large pieces of gold (this nation delighting in even numbers), and a red diamond, which I sold in England for eleven hundred pounds. + +On the 6th of May, 1709, I took a solemn leave of his majesty, and all my friends. This prince was so gracious as to order a guard to conduct me to Glanguenstald, which is a royal port to the south- west part of the island. In six days I found a vessel ready to carry me to Japan, and spent fifteen days in the voyage. We landed at a small port-town called Xamoschi, situated on the south-east part of Japan; the town lies on the western point, where there is a narrow strait leading northward into along arm of the sea, upon the north-west part of which, Yedo, the metropolis, stands. At landing, I showed the custom-house officers my letter from the king of Luggnagg to his imperial majesty. They knew the seal perfectly well; it was as broad as the palm of my hand. The impression was, A KING LIFTING UP A LAME BEGGAR FROM THE EARTH. The magistrates of the town, hearing of my letter, received me as a public minister. They provided me with carriages and servants, and bore my charges to Yedo; where I was admitted to an audience, and delivered my letter, which was opened with great ceremony, and explained to the Emperor by an interpreter, who then gave me notice, by his majesty's order, "that I should signify my request, and, whatever it were, it should be granted, for the sake of his royal brother of Luggnagg." This interpreter was a person employed to transact affairs with the Hollanders. He soon conjectured, by my countenance, that I was a European, and therefore repeated his majesty's commands in Low Dutch, which he spoke perfectly well. I answered, as I had before determined, "that I was a Dutch merchant, shipwrecked in a very remote country, whence I had travelled by sea and land to Luggnagg, and then took shipping for Japan; where I knew my countrymen often traded, and with some of these I hoped to get an opportunity of returning into Europe: I therefore most humbly entreated his royal favour, to give order that I should be conducted in safety to Nangasac." To this I added another petition, "that for the sake of my patron the king of Luggnagg, his majesty would condescend to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed on my countrymen, of trampling upon the crucifix: because I had been thrown into his kingdom by my misfortunes, without any intention of trading." When this latter petition was interpreted to the Emperor, he seemed a little surprised; and said, "he believed I was the first of my countrymen who ever made any scruple in this point; and that he began to doubt, whether I was a real Hollander, or not; but rather suspected I must be a Christian. However, for the reasons I had offered, but chiefly to gratify the king of Luggnagg by an uncommon mark of his favour, he would comply with the singularity of my humour; but the affair must be managed with dexterity, and his officers should be commanded to let me pass, as it were by forgetfulness. For he assured me, that if the secret should be discovered by my countrymen the Dutch, they would cut my throat in the voyage." I returned my thanks, by the interpreter, for so unusual a favour; and some troops being at that time on their march to Nangasac, the commanding officer had orders to convey me safe thither, with particular instructions about the business of the crucifix. + +On the 9th day of June, 1709, I arrived at Nangasac, after a very long and troublesome journey. I soon fell into the company of some Dutch sailors belonging to the Amboyna, of Amsterdam, a stout ship of 450 tons. I had lived long in Holland, pursuing my studies at Leyden, and I spoke Dutch well. The seamen soon knew whence I came last: they were curious to inquire into my voyages and course of life. I made up a story as short and probable as I could, but concealed the greatest part. I knew many persons in Holland. I was able to invent names for my parents, whom I pretended to be obscure people in the province of Gelderland. I would have given the captain (one Theodorus Vangrult) what he pleased to ask for my voyage to Holland; but understanding I was a surgeon, he was contented to take half the usual rate, on condition that I would serve him in the way of my calling. Before we took shipping, I was often asked by some of the crew, whether I had performed the ceremony above mentioned? I evaded the question by general answers; "that I had satisfied the Emperor and court in all particulars." However, a malicious rogue of a skipper went to an officer, and pointing to me, told him, "I had not yet trampled on the crucifix;" but the other, who had received instructions to let me pass, gave the rascal twenty strokes on the shoulders with a bamboo; after which I was no more troubled with such questions. + +Nothing happened worth mentioning in this voyage. We sailed with a fair wind to the Cape of Good Hope, where we staid only to take in fresh water. On the 10th of April, 1710, we arrived safe at Amsterdam, having lost only three men by sickness in the voyage, and a fourth, who fell from the foremast into the sea, not far from the coast of Guinea. From Amsterdam I soon after set sail for England, in a small vessel belonging to that city. + +On the 16th of April we put in at the Downs. I landed next morning, and saw once more my native country, after an absence of five years and six months complete. I went straight to Redriff, where I arrived the same day at two in the afternoon, and found my wife and family in good health. + +PART IV -- A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS. + +CHAPTER I. + +[The author sets out as captain of a ship. His men conspire against him, confine him a long time to his cabin, and set him on shore in an unknown land. He travels up into the country. The Yahoos, a strange sort of animal, described. The author meets two Houyhnhnms.] + +I continued at home with my wife and children about five months, in a very happy condition, if I could have learned the lesson of knowing when I was well. I left my poor wife big with child, and accepted an advantageous offer made me to be captain of the Adventurer, a stout merchantman of 350 tons: for I understood navigation well, and being grown weary of a surgeon's employment at sea, which, however, I could exercise upon occasion, I took a skilful young man of that calling, one Robert Purefoy, into my ship. We set sail from Portsmouth upon the 7th day of September, 1710; on the 14th we met with Captain Pocock, of Bristol, at Teneriffe, who was going to the bay of Campechy to cut logwood. On the 16th, he was parted from us by a storm; I heard since my return, that his ship foundered, and none escaped but one cabin boy. He was an honest man, and a good sailor, but a little too positive in his own opinions, which was the cause of his destruction, as it has been with several others; for if he had followed my advice, he might have been safe at home with his family at this time, as well as myself. + +I had several men who died in my ship of calentures, so that I was forced to get recruits out of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, where I touched, by the direction of the merchants who employed me; which I had soon too much cause to repent: for I found afterwards, that most of them had been buccaneers. I had fifty hands onboard; and my orders were, that I should trade with the Indians in the South-Sea, and make what discoveries I could. These rogues, whom I had picked up, debauched my other men, and they all formed a conspiracy to seize the ship, and secure me; which they did one morning, rushing into my cabin, and binding me hand and foot, threatening to throw me overboard, if I offered to stir. I told them, "I was their prisoner, and would submit." This they made me swear to do, and then they unbound me, only fastening one of my legs with a chain, near my bed, and placed a sentry at my door with his piece charged, who was commanded to shoot me dead if I attempted my liberty. They sent me own victuals and drink, and took the government of the ship to themselves. Their design was to turn pirates and, plunder the Spaniards, which they could not do till they got more men. But first they resolved to sell the goods the ship, and then go to Madagascar for recruits, several among them having died since my confinement. They sailed many weeks, and traded with the Indians; but I knew not what course they took, being kept a close prisoner in my cabin, and expecting nothing less than to be murdered, as they often threatened me. + +Upon the 9th day of May, 1711, one James Welch came down to my cabin, and said, "he had orders from the captain to set me ashore." I expostulated with him, but in vain; neither would he so much as tell me who their new captain was. They forced me into the long- boat, letting me put on my best suit of clothes, which were as good as new, and take a small bundle of linen, but no arms, except my hanger; and they were so civil as not to search my pockets, into which I conveyed what money I had, with some other little necessaries. They rowed about a league, and then set me down on a strand. I desired them to tell me what country it was. They all swore, "they knew no more than myself;" but said, "that the captain" (as they called him) "was resolved, after they had sold the lading, to get rid of me in the first place where they could discover land." They pushed off immediately, advising me to make haste for fear of being overtaken by the tide, and so bade me farewell. + +In this desolate condition I advanced forward, and soon got upon firm ground, where I sat down on a bank to rest myself, and consider what I had best do. When I was a little refreshed, I went up into the country, resolving to deliver myself to the first savages I should meet, and purchase my life from them by some bracelets, glass rings, and other toys, which sailors usually provide themselves with in those voyages, and whereof I had some about me. The land was divided by long rows of trees, not regularly planted, but naturally growing; there was great plenty of grass, and several fields of oats. I walked very circumspectly, for fear of being surprised, or suddenly shot with an arrow from behind, or on either side. I fell into a beaten road, where I saw many tracts of human feet, and some of cows, but most of horses. At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed, which a little discomposed me, so that I lay down behind a thicket to observe them better. Some of them coming forward near the place where I lay, gave me an opportunity of distinctly marking their form. Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled, and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the fore parts of their legs and feet; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff colour. They had no tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus, which, I presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sat on the ground, for this posture they used, as well as lying down, and often stood on their hind feet. They climbed high trees as nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, terminating in sharp points, and hooked. They would often spring, and bound, and leap, with prodigious agility. The females were not so large as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor any thing more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies, except about the anus and pudenda. The dugs hung between their fore feet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked. The hair of both sexes was of several colours, brown, red, black, and yellow. Upon the whole, I never beheld, in all my travels, so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy. So that, thinking I had seen enough, full of contempt and aversion, I got up, and pursued the beaten road, hoping it might direct me to the cabin of some Indian. I had not got far, when I met one of these creatures full in my way, and coming up directly to me. The ugly monster, when he saw me, distorted several ways, every feature of his visage, and stared, as at an object he had never seen before; then approaching nearer, lifted up his fore-paw, whether out of curiosity or mischief I could not tell; but I drew my hanger, and gave him a good blow with the flat side of it, for I durst not strike with the edge, fearing the inhabitants might be provoked against me, if they should come to know that I had killed or maimed any of their cattle. When the beast felt the smart, he drew back, and roared so loud, that a herd of at least forty came flocking about me from the next field, howling and making odious faces; but I ran to the body of a tree, and leaning my back against it, kept them off by waving my hanger. Several of this cursed brood, getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head; however, I escaped pretty well by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with the filth, which fell about me on every side. + +In the midst of this distress, I observed them all to run away on a sudden as fast as they could; at which I ventured to leave the tree and pursue the road, wondering what it was that could put them into this fright. But looking on my left hand, I saw a horse walking softly in the field; which my persecutors having sooner discovered, was the cause of their flight. The horse started a little, when he came near me, but soon recovering himself, looked full in my face with manifest tokens of wonder; he viewed my hands and feet, walking round me several times. I would have pursued my journey, but he placed himself directly in the way, yet looking with a very mild aspect, never offering the least violence. We stood gazing at each other for some time; at last I took the boldness to reach my hand towards his neck with a design to stroke it, using the common style and whistle of jockeys, when they are going to handle a strange horse. But this animal seemed to receive my civilities with disdain, shook his head, and bent his brows, softly raising up his right fore-foot to remove my hand. Then he neighed three or four times, but in so different a cadence, that I almost began to think he was speaking to himself, in some language of his own. + +While he and I were thus employed, another horse came up; who applying himself to the first in a very formal manner, they gently struck each other's right hoof before, neighing several times by turns, and varying the sound, which seemed to be almost articulate. They went some paces off, as if it were to confer together, walking side by side, backward and forward, like persons deliberating upon some affair of weight, but often turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that I might not escape. I was amazed to see such actions and behaviour in brute beasts; and concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants of this country were endued with a proportionable degree of reason, they must needs be the wisest people upon earth. This thought gave me so much comfort, that I resolved to go forward, until I could discover some house or village, or meet with any of the natives, leaving the two horses to discourse together as they pleased. But the first, who was a dapple gray, observing me to steal off, neighed after me in so expressive a tone, that I fancied myself to understand what he meant; whereupon I turned back, and came near to him to expect his farther commands: but concealing my fear as much as I could, for I began to be in some pain how this adventure might terminate; and the reader will easily believe I did not much like my present situation. + +The two horses came up close to me, looking with great earnestness upon my face and hands. The gray steed rubbed my hat all round with his right fore-hoof, and discomposed it so much that I was forced to adjust it better by taking it off and settling it again; whereat, both he and his companion (who was a brown bay) appeared to be much surprised: the latter felt the lappet of my coat, and finding it to hang loose about me, they both looked with new signs of wonder. He stroked my right hand, seeming to admire the softness and colour; but he squeezed it so hard between his hoof and his pastern, that I was forced to roar; after which they both touched me with all possible tenderness. They were under great perplexity about my shoes and stockings, which they felt very often, neighing to each other, and using various gestures, not unlike those of a philosopher, when he would attempt to solve some new and difficult phenomenon. + +Upon the whole, the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and rational, so acute and judicious, that I at last concluded they must needs be magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some design, and seeing a stranger in the way, resolved to divert themselves with him; or, perhaps, were really amazed at the sight of a man so very different in habit, feature, and complexion, from those who might probably live in so remote a climate. Upon the strength of this reasoning, I ventured to address them in the following manner: "Gentlemen, if you be conjurers, as I have good cause to believe, you can understand my language; therefore I make bold to let your worships know that I am a poor distressed Englishman, driven by his misfortunes upon your coast; and I entreat one of you to let me ride upon his back, as if he were a real horse, to some house or village where I can be relieved. In return of which favour, I will make you a present of this knife and bracelet," taking them out of my pocket. The two creatures stood silent while I spoke, seeming to listen with great attention, and when I had ended, they neighed frequently towards each other, as if they were engaged in serious conversation. I plainly observed that their language expressed the passions very well, and the words might, with little pains, be resolved into an alphabet more easily than the Chinese. + +I could frequently distinguish the word Yahoo, which was repeated by each of them several times: and although it was impossible for me to conjecture what it meant, yet while the two horses were busy in conversation, I endeavoured to practise this word upon my tongue; and as soon as they were silent, I boldly pronounced Yahoo in a loud voice, imitating at the same time, as near as I could, the neighing of a horse; at which they were both visibly surprised; and the gray repeated the same word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right accent; wherein I spoke after him as well as I could, and found myself perceivably to improve every time, though very far from any degree of perfection. Then the bay tried me with a second word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing it to the English orthography, may be spelt thus, Houyhnhnm. I did not succeed in this so well as in the former; but after two or three farther trials, I had better fortune; and they both appeared amazed at my capacity. + +After some further discourse, which I then conjectured might relate to me, the two friends took their leaves, with the same compliment of striking each other's hoof; and the gray made me signs that I should walk before him; wherein I thought it prudent to comply, till I could find a better director. When I offered to slacken my pace, he would cry hhuun hhuun: I guessed his meaning, and gave him to understand, as well as I could, "that I was weary, and not able to walk faster;" upon which he would stand awhile to let me rest. + +CHAPTER II. + +[The author conducted by a Houyhnhnm to his house. The house described. The author's reception. The food of the Houyhnhnms. The author in distress for want of meat. Is at last relieved. His manner of feeding in this country.] + +Having travelled about three miles, we came to a long kind of building, made of timber stuck in the ground, and wattled across; the roof was low and covered with straw. I now began to be a little comforted; and took out some toys, which travellers usually carry for presents to the savage Indians of America, and other parts, in hopes the people of the house would be thereby encouraged to receive me kindly. The horse made me a sign to go in first; it was a large room with a smooth clay floor, and a rack and manger, extending the whole length on one side. There were three nags and two mares, not eating, but some of them sitting down upon their hams, which I very much wondered at; but wondered more to see the rest employed in domestic business; these seemed but ordinary cattle. However, this confirmed my first opinion, that a people who could so far civilise brute animals, must needs excel in wisdom all the nations of the world. The gray came in just after, and thereby prevented any ill treatment which the others might have given me. He neighed to them several times in a style of authority, and received answers. + +Beyond this room there were three others, reaching the length of the house, to which you passed through three doors, opposite to each other, in the manner of a vista. We went through the second room towards the third. Here the gray walked in first, beckoning me to attend: I waited in the second room, and got ready my presents for the master and mistress of the house; they were two knives, three bracelets of false pearls, a small looking-glass, and a bead necklace. The horse neighed three or four times, and I waited to hear some answers in a human voice, but I heard no other returns than in the same dialect, only one or two a little shriller than his. I began to think that this house must belong to some person of great note among them, because there appeared so much ceremony before I could gain admittance. But, that a man of quality should be served all by horses, was beyond my comprehension. I feared my brain was disturbed by my sufferings and misfortunes. I roused myself, and looked about me in the room where I was left alone: this was furnished like the first, only after a more elegant manner. I rubbed my eyes often, but the same objects still occurred. I pinched my arms and sides to awake myself, hoping I might be in a dream. I then absolutely concluded, that all these appearances could be nothing else but necromancy and magic. But I had no time to pursue these reflections; for the gray horse came to the door, and made me a sign to follow him into the third room where I saw a very comely mare, together with a colt and foal, sitting on their haunches upon mats of straw, not unartfully made, and perfectly neat and clean. + +The mare soon after my entrance rose from her mat, and coming up close, after having nicely observed my hands and face, gave me a most contemptuous look; and turning to the horse, I heard the word Yahoo often repeated betwixt them; the meaning of which word I could not then comprehend, although it was the first I had learned to pronounce. But I was soon better informed, to my everlasting mortification; for the horse, beckoning to me with his head, and repeating the hhuun, hhuun, as he did upon the road, which I understood was to attend him, led me out into a kind of court, where was another building, at some distance from the house. Here we entered, and I saw three of those detestable creatures, which I first met after my landing, feeding upon roots, and the flesh of some animals, which I afterwards found to be that of asses and dogs, and now and then a cow, dead by accident or disease. They were all tied by the neck with strong withes fastened to a beam; they held their food between the claws of their fore feet, and tore it with their teeth. + +The master horse ordered a sorrel nag, one of his servants, to untie the largest of these animals, and take him into the yard. The beast and I were brought close together, and by our countenances diligently compared both by master and servant, who thereupon repeated several times the word Yahoo. My horror and astonishment are not to be described, when I observed in this abominable animal, a perfect human figure: the face of it indeed was flat and broad, the nose depressed, the lips large, and the mouth wide; but these differences are common to all savage nations, where the lineaments of the countenance are distorted, by the natives suffering their infants to lie grovelling on the earth, or by carrying them on their backs, nuzzling with their face against the mothers' shoulders. The fore-feet of the Yahoo differed from my hands in nothing else but the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs. There was the same resemblance between our feet, with the same differences; which I knew very well, though the horses did not, because of my shoes and stockings; the same in every part of our bodies except as to hairiness and colour, which I have already described. + +The great difficulty that seemed to stick with the two horses, was to see the rest of my body so very different from that of a Yahoo, for which I was obliged to my clothes, whereof they had no conception. The sorrel nag offered me a root, which he held (after their manner, as we shall describe in its proper place) between his hoof and pastern; I took it in my hand, and, having smelt it, returned it to him again as civilly as I could. He brought out of the Yahoos' kennel a piece of ass's flesh; but it smelt so offensively that I turned from it with loathing: he then threw it to the Yahoo, by whom it was greedily devoured. He afterwards showed me a wisp of hay, and a fetlock full of oats; but I shook my head, to signify that neither of these were food for me. And indeed I now apprehended that I must absolutely starve, if I did not get to some of my own species; for as to those filthy Yahoos, although there were few greater lovers of mankind at that time than myself, yet I confess I never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts; and the more I came near them the more hateful they grew, while I stayed in that country. This the master horse observed by my behaviour, and therefore sent the Yahoo back to his kennel. He then put his fore-hoof to his mouth, at which I was much surprised, although he did it with ease, and with a motion that appeared perfectly natural, and made other signs, to know what I would eat; but I could not return him such an answer as he was able to apprehend; and if he had understood me, I did not see how it was possible to contrive any way for finding myself nourishment. While we were thus engaged, I observed a cow passing by, whereupon I pointed to her, and expressed a desire to go and milk her. This had its effect; for he led me back into the house, and ordered a mare-servant to open a room, where a good store of milk lay in earthen and wooden vessels, after a very orderly and cleanly manner. She gave me a large bowlful, of which I drank very heartily, and found myself well refreshed. + +About noon, I saw coming towards the house a kind of vehicle drawn like a sledge by four Yahoos. There was in it an old steed, who seemed to be of quality; he alighted with his hind-feet forward, having by accident got a hurt in his left fore-foot. He came to dine with our horse, who received him with great civility. They dined in the best room, and had oats boiled in milk for the second course, which the old horse ate warm, but the rest cold. Their mangers were placed circular in the middle of the room, and divided into several partitions, round which they sat on their haunches, upon bosses of straw. In the middle was a large rack, with angles answering to every partition of the manger; so that each horse and mare ate their own hay, and their own mash of oats and milk, with much decency and regularity. The behaviour of the young colt and foal appeared very modest, and that of the master and mistress extremely cheerful and complaisant to their guest. The gray ordered me to stand by him; and much discourse passed between him and his friend concerning me, as I found by the stranger's often looking on me, and the frequent repetition of the word Yahoo. + +I happened to wear my gloves, which the master gray observing, seemed perplexed, discovering signs of wonder what I had done to my fore-feet. He put his hoof three or four times to them, as if he would signify, that I should reduce them to their former shape, which I presently did, pulling off both my gloves, and putting them into my pocket. This occasioned farther talk; and I saw the company was pleased with my behaviour, whereof I soon found the good effects. I was ordered to speak the few words I understood; and while they were at dinner, the master taught me the names for oats, milk, fire, water, and some others, which I could readily pronounce after him, having from my youth a great facility in learning languages. + +When dinner was done, the master horse took me aside, and by signs and words made me understand the concern he was in that I had nothing to eat. Oats in their tongue are called hlunnh. This word I pronounced two or three times; for although I had refused them at first, yet, upon second thoughts, I considered that I could contrive to make of them a kind of bread, which might be sufficient, with milk, to keep me alive, till I could make my escape to some other country, and to creatures of my own species. The horse immediately ordered a white mare servant of his family to bring me a good quantity of oats in a sort of wooden tray. These I heated before the fire, as well as I could, and rubbed them till the husks came off, which I made a shift to winnow from the grain. I ground and beat them between two stones; then took water, and made them into a paste or cake, which I toasted at the fire and eat warm with milk. It was at first a very insipid diet, though common enough in many parts of Europe, but grew tolerable by time; and having been often reduced to hard fare in my life, this was not the first experiment I had made how easily nature is satisfied. And I cannot but observe, that I never had one hours sickness while I stayed in this island. It is true, I sometimes made a shift to catch a rabbit, or bird, by springs made of Yahoo's hairs; and I often gathered wholesome herbs, which I boiled, and ate as salads with my bread; and now and then, for a rarity, I made a little butter, and drank the whey. I was at first at a great loss for salt, but custom soon reconciled me to the want of it; and I am confident that the frequent use of salt among us is an effect of luxury, and was first introduced only as a provocative to drink, except where it is necessary for preserving flesh in long voyages, or in places remote from great markets; for we observe no animal to be fond of it but man, and as to myself, when I left this country, it was a great while before I could endure the taste of it in anything that I ate. + +This is enough to say upon the subject of my diet, wherewith other travellers fill their books, as if the readers were personally concerned whether we fare well or ill. However, it was necessary to mention this matter, lest the world should think it impossible that I could find sustenance for three years in such a country, and among such inhabitants. + +When it grew towards evening, the master horse ordered a place for me to lodge in; it was but six yards from the house and separated from the stable of the Yahoos. Here I got some straw, and covering myself with my own clothes, slept very sound. But I was in a short time better accommodated, as the reader shall know hereafter, when I come to treat more particularly about my way of living. + +CHAPTER III. + +[The author studies to learn the language. The Houyhnhnm, his master, assists in teaching him. The language described. Several Houyhnhnms of quality come out of curiosity to see the author. He gives his master a short account of his voyage.] + +My principal endeavour was to learn the language, which my master (for so I shall henceforth call him), and his children, and every servant of his house, were desirous to teach me; for they looked upon it as a prodigy, that a brute animal should discover such marks of a rational creature. I pointed to every thing, and inquired the name of it, which I wrote down in my journal-book when I was alone, and corrected my bad accent by desiring those of the family to pronounce it often. In this employment, a sorrel nag, one of the under-servants, was very ready to assist me. + +In speaking, they pronounced through the nose and throat, and their language approaches nearest to the High-Dutch, or German, of any I know in Europe; but is much more graceful and significant. The emperor Charles V. made almost the same observation, when he said "that if he were to speak to his horse, it should be in High- Dutch." + +The curiosity and impatience of my master were so great, that he spent many hours of his leisure to instruct me. He was convinced (as he afterwards told me) that I must be a Yahoo; but my teachableness, civility, and cleanliness, astonished him; which were qualities altogether opposite to those animals. He was most perplexed about my clothes, reasoning sometimes with himself, whether they were a part of my body: for I never pulled them off till the family were asleep, and got them on before they waked in the morning. My master was eager to learn "whence I came; how I acquired those appearances of reason, which I discovered in all my actions; and to know my story from my own mouth, which he hoped he should soon do by the great proficiency I made in learning and pronouncing their words and sentences." To help my memory, I formed all I learned into the English alphabet, and writ the words down, with the translations. This last, after some time, I ventured to do in my master's presence. It cost me much trouble to explain to him what I was doing; for the inhabitants have not the least idea of books or literature. + +In about ten weeks time, I was able to understand most of his questions; and in three months, could give him some tolerable answers. He was extremely curious to know "from what part of the country I came, and how I was taught to imitate a rational creature; because the Yahoos (whom he saw I exactly resembled in my head, hands, and face, that were only visible), with some appearance of cunning, and the strongest disposition to mischief, were observed to be the most unteachable of all brutes." I answered, "that I came over the sea, from a far place, with many others of my own kind, in a great hollow vessel made of the bodies of trees: that my companions forced me to land on this coast, and then left me to shift for myself." It was with some difficulty, and by the help of many signs, that I brought him to understand me. He replied, "that I must needs be mistaken, or that I said the thing which was not;" for they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood. "He knew it was impossible that there could be a country beyond the sea, or that a parcel of brutes could move a wooden vessel whither they pleased upon water. He was sure no Houyhnhnm alive could make such a vessel, nor would trust Yahoos to manage it." + +The word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a HORSE, and, in its etymology, the PERFECTION OF NATURE. I told my master, "that I was at a loss for expression, but would improve as fast as I could; and hoped, in a short time, I should be able to tell him wonders." He was pleased to direct his own mare, his colt, and foal, and the servants of the family, to take all opportunities of instructing me; and every day, for two or three hours, he was at the same pains himself. Several horses and mares of quality in the neighbourhood came often to our house, upon the report spread of "a wonderful Yahoo, that could speak like a Houyhnhnm, and seemed, in his words and actions, to discover some glimmerings of reason." These delighted to converse with me: they put many questions, and received such answers as I was able to return. By all these advantages I made so great a progress, that, in five months from my arrival I understood whatever was spoken, and could express myself tolerably well. + +The Houyhnhnms, who came to visit my master out of a design of seeing and talking with me, could hardly believe me to be a right Yahoo, because my body had a different covering from others of my kind. They were astonished to observe me without the usual hair or skin, except on my head, face, and hands; but I discovered that secret to my master upon an accident which happened about a fortnight before. + +I have already told the reader, that every night, when the family were gone to bed, it was my custom to strip, and cover myself with my clothes. It happened, one morning early, that my master sent for me by the sorrel nag, who was his valet. When he came I was fast asleep, my clothes fallen off on one side, and my shirt above my waist. I awaked at the noise he made, and observed him to deliver his message in some disorder; after which he went to my master, and in a great fright gave him a very confused account of what he had seen. This I presently discovered, for, going as soon as I was dressed to pay my attendance upon his honour, he asked me "the meaning of what his servant had reported, that I was not the same thing when I slept, as I appeared to be at other times; that his vale assured him, some part of me was white, some yellow, at least not so white, and some brown." + +I had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to distinguish myself, as much as possible, from that cursed race of Yahoos; but now I found it in vain to do so any longer. Besides, I considered that my clothes and shoes would soon wear out, which already were in a declining condition, and must be supplied by some contrivance from the hides of Yahoos, or other brutes; whereby the whole secret would be known. I therefore told my master, "that in the country whence I came, those of my kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of certain animals prepared by art, as well for decency as to avoid the inclemencies of air, both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person, I would give him immediate conviction, if he pleased to command me: only desiring his excuse, if I did not expose those parts that nature taught us to conceal." He said, "my discourse was all very strange, but especially the last part; for he could not understand, why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but, however, I might do as I pleased." Whereupon I first unbuttoned my coat, and pulled it off. I did the same with my waistcoat. I drew off my shoes, stockings, and breeches. I let my shirt down to my waist, and drew up the bottom; fastening it like a girdle about my middle, to hide my nakedness. + +My master observed the whole performance with great signs of curiosity and admiration. He took up all my clothes in his pastern, one piece after another, and examined them diligently; he then stroked my body very gently, and looked round me several times; after which, he said, it was plain I must be a perfect Yahoo; but that I differed very much from the rest of my species in the softness, whiteness, and smoothness of my skin; my want of hair in several parts of my body; the shape and shortness of my claws behind and before; and my affectation of walking continually on my two hinder feet. He desired to see no more; and gave me leave to put on my clothes again, for I was shuddering with cold. + +I expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the appellation of Yahoo, an odious animal, for which I had so utter a hatred and contempt: I begged he would forbear applying that word to me, and make the same order in his family and among his friends whom he suffered to see me. I requested likewise, "that the secret of my having a false covering to my body, might be known to none but himself, at least as long as my present clothing should last; for as to what the sorrel nag, his valet, had observed, his honour might command him to conceal it." + +All this my master very graciously consented to; and thus the secret was kept till my clothes began to wear out, which I was forced to supply by several contrivances that shall hereafter be mentioned. In the meantime, he desired "I would go on with my utmost diligence to learn their language, because he was more astonished at my capacity for speech and reason, than at the figure of my body, whether it were covered or not;" adding, "that he waited with some impatience to hear the wonders which I promised to tell him." + +Thenceforward he doubled the pains he had been at to instruct me: he brought me into all company, and made them treat me with civility; "because," as he told them, privately, "this would put me into good humour, and make me more diverting." + +Every day, when I waited on him, beside the trouble he was at in teaching, he would ask me several questions concerning myself, which I answered as well as I could, and by these means he had already received some general ideas, though very imperfect. It would be tedious to relate the several steps by which I advanced to a more regular conversation; but the first account I gave of myself in any order and length was to this purpose: + +"That I came from a very far country, as I already had attempted to tell him, with about fifty more of my own species; that we travelled upon the seas in a great hollow vessel made of wood, and larger than his honour's house. I described the ship to him in the best terms I could, and explained, by the help of my handkerchief displayed, how it was driven forward by the wind. That upon a quarrel among us, I was set on shore on this coast, where I walked forward, without knowing whither, till he delivered me from the persecution of those execrable Yahoos." He asked me, "who made the ship, and how it was possible that the Houyhnhnms of my country would leave it to the management of brutes?" My answer was, "that I durst proceed no further in my relation, unless he would give me his word and honour that he would not be offended, and then I would tell him the wonders I had so often promised." He agreed; and I went on by assuring him, that the ship was made by creatures like myself; who, in all the countries I had travelled, as well as in my own, were the only governing rational animals; and that upon my arrival hither, I was as much astonished to see the Houyhnhnms act like rational beings, as he, or his friends, could be, in finding some marks of reason in a creature he was pleased to call a Yahoo; to which I owned my resemblance in every part, but could not account for their degenerate and brutal nature. I said farther, "that if good fortune ever restored me to my native country, to relate my travels hither, as I resolved to do, everybody would believe, that I said the thing that was not, that I invented the story out of my own head; and (with all possible respect to himself, his family, and friends, and under his promise of not being offended) our countrymen would hardly think it probable that a Houyhnhnm should be the presiding creature of a nation, and a Yahoo the brute." + +CHAPTER IV. + +[The Houyhnhnm's notion of truth and falsehood. The author's discourse disapproved by his master. The author gives a more particular account of himself, and the accidents of his voyage.] + +My master heard me with great appearances of uneasiness in his countenance; because doubting, or not believing, are so little known in this country, that the inhabitants cannot tell how to behave themselves under such circumstances. And I remember, in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation, it was with much difficulty that he comprehended what I meant, although he had otherwise a most acute judgment. For he argued thus: "that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now, if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated, because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information, that he leaves me worse than in ignorance; for I am led to believe a thing black, when it is white, and short, when it is long." And these were all the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well understood, and so universally practised, among human creatures. + +To return from this digression. When I asserted that the Yahoos were the only governing animals in my country, which my master said was altogether past his conception, he desired to know, "whether we had Houyhnhnms among us, and what was their employment?" I told him, "we had great numbers; that in summer they grazed in the fields, and in winter were kept in houses with hay and oats, where Yahoo servants were employed to rub their skins smooth, comb their manes, pick their feet, serve them with food, and make their beds." "I understand you well," said my master: "it is now very plain, from all you have spoken, that whatever share of reason the Yahoos pretend to, the Houyhnhnms are your masters; I heartily wish our Yahoos would be so tractable." I begged "his honour would please to excuse me from proceeding any further, because I was very certain that the account he expected from me would be highly displeasing." But he insisted in commanding me to let him know the best and the worst. I told him "he should be obeyed." I owned "that the Houyhnhnms among us, whom we called horses, were the most generous and comely animals we had; that they excelled in strength and swiftness; and when they belonged to persons of quality, were employed in travelling, racing, or drawing chariots; they were treated with much kindness and care, till they fell into diseases, or became foundered in the feet; but then they were sold, and used to all kind of drudgery till they died; after which their skins were stripped, and sold for what they were worth, and their bodies left to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey. But the common race of horses had not so good fortune, being kept by farmers and carriers, and other mean people, who put them to greater labour, and fed them worse." I described, as well as I could, our way of riding; the shape and use of a bridle, a saddle, a spur, and a whip; of harness and wheels. I added, "that we fastened plates of a certain hard substance, called iron, at the bottom of their feet, to preserve their hoofs from being broken by the stony ways, on which we often travelled." + +My master, after some expressions of great indignation, wondered "how we dared to venture upon a Houyhnhnm's back; for he was sure, that the weakest servant in his house would be able to shake off the strongest Yahoo; or by lying down and rolling on his back, squeeze the brute to death." I answered "that our horses were trained up, from three or four years old, to the several uses we intended them for; that if any of them proved intolerably vicious, they were employed for carriages; that they were severely beaten, while they were young, for any mischievous tricks; that the males, designed for the common use of riding or draught, were generally castrated about two years after their birth, to take down their spirits, and make them more tame and gentle; that they were indeed sensible of rewards and punishments; but his honour would please to consider, that they had not the least tincture of reason, any more than the Yahoos in this country." + +It put me to the pains of many circumlocutions, to give my master a right idea of what I spoke; for their language does not abound in variety of words, because their wants and passions are fewer than among us. But it is impossible to express his noble resentment at our savage treatment of the Houyhnhnm race; particularly after I had explained the manner and use of castrating horses among us, to hinder them from propagating their kind, and to render them more servile. He said, "if it were possible there could be any country where Yahoos alone were endued with reason, they certainly must be the governing animal; because reason in time will always prevail against brutal strength. But, considering the frame of our bodies, and especially of mine, he thought no creature of equal bulk was so ill-contrived for employing that reason in the common offices of life;" whereupon he desired to know whether those among whom I lived resembled me, or the Yahoos of his country?" I assured him, "that I was as well shaped as most of my age; but the younger, and the females, were much more soft and tender, and the skins of the latter generally as white as milk." He said, "I differed indeed from other Yahoos, being much more cleanly, and not altogether so deformed; but, in point of real advantage, he thought I differed for the worse: that my nails were of no use either to my fore or hinder feet; as to my fore feet, he could not properly call them by that name, for he never observed me to walk upon them; that they were too soft to bear the ground; that I generally went with them uncovered; neither was the covering I sometimes wore on them of the same shape, or so strong as that on my feet behind: that I could not walk with any security, for if either of my hinder feet slipped, I must inevitably fail." He then began to find fault with other parts of my body: "the flatness of my face, the prominence of my nose, mine eyes placed directly in front, so that I could not look on either side without turning my head: that I was not able to feed myself, without lifting one of my fore-feet to my mouth: and therefore nature had placed those joints to answer that necessity. He knew not what could be the use of those several clefts and divisions in my feet behind; that these were too soft to bear the hardness and sharpness of stones, without a covering made from the skin of some other brute; that my whole body wanted a fence against heat and cold, which I was forced to put on and off every day, with tediousness and trouble: and lastly, that he observed every animal in this country naturally to abhor the Yahoos, whom the weaker avoided, and the stronger drove from them. So that, supposing us to have the gift of reason, he could not see how it were possible to cure that natural antipathy, which every creature discovered against us; nor consequently how we could tame and render them serviceable. However, he would," as he said, "debate the matter no farther, because he was more desirous to know my own story, the country where I was born, and the several actions and events of my life, before I came hither." + +I assured him, "how extremely desirous I was that he should be satisfied on every point; but I doubted much, whether it would be possible for me to explain myself on several subjects, whereof his honour could have no conception; because I saw nothing in his country to which I could resemble them; that, however, I would do my best, and strive to express myself by similitudes, humbly desiring his assistance when I wanted proper words;" which he was pleased to promise me. + +I said, "my birth was of honest parents, in an island called England; which was remote from his country, as many days' journey as the strongest of his honour's servants could travel in the annual course of the sun; that I was bred a surgeon, whose trade it is to cure wounds and hurts in the body, gotten by accident or violence; that my country was governed by a female man, whom we called queen; that I left it to get riches, whereby I might maintain myself and family, when I should return; that, in my last voyage, I was commander of the ship, and had about fifty Yahoos under me, many of which died at sea, and I was forced to supply them by others picked out from several nations; that our ship was twice in danger of being sunk, the first time by a great storm, and the second by striking against a rock." Here my master interposed, by asking me, "how I could persuade strangers, out of different countries, to venture with me, after the losses I had sustained, and the hazards I had run?" I said, "they were fellows of desperate fortunes, forced to fly from the places of their birth on account of their poverty or their crimes. Some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, robbery, perjury, forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes, or sodomy; for flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy; and most of them had broken prison; none of these durst return to their native countries, for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and therefore they were under the necessity of seeking a livelihood in other places." + +During this discourse, my master was pleased to interrupt me several times. I had made use of many circumlocutions in describing to him the nature of the several crimes for which most of our crew had been forced to fly their country. This labour took up several days' conversation, before he was able to comprehend me. He was wholly at a loss to know what could be the use or necessity of practising those vices. To clear up which, I endeavoured to give some ideas of the desire of power and riches; of the terrible effects of lust, intemperance, malice, and envy. All this I was forced to define and describe by putting cases and making suppositions. After which, like one whose imagination was struck with something never seen or heard of before, he would lift up his eyes with amazement and indignation. Power, government, war, law, punishment, and a thousand other things, had no terms wherein that language could express them, which made the difficulty almost insuperable, to give my master any conception of what I meant. But being of an excellent understanding, much improved by contemplation and converse, he at last arrived at a competent knowledge of what human nature, in our parts of the world, is capable to perform, and desired I would give him some particular account of that land which we call Europe, but especially of my own country. + +CHAPTER V. + +[The author at his master's command, informs him of the state of England. The causes of war among the princes of Europe. The author begins to explain the English constitution.] + +The reader may please to observe, that the following extract of many conversations I had with my master, contains a summary of the most material points which were discoursed at several times for above two years; his honour often desiring fuller satisfaction, as I farther improved in the Houyhnhnm tongue. I laid before him, as well as I could, the whole state of Europe; I discoursed of trade and manufactures, of arts and sciences; and the answers I gave to all the questions he made, as they arose upon several subjects, were a fund of conversation not to be exhausted. But I shall here only set down the substance of what passed between us concerning my own country, reducing it in order as well as I can, without any regard to time or other circumstances, while I strictly adhere to truth. My only concern is, that I shall hardly be able to do justice to my master's arguments and expressions, which must needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into our barbarous English. + +In obedience, therefore, to his honour's commands, I related to him the Revolution under the Prince of Orange; the long war with France, entered into by the said prince, and renewed by his successor, the present queen, wherein the greatest powers of Christendom were engaged, and which still continued: I computed, at his request, "that about a million of Yahoos might have been killed in the whole progress of it; and perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk." + +He asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another?" I answered "they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or gray; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent. + +"Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrels with another for fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is entered upon, because the enemy is too strong; and sometimes, because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have the things which we want, and we both fight, till they take ours, or give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of a war, to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. It is justifiable to enter into war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for us, or a territory of land, that would render our dominions round and complete. If a prince sends forces into a nation, where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living. It is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another, to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he has driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison, or banish, the prince he came to relieve. Alliance by blood, or marriage, is a frequent cause of war between princes; and the nearer the kindred is, the greater their disposition to quarrel; poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. For these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most honourable of all others; because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill, in cold blood, as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. + +"There is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in Europe, not able to make war by themselves, who hire out their troops to richer nations, for so much a day to each man; of which they keep three- fourths to themselves, and it is the best part of their maintenance: such are those in many northern parts of Europe." + +"What you have told me," said my master, "upon the subject of war, does indeed discover most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend to: however, it is happy that the shame is greater than the danger; and that nature has left you utterly incapable of doing much mischief. For, your mouths lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each other to any purpose, unless by consent. Then as to the claws upon your feet before and behind, they are so short and tender, that one of our Yahoos would drive a dozen of yours before him. And therefore, in recounting the numbers of those who have been killed in battle, I cannot but think you have said the thing which is not." + +I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his ignorance. And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses' feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him, "that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators." + +I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. He said, "whoever understood the nature of Yahoos, might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind to which he was wholly a stranger before. He thought his ears, being used to such abominable words, might, by degrees, admit them with less detestation: that although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that, instead of reason we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill shapen body, not only larger but more distorted." + +He added, "that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, both in this and some former discourses. There was another point, which a little perplexed him at present. I had informed him, that some of our crew left their country on account of being ruined by law; that I had already explained the meaning of the word; but he was at a loss how it should come to pass, that the law, which was intended for every man's preservation, should be any man's ruin. Therefore he desired to be further satisfied what I meant by law, and the dispensers thereof, according to the present practice in my own country; because he thought nature and reason were sufficient guides for a reasonable animal, as we pretended to be, in showing us what he ought to do, and what to avoid." + +I assured his honour, "that the law was a science in which I had not much conversed, further than by employing advocates, in vain, upon some injustices that had been done me: however, I would give him all the satisfaction I was able." + +I said, "there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to gain over my adversary's lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary: and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of the bench. Now your honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office. + +"It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly. + +"In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned; they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black; her horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue. + +"It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide, whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off. + +"In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save a criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law." + +Here my master interposing, said, "it was a pity, that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind, as these lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge." In answer to which I assured his honour, "that in all points out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession." + +CHAPTER VI. + +[A continuation of the state of England under Queen Anne. The character of a first minister of state in European courts.] + +My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what I meant in saying, they did it for hire. Whereupon I was at much pains to describe to him the use of money, the materials it was made of, and the value of the metals; "that when a Yahoo had got a great store of this precious substance, he was able to purchase whatever he had a mind to; the finest clothing, the noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most costly meats and drinks, and have his choice of the most beautiful females. Therefore since money alone was able to perform all these feats, our Yahoos thought they could never have enough of it to spend, or to save, as they found themselves inclined, from their natural bent either to profusion or avarice; that the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man's labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former; that the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring every day for small wages, to make a few live plentifully." + +I enlarged myself much on these, and many other particulars to the same purpose; but his honour was still to seek; for he went upon a supposition, that all animals had a title to their share in the productions of the earth, and especially those who presided over the rest. Therefore he desired I would let him know, "what these costly meats were, and how any of us happened to want them?" Whereupon I enumerated as many sorts as came into my head, with the various methods of dressing them, which could not be done without sending vessels by sea to every part of the world, as well for liquors to drink as for sauces and innumerable other conveniences. I assured him "that this whole globe of earth must be at least three times gone round before one of our better female Yahoos could get her breakfast, or a cup to put it in." He said "that must needs be a miserable country which cannot furnish food for its own inhabitants. But what he chiefly wondered at was, how such vast tracts of ground as I described should be wholly without fresh water, and the people put to the necessity of sending over the sea for drink." I replied "that England (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food more than its inhabitants are able to consume, as well as liquors extracted from grain, or pressed out of the fruit of certain trees, which made excellent drink, and the same proportion in every other convenience of life. But, in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, whence, in return, we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, flattering, suborning, forswearing, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and the like occupations:" every one of which terms I was at much pains to make him understand. + +"That wine was not imported among us from foreign countries to supply the want of water or other drinks, but because it was a sort of liquid which made us merry by putting us out of our senses, diverted all melancholy thoughts, begat wild extravagant imaginations in the brain, raised our hopes and banished our fears, suspended every office of reason for a time, and deprived us of the use of our limbs, till we fell into a profound sleep; although it must be confessed, that we always awaked sick and dispirited; and that the use of this liquor filled us with diseases which made our lives uncomfortable and short. + +"But beside all this, the bulk of our people supported themselves by furnishing the necessities or conveniences of life to the rich and to each other. For instance, when I am at home, and dressed as I ought to be, I carry on my body the workmanship of a hundred tradesmen; the building and furniture of my house employ as many more, and five times the number to adorn my wife." + +I was going on to tell him of another sort of people, who get their livelihood by attending the sick, having, upon some occasions, informed his honour that many of my crew had died of diseases. But here it was with the utmost difficulty that I brought him to apprehend what I meant. "He could easily conceive, that a Houyhnhnm, grew weak and heavy a few days before his death, or by some accident might hurt a limb; but that nature, who works all things to perfection, should suffer any pains to breed in our bodies, he thought impossible, and desired to know the reason of so unaccountable an evil." + +I told him "we fed on a thousand things which operated contrary to each other; that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the provocation of thirst; that we sat whole nights drinking strong liquors, without eating a bit, which disposed us to sloth, inflamed our bodies, and precipitated or prevented digestion; that prostitute female Yahoos acquired a certain malady, which bred rottenness in the bones of those who fell into their embraces; that this, and many other diseases, were propagated from father to son; so that great numbers came into the world with complicated maladies upon them; that it would be endless to give him a catalogue of all diseases incident to human bodies, for they would not be fewer than five or six hundred, spread over every limb and joint--in short, every part, external and intestine, having diseases appropriated to itself. To remedy which, there was a sort of people bred up among us in the profession, or pretence, of curing the sick. And because I had some skill in the faculty, I would, in gratitude to his honour, let him know the whole mystery and method by which they proceed. + +"Their fundamental is, that all diseases arise from repletion; whence they conclude, that a great evacuation of the body is necessary, either through the natural passage or upwards at the mouth. Their next business is from herbs, minerals, gums, oils, shells, salts, juices, sea-weed, excrements, barks of trees, serpents, toads, frogs, spiders, dead men's flesh and bones, birds, beasts, and fishes, to form a composition, for smell and taste, the most abominable, nauseous, and detestable, they can possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately rejects with loathing, and this they call a vomit; or else, from the same store-house, with some other poisonous additions, they command us to take in at the orifice above or below (just as the physician then happens to be disposed) a medicine equally annoying and disgustful to the bowels; which, relaxing the belly, drives down all before it; and this they call a purge, or a clyster. For nature (as the physicians allege) having intended the superior anterior orifice only for the intromission of solids and liquids, and the inferior posterior for ejection, these artists ingeniously considering that in all diseases nature is forced out of her seat, therefore, to replace her in it, the body must be treated in a manner directly contrary, by interchanging the use of each orifice; forcing solids and liquids in at the anus, and making evacuations at the mouth. + +"But, besides real diseases, we are subject to many that are only imaginary, for which the physicians have invented imaginary cures; these have their several names, and so have the drugs that are proper for them; and with these our female Yahoos are always infested. + +"One great excellency in this tribe, is their skill at prognostics, wherein they seldom fail; their predictions in real diseases, when they rise to any degree of malignity, generally portending death, which is always in their power, when recovery is not: and therefore, upon any unexpected signs of amendment, after they have pronounced their sentence, rather than be accused as false prophets, they know how to approve their sagacity to the world, by a seasonable dose. + +"They are likewise of special use to husbands and wives who are grown weary of their mates; to eldest sons, to great ministers of state, and often to princes." + +I had formerly, upon occasion, discoursed with my master upon the nature of government in general, and particularly of our own excellent constitution, deservedly the wonder and envy of the whole world. But having here accidentally mentioned a minister of state, he commanded me, some time after, to inform him, "what species of Yahoo I particularly meant by that appellation." + +I told him, "that a first or chief minister of state, who was the person I intended to describe, was the creature wholly exempt from joy and grief, love and hatred, pity and anger; at least, makes use of no other passions, but a violent desire of wealth, power, and titles; that he applies his words to all uses, except to the indication of his mind; that he never tells a truth but with an intent that you should take it for a lie; nor a lie, but with a design that you should take it for a truth; that those he speaks worst of behind their backs are in the surest way of preferment; and whenever he begins to praise you to others, or to yourself, you are from that day forlorn. The worst mark you can receive is a promise, especially when it is confirmed with an oath; after which, every wise man retires, and gives over all hopes. + +"There are three methods, by which a man may rise to be chief minister. The first is, by knowing how, with prudence, to dispose of a wife, a daughter, or a sister; the second, by betraying or undermining his predecessor; and the third is, by a furious zeal, in public assemblies, against the corruption's of the court. But a wise prince would rather choose to employ those who practise the last of these methods; because such zealots prove always the most obsequious and subservient to the will and passions of their master. That these ministers, having all employments at their disposal, preserve themselves in power, by bribing the majority of a senate or great council; and at last, by an expedient, called an act of indemnity" (whereof I described the nature to him), "they secure themselves from after-reckonings, and retire from the public laden with the spoils of the nation. + +"The palace of a chief minister is a seminary to breed up others in his own trade: the pages, lackeys, and porters, by imitating their master, become ministers of state in their several districts, and learn to excel in the three principal ingredients, of insolence, lying, and bribery. Accordingly, they have a subaltern court paid to them by persons of the best rank; and sometimes by the force of dexterity and impudence, arrive, through several gradations, to be successors to their lord. + +"He is usually governed by a decayed wench, or favourite footman, who are the tunnels through which all graces are conveyed, and may properly be called, in the last resort, the governors of the kingdom." + +One day, in discourse, my master, having heard me mention the nobility of my country, was pleased to make me a compliment which I could not pretend to deserve: "that he was sure I must have been born of some noble family, because I far exceeded in shape, colour, and cleanliness, all the Yahoos of his nation, although I seemed to fail in strength and agility, which must be imputed to my different way of living from those other brutes; and besides I was not only endowed with the faculty of speech, but likewise with some rudiments of reason, to a degree that, with all his acquaintance, I passed for a prodigy." + +He made me observe, "that among the Houyhnhnms, the white, the sorrel, and the iron-gray, were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the dapple-gray, and the black; nor born with equal talents of mind, or a capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own race, which in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural." + +I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, "that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that, as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of money), whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride. + +"Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted, repealed, or altered: and these nobles have likewise the decision of all our possessions, without appeal."~{ This paragraph is not in the original editions. }~ + +CHAPTER VII. + +[The author's great love of his native country. His master's observations upon the constitution and administration of England, as described by the author, with parallel cases and comparisons. His master's observations upon human nature.] + +The reader may be disposed to wonder how I could prevail on myself to give so free a representation of my own species, among a race of mortals who are already too apt to conceive the vilest opinion of humankind, from that entire congruity between me and their Yahoos. But I must freely confess, that the many virtues of those excellent quadrupeds, placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light, and to think the honour of my own kind not worth managing; which, besides, it was impossible for me to do, before a person of so acute a judgment as my master, who daily convinced me of a thousand faults in myself, whereof I had not the least perception before, and which, with us, would never be numbered even among human infirmities. I had likewise learned, from his example, an utter detestation of all falsehood or disguise; and truth appeared so amiable to me, that I determined upon sacrificing every thing to it. + +Let me deal so candidly with the reader as to confess that there was yet a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my representation of things. I had not yet been a year in this country before I contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that I entered on a firm resolution never to return to humankind, but to pass the rest of my life among these admirable Houyhnhnms, in the contemplation and practice of every virtue, where I could have no example or incitement to vice. But it was decreed by fortune, my perpetual enemy, that so great a felicity should not fall to my share. However, it is now some comfort to reflect, that in what I said of my countrymen, I extenuated their faults as much as I durst before so strict an examiner; and upon every article gave as favourable a turn as the matter would bear. For, indeed, who is there alive that will not be swayed by his bias and partiality to the place of his birth? + +I have related the substance of several conversations I had with my master during the greatest part of the time I had the honour to be in his service; but have, indeed, for brevity sake, omitted much more than is here set down. + +When I had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed to be fully satisfied, he sent for me one morning early, and commanded me to sit down at some distance (an honour which he had never before conferred upon me). He said, "he had been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions; that, as to myself, it was manifest I had neither the strength nor agility of a common Yahoo; that I walked infirmly on my hinder feet; had found out a contrivance to make my claws of no use or defence, and to remove the hair from my chin, which was intended as a shelter from the sun and the weather: lastly, that I could neither run with speed, nor climb trees like my brethren," as he called them, "the Yahoos in his country. + +"That our institutions of government and law were plainly owing to our gross defects in reason, and by consequence in virtue; because reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature; which was, therefore, a character we had no pretence to challenge, even from the account I had given of my own people; although he manifestly perceived, that, in order to favour them, I had concealed many particulars, and often said the thing which was not. + +"He was the more confirmed in this opinion, because, he observed, that as I agreed in every feature of my body with other Yahoos, except where it was to my real disadvantage in point of strength, speed, and activity, the shortness of my claws, and some other particulars where nature had no part; so from the representation I had given him of our lives, our manners, and our actions, he found as near a resemblance in the disposition of our minds." He said, "the Yahoos were known to hate one another, more than they did any different species of animals; and the reason usually assigned was, the odiousness of their own shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves. He had therefore begun to think it not unwise in us to cover our bodies, and by that invention conceal many of our deformities from each other, which would else be hardly supportable. But he now found he had been mistaken, and that the dissensions of those brutes in his country were owing to the same cause with ours, as I had described them. For if," said he, "you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself; and therefore a servant was usually employed to stand by while they were feeding abroad, and those kept at home were tied at a distance from each other: that if a cow died of age or accident, before a Houyhnhnm could secure it for his own Yahoos, those in the neighbourhood would come in herds to seize it, and then would ensue such a battle as I had described, with terrible wounds made by their claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one another, for want of such convenient instruments of death as we had invented. At other times, the like battles have been fought between the Yahoos of several neighbourhoods, without any visible cause; those of one district watching all opportunities to surprise the next, before they are prepared. But if they find their project has miscarried, they return home, and, for want of enemies, engage in what I call a civil war among themselves. + +"That in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of several colours, whereof the Yahoos are violently fond: and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happens, they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out; then carry them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their treasure." My master said, "he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a Yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice which I had ascribed to mankind. That he had once, by way of experiment, privately removed a heap of these stones from the place where one of his Yahoos had buried it; whereupon the sordid animal, missing his treasure, by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to the place, there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the rest, began to pine away, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor work, till he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole, and hide them as before; which, when his Yahoo had found, he presently recovered his spirits and good humour, but took good care to remove them to a better hiding place, and has ever since been a very serviceable brute." + +My master further assured me, which I also observed myself, "that in the fields where the shining stones abound, the fiercest and most frequent battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the neighbouring Yahoos." + +He said, "it was common, when two Yahoos discovered such a stone in a field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a third would take the advantage, and carry it away from them both;" which my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance with our suits at law; wherein I thought it for our credit not to undeceive him; since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable than many decrees among us; because the plaintiff and defendant there lost nothing beside the stone they contended for: whereas our courts of equity would never have dismissed the cause, while either of them had any thing left. + +My master, continuing his discourse, said, "there was nothing that rendered the Yahoos more odious, than their undistinguishing appetite to devour every thing that came in their way, whether herbs, roots, berries, the corrupted flesh of animals, or all mingled together: and it was peculiar in their temper, that they were fonder of what they could get by rapine or stealth, at a greater distance, than much better food provided for them at home. If their prey held out, they would eat till they were ready to burst; after which, nature had pointed out to them a certain root that gave them a general evacuation. + +"There was also another kind of root, very juicy, but somewhat rare and difficult to be found, which the Yahoos sought for with much eagerness, and would suck it with great delight; it produced in them the same effects that wine has upon us. It would make them sometimes hug, and sometimes tear one another; they would howl, and grin, and chatter, and reel, and tumble, and then fall asleep in the mud." + +I did indeed observe that the Yahoos were the only animals in this country subject to any diseases; which, however, were much fewer than horses have among us, and contracted, not by any ill-treatment they meet with, but by the nastiness and greediness of that sordid brute. Neither has their language any more than a general appellation for those maladies, which is borrowed from the name of the beast, and called hnea-yahoo, or Yahoo's evil; and the cure prescribed is a mixture of their own dung and urine, forcibly put down the Yahoo's throat. This I have since often known to have been taken with success, and do here freely recommend it to my countrymen for the public good, as an admirable specific against all diseases produced by repletion. + +"As to learning, government, arts, manufactures, and the like," my master confessed, "he could find little or no resemblance between the Yahoos of that country and those in ours; for he only meant to observe what parity there was in our natures. He had heard, indeed, some curious Houyhnhnms observe, that in most herds there was a sort of ruling Yahoo (as among us there is generally some leading or principal stag in a park), who was always more deformed in body, and mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest; that this leader had usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick his master's feet and posteriors, and drive the female Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass's flesh. This favourite is hated by the whole herd, and therefore, to protect himself, keeps always near the person of his leader. He usually continues in office till a worse can be found; but the very moment he is discarded, his successor, at the head of all the Yahoos in that district, young and old, male and female, come in a body, and discharge their excrements upon him from head to foot. But how far this might be applicable to our courts, and favourites, and ministers of state, my master said I could best determine." + +I durst make no return to this malicious insinuation, which debased human understanding below the sagacity of a common hound, who has judgment enough to distinguish and follow the cry of the ablest dog in the pack, without being ever mistaken. + +My master told me, "there were some qualities remarkable in the Yahoos, which he had not observed me to mention, or at least very slightly, in the accounts I had given of humankind." He said, "those animals, like other brutes, had their females in common; but in this they differed, that the she Yahoo would admit the males while she was pregnant; and that the hes would quarrel and fight with the females, as fiercely as with each other; both which practices were such degrees of infamous brutality, as no other sensitive creature ever arrived at. + +"Another thing he wondered at in the Yahoos, was their strange disposition to nastiness and dirt; whereas there appears to be a natural love of cleanliness in all other animals." As to the two former accusations, I was glad to let them pass without any reply, because I had not a word to offer upon them in defence of my species, which otherwise I certainly had done from my own inclinations. But I could have easily vindicated humankind from the imputation of singularity upon the last article, if there had been any swine in that country (as unluckily for me there were not), which, although it may be a sweeter quadruped than a Yahoo, cannot, I humbly conceive, in justice, pretend to more cleanliness; and so his honour himself must have owned, if he had seen their filthy way of feeding, and their custom of wallowing and sleeping in the mud. + +My master likewise mentioned another quality which his servants had discovered in several Yahoos, and to him was wholly unaccountable. He said, "a fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo to retire into a corner, to lie down, and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water, nor did the servant imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only remedy they found was, to set him to hard work, after which he would infallibly come to himself." To this I was silent out of partiality to my own kind; yet here I could plainly discover the true seeds of spleen, which only seizes on the lazy, the luxurious, and the rich; who, if they were forced to undergo the same regimen, I would undertake for the cure. + +His honour had further observed, "that a female Yahoo would often stand behind a bank or a bush, to gaze on the young males passing by, and then appear, and hide, using many antic gestures and grimaces, at which time it was observed that she had a most offensive smell; and when any of the males advanced, would slowly retire, looking often back, and with a counterfeit show of fear, run off into some convenient place, where she knew the male would follow her. + +"At other times, if a female stranger came among them, three or four of her own sex would get about her, and stare, and chatter, and grin, and smell her all over; and then turn off with gestures, that seemed to express contempt and disdain." + +Perhaps my master might refine a little in these speculations, which he had drawn from what he observed himself, or had been told him by others; however, I could not reflect without some amazement, and much sorrow, that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal, should have place by instinct in womankind. + +I expected every moment that my master would accuse the Yahoos of those unnatural appetites in both sexes, so common among us. But nature, it seems, has not been so expert a school-mistress; and these politer pleasures are entirely the productions of art and reason on our side of the globe. + +CHAPTER VIII. + +[The author relates several particulars of the Yahoos. The great virtues of the Houyhnhnms. The education and exercise of their youth. Their general assembly.] + +As I ought to have understood human nature much better than I supposed it possible for my master to do, so it was easy to apply the character he gave of the Yahoos to myself and my countrymen; and I believed I could yet make further discoveries, from my own observation. I therefore often begged his honour to let me go among the herds of Yahoos in the neighbourhood; to which he always very graciously consented, being perfectly convinced that the hatred I bore these brutes would never suffer me to be corrupted by them; and his honour ordered one of his servants, a strong sorrel nag, very honest and good-natured, to be my guard; without whose protection I durst not undertake such adventures. For I have already told the reader how much I was pestered by these odious animals, upon my first arrival; and I afterwards failed very narrowly, three or four times, of falling into their clutches, when I happened to stray at any distance without my hanger. And I have reason to believe they had some imagination that I was of their own species, which I often assisted myself by stripping up my sleeves, and showing my naked arms and breasts in their sight, when my protector was with me. At which times they would approach as near as they durst, and imitate my actions after the manner of monkeys, but ever with great signs of hatred; as a tame jackdaw with cap and stockings is always persecuted by the wild ones, when he happens to be got among them. + +They are prodigiously nimble from their infancy. However, I once caught a young male of three years old, and endeavoured, by all marks of tenderness, to make it quiet; but the little imp fell a squalling, and scratching, and biting with such violence, that I was forced to let it go; and it was high time, for a whole troop of old ones came about us at the noise, but finding the cub was safe (for away it ran), and my sorrel nag being by, they durst not venture near us. I observed the young animal's flesh to smell very rank, and the stink was somewhat between a weasel and a fox, but much more disagreeable. I forgot another circumstance (and perhaps I might have the reader's pardon if it were wholly omitted), that while I held the odious vermin in my hands, it voided its filthy excrements of a yellow liquid substance all over my clothes; but by good fortune there was a small brook hard by, where I washed myself as clean as I could; although I durst not come into my master's presence until I were sufficiently aired. + +By what I could discover, the Yahoos appear to be the most unteachable of all animals: their capacity never reaching higher than to draw or carry burdens. Yet I am of opinion, this defect arises chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition; for they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful. They are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly spirit, and, by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel. It is observed, that the red haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and activity. + +The Houyhnhnms keep the Yahoos for present use in huts not far from the house; but the rest are sent abroad to certain fields, where they dig up roots, eat several kinds of herbs, and search about for carrion, or sometimes catch weasels and luhimuhs (a sort of wild rat), which they greedily devour. Nature has taught them to dig deep holes with their nails on the side of a rising ground, wherein they lie by themselves; only the kennels of the females are larger, sufficient to hold two or three cubs. + +They swim from their infancy like frogs, and are able to continue long under water, where they often take fish, which the females carry home to their young. And, upon this occasion, I hope the reader will pardon my relating an odd adventure. + +Being one day abroad with my protector the sorrel nag, and the weather exceeding hot, I entreated him to let me bathe in a river that was near. He consented, and I immediately stripped myself stark naked, and went down softly into the stream. It happened that a young female Yahoo, standing behind a bank, saw the whole proceeding, and inflamed by desire, as the nag and I conjectured, came running with all speed, and leaped into the water, within five yards of the place where I bathed. I was never in my life so terribly frightened. The nag was grazing at some distance, not suspecting any harm. She embraced me after a most fulsome manner. I roared as loud as I could, and the nag came galloping towards me, whereupon she quitted her grasp, with the utmost reluctancy, and leaped upon the opposite bank, where she stood gazing and howling all the time I was putting on my clothes. + +This was a matter of diversion to my master and his family, as well as of mortification to myself. For now I could no longer deny that I was a real Yahoo in every limb and feature, since the females had a natural propensity to me, as one of their own species. Neither was the hair of this brute of a red colour (which might have been some excuse for an appetite a little irregular), but black as a sloe, and her countenance did not make an appearance altogether so hideous as the rest of her kind; for I think she could not be above eleven years old. + +Having lived three years in this country, the reader, I suppose, will expect that I should, like other travellers, give him some account of the manners and customs of its inhabitants, which it was indeed my principal study to learn. + +As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it. Neither is reason among them a point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides of the question, but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it must needs do, where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured, by passion and interest. I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either. So that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness, in false or dubious propositions, are evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms. In the like manner, when I used to explain to him our several systems of natural philosophy, he would laugh, "that a creature pretending to reason, should value itself upon the knowledge of other people's conjectures, and in things where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use." Wherein he agreed entirely with the sentiments of Socrates, as Plato delivers them; which I mention as the highest honour I can do that prince of philosophers. I have often since reflected, what destruction such doctrine would make in the libraries of Europe; and how many paths of fame would be then shut up in the learned world. + +Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms; and these not confined to particular objects, but universal to the whole race; for a stranger from the remotest part is equally treated with the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes, looks upon himself as at home. They preserve decency and civility in the highest degrees, but are altogether ignorant of ceremony. They have no fondness for their colts or foals, but the care they take in educating them proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason. And I observed my master to show the same affection to his neighbour's issue, that he had for his own. They will have it that nature teaches them to love the whole species, and it is reason only that makes a distinction of persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue. + +When the matron Houyhnhnms have produced one of each sex, they no longer accompany with their consorts, except they lose one of their issue by some casualty, which very seldom happens; but in such a case they meet again; or when the like accident befalls a person whose wife is past bearing, some other couple bestow on him one of their own colts, and then go together again until the mother is pregnant. This caution is necessary, to prevent the country from being overburdened with numbers. But the race of inferior Houyhnhnms, bred up to be servants, is not so strictly limited upon this article: these are allowed to produce three of each sex, to be domestics in the noble families. + +In their marriages, they are exactly careful to choose such colours as will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed. Strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female; not upon the account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for where a female happens to excel in strength, a consort is chosen, with regard to comeliness. + +Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements have no place in their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their language. The young couple meet, and are joined, merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends; it is what they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being. But the violation of marriage, or any other unchastity, was never heard of; and the married pair pass their lives with the same friendship and mutual benevolence, that they bear to all others of the same species who come in their way, without jealousy, fondness, quarrelling, or discontent. + +In educating the youth of both sexes, their method is admirable, and highly deserves our imitation. These are not suffered to taste a grain of oats, except upon certain days, till eighteen years old; nor milk, but very rarely; and in summer they graze two hours in the morning, and as many in the evening, which their parents likewise observe; but the servants are not allowed above half that time, and a great part of their grass is brought home, which they eat at the most convenient hours, when they can be best spared from work. + +Temperance, industry, exercise, and cleanliness, are the lessons equally enjoined to the young ones of both sexes: and my master thought it monstrous in us, to give the females a different kind of education from the males, except in some articles of domestic management; whereby, as he truly observed, one half of our natives were good for nothing but bringing children into the world; and to trust the care of our children to such useless animals, he said, was yet a greater instance of brutality. + +But the Houyhnhnms train up their youth to strength, speed, and hardiness, by exercising them in running races up and down steep hills, and over hard stony grounds; and when they are all in a sweat, they are ordered to leap over head and ears into a pond or river. Four times a year the youth of a certain district meet to show their proficiency in running and leaping, and other feats of strength and agility; where the victor is rewarded with a song in his or her praise. On this festival, the servants drive a herd of Yahoos into the field, laden with hay, and oats, and milk, for a repast to the Houyhnhnms; after which, these brutes are immediately driven back again, for fear of being noisome to the assembly. + +Every fourth year, at the vernal equinox, there is a representative council of the whole nation, which meets in a plain about twenty miles from our house, and continues about five or six days. Here they inquire into the state and condition of the several districts; whether they abound or be deficient in hay or oats, or cows, or Yahoos; and wherever there is any want (which is but seldom) it is immediately supplied by unanimous consent and contribution. Here likewise the regulation of children is settled: as for instance, if a Houyhnhnm has two males, he changes one of them with another that has two females; and when a child has been lost by any casualty, where the mother is past breeding, it is determined what family in the district shall breed another to supply the loss. + +CHAPTER IX. + +[A grand debate at the general assembly of the Houyhnhnms, and how it was determined. The learning of the Houyhnhnms. Their buildings. Their manner of burials. The defectiveness of their language.] + +One of these grand assemblies was held in my time, about three months before my departure, whither my master went as the representative of our district. In this council was resumed their old debate, and indeed the only debate that ever happened in their country; whereof my master, after his return, give me a very particular account. + +The question to be debated was, "whether the Yahoos should be exterminated from the face of the earth?" One of the members for the affirmative offered several arguments of great strength and weight, alleging, "that as the Yahoos were the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animals which nature ever produced, so they were the most restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious; they would privately suck the teats of the Houyhnhnms' cows, kill and devour their cats, trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually watched, and commit a thousand other extravagancies." He took notice of a general tradition, "that Yahoos had not been always in their country; but that many ages ago, two of these brutes appeared together upon a mountain; whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and slime, or from the ooze and froth of the sea, was never known; that these Yahoos engendered, and their brood, in a short time, grew so numerous as to overrun and infest the whole nation; that the Houyhnhnms, to get rid of this evil, made a general hunting, and at last enclosed the whole herd; and destroying the elder, every Houyhnhnm kept two young ones in a kennel, and brought them to such a degree of tameness, as an animal, so savage by nature, can be capable of acquiring, using them for draught and carriage; that there seemed to be much truth in this tradition, and that those creatures could not be yinhniamshy (or aborigines of the land), because of the violent hatred the Houyhnhnms, as well as all other animals, bore them, which, although their evil disposition sufficiently deserved, could never have arrived at so high a degree if they had been aborigines, or else they would have long since been rooted out; that the inhabitants, taking a fancy to use the service of the Yahoos, had, very imprudently, neglected to cultivate the breed of asses, which are a comely animal, easily kept, more tame and orderly, without any offensive smell, strong enough for labour, although they yield to the other in agility of body, and if their braying be no agreeable sound, it is far preferable to the horrible howlings of the Yahoos." + +Several others declared their sentiments to the same purpose, when my master proposed an expedient to the assembly, whereof he had indeed borrowed the hint from me. "He approved of the tradition mentioned by the honourable member who spoke before, and affirmed, that the two Yahoos said to be seen first among them, had been driven thither over the sea; that coming to land, and being forsaken by their companions, they retired to the mountains, and degenerating by degrees, became in process of time much more savage than those of their own species in the country whence these two originals came. The reason of this assertion was, that he had now in his possession a certain wonderful Yahoo (meaning myself) which most of them had heard of, and many of them had seen. He then related to them how he first found me; that my body was all covered with an artificial composure of the skins and hairs of other animals; that I spoke in a language of my own, and had thoroughly learned theirs; that I had related to him the accidents which brought me thither; that when he saw me without my covering, I was an exact Yahoo in every part, only of a whiter colour, less hairy, and with shorter claws. He added, how I had endeavoured to persuade him, that in my own and other countries, the Yahoos acted as the governing, rational animal, and held the Houyhnhnms in servitude; that he observed in me all the qualities of a Yahoo, only a little more civilized by some tincture of reason, which, however, was in a degree as far inferior to the Houyhnhnm race, as the Yahoos of their country were to me; that, among other things, I mentioned a custom we had of castrating Houyhnhnms when they were young, in order to render them tame; that the operation was easy and safe; that it was no shame to learn wisdom from brutes, as industry is taught by the ant, and building by the swallow (for so I translate the word lyhannh, although it be a much larger fowl); that this invention might be practised upon the younger Yahoos here, which besides rendering them tractable and fitter for use, would in an age put an end to the whole species, without destroying life; that in the mean time the Houyhnhnms should be exhorted to cultivate the breed of asses, which, as they are in all respects more valuable brutes, so they have this advantage, to be fit for service at five years old, which the others are not till twelve." + +This was all my master thought fit to tell me, at that time, of what passed in the grand council. But he was pleased to conceal one particular, which related personally to myself, whereof I soon felt the unhappy effect, as the reader will know in its proper place, and whence I date all the succeeding misfortunes of my life. + +The Houyhnhnms have no letters, and consequently their knowledge is all traditional. But there happening few events of any moment among a people so well united, naturally disposed to every virtue, wholly governed by reason, and cut off from all commerce with other nations, the historical part is easily preserved without burdening their memories. I have already observed that they are subject to no diseases, and therefore can have no need of physicians. However, they have excellent medicines, composed of herbs, to cure accidental bruises and cuts in the pastern or frog of the foot, by sharp stones, as well as other maims and hurts in the several parts of the body. + +They calculate the year by the revolution of the sun and moon, but use no subdivisions into weeks. They are well enough acquainted with the motions of those two luminaries, and understand the nature of eclipses; and this is the utmost progress of their astronomy. + +In poetry, they must be allowed to excel all other mortals; wherein the justness of their similes, and the minuteness as well as exactness of their descriptions, are indeed inimitable. Their verses abound very much in both of these, and usually contain either some exalted notions of friendship and benevolence or the praises of those who were victors in races and other bodily exercises. Their buildings, although very rude and simple, are not inconvenient, but well contrived to defend them from all injuries of and heat. They have a kind of tree, which at forty years old loosens in the root, and falls with the first storm: it grows very straight, and being pointed like stakes with a sharp stone (for the Houyhnhnms know not the use of iron), they stick them erect in the ground, about ten inches asunder, and then weave in oat straw, or sometimes wattles, between them. The roof is made after the same manner, and so are the doors. + +The Houyhnhnms use the hollow part, between the pastern and the hoof of their fore-foot, as we do our hands, and this with greater dexterity than I could at first imagine. I have seen a white mare of our family thread a needle (which I lent her on purpose) with that joint. They milk their cows, reap their oats, and do all the work which requires hands, in the same manner. They have a kind of hard flints, which, by grinding against other stones, they form into instruments, that serve instead of wedges, axes, and hammers. With tools made of these flints, they likewise cut their hay, and reap their oats, which there grow naturally in several fields; the Yahoos draw home the sheaves in carriages, and the servants tread them in certain covered huts to get out the grain, which is kept in stores. They make a rude kind of earthen and wooden vessels, and bake the former in the sun. + +If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried in the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his neighbours. I remember my master having once made an appointment with a friend and his family to come to his house, upon some affair of importance: on the day fixed, the mistress and her two children came very late; she made two excuses, first for her husband, who, as she said, happened that very morning to shnuwnh. The word is strongly expressive in their language, but not easily rendered into English; it signifies, "to retire to his first mother." Her excuse for not coming sooner, was, that her husband dying late in the morning, she was a good while consulting her servants about a convenient place where his body should be laid; and I observed, she behaved herself at our house as cheerfully as the rest. She died about three months after. + +They live generally to seventy, or seventy-five years, very seldom to fourscore. Some weeks before their death, they feel a gradual decay; but without pain. During this time they are much visited by their friends, because they cannot go abroad with their usual ease and satisfaction. However, about ten days before their death, which they seldom fail in computing, they return the visits that have been made them by those who are nearest in the neighbourhood, being carried in a convenient sledge drawn by Yahoos; which vehicle they use, not only upon this occasion, but when they grow old, upon long journeys, or when they are lamed by any accident: and therefore when the dying Houyhnhnms return those visits, they take a solemn leave of their friends, as if they were going to some remote part of the country, where they designed to pass the rest of their lives. + +I know not whether it may be worth observing, that the Houyhnhnms have no word in their language to express any thing that is evil, except what they borrow from the deformities or ill qualities of the Yahoos. Thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or unseasonable weather, and the like, by adding to each the epithet of Yahoo. For instance, hhnm Yahoo; whnaholm Yahoo, ynlhmndwihlma Yahoo, and an ill-contrived house ynholmhnmrohlnw Yahoo. + +I could, with great pleasure, enlarge further upon the manners and virtues of this excellent people; but intending in a short time to publish a volume by itself, expressly upon that subject, I refer the reader thither; and, in the mean time, proceed to relate my own sad catastrophe. + +CHAPTER X. + +[The author's economy, and happy life, among the Houyhnhnms. His great improvement in virtue by conversing with them. Their conversations. The author has notice given him by his master, that he must depart from the country. He falls into a swoon for grief; but submits. He contrives and finishes a canoe by the help of a fellow-servant, and puts to sea at a venture.] + +I had settled my little economy to my own heart's content. My master had ordered a room to be made for me, after their manner, about six yards from the house: the sides and floors of which I plastered with clay, and covered with rush-mats of my own contriving. I had beaten hemp, which there grows wild, and made of it a sort of ticking; this I filled with the feathers of several birds I had taken with springes made of Yahoos' hairs, and were excellent food. I had worked two chairs with my knife, the sorrel nag helping me in the grosser and more laborious part. When my clothes were worn to rags, I made myself others with the skins of rabbits, and of a certain beautiful animal, about the same size, called nnuhnoh, the skin of which is covered with a fine down. Of these I also made very tolerable stockings. I soled my shoes with wood, which I cut from a tree, and fitted to the upper-leather; and when this was worn out, I supplied it with the skins of Yahoos dried in the sun. I often got honey out of hollow trees, which I mingled with water, or ate with my bread. No man could more verify the truth of these two maxims, "That nature is very easily satisfied;" and, "That necessity is the mother of invention." I enjoyed perfect health of body, and tranquillity of mind; I did not feel the treachery or inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries of a secret or open enemy. I had no occasion of bribing, flattering, or pimping, to procure the favour of any great man, or of his minion; I wanted no fence against fraud or oppression: here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch my words and actions, or forge accusations against me for hire: here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; no leaders, or followers, of party and faction; no encouragers to vice, by seducement or examples; no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts, or pillories; no cheating shopkeepers or mechanics; no pride, vanity, or affectation; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores, or poxes; no ranting, lewd, expensive wives; no stupid, proud pedants; no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions; no scoundrels raised from the dust upon the merit of their vices, or nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues; no lords, fiddlers, judges, or dancing-masters. + +I had the favour of being admitted to several Houyhnhnms, who came to visit or dine with my master; where his honour graciously suffered me to wait in the room, and listen to their discourse. Both he and his company would often descend to ask me questions, and receive my answers. I had also sometimes the honour of attending my master in his visits to others. I never presumed to speak, except in answer to a question; and then I did it with inward regret, because it was a loss of so much time for improving myself; but I was infinitely delighted with the station of an humble auditor in such conversations, where nothing passed but what was useful, expressed in the fewest and most significant words; where, as I have already said, the greatest decency was observed, without the least degree of ceremony; where no person spoke without being pleased himself, and pleasing his companions; where there was no interruption, tediousness, heat, or difference of sentiments. They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse. Their subjects are, generally on friendship and benevolence, on order and economy; sometimes upon the visible operations of nature, or ancient traditions; upon the bounds and limits of virtue; upon the unerring rules of reason, or upon some determinations to be taken at the next great assembly: and often upon the various excellences of poetry. I may add, without vanity, that my presence often gave them sufficient matter for discourse, because it afforded my master an occasion of letting his friends into the history of me and my country, upon which they were all pleased to descant, in a manner not very advantageous to humankind: and for that reason I shall not repeat what they said; only I may be allowed to observe, that his honour, to my great admiration, appeared to understand the nature of Yahoos much better than myself. He went through all our vices and follies, and discovered many, which I had never mentioned to him, by only supposing what qualities a Yahoo of their country, with a small proportion of reason, might be capable of exerting; and concluded, with too much probability, "how vile, as well as miserable, such a creature must be." + +I freely confess, that all the little knowledge I have of any value, was acquired by the lectures I received from my master, and from hearing the discourses of him and his friends; to which I should be prouder to listen, than to dictate to the greatest and wisest assembly in Europe. I admired the strength, comeliness, and speed of the inhabitants; and such a constellation of virtues, in such amiable persons, produced in me the highest veneration. At first, indeed, I did not feel that natural awe, which the Yahoos and all other animals bear toward them; but it grew upon me by decrees, much sooner than I imagined, and was mingled with a respectful love and gratitude, that they would condescend to distinguish me from the rest of my species. + +When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or the human race in general, I considered them, as they really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech; but making no other use of reason, than to improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them. When I happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common Yahoo than of my own person. By conversing with the Houyhnhnms, and looking upon them with delight, I fell to imitate their gait and gesture, which is now grown into a habit; and my friends often tell me, in a blunt way, "that I trot like a horse;" which, however, I take for a great compliment. Neither shall I disown, that in speaking I am apt to fall into the voice and manner of the Houyhnhnms, and hear myself ridiculed on that account, without the least mortification. + +In the midst of all this happiness, and when I looked upon myself to be fully settled for life, my master sent for me one morning a little earlier than his usual hour. I observed by his countenance that he was in some perplexity, and at a loss how to begin what he had to speak. After a short silence, he told me, "he did not know how I would take what he was going to say: that in the last general assembly, when the affair of the Yahoos was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family, more like a Houyhnhnm than a brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them; the assembly did therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who had ever seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged, that because I had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be feared I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the Houyhnhnms' cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour." + +My master added, "that he was daily pressed by the Houyhnhnms of the neighbourhood to have the assembly's exhortation executed, which he could not put off much longer. He doubted it would be impossible for me to swim to another country; and therefore wished I would contrive some sort of vehicle, resembling those I had described to him, that might carry me on the sea; in which work I should have the assistance of his own servants, as well as those of his neighbours." He concluded, "that for his own part, he could have been content to keep me in his service as long as I lived; because he found I had cured myself of some bad habits and dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as my inferior nature was capable, to imitate the Houyhnhnms." + +I should here observe to the reader, that a decree of the general assembly in this country is expressed by the word hnhloayn, which signifies an exhortation, as near as I can render it; for they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised, or exhorted; because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a rational creature. + +I was struck with the utmost grief and despair at my master's discourse; and being unable to support the agonies I was under, I fell into a swoon at his feet. When I came to myself, he told me "that he concluded I had been dead;" for these people are subject to no such imbecilities of nature. I answered in a faint voice, "that death would have been too great a happiness; that although I could not blame the assembly's exhortation, or the urgency of his friends; yet, in my weak and corrupt judgment, I thought it might consist with reason to have been less rigorous; that I could not swim a league, and probably the nearest land to theirs might be distant above a hundred: that many materials, necessary for making a small vessel to carry me off, were wholly wanting in this country; which, however, I would attempt, in obedience and gratitude to his honour, although I concluded the thing to be impossible, and therefore looked on myself as already devoted to destruction; that the certain prospect of an unnatural death was the least of my evils; for, supposing I should escape with life by some strange adventure, how could I think with temper of passing my days among Yahoos, and relapsing into my old corruptions, for want of examples to lead and keep me within the paths of virtue? that I knew too well upon what solid reasons all the determinations of the wise Houyhnhnms were founded, not to be shaken by arguments of mine, a miserable Yahoo; and therefore, after presenting him with my humble thanks for the offer of his servants' assistance in making a vessel, and desiring a reasonable time for so difficult a work, I told him I would endeavour to preserve a wretched being; and if ever I returned to England, was not without hopes of being useful to my own species, by celebrating the praises of the renowned Houyhnhnms, and proposing their virtues to the imitation of mankind." + +My master, in a few words, made me a very gracious reply; allowed me the space of two months to finish my boat; and ordered the sorrel nag, my fellow-servant (for so, at this distance, I may presume to call him), to follow my instruction; because I told my master, "that his help would be sufficient, and I knew he had a tenderness for me." + +In his company, my first business was to go to that part of the coast where my rebellious crew had ordered me to be set on shore. I got upon a height, and looking on every side into the sea; fancied I saw a small island toward the north-east. I took out my pocket glass, and could then clearly distinguish it above five leagues off, as I computed; but it appeared to the sorrel nag to be only a blue cloud: for as he had no conception of any country beside his own, so he could not be as expert in distinguishing remote objects at sea, as we who so much converse in that element. + +After I had discovered this island, I considered no further; but resolved it should if possible, be the first place of my banishment, leaving the consequence to fortune. + +I returned home, and consulting with the sorrel nag, we went into a copse at some distance, where I with my knife, and he with a sharp flint, fastened very artificially after their manner, to a wooden handle, cut down several oak wattles, about the thickness of a walking-staff, and some larger pieces. But I shall not trouble the reader with a particular description of my own mechanics; let it suffice to say, that in six weeks time with the help of the sorrel nag, who performed the parts that required most labour, I finished a sort of Indian canoe, but much larger, covering it with the skins of Yahoos, well stitched together with hempen threads of my own making. My sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but I made use of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick; and I likewise provided myself with four paddles. I laid in a stock of boiled flesh, of rabbits and fowls, and took with me two vessels, one filled with milk and the other with water. + +I tried my canoe in a large pond, near my master's house, and then corrected in it what was amiss; stopping all the chinks with Yahoos' tallow, till I found it staunch, and able to bear me and my freight; and, when it was as complete as I could possibly make it, I had it drawn on a carriage very gently by Yahoos to the sea-side, under the conduct of the sorrel nag and another servant. + +When all was ready, and the day came for my departure, I took leave of my master and lady and the whole family, my eyes flowing with tears, and my heart quite sunk with grief. But his honour, out of curiosity, and, perhaps, (if I may speak without vanity,) partly out of kindness, was determined to see me in my canoe, and got several of his neighbouring friends to accompany him. I was forced to wait above an hour for the tide; and then observing the wind very fortunately bearing toward the island to which I intended to steer my course, I took a second leave of my master: but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. Detractors are pleased to think it improbable, that so illustrious a person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so inferior as I. Neither have I forgotten how apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have received. But, if these censurers were better acquainted with the noble and courteous disposition of the Houyhnhnms, they would soon change their opinion. + +I paid my respects to the rest of the Houyhnhnms in his honour's company; then getting into my canoe, I pushed off from shore. + +CHAPTER XI. + +[The author's dangerous voyage. He arrives at New Holland, hoping to settle there. Is wounded with an arrow by one of the natives. Is seized and carried by force into a Portuguese ship. The great civilities of the captain. The author arrives at England.] + +I began this desperate voyage on February 15, 1714-15, at nine o'clock in the morning. The wind was very favourable; however, I made use at first only of my paddles; but considering I should soon be weary, and that the wind might chop about, I ventured to set up my little sail; and thus, with the help of the tide, I went at the rate of a league and a half an hour, as near as I could guess. My master and his friends continued on the shore till I was almost out of sight; and I often heard the sorrel nag (who always loved me) crying out, "Hnuy illa nyha, majah Yahoo;" "Take care of thyself, gentle Yahoo." + +My design was, if possible, to discover some small island uninhabited, yet sufficient, by my labour, to furnish me with the necessaries of life, which I would have thought a greater happiness, than to be first minister in the politest court of Europe; so horrible was the idea I conceived of returning to live in the society, and under the government of Yahoos. For in such a solitude as I desired, I could at least enjoy my own thoughts, and reflect with delight on the virtues of those inimitable Houyhnhnms, without an opportunity of degenerating into the vices and corruptions of my own species. + +The reader may remember what I related, when my crew conspired against me, and confined me to my cabin; how I continued there several weeks without knowing what course we took; and when I was put ashore in the long-boat, how the sailors told me, with oaths, whether true or false, "that they knew not in what part of the world we were." However, I did then believe us to be about 10 degrees southward of the Cape of Good Hope, or about 45 degrees southern latitude, as I gathered from some general words I overheard among them, being I supposed to the south-east in their intended voyage to Madagascar. And although this were little better than conjecture, yet I resolved to steer my course eastward, hoping to reach the south-west coast of New Holland, and perhaps some such island as I desired lying westward of it. The wind was full west, and by six in the evening I computed I had gone eastward at least eighteen leagues; when I spied a very small island about half a league off, which I soon reached. It was nothing but a rock, with one creek naturally arched by the force of tempests. Here I put in my canoe, and climbing a part of the rock, I could plainly discover land to the east, extending from south to north. I lay all night in my canoe; and repeating my voyage early in the morning, I arrived in seven hours to the south-east point of New Holland. This confirmed me in the opinion I have long entertained, that the maps and charts place this country at least three degrees more to the east than it really is; which thought I communicated many years ago to my worthy friend, Mr. Herman Moll, and gave him my reasons for it, although he has rather chosen to follow other authors. + +I saw no inhabitants in the place where I landed, and being unarmed, I was afraid of venturing far into the country. I found some shellfish on the shore, and ate them raw, not daring to kindle a fire, for fear of being discovered by the natives. I continued three days feeding on oysters and limpets, to save my own provisions; and I fortunately found a brook of excellent water, which gave me great relief. + +On the fourth day, venturing out early a little too far, I saw twenty or thirty natives upon a height not above five hundred yards from me. They were stark naked, men, women, and children, round a fire, as I could discover by the smoke. One of them spied me, and gave notice to the rest; five of them advanced toward me, leaving the women and children at the fire. I made what haste I could to the shore, and, getting into my canoe, shoved off: the savages, observing me retreat, ran after me: and before I could get far enough into the sea, discharged an arrow which wounded me deeply on the inside of my left knee: I shall carry the mark to my grave. I apprehended the arrow might be poisoned, and paddling out of the reach of their darts (being a calm day), I made a shift to suck the wound, and dress it as well as I could. + +I was at a loss what to do, for I durst not return to the same landing-place, but stood to the north, and was forced to paddle, for the wind, though very gentle, was against me, blowing north- west. As I was looking about for a secure landing-place, I saw a sail to the north-north-east, which appearing every minute more visible, I was in some doubt whether I should wait for them or not; but at last my detestation of the Yahoo race prevailed: and turning my canoe, I sailed and paddled together to the south, and got into the same creek whence I set out in the morning, choosing rather to trust myself among these barbarians, than live with European Yahoos. I drew up my canoe as close as I could to the shore, and hid myself behind a stone by the little brook, which, as I have already said, was excellent water. + +The ship came within half a league of this creek, and sent her long boat with vessels to take in fresh water (for the place, it seems, was very well known); but I did not observe it, till the boat was almost on shore; and it was too late to seek another hiding-place. The seamen at their landing observed my canoe, and rummaging it all over, easily conjectured that the owner could not be far off. Four of them, well armed, searched every cranny and lurking-hole, till at last they found me flat on my face behind the stone. They gazed awhile in admiration at my strange uncouth dress; my coat made of skins, my wooden-soled shoes, and my furred stockings; whence, however, they concluded, I was not a native of the place, who all go naked. One of the seamen, in Portuguese, bid me rise, and asked who I was. I understood that language very well, and getting upon my feet, said, "I was a poor Yahoo banished from the Houyhnhnms, and desired they would please to let me depart." They admired to hear me answer them in their own tongue, and saw by my complexion I must be a European; but were at a loss to know what I meant by Yahoos and Houyhnhnms; and at the same time fell a-laughing at my strange tone in speaking, which resembled the neighing of a horse. I trembled all the while betwixt fear and hatred. I again desired leave to depart, and was gently moving to my canoe; but they laid hold of me, desiring to know, "what country I was of? whence I came?" with many other questions. I told them "I was born in England, whence I came about five years ago, and then their country and ours were at peace. I therefore hoped they would not treat me as an enemy, since I meant them no harm, but was a poor Yahoo seeking some desolate place where to pass the remainder of his unfortunate life." + +When they began to talk, I thought I never heard or saw any thing more unnatural; for it appeared to me as monstrous as if a dog or a cow should speak in England, or a Yahoo in Houyhnhnmland. The honest Portuguese were equally amazed at my strange dress, and the odd manner of delivering my words, which, however, they understood very well. They spoke to me with great humanity, and said, "they were sure the captain would carry me gratis to Lisbon, whence I might return to my own country; that two of the seamen would go back to the ship, inform the captain of what they had seen, and receive his orders; in the mean time, unless I would give my solemn oath not to fly, they would secure me by force. I thought it best to comply with their proposal. They were very curious to know my story, but I gave them very little satisfaction, and they all conjectured that my misfortunes had impaired my reason. In two hours the boat, which went laden with vessels of water, returned, with the captain's command to fetch me on board. I fell on my knees to preserve my liberty; but all was in vain; and the men, having tied me with cords, heaved me into the boat, whence I was taken into the ship, and thence into the captain's cabin. + +His name was Pedro de Mendez; he was a very courteous and generous person. He entreated me to give some account of myself, and desired to know what I would eat or drink; said, "I should be used as well as himself;" and spoke so many obliging things, that I wondered to find such civilities from a Yahoo. However, I remained silent and sullen; I was ready to faint at the very smell of him and his men. At last I desired something to eat out of my own canoe; but he ordered me a chicken, and some excellent wine, and then directed that I should be put to bed in a very clean cabin. I would not undress myself, but lay on the bed-clothes, and in half an hour stole out, when I thought the crew was at dinner, and getting to the side of the ship, was going to leap into the sea, and swim for my life, rather than continue among Yahoos. But one of the seamen prevented me, and having informed the captain, I was chained to my cabin. + +After dinner, Don Pedro came to me, and desired to know my reason for so desperate an attempt; assured me, "he only meant to do me all the service he was able;" and spoke so very movingly, that at last I descended to treat him like an animal which had some little portion of reason. I gave him a very short relation of my voyage; of the conspiracy against me by my own men; of the country where they set me on shore, and of my five years residence there. All which he looked upon as if it were a dream or a vision; whereat I took great offence; for I had quite forgot the faculty of lying, so peculiar to Yahoos, in all countries where they preside, and, consequently, their disposition of suspecting truth in others of their own species. I asked him, "whether it were the custom in his country to say the thing which was not?" I assured him, "I had almost forgot what he meant by falsehood, and if I had lived a thousand years in Houyhnhnmland, I should never have heard a lie from the meanest servant; that I was altogether indifferent whether he believed me or not; but, however, in return for his favours, I would give so much allowance to the corruption of his nature, as to answer any objection he would please to make, and then he might easily discover the truth." + +The captain, a wise man, after many endeavours to catch me tripping in some part of my story, at last began to have a better opinion of my veracity. But he added, "that since I professed so inviolable an attachment to truth, I must give him my word and honour to bear him company in this voyage, without attempting any thing against my life; or else he would continue me a prisoner till we arrived at Lisbon." I gave him the promise he required; but at the same time protested, "that I would suffer the greatest hardships, rather than return to live among Yahoos." + +Our voyage passed without any considerable accident. In gratitude to the captain, I sometimes sat with him, at his earnest request, and strove to conceal my antipathy against human kind, although it often broke out; which he suffered to pass without observation. But the greatest part of the day I confined myself to my cabin, to avoid seeing any of the crew. The captain had often entreated me to strip myself of my savage dress, and offered to lend me the best suit of clothes he had. This I would not be prevailed on to accept, abhorring to cover myself with any thing that had been on the back of a Yahoo. I only desired he would lend me two clean shirts, which, having been washed since he wore them, I believed would not so much defile me. These I changed every second day, and washed them myself. + +We arrived at Lisbon, Nov. 5, 1715. At our landing, the captain forced me to cover myself with his cloak, to prevent the rabble from crowding about me. I was conveyed to his own house; and at my earnest request he led me up to the highest room backwards. I conjured him "to conceal from all persons what I had told him of the Houyhnhnms; because the least hint of such a story would not only draw numbers of people to see me, but probably put me in danger of being imprisoned, or burnt by the Inquisition." The captain persuaded me to accept a suit of clothes newly made; but I would not suffer the tailor to take my measure; however, Don Pedro being almost of my size, they fitted me well enough. He accoutred me with other necessaries, all new, which I aired for twenty-four hours before I would use them. + +The captain had no wife, nor above three servants, none of which were suffered to attend at meals; and his whole deportment was so obliging, added to very good human understanding, that I really began to tolerate his company. He gained so far upon me, that I ventured to look out of the back window. By degrees I was brought into another room, whence I peeped into the street, but drew my head back in a fright. In a week's time he seduced me down to the door. I found my terror gradually lessened, but my hatred and contempt seemed to increase. I was at last bold enough to walk the street in his company, but kept my nose well stopped with rue, or sometimes with tobacco. + +In ten days, Don Pedro, to whom I had given some account of my domestic affairs, put it upon me, as a matter of honour and conscience, "that I ought to return to my native country, and live at home with my wife and children." He told me, "there was an English ship in the port just ready to sail, and he would furnish me with all things necessary." It would be tedious to repeat his arguments, and my contradictions. He said, "it was altogether impossible to find such a solitary island as I desired to live in; but I might command in my own house, and pass my time in a manner as recluse as I pleased." + +I complied at last, finding I could not do better. I left Lisbon the 24th day of November, in an English merchantman, but who was the master I never inquired. Don Pedro accompanied me to the ship, and lent me twenty pounds. He took kind leave of me, and embraced me at parting, which I bore as well as I could. During this last voyage I had no commerce with the master or any of his men; but, pretending I was sick, kept close in my cabin. On the fifth of December, 1715, we cast anchor in the Downs, about nine in the morning, and at three in the afternoon I got safe to my house at Rotherhith.~{ The original editions and Hawksworth's have Rotherhith here, though earlier in the work, Redriff is said to have been Gulliver's home in England. }~ + +My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because they concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely confess the sight of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt; and the more, by reflecting on the near alliance I had to them. For although, since my unfortunate exile from the Houyhnhnm country, I had compelled myself to tolerate the sight of Yahoos, and to converse with Don Pedro de Mendez, yet my memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those exalted Houyhnhnms. And when I began to consider that, by copulating with one of the Yahoo species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror. + +As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. At the time I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England. During the first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my presence; the very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one of them take me by the hand. The first money I laid out was to buy two young stone-horses, which I keep in a good stable; and next to them, the groom is my greatest favourite, for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in the stable. My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me and friendship to each other. + +CHAPTER XII. + +[The author's veracity. His design in publishing this work. His censure of those travellers who swerve from the truth. The author clears himself from any sinister ends in writing. An objection answered. The method of planting colonies. His native country commended. The right of the crown to those countries described by the author is justified. The difficulty of conquering them. The author takes his last leave of the reader; proposes his manner of living for the future; gives good advice, and concludes.] + +Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels for sixteen years and above seven months: wherein I have not been so studious of ornament as of truth. I could, perhaps, like others, have astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact, in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee. + +It is easy for us who travel into remote countries, which are seldom visited by Englishmen or other Europeans, to form descriptions of wonderful animals both at sea and land. Whereas a traveller's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver concerning foreign places. + +I could heartily wish a law was enacted, that every traveller, before he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath before the Lord High Chancellor, that all he intended to print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; for then the world would no longer be deceived, as it usually is, while some writers, to make their works pass the better upon the public, impose the grossest falsities on the unwary reader. I have perused several books of travels with great delight in my younger days; but having since gone over most parts of the globe, and been able to contradict many fabulous accounts from my own observation, it has given me a great disgust against this part of reading, and some indignation to see the credulity of mankind so impudently abused. Therefore, since my acquaintance were pleased to think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, I imposed on myself, as a maxim never to be swerved from, that I would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and example of my noble master and the other illustrious Houyhnhnms of whom I had so long the honour to be an humble hearer. + +- Nec si miserum Fortuna Sinonem Finxit, vanum etiam, mendacemque improba finget. + +I know very well, how little reputation is to be got by writings which require neither genius nor learning, nor indeed any other talent, except a good memory, or an exact journal. I know likewise, that writers of travels, like dictionary-makers, are sunk into oblivion by the weight and bulk of those who come last, and therefore lie uppermost. And it is highly probable, that such travellers, who shall hereafter visit the countries described in this work of mine, may, by detecting my errors (if there be any), and adding many new discoveries of their own, justle me out of vogue, and stand in my place, making the world forget that ever I was an author. This indeed would be too great a mortification, if I wrote for fame: but as my sole intention was the public good, I cannot be altogether disappointed. For who can read of the virtues I have mentioned in the glorious Houyhnhnms, without being ashamed of his own vices, when he considers himself as the reasoning, governing animal of his country? I shall say nothing of those remote nations where Yahoos preside; among which the least corrupted are the Brobdingnagians; whose wise maxims in morality and government it would be our happiness to observe. But I forbear descanting further, and rather leave the judicious reader to his own remarks and application. + +I am not a little pleased that this work of mine can possibly meet with no censurers: for what objections can be made against a writer, who relates only plain facts, that happened in such distant countries, where we have not the least interest, with respect either to trade or negotiations? I have carefully avoided every fault with which common writers of travels are often too justly charged. Besides, I meddle not the least with any party, but write without passion, prejudice, or ill-will against any man, or number of men, whatsoever. I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind; over whom I may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority, from the advantages I received by conversing so long among the most accomplished Houyhnhnms. I write without any view to profit or praise. I never suffer a word to pass that may look like reflection, or possibly give the least offence, even to those who are most ready to take it. So that I hope I may with justice pronounce myself an author perfectly blameless; against whom the tribes of Answerers, Considerers, Observers, Reflectors, Detectors, Remarkers, will never be able to find matter for exercising their talents. + +I confess, it was whispered to me, "that I was bound in duty, as a subject of England, to have given in a memorial to a secretary of state at my first coming over; because, whatever lands are discovered by a subject belong to the crown." But I doubt whether our conquests in the countries I treat of would be as easy as those of Ferdinando Cortez over the naked Americans. The Lilliputians, I think, are hardly worth the charge of a fleet and army to reduce them; and I question whether it might be prudent or safe to attempt the Brobdingnagians; or whether an English army would be much at their ease with the Flying Island over their heads. The Houyhnhnms indeed appear not to be so well prepared for war, a science to which they are perfect strangers, and especially against missive weapons. However, supposing myself to be a minister of state, I could never give my advice for invading them. Their prudence, unanimity, unacquaintedness with fear, and their love of their country, would amply supply all defects in the military art. Imagine twenty thousand of them breaking into the midst of an European army, confounding the ranks, overturning the carriages, battering the warriors' faces into mummy by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs; for they would well deserve the character given to Augustus, Recalcitrat undique tutus. But, instead of proposals for conquering that magnanimous nation, I rather wish they were in a capacity, or disposition, to send a sufficient number of their inhabitants for civilizing Europe, by teaching us the first principles of honour, justice, truth, temperance, public spirit, fortitude, chastity, friendship, benevolence, and fidelity. The names of all which virtues are still retained among us in most languages, and are to be met with in modern, as well as ancient authors; which I am able to assert from my own small reading. + +But I had another reason, which made me less forward to enlarge his majesty's dominions by my discoveries. To say the truth, I had conceived a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of princes upon those occasions. For instance, a crew of pirates are driven by a storm they know not whither; at length a boy discovers land from the topmast; they go on shore to rob and plunder, they see a harmless people, are entertained with kindness; they give the country a new name; they take formal possession of it for their king; they set up a rotten plank, or a stone, for a memorial; they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more, by force, for a sample; return home, and get their pardon. Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers, employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people! + +But this description, I confess, does by no means affect the British nation, who may be an example to the whole world for their wisdom, care, and justice in planting colonies; their liberal endowments for the advancement of religion and learning; their choice of devout and able pastors to propagate Christianity; their caution in stocking their provinces with people of sober lives and conversations from this the mother kingdom; their strict regard to the distribution of justice, in supplying the civil administration through all their colonies with officers of the greatest abilities, utter strangers to corruption; and, to crown all, by sending the most vigilant and virtuous governors, who have no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they preside, and the honour of the king their master. + +But as those countries which I have described do not appear to have any desire of being conquered and enslaved, murdered or driven out by colonies, nor abound either in gold, silver, sugar, or tobacco, I did humbly conceive, they were by no means proper objects of our zeal, our valour, or our interest. However, if those whom it more concerns think fit to be of another opinion, I am ready to depose, when I shall be lawfully called, that no European did ever visit those countries before me. I mean, if the inhabitants ought to be believed, unless a dispute may arise concerning the two Yahoos, said to have been seen many years ago upon a mountain in Houyhnhnmland. + +But, as to the formality of taking possession in my sovereign's name, it never came once into my thoughts; and if it had, yet, as my affairs then stood, I should perhaps, in point of prudence and self-preservation, have put it off to a better opportunity. + +Having thus answered the only objection that can ever be raised against me as a traveller, I here take a final leave of all my courteous readers, and return to enjoy my own speculations in my little garden at Redriff; to apply those excellent lessons of virtue which I learned among the Houyhnhnms; to instruct the Yahoos of my own family, is far as I shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus, if possible, habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creature; to lament the brutality to Houyhnhnms in my own country, but always treat their persons with respect, for the sake of my noble master, his family, his friends, and the whole Houyhnhnm race, whom these of ours have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their intellectuals came to degenerate. + +I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of a long table; and to answer (but with the utmost brevity) the few questions I asked her. Yet, the smell of a Yahoo continuing very offensive, I always keep my nose well stopped with rue, lavender, or tobacco leaves. And, although it be hard for a man late in life to remove old habits, I am not altogether out of hopes, in some time, to suffer a neighbour Yahoo in my company, without the apprehensions I am yet under of his teeth or his claws. + +My reconcilement to the Yahoo kind in general might not be so difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only which nature has entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamester, a politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to the due course of things: but when I behold a lump of deformity and diseases, both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience; neither shall I be ever able to comprehend how such an animal, and such a vice, could tally together. The wise and virtuous Houyhnhnms, who abound in all excellences that can adorn a rational creature, have no name for this vice in their language, which has no terms to express any thing that is evil, except those whereby they describe the detestable qualities of their Yahoos, among which they were not able to distinguish this of pride, for want of thoroughly understanding human nature, as it shows itself in other countries where that animal presides. But I, who had more experience, could plainly observe some rudiments of it among the wild Yahoos. + +But the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they possess, than I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm; which no man in his wits would boast of, although he must be miserable without them. I dwell the longer upon this subject from the desire I have to make the society of an English Yahoo by any means not insupportable; and therefore I here entreat those who have any tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not presume to come in my sight. + diff --git a/markup/non-pod-samples/image/di_evh_f1-1.png b/markup/non-pod-samples/image/di_evh_f1-1.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb884e9 --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/non-pod-samples/image/di_evh_f1-1.png diff --git a/markup/non-pod-samples/image/di_evh_f10-1.png b/markup/non-pod-samples/image/di_evh_f10-1.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ce41d83 --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/non-pod-samples/image/di_evh_f10-1.png diff --git a/markup/non-pod-samples/image/di_evh_f11-1.png b/markup/non-pod-samples/image/di_evh_f11-1.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4534358 --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/non-pod-samples/image/di_evh_f11-1.png diff --git 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Production Transforms Markets and Freedom" + language: "US" + +creator: + author: "Benkler, Yochai" + +date: + published: "2006-04-03" + created: "2006-04-03" + issued: "2006-04-03" + available: "2006-04-03" + modified: "2006-04-03" + valid: "2006-04-03" + +rights: + copyright: "2006 Yochai Benkler." + license: "All rights reserved. Subject to the exception immediately following, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ The author has made an online version of the book available under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike license; it can be accessed through the author's website at http://www.benkler.org." + +classify: + topic_register: "SiSU markup sample:book:discourse;networks;Internet;intellectual property:patents|copyright;intellectual property:copyright:creative commons;economics;society;copyright;patents;book:subject:information society|information networks|economics|public policy|society|copyright|patents" + +identifier: + isbn: "9780300110562" + oclc: "61881089" + +# isbn: "0300110561 + +# STRANGE FRUIT By Lewis Allan 1939 (Renewed) by Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP) International copyright secured. All rights reserved. All rights outside the United States controlled by Edward B. Marks Music Company. Reprinted by permission. + +# created: "2006-01-27 + +links: [ + "{ The Wealth of Networks, dedicated wiki }http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/Main_Page", + "{ Yochai Benkler, wiki }http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page", + "{ @ Wikipedia}http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Networks", + "{ WoN @ Amazon.com }http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Networks-Production-Transforms-Markets/dp/0300110561/", + "{ WoN @ Barnes & Noble }http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0300110561" + ] + +make: + doc_type: "book" + breaks: "new=:B; break=1" + home_button_image: "{won_benkler.png }http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/Main_Page" + footer: "{The Wealth of Networks}http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/Main_Page; {Yochai Benkler}http://http://www.benkler.org" + +#% -- body --- + +:A~ @title @author + +--~# + +1~attribution Attribution + +!_ For Deb, Noam, and Ari + +"Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing." "Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable." + +John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) + +--+# + +1~acknowledgments Acknowledgments + +Reading this manuscript was an act of heroic generosity. I owe my gratitude to those who did and who therefore helped me to avoid at least some of the errors that I would have made without their assistance. Bruce Ackerman spent countless hours listening, and reading and challenging both this book and its precursor bits and pieces since 2001. I owe much of its present conception and form to his friendship. Jack Balkin not only read the manuscript, but in an act of great generosity taught it to his seminar, imposed it on the fellows of Yale's Information Society Project, and then spent hours with me working through the limitations and pitfalls they found. Marvin Ammori, Ady Barkan, Elazar Barkan, Becky Bolin, Eszter Hargittai, Niva Elkin Koren, Amy Kapczynski, Eddan Katz, Zac Katz, Nimrod Koslovski, Orly Lobel, Katherine McDaniel, and Siva Vaidhyanathan all read the manuscript and provided valuable thoughts and insights. Michael O'Malley from Yale University Press deserves special thanks for helping me decide to write the book that I really wanted to write, not something else, and then stay the course. ,{[pg 10]}, + +This book has been more than a decade in the making. Its roots go back to 1993-1994: long nights of conversations, as only graduate students can have, with Niva Elkin Koren about democracy in cyberspace; a series of formative conversations with Mitch Kapor; a couple of madly imaginative sessions with Charlie Nesson; and a moment of true understanding with Eben Moglen. Equally central from around that time, but at an angle, were a paper under Terry Fisher's guidance on nineteenth-century homesteading and the radical republicans, and a series of classes and papers with Frank Michelman, Duncan Kennedy, Mort Horwitz, Roberto Unger, and the late David Charny, which led me to think quite fundamentally about the role of property and economic organization in the construction of human freedom. It was Frank Michelman who taught me that the hard trick was to do so as a liberal. + +Since then, I have been fortunate in many and diverse intellectual friendships and encounters, from people in different fields and foci, who shed light on various aspects of this project. I met Larry Lessig for (almost) the first time in 1998. By the end of a two-hour conversation, we had formed a friendship and intellectual conversation that has been central to my work ever since. He has, over the past few years, played a pivotal role in changing the public understanding of control, freedom, and creativity in the digital environment. Over the course of these years, I spent many hours learning from Jamie Boyle, Terry Fisher, and Eben Moglen. In different ways and styles, each of them has had significant influence on my work. There was a moment, sometime between the conference Boyle organized at Yale in 1999 and the one he organized at Duke in 2001, when a range of people who had been doing similar things, pushing against the wind with varying degrees of interconnection, seemed to cohere into a single intellectual movement, centered on the importance of the commons to information production and creativity generally, and to the digitally networked environment in particular. In various contexts, both before this period and since, I have learned much from Julie Cohen, Becky Eisenberg, Bernt Hugenholtz, David Johnson, David Lange, Jessica Litman, Neil Netanel, Helen Nissenbaum, Peggy Radin, Arti Rai, David Post, Jerry Reichman, Pam Samuelson, Jon Zittrain, and Diane Zimmerman. One of the great pleasures of this field is the time I have been able to spend with technologists, economists, sociologists, and others who don't quite fit into any of these categories. Many have been very patient with me and taught me much. In particular, I owe thanks to Sam Bowles, Dave Clark, Dewayne Hendricks, Richard Jefferson, Natalie Jeremijenko, Tara Lemmey, Josh Lerner, Andy Lippman, David Reed, Chuck Sabel, Jerry Saltzer, Tim Shepard, Clay Shirky, and Eric von Hippel. In constitutional law and political theory, I benefited early and consistently from the insights of Ed Baker, with whom I spent many hours puzzling through practically every problem of political theory that I tackle in this book; Chris Eisgruber, Dick Fallon, Larry Kramer, Burt Neuborne, Larry Sager, and Kathleen Sullivan all helped in constructing various components of the argument. + +Much of the early work in this project was done at New York University, whose law school offered me an intellectually engaging and institutionally safe environment to explore some quite unorthodox views. A friend, visiting when I gave a brown-bag workshop there in 1998, pointed out that at very few law schools could I have presented "The Commons as a Neglected Factor of Information Policy" as an untenured member of the faculty, to a room full of law and economics scholars, without jeopardizing my career. Mark Geistfeld, in particular, helped me work though the economics of sharing--as we shared many a pleasant afternoon on the beach, watching our boys playing in the waves. I benefited from the generosity of Al Engelberg, who funded the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy and through it students and fellows, from whose work I learned so much; and Arthur Penn, who funded the Information Law Institute and through it that amazing intellectual moment, the 2000 conference on "A Free Information Ecology in the Digital Environment," and the series of workshops that became the Open Spectrum Project. During that period, I was fortunate enough to have had wonderful students and fellows with whom I worked in various ways that later informed this book, in particular Gaia Bernstein, Mike Burstein, John Kuzin, Greg Pomerantz, Steve Snyder, and Alan Toner. +={ institutional ecology of digital environment } + +Since 2001, first as a visitor and now as a member, I have had the remarkable pleasure of being part of the intellectual community that is Yale Law School. The book in its present form, structure, and emphasis is a direct reflection of my immersion in this wonderful community. Practically every single one of my colleagues has read articles I have written over this period, attended workshops where I presented my work, provided comments that helped to improve the articles--and through them, this book, as well. I owe each and every one of them thanks, not least to Tony Kronman, who made me see that it would be so. To list them all would be redundant. To list some would inevitably underrepresent the various contributions they have made. Still, I will try to say a few of the special thanks, owing much yet to ,{[pg xii]}, those I will not name. Working out the economics was a precondition of being able to make the core political claims. Bob Ellickson, Dan Kahan, and Carol Rose all engaged deeply with questions of reciprocity and commonsbased production, while Jim Whitman kept my feet to the fire on the relationship to the anthropology of the gift. Ian Ayres, Ron Daniels during his visit, Al Klevorick, George Priest, Susan Rose-Ackerman, and Alan Schwartz provided much-needed mixtures of skepticism and help in constructing the arguments that would allay it. Akhil Amar, Owen Fiss, Jerry Mashaw, Robert Post, Jed Rubenfeld, Reva Siegal, and Kenji Yoshino helped me work on the normative and constitutional questions. The turn I took to focusing on global development as the core aspect of the implications for justice, as it is in chapter 9, resulted from an invitation from Harold Koh and Oona Hathaway to speak at their seminar on globalization, and their thoughtful comments to my paper. The greatest influence on that turn has been Amy Kapczynski's work as a fellow at Yale, and with her, the students who invited me to work with them on university licensing policy, in particular, Sam Chaifetz. + +Oddly enough, I have *{never had the proper context}* in which to give two more basic thanks. My father, who was swept up in the resistance to British colonialism and later in Israel's War of Independence, dropped out of high school. He was left with a passionate intellectual hunger and a voracious appetite for reading. He died too young to even imagine sitting, as I do today with my own sons, with the greatest library in human history right there, at the dinner table, with us. But he would have loved it. Another great debt is to David Grais, who spent many hours mentoring me in my first law job, bought me my first copy of Strunk and White, and, for all practical purposes, taught me how to write in English; as he reads these words, he will be mortified, I fear, to be associated with a work of authorship as undisciplined as this, with so many excessively long sentences, replete with dependent clauses and unnecessarily complex formulations of quite simple ideas. + +Finally, to my best friend and tag-team partner in this tussle we call life, Deborah Schrag, with whom I have shared nicely more or less everything since we were barely adults. ,{[pg 1]}, + +1~ Chapter 1 - Introduction: A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge + +Information, knowledge, and culture are central to human freedom and human development. How they are produced and exchanged in our society critically affects the way we see the state of the world as it is and might be; who decides these questions; and how we, as societies and polities, come to understand what can and ought to be done. For more than 150 years, modern complex democracies have depended in large measure on an industrial information economy for these basic functions. In the past decade and a half, we have begun to see a radical change in the organization of information production. Enabled by technological change, we are beginning to see a series of economic, social, and cultural adaptations that make possible a radical transformation of how we make the information environment we occupy as autonomous individuals, citizens, and members of cultural and social groups. It seems passe today to speak of "the Internet revolution." In some academic circles, it is positively naïve. But it should not be. The change brought about by the networked information environment is deep. It is structural. It goes to the very foundations of how liberal markets and liberal democracies have coevolved for almost two centuries. ,{[pg 2]}, +={ access : + human development and justice +2 ; + information economy +55 +} + +A series of changes in the technologies, economic organization, and social practices of production in this environment has created new opportunities for how we make and exchange information, knowledge, and culture. These changes have increased the role of nonmarket and nonproprietary production, both by individuals alone and by cooperative efforts in a wide range of loosely or tightly woven collaborations. These newly emerging practices have seen remarkable success in areas as diverse as software development and investigative reporting, avant-garde video and multiplayer online games. Together, they hint at the emergence of a new information environment, one in which individuals are free to take a more active role than was possible in the industrial information economy of the twentieth century. This new freedom holds great practical promise: as a dimension of individual freedom; as a platform for better democratic participation; as a medium to foster a more critical and self-reflective culture; and, in an increasingly information dependent global economy, as a mechanism to achieve improvements in human development everywhere. + +The rise of greater scope for individual and cooperative nonmarket production of information and culture, however, threatens the incumbents of the industrial information economy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in the midst of a battle over the institutional ecology of the digital environment. A wide range of laws and institutions-- from broad areas like telecommunications, copyright, or international trade regulation, to minutiae like the rules for registering domain names or whether digital television receivers will be required by law to recognize a particular code--are being tugged and warped in efforts to tilt the playing field toward one way of doing things or the other. How these battles turn out over the next decade or so will likely have a significant effect on how we come to know what is going on in the world we occupy, and to what extent and in what forms we will be able--as autonomous individuals, as citizens, and as participants in cultures and communities--to affect how we and others see the world as it is and as it might be. + +2~ THE EMERGENCE OF THE NETWORKED INFORMATION ECONOMY +={ information economy : + emergence of +9 ; + networked information economy +52 : + emergence of +9 +} + +The most advanced economies in the world today have made two parallel shifts that, paradoxically, make possible a significant attenuation of the limitations that market-based production places on the pursuit of the political ,{[pg 3]}, values central to liberal societies. The first move, in the making for more than a century, is to an economy centered on information (financial services, accounting, software, science) and cultural (films, music) production, and the manipulation of symbols (from making sneakers to branding them and manufacturing the cultural significance of the Swoosh). The second is the move to a communications environment built on cheap processors with high computation capabilities, interconnected in a pervasive network--the phenomenon we associate with the Internet. It is this second shift that allows for an increasing role for nonmarket production in the information and cultural production sector, organized in a radically more decentralized pattern than was true of this sector in the twentieth century. The first shift means that these new patterns of production--nonmarket and radically decentralized--will emerge, if permitted, at the core, rather than the periphery of the most advanced economies. It promises to enable social production and exchange to play a much larger role, alongside property- and marketbased production, than they ever have in modern democracies. +={ nonmarket information producers +4 ; + physical constraints on information production +2 ; + production of information : + physical constraints on +2 +} + +The first part of this book is dedicated to establishing a number of basic economic observations. Its overarching claim is that we are seeing the emergence of a new stage in the information economy, which I call the "networked information economy." It is displacing the industrial information economy that typified information production from about the second half of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century. What characterizes the networked information economy is that decentralized individual action--specifically, new and important cooperative and coordinate action carried out through radically distributed, nonmarket mechanisms that do not depend on proprietary strategies--plays a much greater role than it did, or could have, in the industrial information economy. The catalyst for this change is the happenstance of the fabrication technology of computation, and its ripple effects throughout the technologies of communication and storage. The declining price of computation, communication, and storage have, as a practical matter, placed the material means of information and cultural production in the hands of a significant fraction of the world's population--on the order of a billion people around the globe. The core distinguishing feature of communications, information, and cultural production since the mid-nineteenth century was that effective communication spanning the ever-larger societies and geographies that came to make up the relevant political and economic units of the day required ever-larger investments of physical capital. Large-circulation mechanical presses, the telegraph ,{[pg 4]}, system, powerful radio and later television transmitters, cable and satellite, and the mainframe computer became necessary to make information and communicate it on scales that went beyond the very local. Wanting to communicate with others was not a sufficient condition to being able to do so. As a result, information and cultural production took on, over the course of this period, a more industrial model than the economics of information itself would have required. The rise of the networked, computer-mediated communications environment has changed this basic fact. The material requirements for effective information production and communication are now owned by numbers of individuals several orders of magnitude larger than the number of owners of the basic means of information production and exchange a mere two decades ago. +={ capabilities of individuals : + coordinated effects of individual actions ; + commercial model of communication +1 ; + constraints of information production, physical +1 ; + coordinated effects of individual actions +2 ; + individual capabilities and action : + coordinated effects of individual actions +2 ; + industrial model of communication +1 ; + information production : + physical constraints on +1 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment +1 ; + traditional model of communication +} + +The removal of the physical constraints on effective information production has made human creativity and the economics of information itself the core structuring facts in the new networked information economy. These have quite different characteristics than coal, steel, and manual human labor, which characterized the industrial economy and structured our basic thinking about economic production for the past century. They lead to three observations about the emerging information production system. First, nonproprietary strategies have always been more important in information production than they were in the production of steel or automobiles, even when the economics of communication weighed in favor of industrial models. Education, arts and sciences, political debate, and theological disputation have always been much more importantly infused with nonmarket motivations and actors than, say, the automobile industry. As the material barrier that ultimately nonetheless drove much of our information environment to be funneled through the proprietary, market-based strategies is removed, these basic nonmarket, nonproprietary, motivations and organizational forms should in principle become even more important to the information production system. + +Second, we have in fact seen the rise of nonmarket production to much greater importance. Individuals can reach and inform or edify millions around the world. Such a reach was simply unavailable to diversely motivated individuals before, unless they funneled their efforts through either market organizations or philanthropically or state-funded efforts. The fact that every such effort is available to anyone connected to the network, from anywhere, has led to the emergence of coordinate effects, where the aggregate effect of individual action, even when it is not self-consciously cooperative, produces ,{[pg 5]}, the coordinate effect of a new and rich information environment. One needs only to run a Google search on any subject of interest to see how the "information good" that is the response to one's query is produced by the coordinate effects of the uncoordinated actions of a wide and diverse range of individuals and organizations acting on a wide range of motivations-- both market and nonmarket, state-based and nonstate. +={ aggregate effect of individual action } + +Third, and likely most radical, new, and difficult for observers to believe, is the rise of effective, large-scale cooperative efforts--peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. These are typified by the emergence of free and open-source software. We are beginning to see the expansion of this model not only to our core software platforms, but beyond them into every domain of information and cultural production--and this book visits these in many different domains--from peer production of encyclopedias, to news and commentary, to immersive entertainment. +={ free software +1 ; + open-source software +1 ; + peer production ; + software, open-source +} + +It is easy to miss these changes. They run against the grain of some of our most basic Economics 101 intuitions, intuitions honed in the industrial economy at a time when the only serious alternative seen was state Communism--an alternative almost universally considered unattractive today. The undeniable economic success of free software has prompted some leading-edge economists to try to understand why many thousands of loosely networked free software developers can compete with Microsoft at its own game and produce a massive operating system--GNU/Linux. That growing literature, consistent with its own goals, has focused on software and the particulars of the free and open-source software development communities, although Eric von Hippel's notion of "user-driven innovation" has begun to expand that focus to thinking about how individual need and creativity drive innovation at the individual level, and its diffusion through networks of likeminded individuals. The political implications of free software have been central to the free software movement and its founder, Richard Stallman, and were developed provocatively and with great insight by Eben Moglen. Free software is but one salient example of a much broader phenomenon. Why can fifty thousand volunteers successfully coauthor /{Wikipedia}/, the most serious online alternative to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and then turn around and give it away for free? Why do 4.5 million volunteers contribute their leftover computer cycles to create the most powerful supercomputer on Earth, SETI@Home? Without a broadly accepted analytic model to explain these phenomena, we tend to treat them as curiosities, perhaps transient fads, possibly of significance in one market segment or another. We ,{[pg 6]}, should try instead to see them for what they are: a new mode of production emerging in the middle of the most advanced economies in the world-- those that are the most fully computer networked and for which information goods and services have come to occupy the highest-valued roles. +={ Moglen, Eben ; + von Hippel, Eric ; + Stallman, Richard +} + +Human beings are, and always have been, diversely motivated beings. We act instrumentally, but also noninstrumentally. We act for material gain, but also for psychological well-being and gratification, and for social connectedness. There is nothing new or earth-shattering about this, except perhaps to some economists. In the industrial economy in general, and the industrial information economy as well, most opportunities to make things that were valuable and important to many people were constrained by the physical capital requirements of making them. From the steam engine to the assembly line, from the double-rotary printing press to the communications satellite, the capital constraints on action were such that simply wanting to do something was rarely a sufficient condition to enable one to do it. Financing the necessary physical capital, in turn, oriented the necessarily capital-intensive projects toward a production and organizational strategy that could justify the investments. In market economies, that meant orienting toward market production. In state-run economies, that meant orienting production toward the goals of the state bureaucracy. In either case, the practical individual freedom to cooperate with others in making things of value was limited by the extent of the capital requirements of production. +={ behavior : + motivation to produce +2 ; + capital for production +1 ; + constraints of information production, monetary ; + diversity : + human motivation +1 | motivation to produce +1 ; + human motivation ; + incentives to produce ; + information production capital +1 ; + monetary constraints on information production +2 ; + motivation to produce +1 ; + physical capital for production +2 ; + production capital +2 +} + +In the networked information economy, the physical capital required for production is broadly distributed throughout society. Personal computers and network connections are ubiquitous. This does not mean that they cannot be used for markets, or that individuals cease to seek market opportunities. It does mean, however, that whenever someone, somewhere, among the billion connected human beings, and ultimately among all those who will be connected, wants to make something that requires human creativity, a computer, and a network connection, he or she can do so--alone, or in cooperation with others. He or she already has the capital capacity necessary to do so; if not alone, then at least in cooperation with other individuals acting for complementary reasons. The result is that a good deal more that human beings value can now be done by individuals, who interact with each other socially, as human beings and as social beings, rather than as market actors through the price system. Sometimes, under conditions I specify in some detail, these nonmarket collaborations can be better at motivating effort and can allow creative people to work on information projects more ,{[pg 7]}, efficiently than would traditional market mechanisms and corporations. The result is a flourishing nonmarket sector of information, knowledge, and cultural production, based in the networked environment, and applied to anything that the many individuals connected to it can imagine. Its outputs, in turn, are not treated as exclusive property. They are instead subject to an increasingly robust ethic of open sharing, open for all others to build on, extend, and make their own. + +Because the presence and importance of nonmarket production has become so counterintuitive to people living in market-based economies at the end of the twentieth century, part I of this volume is fairly detailed and technical; overcoming what we intuitively "know" requires disciplined analysis. Readers who are not inclined toward economic analysis should at least read the introduction to part I, the segments entitled "When Information Production Meets the Computer Network" and "Diversity of Strategies in our Current Production System" in chapter 2, and the case studies in chapter 3. These should provide enough of an intuitive feel for what I mean by the diversity of production strategies for information and the emergence of nonmarket individual and cooperative production, to serve as the basis for the more normatively oriented parts of the book. Readers who are genuinely skeptical of the possibility that nonmarket production is sustainable and effective, and in many cases is an efficient strategy for information, knowledge, and cultural production, should take the time to read part I in its entirety. The emergence of precisely this possibility and practice lies at the very heart of my claims about the ways in which liberal commitments are translated into lived experiences in the networked environment, and forms the factual foundation of the political-theoretical and the institutional-legal discussion that occupies the remainder of the book. + +2~ NETWORKED INFORMATION ECONOMY AND LIBERAL, DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES +={ democratic societies +15 ; + information economy : + democracy and liberalism +15 ; + liberal societies +15 ; + networked information economy : + democracy and liberalism +15 +} + +How we make information, how we get it, how we speak to others, and how others speak to us are core components of the shape of freedom in any society. Part II of this book provides a detailed look at how the changes in the technological, economic, and social affordances of the networked information environment affect a series of core commitments of a wide range of liberal democracies. The basic claim is that the diversity of ways of organizing information production and use opens a range of possibilities for pursuing % ,{[pg 8]}, the core political values of liberal societies--individual freedom, a more genuinely participatory political system, a critical culture, and social justice. These values provide the vectors of political morality along which the shape and dimensions of any liberal society can be plotted. Because their practical policy implications are often contradictory, rather than complementary, the pursuit of each places certain limits on how we pursue the others, leading different liberal societies to respect them in different patterns. How much a society constrains the democratic decision-making powers of the majority in favor of individual freedom, or to what extent it pursues social justice, have always been attributes that define the political contours and nature of that society. But the economics of industrial production, and our pursuit of productivity and growth, have imposed a limit on how we can pursue any mix of arrangements to implement our commitments to freedom and justice. Singapore is commonly trotted out as an extreme example of the trade-off of freedom for welfare, but all democracies with advanced capitalist economies have made some such trade-off. Predictions of how well we will be able to feed ourselves are always an important consideration in thinking about whether, for example, to democratize wheat production or make it more egalitarian. Efforts to push workplace democracy have also often foundered on the shoals--real or imagined--of these limits, as have many plans for redistribution in the name of social justice. Market-based, proprietary production has often seemed simply too productive to tinker with. The emergence of the networked information economy promises to expand the horizons of the feasible in political imagination. Different liberal polities can pursue different mixtures of respect for different liberal commitments. However, the overarching constraint represented by the seeming necessity of the industrial model of information and cultural production has significantly shifted as an effective constraint on the pursuit of liberal commitments. + +3~ Enhanced Autonomy +={ autonomy +3 ; + individual autonomy +2 ; + democratic societies : + autonomy +3 ; + liberal societies : + autonomy +3 +} + +The networked information economy improves the practical capacities of individuals along three dimensions: (1) it improves their capacity to do more for and by themselves; (2) it enhances their capacity to do more in loose commonality with others, without being constrained to organize their relationship through a price system or in traditional hierarchical models of social and economic organization; and (3) it improves the capacity of individuals to do more in formal organizations that operate outside the market sphere. This enhanced autonomy is at the core of all the other improvements I ,{[pg 9]}, describe. Individuals are using their newly expanded practical freedom to act and cooperate with others in ways that improve the practiced experience of democracy, justice and development, a critical culture, and community. +={ institutional ecology of digital environment +1 ; + loose affiliations +1 ; + networked public sphere : + loose affiliations +1 ; + norms (social) : + loose affiliations +1 ; + peer production : + loose affiliations ; + public sphere : + loose affiliations +1 ; + regulation by social norms : + loose affiliations +1 ; + scope of loose relations +1 ; + social relations and norms : + loose affiliations +1 +} + +I begin, therefore, with an analysis of the effects of networked information economy on individual autonomy. First, individuals can do more for themselves independently of the permission or cooperation of others. They can create their own expressions, and they can seek out the information they need, with substantially less dependence on the commercial mass media of the twentieth century. Second, and no less importantly, individuals can do more in loose affiliation with others, rather than requiring stable, long-term relations, like coworker relations or participation in formal organizations, to underwrite effective cooperation. Very few individuals living in the industrial information economy could, in any realistic sense, decide to build a new Library of Alexandria of global reach, or to start an encyclopedia. As collaboration among far-flung individuals becomes more common, the idea of doing things that require cooperation with others becomes much more attainable, and the range of projects individuals can choose as their own therefore qualitatively increases. The very fluidity and low commitment required of any given cooperative relationship increases the range and diversity of cooperative relations people can enter, and therefore of collaborative projects they can conceive of as open to them. + +These ways in which autonomy is enhanced require a fairly substantive and rich conception of autonomy as a practical lived experience, rather than the formal conception preferred by many who think of autonomy as a philosophical concept. But even from a narrower perspective, which spans a broader range of conceptions of autonomy, at a minimum we can say that individuals are less susceptible to manipulation by a legally defined class of others--the owners of communications infrastructure and media. The networked information economy provides varied alternative platforms for communication, so that it moderates the power of the traditional mass-media model, where ownership of the means of communication enables an owner to select what others view, and thereby to affect their perceptions of what they can and cannot do. Moreover, the diversity of perspectives on the way the world is and the way it could be for any given individual is qualitatively increased. This gives individuals a significantly greater role in authoring their own lives, by enabling them to perceive a broader range of possibilities, and by providing them a richer baseline against which to measure the choices they in fact make. +={ commercial model of communication ; + industrial model of communication ; + traditional model of communication +} + +% ,{[pg 10]}, + +3~ Democracy: The Networked Public Sphere +={ democratic societies : + public sphere, shift from mass media +4 +} + +The second major implication of the networked information economy is the shift it enables from the mass-mediated public sphere to a networked public sphere. This shift is also based on the increasing freedom individuals enjoy to participate in creating information and knowledge, and the possibilities it presents for a new public sphere to emerge alongside the commercial, mass-media markets. The idea that the Internet democratizes is hardly new. It has been a staple of writing about the Internet since the early 1990s. The relatively simple first-generation claims about the liberating effects of the Internet, summarized in the U.S. Supreme Court's celebration of its potential to make everyone a pamphleteer, came under a variety of criticisms and attacks over the course of the past half decade or so. Here, I offer a detailed analysis of how the emergence of a networked information economy in particular, as an alternative to mass media, improves the political public sphere. The first-generation critique of the democratizing effect of the Internet was based on various implications of the problem of information overload, or the Babel objection. According to the Babel objection, when everyone can speak, no one can be heard, and we devolve either to a cacophony or to the reemergence of money as the distinguishing factor between statements that are heard and those that wallow in obscurity. The second-generation critique was that the Internet is not as decentralized as we thought in the 1990s. The emerging patterns of Internet use show that very few sites capture an exceedingly large amount of attention, and millions of sites go unnoticed. In this world, the Babel objection is perhaps avoided, but only at the expense of the very promise of the Internet as a democratic medium. +={ centralization of communications : + decentralization +3 ; + decentralization of communications +3 ; + democratic societies : + shift from mass-media communications model +3 ; + Babel objection ; + commercial model of communication : + shift away from +2 ; + industrial model of communication : + shift away from +3 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + shift away from +3 ; + liberal societies : + public sphere, shift from mass media +3 ; + networked public sphere +3 ; + public sphere +3 ; + traditional model of communication : + shift away from +3 ; + information overload and Babel objection +} + +In chapters 6 and 7, I offer a detailed and updated analysis of this, perhaps the best-known and most contentious claim about the Internet's liberalizing effects. First, it is important to understand that any consideration of the democratizing effects of the Internet must measure its effects as compared to the commercial, mass-media-based public sphere, not as compared to an idealized utopia that we embraced a decade ago of how the Internet might be. Commercial mass media that have dominated the public spheres of all modern democracies have been studied extensively. They have been shown in extensive literature to exhibit a series of failures as platforms for public discourse. First, they provide a relatively limited intake basin--that is, too many observations and concerns of too many people in complex modern ,{[pg 11]}, societies are left unobserved and unattended to by the small cadre of commercial journalists charged with perceiving the range of issues of public concern in any given society. Second, particularly where the market is concentrated, they give their owners inordinate power to shape opinion and information. This power they can either use themselves or sell to the highest bidder. And third, whenever the owners of commercial media choose not to exercise their power in this way, they then tend to program toward the inane and soothing, rather than toward that which will be politically engaging, and they tend to oversimplify complex public discussions. On the background of these limitations of the mass media, I suggest that the networked public sphere enables many more individuals to communicate their observations and their viewpoints to many others, and to do so in a way that cannot be controlled by media owners and is not as easily corruptible by money as were the mass media. + +The empirical and theoretical literature about network topology and use provides answers to all the major critiques of the claim that the Internet improves the structure of the public sphere. In particular, I show how a wide range of mechanisms--starting from the simple mailing list, through static Web pages, the emergence of writable Web capabilities, and mobility--are being embedded in a social system for the collection of politically salient information, observations, and comments, and provide a platform for discourse. These platforms solve some of the basic limitations of the commercial, concentrated mass media as the core platform of the public sphere in contemporary complex democracies. They enable anyone, anywhere, to go through his or her practical life, observing the social environment through new eyes--the eyes of someone who could actually inject a thought, a criticism, or a concern into the public debate. Individuals become less passive, and thus more engaged observers of social spaces that could potentially become subjects for political conversation; they become more engaged participants in the debates about their observations. The various formats of the networked public sphere provide anyone with an outlet to speak, to inquire, to investigate, without need to access the resources of a major media organization. We are seeing the emergence of new, decentralized approaches to fulfilling the watchdog function and to engaging in political debate and organization. These are being undertaken in a distinctly nonmarket form, in ways that would have been much more difficult to pursue effectively, as a standard part of the construction of the public sphere, before the networked information environment. Working through detailed examples, I try ,{[pg 12]}, to render the optimism about the democratic advantages of the networked public sphere a fully specified argument. + +The networked public sphere has also begun to respond to the information overload problem, but without re-creating the power of mass media at the points of filtering and accreditation. There are two core elements to these developments: First, we are beginning to see the emergence of nonmarket, peer-produced alternative sources of filtration and accreditation in place of the market-based alternatives. Relevance and accreditation are themselves information goods, just like software or an encyclopedia. What we are seeing on the network is that filtering for both relevance and accreditation has become the object of widespread practices of mutual pointing, of peer review, of pointing to original sources of claims, and its complement, the social practice that those who have some ability to evaluate the claims in fact do comment on them. The second element is a contingent but empirically confirmed observation of how users actually use the network. As a descriptive matter, information flow in the network is much more ordered than a simple random walk in the cacophony of information flow would suggest, and significantly less centralized than the mass media environment was. Some sites are much more visible and widely read than others. This is true both when one looks at the Web as a whole, and when one looks at smaller clusters of similar sites or users who tend to cluster. Most commentators who have looked at this pattern have interpreted it as a reemergence of mass media--the dominance of the few visible sites. But a full consideration of the various elements of the network topology literature supports a very different interpretation, in which order emerges in the networked environment without re-creating the failures of the mass-media-dominated public sphere. Sites cluster around communities of interest: Australian fire brigades tend to link to other Australian fire brigades, conservative political blogs (Web logs or online journals) in the United States to other conservative political blogs in the United States, and to a lesser but still significant extent, to liberal political blogs. In each of these clusters, the pattern of some high visibility nodes continues, but as the clusters become small enough, many more of the sites are moderately linked to each other in the cluster. Through this pattern, the network seems to be forming into an attention backbone. "Local" clusters--communities of interest--can provide initial vetting and "peer-review-like" qualities to individual contributions made within an interest cluster. Observations that are seen as significant within a community ,{[pg 13]}, of interest make their way to the relatively visible sites in that cluster, from where they become visible to people in larger ("regional") clusters. This continues until an observation makes its way to the "superstar" sites that hundreds of thousands of people might read and use. This path is complemented by the practice of relatively easy commenting and posting directly to many of the superstar sites, which creates shortcuts to wide attention. It is fairly simple to grasp intuitively why these patterns might emerge. Users tend to treat other people's choices about what to link to and to read as good indicators of what is worthwhile for them. They are not slavish in this, though; they apply some judgment of their own as to whether certain types of users--say, political junkies of a particular stripe, or fans of a specific television program--are the best predictors of what will be interesting for them. The result is that attention in the networked environment is more dependent on being interesting to an engaged group of people than it is in the mass-media environment, where moderate interest to large numbers of weakly engaged viewers is preferable. Because of the redundancy of clusters and links, and because many clusters are based on mutual interest, not on capital investment, it is more difficult to buy attention on the Internet than it is in mass media outlets, and harder still to use money to squelch an opposing view. These characteristics save the networked environment from the Babel objection without reintroducing excessive power in any single party or small cluster of them, and without causing a resurgence in the role of money as a precondition to the ability to speak publicly. +={ accreditation : + as public good ; + Babel objection ; + clusters in network topology ; + information overload and Babel objection ; + filtering : + as public good ; + information flow ; + local clusters in network topology ; + regional clusters in network topology ; + relevance filtering : + as public good +} + +3~ Justice and Human Development +={ access : + human development and justice +3 ; + democratic societies : + justice and human development +3 ; + human development and justice +3 ; + justice and human development +3 ; + liberal societies : + justice and human development +} + +Information, knowledge, and information-rich goods and tools play a significant role in economic opportunity and human development. While the networked information economy cannot solve global hunger and disease, its emergence does open reasonably well-defined new avenues for addressing and constructing some of the basic requirements of justice and human development. Because the outputs of the networked information economy are usually nonproprietary, it provides free access to a set of the basic instrumentalities of economic opportunity and the basic outputs of the information economy. From a liberal perspective concerned with justice, at a minimum, these outputs become more readily available as "finished goods" to those who are least well off. More importantly, the availability of free information resources makes participating in the economy less dependent on ,{[pg 14]}, surmounting access barriers to financing and social-transactional networks that made working out of poverty difficult in industrial economies. These resources and tools thus improve equality of opportunity. + +From a more substantive and global perspective focused on human development, the freedom to use basic resources and capabilities allows improved participation in the production of information and information-dependent components of human development. First, and currently most advanced, the emergence of a broad range of free software utilities makes it easier for poor and middle-income countries to obtain core software capabilities. More importantly, free software enables the emergence of local capabilities to provide software services, both for national uses and as a basis for participating in a global software services industry, without need to rely on permission from multinational software companies. Scientific publication is beginning to use commons-based strategies to publish important sources of information in a way that makes the outputs freely available in poorer countries. More ambitiously, we begin to see in agricultural research a combined effort of public, nonprofit, and open-source-like efforts being developed and applied to problems of agricultural innovation. The ultimate purpose is to develop a set of basic capabilities that would allow collaboration among farmers and scientists, in both poor countries and around the globe, to develop better, more nutritious crops to improve food security throughout the poorer regions of the world. Equally ambitious, but less operationally advanced, we are beginning to see early efforts to translate this system of innovation to health-related products. +={ free software : + human development and justice ; + innovation : + human development +1 ; + open-source software : + human development and justice ; + software, open-source : + human development and justice +} + +All these efforts are aimed at solving one of the most glaring problems of poverty and poor human development in the global information economy: Even as opulence increases in the wealthier economies--as information and innovation offer longer and healthier lives that are enriched by better access to information, knowledge, and culture--in many places, life expectancy is decreasing, morbidity is increasing, and illiteracy remains rampant. Some, although by no means all, of this global injustice is due to the fact that we have come to rely ever-more exclusively on proprietary business models of the industrial economy to provide some of the most basic information components of human development. As the networked information economy develops new ways of producing information, whose outputs are not treated as proprietary and exclusive but can be made available freely to everyone, it offers modest but meaningful opportunities for improving human development everywhere. We are seeing early signs of the emergence of an innovation ,{[pg 15]}, ecosystem made of public funding, traditional nonprofits, and the newly emerging sector of peer production that is making it possible to advance human development through cooperative efforts in both rich countries and poor. + +3~ A Critical Culture and Networked Social Relations + +The networked information economy also allows for the emergence of a more critical and self-reflective culture. In the past decade, a number of legal scholars--Niva Elkin Koren, Terry Fisher, Larry Lessig, and Jack Balkin-- have begun to examine how the Internet democratizes culture. Following this work and rooted in the deliberative strand of democratic theory, I suggest that the networked information environment offers us a more attractive cultural production system in two distinct ways: (1) it makes culture more transparent, and (2) it makes culture more malleable. Together, these mean that we are seeing the emergence of a new folk culture--a practice that has been largely suppressed in the industrial era of cultural production--where many more of us participate actively in making cultural moves and finding meaning in the world around us. These practices make their practitioners better "readers" of their own culture and more self-reflective and critical of the culture they occupy, thereby enabling them to become more self-reflective participants in conversations within that culture. This also allows individuals much greater freedom to participate in tugging and pulling at the cultural creations of others, "glomming on" to them, as Balkin puts it, and making the culture they occupy more their own than was possible with mass-media culture. In these senses, we can say that culture is becoming more democratic: self-reflective and participatory. +={ Balkin, Jack ; + communities : + critical culture and self-reflection +1 ; + critical culture and self-reflection +1 ; + culture : + criticality of (self-reflection) +1 ; + democratic societies : + critical culture and social relations +1 ; + Fisher, William (Terry) ; + Koren, Niva Elkin ; + Lessig, Lawrence (Larry) ; + self-organization : + See clusters in network topology self-reflection +1 ; + liberal societies : + critical culture and social relations +} + +Throughout much of this book, I underscore the increased capabilities of individuals as the core driving social force behind the networked information economy. This heightened individual capacity has raised concerns by many that the Internet further fragments community, continuing the long trend of industrialization. A substantial body of empirical literature suggests, however, that we are in fact using the Internet largely at the expense of television, and that this exchange is a good one from the perspective of social ties. We use the Internet to keep in touch with family and intimate friends, both geographically proximate and distant. To the extent we do see a shift in social ties, it is because, in addition to strengthening our strong bonds, we are also increasing the range and diversity of weaker connections. Following ,{[pg 16]}, Manuel Castells and Barry Wellman, I suggest that we have become more adept at filling some of the same emotional and context-generating functions that have traditionally been associated with the importance of community with a network of overlapping social ties that are limited in duration or intensity. +={ attention fragmentation ; + Castells, Manuel ; + fragmentation of communication ; + norms (social) : + fragmentation of communication ; + regulation by social norms : + fragmentation of communication ; + social relations and norms : + fragmentation of communication ; + communities : + fragmentation of ; + diversity : + fragmentation of communication ; + Castells, Manuel +} + +2~ FOUR METHODOLOGICAL COMMENTS +={ information economy : + methodological choices +14 ; + networked environmental policy : + See policy ; + networked information economy : + methodological choices +14 +} + +There are four methodological choices represented by the thesis that I have outlined up to this point, and therefore in this book as a whole, which require explication and defense. The first is that I assign a very significant role to technology. The second is that I offer an explanation centered on social relations, but operating in the domain of economics, rather than sociology. The third and fourth are more internal to liberal political theory. The third is that I am offering a liberal political theory, but taking a path that has usually been resisted in that literature--considering economic structure and the limits of the market and its supporting institutions from the perspective of freedom, rather than accepting the market as it is, and defending or criticizing adjustments through the lens of distributive justice. Fourth, my approach heavily emphasizes individual action in nonmarket relations. Much of the discussion revolves around the choice between markets and nonmarket social behavior. In much of it, the state plays no role, or is perceived as playing a primarily negative role, in a way that is alien to the progressive branches of liberal political thought. In this, it seems more of a libertarian or an anarchistic thesis than a liberal one. I do not completely discount the state, as I will explain. But I do suggest that what is special about our moment is the rising efficacy of individuals and loose, nonmarket affiliations as agents of political economy. Just like the market, the state will have to adjust to this new emerging modality of human action. Liberal political theory must first recognize and understand it before it can begin to renegotiate its agenda for the liberal state, progressive or otherwise. +={ capabilities of individuals : + technology and human affairs +5 ; + human affairs, technology and +5 ; + individual capabilities and action : + technology and human affairs +5 +} + +3~ The Role of Technology in Human Affairs +={ technology : + role of +2 +} + +The first methodological choice concerns how one should treat the role of technology in the development of human affairs. The kind of technological determinism that typified Lewis Mumford, or, specifically in the area of communications, Marshall McLuhan, is widely perceived in academia today ,{[pg 17]}, as being too deterministic, though perhaps not so in popular culture. The contemporary effort to offer more nuanced, institution-based, and politicalchoice-based explanations is perhaps best typified by Paul Starr's recent and excellent work on the creation of the media. While these contemporary efforts are indeed powerful, one should not confuse a work like Elizabeth Eisenstein's carefully argued and detailed The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, with McLuhan's determinism. Assuming that technologies are just tools that happen, more or less, to be there, and are employed in any given society in a pattern that depends only on what that society and culture makes of them is too constrained. A society that has no wheel and no writing has certain limits on what it can do. Barry Wellman has imported into sociology a term borrowed from engineering--affordances.~{ Barry Wellman et al., "The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism," JCMC 8, no. 3 (April 2003). }~ Langdon Winner called these the "political properties" of technologies.~{ Langdon Winner, ed., "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" in The Whale and The Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 19-39. }~ An earlier version of this idea is Harold Innis's concept of "the bias of communications."~{ Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951). Innis too is often lumped with McLuhan and Walter Ong as a technological determinist. His work was, however, one of a political economist, and he emphasized the relationship between technology and economic and social organization, much more than the deterministic operation of technology on human cognition and capability. }~ In Internet law and policy debates this approach has become widely adopted through the influential work of Lawrence Lessig, who characterized it as "code is law."~{ Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999). }~ +={ deregulation : + See policy determinism, technological +1 ; + Eisenstein, Elizabeth ; + McLuhan, Marshall ; + Mumford, Lewis ; + Winner, Langdon ; + Wellman, Barry ; + Starr, Paul +} + +The idea is simple to explain, and distinct from a naïve determinism. Different technologies make different kinds of human action and interaction easier or harder to perform. All other things being equal, things that are easier to do are more likely to be done, and things that are harder to do are less likely to be done. All other things are never equal. That is why technological determinism in the strict sense--if you have technology "t," you should expect social structure or relation "s" to emerge--is false. Ocean navigation had a different adoption and use when introduced in states whose land empire ambitions were effectively countered by strong neighbors--like Spain and Portugal--than in nations that were focused on building a vast inland empire, like China. Print had different effects on literacy in countries where religion encouraged individual reading--like Prussia, Scotland, England, and New England--than where religion discouraged individual, unmediated interaction with texts, like France and Spain. This form of understanding the role of technology is adopted here. Neither deterministic nor wholly malleable, technology sets some parameters of individual and social action. It can make some actions, relationships, organizations, and institutions easier to pursue, and others harder. In a challenging environment--be the challenges natural or human--it can make some behaviors obsolete by increasing the efficacy of directly competitive strategies. However, within the realm of the feasible--uses not rendered impossible by the adoption or rejection of a technology--different patterns of adoption and use ,{[pg 18]}, can result in very different social relations that emerge around a technology. Unless these patterns are in competition, or unless even in competition they are not catastrophically less effective at meeting the challenges, different societies can persist with different patterns of use over long periods. It is the feasibility of long-term sustainability of different patterns of use that makes this book relevant to policy, not purely to theory. The same technologies of networked computers can be adopted in very different patterns. There is no guarantee that networked information technology will lead to the improvements in innovation, freedom, and justice that I suggest are possible. That is a choice we face as a society. The way we develop will, in significant measure, depend on choices we make in the next decade or so. + +3~ The Role of Economic Analysis and Methodological Individualism +={ individualist methodologies +1 ; + economic analysis, role of +1 +} + +It should be emphasized, as the second point, that this book has a descriptive methodology that is distinctly individualist and economic in orientation, which is hardly the only way to approach this problem. Manuel Castells's magisterial treatment of the networked society~{ Manuel Castells, The Rise of Networked Society (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996). }~ locates its central characteristic in the shift from groups and hierarchies to networks as social and organizational models--looser, flexible arrangements of human affairs. Castells develops this theory as he describes a wide range of changes, from transportation networks to globalization and industrialization. In his work, the Internet fits into this trend, enabling better coordination and cooperation in these sorts of loosely affiliated networks. My own emphasis is on the specific relative roles of market and nonmarket sectors, and how that change anchors the radical decentralization that he too observes, as a matter of sociological observation. I place at the core of the shift the technical and economic characteristics of computer networks and information. These provide the pivot for the shift toward radical decentralization of production. They underlie the shift from an information environment dominated by proprietary, market-oriented action, to a world in which nonproprietary, nonmarket transactional frameworks play a large role alongside market production. This newly emerging, nonproprietary sector affects to a substantial degree the entire information environment in which individuals and societies live their lives. If there is one lesson we can learn from globalization and the ever-increasing reach of the market, it is that the logic of the market exerts enormous pressure on existing social structures. If we are indeed seeing the emergence of a substantial component of nonmarket production at the very ,{[pg 19]}, core of our economic engine--the production and exchange of information, and through it of information-based goods, tools, services, and capabilities-- then this change suggests a genuine limit on the extent of the market. Such a limit, growing from within the very market that it limits, in its most advanced loci, would represent a genuine shift in direction for what appeared to be the ever-increasing global reach of the market economy and society in the past half century. +={ Castells, Manuel ; + methodological individualism ; + nonmarket information producers : + role of +} + +3~ Economic Structure in Liberal Political Theory +={ economics in liberal political theory +2 ; + liberal political theory +2 +} + +The third point has to do with the role of economic structure in liberal political theory. My analysis in this regard is practical and human centric. By this, I mean to say two things: First, I am concerned with human beings, with individuals as the bearers of moral claims regarding the structure of the political and economic systems they inhabit. Within the liberal tradition, the position I take is humanistic and general, as opposed to political and particular. It is concerned first and foremost with the claims of human beings as human beings, rather than with the requirements of democracy or the entitlements of citizenship or membership in a legitimate or meaningfully self-governed political community. There are diverse ways of respecting the basic claims of human freedom, dignity, and well-being. Different liberal polities do so with different mixes of constitutional and policy practices. The rise of global information economic structures and relationships affects human beings everywhere. In some places, it complements democratic traditions. In others, it destabilizes constraints on liberty. An understanding of how we can think of this moment in terms of human freedom and development must transcend the particular traditions, both liberal and illiberal, of any single nation. The actual practice of freedom that we see emerging from the networked environment allows people to reach across national or social boundaries, across space and political division. It allows people to solve problems together in new associations that are outside the boundaries of formal, legal-political association. In this fluid social economic environment, the individual's claims provide a moral anchor for considering the structures of power and opportunity, of freedom and well-being. Furthermore, while it is often convenient and widely accepted to treat organizations or communities as legal entities, as "persons," they are not moral agents. Their role in an analysis of freedom and justice is derivative from their role--both enabling and constraining--as structuring context in which human beings, ,{[pg 20]}, the actual moral agents of political economy, find themselves. In this regard, my positions here are decidedly "liberal," as opposed to either communitarian or critical. +={ dignity ; + well-being ; + freedom ; + communities : + as persons +1 +} + +Second, I am concerned with actual human beings in actual historical settings, not with representations of human beings abstracted from their settings. These commitments mean that freedom and justice for historically situated individuals are measured from a first-person, practical perspective. No constraints on individual freedom and no sources of inequality are categorically exempt from review, nor are any considered privileged under this view. Neither economy nor cultural heritage is given independent moral weight. A person whose life and relations are fully regimented by external forces is unfree, no matter whether the source of regimentation can be understood as market-based, authoritarian, or traditional community values. This does not entail a radical anarchism or libertarianism. Organizations, communities, and other external structures are pervasively necessary for human beings to flourish and to act freely and effectively. This does mean, however, that I think of these structures only from the perspective of their effects on human beings. Their value is purely derivative from their importance to the actual human beings that inhabit them and are structured--for better or worse--by them. As a practical matter, this places concern with market structure and economic organization much closer to the core of questions of freedom than liberal theory usually is willing to do. Liberals have tended to leave the basic structure of property and markets either to libertarians--who, like Friedrich Hayek, accepted its present contours as "natural," and a core constituent element of freedom--or to Marxists and neo-Marxists. I treat property and markets as just one domain of human action, with affordances and limitations. Their presence enhances freedom along some dimensions, but their institutional requirements can become sources of constraint when they squelch freedom of action in nonmarket contexts. Calibrating the reach of the market, then, becomes central not only to the shape of justice or welfare in a society, but also to freedom. +={ autonomy +5 ; + capabilities of individuals +5 ; + democratic societies : + individual capabilities in +5 ; + individual autonomy : + individual capabilities in +5 ; + individual capabilities and action +5 ; + Hayek, Friedrich +} + +3~ Whither the State? +={ government : + role of +4 ; + state, role of +4 +} + +The fourth and last point emerges in various places throughout this book, but deserves explicit note here. What I find new and interesting about the networked information economy is the rise of individual practical capabilities, and the role that these new capabilities play in increasing the relative salience of nonproprietary, often nonmarket individual and social behavior. ,{[pg 21]}, + +In my discussion of autonomy and democracy, of justice and a critical culture, I emphasize the rise of individual and cooperative private action and the relative decrease in the dominance of market-based and proprietary action. Where in all this is the state? For the most part, as you will see particularly in chapter 11, the state in both the United States and Europe has played a role in supporting the market-based industrial incumbents of the twentieth-century information production system at the expense of the individuals who make up the emerging networked information economy. Most state interventions have been in the form of either captured legislation catering to incumbents, or, at best, well-intentioned but wrongheaded efforts to optimize the institutional ecology for outdated modes of information and cultural production. In the traditional mapping of political theory, a position such as the one I present here--that freedom and justice can and should best be achieved by a combination of market action and private, voluntary (not to say charitable) nonmarket action, and that the state is a relatively suspect actor--is libertarian. Perhaps, given that I subject to similar criticism rules styled by their proponents as "property"--like "intellectual property" or "spectrum property rights"--it is anarchist, focused on the role of mutual aid and highly skeptical of the state. (It is quite fashionable nowadays to be libertarian, as it has been for a few decades, and more fashionable to be anarchist than it has been in a century.) + +The more modest truth is that my position is not rooted in a theoretical skepticism about the state, but in a practical diagnosis of opportunities, barriers, and strategies for achieving improvements in human freedom and development given the actual conditions of technology, economy, and politics. I have no objection in principle to an effective, liberal state pursuing one of a range of liberal projects and commitments. Here and there throughout this book you will encounter instances where I suggest that the state could play constructive roles, if it stopped listening to incumbents for long enough to realize this. These include, for example, municipal funding of neutral broadband networks, state funding of basic research, and possible strategic regulatory interventions to negate monopoly control over essential resources in the digital environment. However, the necessity for the state's affirmative role is muted because of my diagnosis of the particular trajectory of markets, on the one hand, and individual and social action, on the other hand, in the digitally networked information environment. The particular economics of computation and communications; the particular economics of information, knowledge, and cultural production; and the relative role of ,{[pg 22]}, information in contemporary, advanced economies have coalesced to make nonmarket individual and social action the most important domain of action in the furtherance of the core liberal commitments. Given these particular characteristics, there is more freedom to be found through opening up institutional spaces for voluntary individual and cooperative action than there is in intentional public action through the state. Nevertheless, I offer no particular reasons to resist many of the roles traditionally played by the liberal state. I offer no reason to think that, for example, education should stop being primarily a state-funded, public activity and a core responsibility of the liberal state, or that public health should not be so. I have every reason to think that the rise of nonmarket production enhances, rather than decreases, the justifiability of state funding for basic science and research, as the spillover effects of publicly funded information production can now be much greater and more effectively disseminated and used to enhance the general welfare. +={ social action +1 } + +The important new fact about the networked environment, however, is the efficacy and centrality of individual and collective social action. In most domains, freedom of action for individuals, alone and in loose cooperation with others, can achieve much of the liberal desiderata I consider throughout this book. From a global perspective, enabling individuals to act in this way also extends the benefits of liberalization across borders, increasing the capacities of individuals in nonliberal states to grab greater freedom than those who control their political systems would like. By contrast, as long as states in the most advanced market-based economies continue to try to optimize their institutional frameworks to support the incumbents of the industrial information economy, they tend to threaten rather than support liberal commitments. Once the networked information economy has stabilized and we come to understand the relative importance of voluntary private action outside of markets, the state can begin to adjust its policies to facilitate nonmarket action and to take advantage of its outputs to improve its own support for core liberal commitments. +={ collaborative authorship : + See also peer production collective social action +} + +2~ THE STAKES OF IT ALL: THE BATTLE OVER THE INSTITUTIONAL ECOLOGY OF THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT +={ commercial model of communication +9 ; + industrial model of communication +9 ; + information economy : + institutional ecology +9 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment +9 ; + networked information economy : + institutional ecology +9 ; + proprietary rights +9 ; + traditional model of communication +9 +} + +No benevolent historical force will inexorably lead this technologicaleconomic moment to develop toward an open, diverse, liberal equilibrium. ,{[pg 23]}, If the transformation I describe as possible occurs, it will lead to substantial redistribution of power and money from the twentieth-century industrial producers of information, culture, and communications--like Hollywood, the recording industry, and perhaps the broadcasters and some of the telecommunications services giants--to a combination of widely diffuse populations around the globe, and the market actors that will build the tools that make this population better able to produce its own information environment rather than buying it ready-made. None of the industrial giants of yore are taking this reallocation lying down. The technology will not overcome their resistance through an insurmountable progressive impulse. The reorganization of production and the advances it can bring in freedom and justice will emerge, therefore, only as a result of social and political action aimed at protecting the new social patterns from the incumbents' assaults. It is precisely to develop an understanding of what is at stake and why it is worth fighting for that I write this book. I offer no reassurances, however, that any of this will in fact come to pass. + +The battle over the relative salience of the proprietary, industrial models of information production and exchange and the emerging networked information economy is being carried out in the domain of the institutional ecology of the digital environment. In a wide range of contexts, a similar set of institutional questions is being contested: To what extent will resources necessary for information production and exchange be governed as a commons, free for all to use and biased in their availability in favor of none? To what extent will these resources be entirely proprietary, and available only to those functioning within the market or within traditional forms of wellfunded nonmarket action like the state and organized philanthropy? We see this battle played out at all layers of the information environment: the physical devices and network channels necessary to communicate; the existing information and cultural resources out of which new statements must be made; and the logical resources--the software and standards--necessary to translate what human beings want to say to each other into signals that machines can process and transmit. Its central question is whether there will, or will not, be a core common infrastructure that is governed as a commons and therefore available to anyone who wishes to participate in the networked information environment outside of the market-based, proprietary framework. +={ property ownership +5 ; + commons +} + +This is not to say that property is in some sense inherently bad. Property, together with contract, is the core institutional component of markets, and ,{[pg 24]}, a core institutional element of liberal societies. It is what enables sellers to extract prices from buyers, and buyers to know that when they pay, they will be secure in their ability to use what they bought. It underlies our capacity to plan actions that require use of resources that, without exclusivity, would be unavailable for us to use. But property also constrains action. The rules of property are circumscribed and intended to elicit a particular datum--willingness and ability to pay for exclusive control over a resource. They constrain what one person or another can do with regard to a resource; that is, use it in some ways but not others, reveal or hide information with regard to it, and so forth. These constraints are necessary so that people must transact with each other through markets, rather than through force or social networks, but they do so at the expense of constraining action outside of the market to the extent that it depends on access to these resources. +={ constrains of information production, physical +2 ; + physical constraints on information production +2 +} + +Commons are another core institutional component of freedom of action in free societies, but they are structured to enable action that is not based on exclusive control over the resources necessary for action. For example, I can plan an outdoor party with some degree of certainty by renting a private garden or beach, through the property system. Alternatively, I can plan to meet my friends on a public beach or at Sheep's Meadow in Central Park. I can buy an easement from my neighbor to reach a nearby river, or I can walk around her property using the public road that makes up our transportation commons. Each institutional framework--property and commons--allows for a certain freedom of action and a certain degree of predictability of access to resources. Their complementary coexistence and relative salience as institutional frameworks for action determine the relative reach of the market and the domain of nonmarket action, both individual and social, in the resources they govern and the activities that depend on access to those resources. Now that material conditions have enabled the emergence of greater scope for nonmarket action, the scope and existence of a core common infrastructure that includes the basic resources necessary to produce and exchange information will shape the degree to which individuals will be able to act in all the ways that I describe as central to the emergence of a networked information economy and the freedoms it makes possible. +={ commons } + +At the physical layer, the transition to broadband has been accompanied by a more concentrated market structure for physical wires and connections, and less regulation of the degree to which owners can control the flow of ,{[pg 25]}, information on their networks. The emergence of open wireless networks, based on "spectrum commons," counteracts this trend to some extent, as does the current apparent business practice of broadband owners not to use their ownership to control the flow of information over their networks. Efforts to overcome the broadband market concentration through the development of municipal broadband networks are currently highly contested in legislation and courts. The single most threatening development at the physical layer has been an effort driven primarily by Hollywood, over the past few years, to require the manufacturers of computation devices to design their systems so as to enforce the copyright claims and permissions imposed by the owners of digital copyrighted works. Should this effort succeed, the core characteristic of computers--that they are general-purpose devices whose abilities can be configured and changed over time by their owners as uses and preferences change--will be abandoned in favor of machines that can be trusted to perform according to factory specifications, irrespective of what their owners wish. The primary reason that these laws have not yet passed, and are unlikely to pass, is that the computer hardware and software, and electronics and telecommunications industries all understand that such a law would undermine their innovation and creativity. At the logical layer, we are seeing a concerted effort, again headed primarily by Hollywood and the recording industry, to shape the software and standards to make sure that digitally encoded cultural products can continue to be sold as packaged goods. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the assault on peer-to-peer technologies are the most obvious in this regard. +={ boradband networks } + +More generally information, knowledge, and culture are being subjected to a second enclosure movement, as James Boyle has recently explored in depth. The freedom of action for individuals who wish to produce information, knowledge, and culture is being systematically curtailed in order to secure the economic returns demanded by the manufacturers of the industrial information economy. A rich literature in law has developed in response to this increasing enclosure over the past twenty years. It started with David Lange's evocative exploration of the public domain and Pamela Samuelson's prescient critique of the application of copyright to computer programs and digital materials, and continued through Jessica Litman's work on the public domain and digital copyright and Boyle's exploration of the basic romantic assumptions underlying our emerging "intellectual property" construct and the need for an environmentalist framework for preserving the public domain. It reached its most eloquent expression in Lawrence Lessig's arguments ,{[pg 26]}, for the centrality of free exchange of ideas and information to our most creative endeavors, and his diagnoses of the destructive effects of the present enclosure movement. This growing skepticism among legal academics has been matched by a long-standing skepticism among economists (to which I devote much discussion in chapter 2). The lack of either analytic or empirical foundation for the regulatory drive toward ever-stronger proprietary rights has not, however, resulted in a transformed politics of the regulation of intellectual production. Only recently have we begun to see a politics of information policy and "intellectual property" emerge from a combination of popular politics among computer engineers, college students, and activists concerned with the global poor; a reorientation of traditional media advocates; and a very gradual realization by high-technology firms that rules pushed by Hollywood can impede the growth of computer-based businesses. This political countermovement is tied to quite basic characteristics of the technology of computer communications, and to the persistent and growing social practices of sharing--some, like p2p (peer-to-peer) file sharing, in direct opposition to proprietary claims; others, increasingly, are instances of the emerging practices of making information on nonproprietary models and of individuals sharing what they themselves made in social, rather than market patterns. These economic and social forces are pushing at each other in opposite directions, and each is trying to mold the legal environment to better accommodate its requirements. We still stand at a point where information production could be regulated so that, for most users, it will be forced back into the industrial model, squelching the emerging model of individual, radically decentralized, and nonmarket production and its attendant improvements in freedom and justice. +={ Boyle, James ; + Lange, David ; + Lessig, Lawrence (Larry) ; + Litman, Jessica ; + Samuelson, Pamela ; + policy +2 +} + +Social and economic organization is not infinitely malleable. Neither is it always equally open to affirmative design. The actual practices of human interaction with information, knowledge, and culture and with production and consumption are the consequence of a feedback effect between social practices, economic organization, technological affordances, and formal constraints on behavior through law and similar institutional forms. These components of the constraints and affordances of human behavior tend to adapt dynamically to each other, so that the tension between the technological affordances, the social and economic practices, and the law are often not too great. During periods of stability, these components of the structure within which human beings live are mostly aligned and mutually reinforce ,{[pg 27]}, each other, but the stability is subject to shock at any one of these dimensions. Sometimes shock can come in the form of economic crisis, as it did in the United States during the Great Depression. Often it can come from an external physical threat to social institutions, like a war. Sometimes, though probably rarely, it can come from law, as, some would argue, it came from the desegregation decision in /{Brown v. Board of Education}/. Sometimes it can come from technology; the introduction of print was such a perturbation, as was, surely, the steam engine. The introduction of the highcapacity mechanical presses and telegraph ushered in the era of mass media. The introduction of radio created a similar perturbation, which for a brief moment destabilized the mass-media model, but quickly converged to it. In each case, the period of perturbation offered more opportunities and greater risks than the periods of relative stability. During periods of perturbation, more of the ways in which society organizes itself are up for grabs; more can be renegotiated, as the various other components of human stability adjust to the changes. To borrow Stephen Jay Gould's term from evolutionary theory, human societies exist in a series of punctuated equilibria. The periods of disequilibrium are not necessarily long. A mere twenty-five years passed between the invention of radio and its adaptation to the mass-media model. A similar period passed between the introduction of telephony and its adoption of the monopoly utility form that enabled only one-to-one limited communications. In each of these periods, various paths could have been taken. Radio showed us even within the past century how, in some societies, different paths were in fact taken and then sustained over decades. After a period of instability, however, the various elements of human behavioral constraint and affordances settled on a new stable alignment. During periods of stability, we can probably hope for little more than tinkering at the edges of the human condition. +={ Gould, Stephen Jay ; + Luther, Martin +} + +This book is offered, then, as a challenge to contemporary liberal democracies. We are in the midst of a technological, economic, and organizational transformation that allows us to renegotiate the terms of freedom, justice, and productivity in the information society. How we shall live in this new environment will in some significant measure depend on policy choices that we make over the next decade or so. To be able to understand these choices, to be able to make them well, we must recognize that they are part of what is fundamentally a social and political choice--a choice about how to be free, equal, productive human beings under a new set of technological and ,{[pg 28]}, economic conditions. As economic policy, allowing yesterday's winners to dictate the terms of tomorrow's economic competition would be disastrous. As social policy, missing an opportunity to enrich democracy, freedom, and justice in our society while maintaining or even enhancing our productivity would be unforgivable. ,{[pg 29]}, + +:B~ Part One - The Networked Information Economy + +1~p1 Introduction +={ communities : + technology-defined social structure +9 ; + norms (social) : + technology-defined structure +9 ; + regulation by social norms : + technology-defined structure +9 ; + social relations and norms : + technology-defined structure +9 ; + social structure, defined by technology +9 ; + technology : + social structure defined by +9 +} + +For more than 150 years, new communications technologies have tended to concentrate and commercialize the production and exchange of information, while extending the geographic and social reach of information distribution networks. High-volume mechanical presses and the telegraph combined with new business practices to change newspapers from small-circulation local efforts into mass media. Newspapers became means of communications intended to reach ever-larger and more dispersed audiences, and their management required substantial capital investment. As the size of the audience and its geographic and social dispersion increased, public discourse developed an increasingly one-way model. Information and opinion that was widely known and formed the shared basis for political conversation and broad social relations flowed from ever more capital-intensive commercial and professional producers to passive, undifferentiated consumers. It was a model easily adopted and amplified by radio, television, and later cable and satellite communications. This trend did not cover all forms of communication and culture. Telephones and personal interactions, most importantly, ,{[pg 30]}, and small-scale distributions, like mimeographed handbills, were obvious alternatives. Yet the growth of efficient transportation and effective large-scale managerial and administrative structures meant that the sources of effective political and economic power extended over larger geographic areas and required reaching a larger and more geographically dispersed population. The economics of long-distance mass distribution systems necessary to reach this constantly increasing and more dispersed relevant population were typified by high up-front costs and low marginal costs of distribution. These cost characteristics drove cultural production toward delivery to everwider audiences of increasingly high production-value goods, whose fixed costs could be spread over ever-larger audiences--like television series, recorded music, and movies. Because of these economic characteristics, the mass-media model of information and cultural production and transmission became the dominant form of public communication in the twentieth century. + +The Internet presents the possibility of a radical reversal of this long trend. It is the first modern communications medium that expands its reach by decentralizing the capital structure of production and distribution of information, culture, and knowledge. Much of the physical capital that embeds most of the intelligence in the network is widely diffused and owned by end users. Network routers and servers are not qualitatively different from the computers that end users own, unlike broadcast stations or cable systems, which are radically different in economic and technical terms from the televisions that receive their signals. This basic change in the material conditions of information and cultural production and distribution have substantial effects on how we come to know the world we occupy and the alternative courses of action open to us as individuals and as social actors. Through these effects, the emerging networked environment structures how we perceive and pursue core values in modern liberal societies. + +Technology alone does not, however, determine social structure. The introduction of print in China and Korea did not induce the kind of profound religious and political reformation that followed the printed Bible and disputations in Europe. But technology is not irrelevant, either. Luther's were not the first disputations nailed to a church door. Print, however, made it practically feasible for more than 300,000 copies of Luther's publications to be circulated between 1517 and 1520 in a way that earlier disputations could not have been.~{ Elizabeth Eisenstein, Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). }~ Vernacular reading of the Bible became a feasible form of religious self-direction only when printing these Bibles and making them ,{[pg 31]}, available to individual households became economically feasible, and not when all copyists were either monks or otherwise dependent on the church. Technology creates feasibility spaces for social practice. Some things become easier and cheaper, others harder and more expensive to do or to prevent under different technological conditions. The interaction between these technological-economic feasibility spaces, and the social responses to these changes--both in terms of institutional changes, like law and regulation, and in terms of changing social practices--define the qualities of a period. The way life is actually lived by people within a given set of interlocking technological, economic, institutional, and social practices is what makes a society attractive or unattractive, what renders its practices laudable or lamentable. + +A particular confluence of technical and economic changes is now altering the way we produce and exchange information, knowledge, and culture in ways that could redefine basic practices, first in the most advanced economies, and eventually around the globe. The potential break from the past 150 years is masked by the somewhat liberal use of the term "information economy" in various permutations since the 1970s. The term has been used widely to signify the dramatic increase in the importance of usable information as a means of controlling production and the flow of inputs, outputs, and services. While often evoked as parallel to the "postindustrial" stage, in fact, the information economy was tightly linked throughout the twentieth century with controlling the processes of the industrial economy. This is clearest in the case of accounting firms and financial markets, but is true of the industrial modalities of organizing cultural production as well. Hollywood, the broadcast networks, and the recording industry were built around a physical production model. Once the cultural utterances, the songs or movies, were initially produced and fixed in some means of storage and transmission, the economics of production and distribution of these physical goods took over. Making the initial utterances and the physical goods that embodied them required high capital investment up front. Making many copies was not much more expensive than making few copies, and very much cheaper on a per-copy basis. These industries therefore organized themselves to invest large sums in making a small number of high production-value cultural "artifacts," which were then either replicated and stamped onto many low-cost copies of each artifact, or broadcast or distributed through high-cost systems for low marginal cost ephemeral consumption on screens and with receivers. This required an effort to manage demand for those ,{[pg 32]}, products that were in fact recorded and replicated or distributed, so as to make sure that the producers could sell many units of a small number of cultural utterances at a low per-unit cost, rather than few units each of many cultural utterances at higher per-unit costs. Because of its focus around capital-intensive production and distribution techniques, this first stage might best be thought of as the "industrial information economy." +={ information, defined } + +Radical decentralization of intelligence in our communications network and the centrality of information, knowledge, culture, and ideas to advanced economic activity are leading to a new stage of the information economy-- the networked information economy. In this new stage, we can harness many more of the diverse paths and mechanisms for cultural transmission that were muted by the economies of scale that led to the rise of the concentrated, controlled form of mass media, whether commercial or state-run. The most important aspect of the networked information economy is the possibility it opens for reversing the control focus of the industrial information economy. In particular, it holds out the possibility of reversing two trends in cultural production central to the project of control: concentration and commercialization. + +Two fundamental facts have changed in the economic ecology in which the industrial information enterprises have arisen. First, the basic output that has become dominant in the most advanced economies is human meaning and communication. Second, the basic physical capital necessary to express and communicate human meaning is the connected personal computer. The core functionalities of processing, storage, and communications are widely owned throughout the population of users. Together, these changes destabilize the industrial stage of the information economy. Both the capacity to make meaning--to encode and decode humanly meaningful statements-- and the capacity to communicate one's meaning around the world, are held by, or readily available to, at least many hundreds of millions of users around the globe. Any person who has information can connect with any other person who wants it, and anyone who wants to make it mean something in some context, can do so. The high capital costs that were a prerequisite to gathering, working, and communicating information, knowledge, and culture, have now been widely distributed in the society. The entry barrier they posed no longer offers a condensation point for the large organizations that once dominated the information environment. Instead, emerging models of information and cultural production, radically decentralized and based on ,{[pg 33]}, emergent patterns of cooperation and sharing, but also of simple coordinate coexistence, are beginning to take on an ever-larger role in how we produce meaning--information, knowledge, and culture--in the networked information economy. +={ physical capital for production ; + peer production ; + capital for production ; + constraints of information production, monetary ; + industrial age : + destabilization of ; + information production capital ; + monetary constraints on information production ; + production capital +} + +A Google response to a query, which returns dozens or more sites with answers to an information question you may have, is an example of coordinate coexistence producing information. As Jessica Litman demonstrated in Sharing and Stealing, hundreds of independent producers of information, acting for reasons ranging from hobby and fun to work and sales, produce information, independently and at widely varying costs, related to what you were looking for. They all coexist without knowing of each other, most of them without thinking or planning on serving you in particular, or even a class of user like you. Yet the sheer volume and diversity of interests and sources allows their distributed, unrelated efforts to be coordinated-- through the Google algorithm in this case, but also through many others-- into a picture that has meaning and provides the answer to your question. Other, more deeply engaged and cooperative enterprises are also emerging on the Internet. /{Wikipedia}/, a multilingual encyclopedia coauthored by fifty thousand volunteers, is one particularly effective example of many such enterprises. +={ Litman, Jessica } + +The technical conditions of communication and information processing are enabling the emergence of new social and economic practices of information and knowledge production. Eisenstein carefully documented how print loosened the power of the church over information and knowledge production in Europe, and enabled, particularly in the Protestant North, the emergence of early modern capitalist enterprises in the form of print shops. These printers were able to use their market revenues to become independent of the church or the princes, as copyists never were, and to form the economic and social basis of a liberal, market-based freedom of thought and communication. Over the past century and a half, these early printers turned into the commercial mass media: A particular type of market-based production--concentrated, largely homogenous, and highly commercialized--that came to dominate our information environment by the end of the twentieth century. On the background of that dominant role, the possibility that a radically different form of information production will emerge--decentralized; socially, no less than commercially, driven; and as diverse as human thought itself--offers the promise of a deep change in how we see the world ,{[pg 34]}, around us, how we come to know about it and evaluate it, and how we are capable of communicating with others about what we know, believe, and plan. + +This part of the book is dedicated to explaining the technological-economic transformation that is making these practices possible. Not because economics drives all; not because technology determines the way society or communication go; but because it is the technological shock, combined with the economic sustainability of the emerging social practices, that creates the new set of social and political opportunities that are the subject of this book. By working out the economics of these practices, we can understand the economic parameters within which practical political imagination and fulfillment can operate in the digitally networked environment. I describe sustained productive enterprises that take the form of decentralized and nonmarket-based production, and explain why productivity and growth are consistent with a shift toward such modes of production. What I describe is not an exercise in pastoral utopianism. It is not a vision of a return to production in a preindustrial world. It is a practical possibility that directly results from our economic understanding of information and culture as objects of production. It flows from fairly standard economic analysis applied to a very nonstandard economic reality: one in which all the means of producing and exchanging information and culture are placed in the hands of hundreds of millions, and eventually billions, of people around the world, available for them to work with not only when they are functioning in the market to keep body and soul together, but also, and with equal efficacy, when they are functioning in society and alone, trying to give meaning to their lives as individuals and as social beings. ,{[pg 35]}, + +1~ Chapter 2 - Some Basic Economics of Information Production and Innovation +={ economics of information production and innovation +40 ; + information production economics +40 ; + innovation economics +40 +} + +There are no noncommercial automobile manufacturers. There are no volunteer steel foundries. You would never choose to have your primary source of bread depend on voluntary contributions from others. Nevertheless, scientists working at noncommercial research institutes funded by nonprofit educational institutions and government grants produce most of our basic science. Widespread cooperative networks of volunteers write the software and standards that run most of the Internet and enable what we do with it. Many people turn to National Public Radio or the BBC as a reliable source of news. What is it about information that explains this difference? Why do we rely almost exclusively on markets and commercial firms to produce cars, steel, and wheat, but much less so for the most critical information our advanced societies depend on? Is this a historical contingency, or is there something about information as an object of production that makes nonmarket production attractive? + +The technical economic answer is that certain characteristics of information and culture lead us to understand them as "public ,{[pg 36]}, goods," rather than as "pure private goods" or standard "economic goods." When economists speak of information, they usually say that it is "nonrival." We consider a good to be nonrival when its consumption by one person does not make it any less available for consumption by another. Once such a good is produced, no more social resources need be invested in creating more of it to satisfy the next consumer. Apples are rival. If I eat this apple, you cannot eat it. If you nonetheless want to eat an apple, more resources (trees, labor) need to be diverted from, say, building chairs, to growing apples, to satisfy you. The social cost of your consuming the second apple is the cost of not using the resources needed to grow the second apple (the wood from the tree) in their next best use. In other words, it is the cost to society of not having the additional chairs that could have been made from the tree. Information is nonrival. Once a scientist has established a fact, or once Tolstoy has written War and Peace, neither the scientist nor Tolstoy need spend a single second on producing additional War and Peace manuscripts or studies for the one-hundredth, one-thousandth, or one-millionth user of what they wrote. The physical paper for the book or journal costs something, but the information itself need only be created once. Economists call such goods "public" because a market will not produce them if priced at their marginal cost--zero. In order to provide Tolstoy or the scientist with income, we regulate publishing: We pass laws that enable their publishers to prevent competitors from entering the market. Because no competitors are permitted into the market for copies of War and Peace, the publishers can price the contents of the book or journal at above their actual marginal cost of zero. They can then turn some of that excess revenue over to Tolstoy. Even if these laws are therefore necessary to create the incentives for publication, the market that develops based on them will, from the technical economic perspective, systematically be inefficient. As Kenneth Arrow put it in 1962, "precisely to the extent that [property] is effective, there is underutilization of the information."~{ The full statement was: "[A]ny information obtained, say a new method of production, should, from the welfare point of view, be available free of charge (apart from the costs of transmitting information). This insures optimal utilization of the information but of course provides no incentive for investment in research. In a free enterprise economy, inventive activity is supported by using the invention to create property rights; precisely to the extent that it is successful, there is an underutilization of information." Kenneth Arrow, "Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention," in Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors, ed. Richard R. Nelson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), 616-617. }~ Because welfare economics defines a market as producing a good efficiently only when it is pricing the good at its marginal cost, a good like information (and culture and knowledge are, for purposes of economics, forms of information), which can never be sold both at a positive (greater than zero) price and at its marginal cost, is fundamentally a candidate for substantial nonmarket production. +={ Arrow, Kenneth ; + efficiency of information regulation +8 ; + inefficiency of information regulation +8 ; + proprietary rights, inefficiency of +8 ; + regulating information, efficiency of +8 ; + information production : + nonrivalry +4 ; + information as nonrival +4 ; + nonrival goods +4 ; + production of information : + nonrivalry +4 ; + public goods vs. nonrival goods +4 +} + +This widely held explanation of the economics of information production has led to an understanding that markets based on patents or copyrights involve a trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency. That is, looking ,{[pg 37]}, at the state of the world on any given day, it is inefficient that people and firms sell the information they possess. From the perspective of a society's overall welfare, the most efficient thing would be for those who possess information to give it away for free--or rather, for the cost of communicating it and no more. On any given day, enforcing copyright law leads to inefficient underutilization of copyrighted information. However, looking at the problem of information production over time, the standard defense of exclusive rights like copyright expects firms and people not to produce if they know that their products will be available for anyone to take for free. In order to harness the efforts of individuals and firms that want to make money, we are willing to trade off some static inefficiency to achieve dynamic efficiency. That is, we are willing to have some inefficient lack of access to information every day, in exchange for getting more people involved in information production over time. Authors and inventors or, more commonly, companies that contract with musicians and filmmakers, scientists, and engineers, will invest in research and create cultural goods because they expect to sell their information products. Over time, this incentive effect will give us more innovation and creativity, which will outweigh the inefficiency at any given moment caused by selling the information at above its marginal cost. This defense of exclusive rights is limited by the extent to which it correctly describes the motivations of information producers and the business models open to them to appropriate the benefits of their investments. If some information producers do not need to capture the economic benefits of their particular information outputs, or if some businesses can capture the economic value of their information production by means other than exclusive control over their products, then the justification for regulating access by granting copyrights or patents is weakened. As I will discuss in detail, both of these limits on the standard defense are in fact the case. + +Nonrivalry, moreover, is not the only quirky characteristic of information production as an economic phenomenon. The other crucial quirkiness is that information is both input and output of its own production process. In order to write today's academic or news article, I need access to yesterday's articles and reports. In order to write today's novel, movie, or song, I need to use and rework existing cultural forms, such as story lines and twists. This characteristic is known to economists as the "on the shoulders of giants" effect, recalling a statement attributed to Isaac Newton: "If I have seen farther it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants."~{ Suzanne Scotchmer, "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Cumulative Research and the Patent Law," Journal of Economic Perspectives 5 (1991): 29-41. }~ This second quirkiness ,{[pg 38]}, of information as a production good makes property-like exclusive rights less appealing as the dominant institutional arrangement for information and cultural production than it would have been had the sole quirky characteristic of information been its nonrivalry. The reason is that if any new information good or innovation builds on existing information, then strengthening intellectual property rights increases the prices that those who invest in producing information today must pay to those who did so yesterday, in addition to increasing the rewards an information producer can get tomorrow. Given the nonrivalry, those payments made today for yesterday's information are all inefficiently too high, from today's perspective. They are all above the marginal cost--zero. Today's users of information are not only today's readers and consumers. They are also today's producers and tomorrow's innovators. Their net benefit from a strengthened patent or copyright regime, given not only increased potential revenues but also the increased costs, may be negative. If we pass a law that regulates information production too strictly, allowing its beneficiaries to impose prices that are too high on today's innovators, then we will have not only too little consumption of information today, but also too little production of new information for tomorrow. +={ building on existing information +2 ; + existing information, building on +2 ; + information production inputs : + existing information +2 ; + inputs to production : + existing information +2 ; + on the shoulders of giants +2 ; + production inputs : + existing information +2 ; + reuse of information +2 ; + Shirky, Clay : + "shoulders of giants" +2 ; + Newton, Isaac +} + +Perhaps the most amazing document of the consensus among economists today that, because of the combination of nonrivalry and the "on the shoulders of giants" effect, excessive expansion of "intellectual property" protection is economically detrimental, was the economists' brief filed in the Supreme Court case of /{Eldred v. Ashcroft}/.~{ Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003). }~ The case challenged a law that extended the term of copyright protection from lasting for the life of the author plus fifty years, to life of the author plus seventy years, or from seventy-five years to ninety-five years for copyrights owned by corporations. If information were like land or iron, the ideal length of property rights would be infinite from the economists' perspective. In this case, however, where the "property right" was copyright, more than two dozen leading economists volunteered to sign a brief opposing the law, counting among their number five Nobel laureates, including that well-known market skeptic, Milton Friedman. +={ Friedman, Milton } + +The efficiency of regulating information, knowledge, and cultural production through strong copyright and patent is not only theoretically ambiguous, it also lacks empirical basis. The empirical work trying to assess the impact of intellectual property on innovation has focused to date on patents. The evidence provides little basis to support stronger and increasing exclusive ,{[pg 39]}, rights of the type we saw in the last two and a half decades of the twentieth century. Practically no studies show a clear-cut benefit to stronger or longer patents.~{ Adam Jaffe, "The U.S. Patent System in Transition: Policy Innovation and the Innovation Process," Research Policy 29 (2000): 531. }~ In perhaps one of the most startling papers on the economics of innovation published in the past few years, Josh Lerner looked at changes in intellectual property law in sixty countries over a period of 150 years. He studied close to three hundred policy changes, and found that, both in developing countries and in economically advanced countries that already have patent law, patenting both at home and abroad by domestic firms of the country that made the policy change, a proxy for their investment in research and development, decreases slightly when patent law is strengthened!~{ Josh Lerner, "Patent Protection and Innovation Over 150 Years" (working paper no. 8977, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2002). }~ The implication is that when a country--either one that already has a significant patent system, or a developing nation--increases its patent protection, it slightly decreases the level of investment in innovation by local firms. Going on intuitions alone, without understanding the background theory, this seems implausible--why would inventors or companies innovate less when they get more protection? Once you understand the interaction of nonrivalry and the "on the shoulders of giants" effect, the findings are entirely consistent with theory. Increasing patent protection, both in developing nations that are net importers of existing technology and science, and in developed nations that already have a degree of patent protection, and therefore some nontrivial protection for inventors, increases the costs that current innovators have to pay on existing knowledge more than it increases their ability to appropriate the value of their own contributions. When one cuts through the rent-seeking politics of intellectual property lobbies like the pharmaceutical companies or Hollywood and the recording industry; when one overcomes the honestly erroneous, but nonetheless conscience-soothing beliefs of lawyers who defend the copyright and patent-dependent industries and the judges they later become, the reality of both theory and empirics in the economics of intellectual property is that both in theory and as far as empirical evidence shows, there is remarkably little support in economics for regulating information, knowledge, and cultural production through the tools of intellectual property law. +={ Lerner, Josh ; + information production, market-based : + without property protections +4 ; + market-based information producers : + without property protections +4 ; + nonexclusion-market production strategies +4 ; + nonmarket information producers +4 +} + +Where does innovation and information production come from, then, if it does not come as much from intellectual-property-based market actors, as many generally believe? The answer is that it comes mostly from a mixture of (1) nonmarket sources--both state and nonstate--and (2) market actors whose business models do not depend on the regulatory framework of intellectual property. The former type of producer is the expected answer, ,{[pg 40]}, within mainstream economics, for a public goods problem like information production. The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Defense Department are major sources of funding for research in the United States, as are government agencies in Europe, at the national and European level, Japan, and other major industrialized nations. The latter type--that is, the presence and importance of market-based producers whose business models do not require and do not depend on intellectual property protection--is not theoretically predicted by that model, but is entirely obvious once you begin to think about it. + +Consider a daily newspaper. Normally, we think of newspapers as dependent on copyrights. In fact, however, that would be a mistake. No daily newspaper would survive if it depended for its business on waiting until a competitor came out with an edition, then copied the stories, and reproduced them in a competing edition. Daily newspapers earn their revenue from a combination of low-priced newsstand sales or subscriptions together with advertising revenues. Neither of those is copyright dependent once we understand that consumers will not wait half a day until the competitor's paper comes out to save a nickel or a quarter on the price of the newspaper. If all copyright on newspapers were abolished, the revenues of newspapers would be little affected.~{ At most, a "hot news" exception on the model of /{International News Service v. Associated Press}/, 248 U.S. 215 (1918), might be required. Even that, however, would only be applicable to online editions that are for pay. In paper, habits of reading, accreditation of the original paper, and first-to-market advantages of even a few hours would be enough. Online, where the first-to-market advantage could shrink to seconds, "hot news" protection may be worthwhile. However, almost all papers are available for free and rely solely on advertising. The benefits of reading a copied version are, at that point, practically insignificant to the reader. }~ Take, for example, the 2003 annual reports of a few of the leading newspaper companies in the United States. The New York Times Company receives a little more than $3 billion a year from advertising and circulation revenues, and a little more than $200 million a year in revenues from all other sources. Even if the entire amount of "other sources" were from syndication of stories and photos--which likely overstates the role of these copyright-dependent sources--it would account for little more than 6 percent of total revenues. The net operating revenues for the Gannett Company were more than $5.6 billion in newspaper advertising and circulation revenue, relative to about $380 million in all other revenues. As with the New York Times, at most a little more than 6 percent of revenues could be attributed to copyright-dependent activities. For Knight Ridder, the 2003 numbers were $2.8 billion and $100 million, respectively, or a maximum of about 3.5 percent from copyrights. Given these numbers, it is safe to say that daily newspapers are not a copyright-dependent industry, although they are clearly a market-based information production industry. +={ daily newspapers ; + newspapers +} + +As it turns out, repeated survey studies since 1981 have shown that in all industrial sectors except for very few--most notably pharmaceuticals--firm managers do not see patents as the most important way they capture the ,{[pg 41]}, benefits of their research and developments.~{ Wesley Cohen, R. Nelson, and J. Walsh, "Protecting Their Intellectual Assets: Appropriability Conditions and Why U.S. Manufacturing Firms Patent (or Not)" (working paper no. 7552, National Bureau Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2000); Richard Levin et al., "Appropriating the Returns from Industrial Research and Development"Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 3 (1987): 783; Mansfield et al., "Imitation Costs and Patents: An Empirical Study," The Economic Journal 91 (1981): 907. }~ They rank the advantages that strong research and development gives them in lowering the cost or improving the quality of manufacture, being the first in the market, or developing strong marketing relationships as more important than patents. The term "intellectual property" has high cultural visibility today. Hollywood, the recording industry, and pharmaceuticals occupy center stage on the national and international policy agenda for information policy. However, in the overall mix of our information, knowledge, and cultural production system, the total weight of these exclusivity-based market actors is surprisingly small relative to the combination of nonmarket sectors, government and nonprofit, and market-based actors whose business models do not depend on proprietary exclusion from their information outputs. + +The upshot of the mainstream economic analysis of information production today is that the widely held intuition that markets are more or less the best way to produce goods, that property rights and contracts are efficient ways of organizing production decisions, and that subsidies distort production decisions, is only very ambiguously applicable to information. While exclusive rights-based production can partially solve the problem of how information will be produced in our society, a comprehensive regulatory system that tries to mimic property in this area--such as both the United States and the European Union have tried to implement internally and through international agreements--simply cannot work perfectly, even in an ideal market posited by the most abstract economics models. Instead, we find the majority of businesses in most sectors reporting that they do not rely on intellectual property as a primary mechanism for appropriating the benefits of their research and development investments. In addition, we find mainstream economists believing that there is a substantial role for government funding; that nonprofit research can be more efficient than for-profit research; and, otherwise, that nonproprietary production can play an important role in our information production system. + +2~ THE DIVERSITY OF STRATEGIES IN OUR CURRENT INFORMATION PRODUCTION SYSTEM +={ production of information : + strategies of +11 ; + proprietary rights : + strategies for information production +11 ; + strategies for information production +11 ; + business strategies for information production +11 ; + economics of information production and innovation : + current production strategies +11 ; + information production : + strategies of ; + information production economics : + current production strategies +11 ; + innovation economics : + current production strategies +} + +The actual universe of information production in the economy then, is not as dependent on property rights and markets in information goods as the last quarter century's increasing obsession with "intellectual property" might ,{[pg 42]}, suggest. Instead, what we see both from empirical work and theoretical work is that individuals and firms in the economy produce information using a wide range of strategies. Some of these strategies indeed rely on exclusive rights like patents or copyrights, and aim at selling information as a good into an information market. Many, however, do not. In order to provide some texture to what these models look like, we can outline a series of ideal-type "business" strategies for producing information. The point here is not to provide an exhaustive map of the empirical business literature. It is, instead, to offer a simple analytic framework within which to understand the mix of strategies available for firms and individuals to appropriate the benefits of their investments--of time, money, or both, in activities that result in the production of information, knowledge, and culture. The differentiating parameters are simple: cost minimization and benefit maximization. Any of these strategies could use inputs that are already owned--such as existing lyrics for a song or a patented invention to improve on--by buying a license from the owner of the exclusive rights for the existing information. Cost minimization here refers purely to ideal-type strategies for obtaining as many of the information inputs as possible at their marginal cost of zero, instead of buying licenses to inputs at a positive market price. It can be pursued by using materials from the public domain, by using materials the producer itself owns, or by sharing/bartering for information inputs owned by others in exchange for one's own information inputs. Benefits can be obtained either in reliance on asserting one's exclusive rights, or by following a non-exclusive strategy, using some other mechanism that improves the position of the information producer because they invested in producing the information. Nonexclusive strategies for benefit maximization can be pursued both by market actors and by nonmarket actors. Table 2.1 maps nine ideal-type strategies characterized by these components. +={ benefit maximization ; + proprietary rights : + models of +5 ; + capital for production : + cost minimization and benefit maximization ; + constraints of information production, monetary : + cost minimization and benefits maximization ; + cost : + minimizing ; + information production capital : + cost minimization and benefit maximization ; + monetary constraints on information production : + cost minimization and benefit maximization ; + money : + cost minimization and benefit maximization ; + physical capital for production : + cost minimization and benefit maximization ; + production capital : + cost minimization and benefit maximization +} + +The ideal-type strategy that underlies patents and copyrights can be thought of as the "Romantic Maximizer." It conceives of the information producer as a single author or inventor laboring creatively--hence romantic--but in expectation of royalties, rather than immortality, beauty, or truth. An individual or small start-up firm that sells software it developed to a larger firm, or an author selling rights to a book or a film typify this model. The second ideal type that arises within exclusive-rights based industries, "Mickey," is a larger firm that already owns an inventory of exclusive rights, some through in-house development, some by buying from Romantic Maximizers. ,{[pg 43]}, +={ Mickey model +3 ; + Romantic Maximizer model +2 +} + +-\\- + +!_ Table 2.1: Ideal-Type Information Production Strategies +={ demand-side effects of information production ; + Joe Einstein model +1 ; + learning networks +1 ; + limited sharing networks +1 ; + Los Alamos model +1 ; + nonmarket information producers : + strategies for information production +1 ; + RCA strategy +1 ; + Scholarly Lawyers model +1 ; + sharing : + limited sharing networks +} + +table(h; c4: 25, 25, 25, 25){ + +Cost Minimization/ Benefit Acquisition +Public Domain +Intrafirm +Barter/Sharing + +Rights based exclusion (make money by exercising exclusive rights - licensing or blocking competition) +Romantic Maximizers (authors, composers; sell to publishers; sometimes sell to Mickeys) +Mikey (Disney reuses inventory for derivative works; buy outputs of Romantic Maximizers) +RCA (small number of companies hold blocking patents; they create patent pools to build valuable goods) + +Nonexclusion - Market (make money from information production but not by exercising the exclusive rights) +Scholarly Lawyers (write articles to get clients; other examples include bands that give music out for free as advertisements for touring and charge money for performance; software developers who develop software and make money from customizing it to a particular client, on-site management, advice and training, not from licensing) +Know-How (firms that have cheaper or better production processes because of their research, lower their costs or improve the quality of other goods or services; lawyer offices that build on existing forms) +Learning Networks (share information with similar organizations - make money from early access to information. For example, newspapers join together to create a wire service; firms where engineers and scientists from different firms attend professional societies to diffuse knowledge) + +Nonexclusion - Nonmarket +Joe Einstein (give away information for free in return for status, benefits to reputation, value for the innovation to themselves; wide range of motivations. Includes members of amateur choirs who perform for free, academics who write articles for fame, people who write opeds, contribute to mailing lists; many free software developers and free software generally for most uses) +Los Alamos (share in-house information, rely on in-house inputs to produce valuable public goods used to secure additional government funding and status) +Limited sharing networks (release paper to small number of colleagues to get comments so you can improve it before publication. Make use of time delay to gain relative advantage later on using Joe Einstein strategy. Share one's information on formal condition of reciprocity: like "copyleft" conditions on derivative works for distribution) + +}table + +% ,{[pg 44]}, + +- A defining cost-reduction mechanism for Mickey is that it applies creative people to work on its own inventory, for which it need not pay above marginal cost prices in the market. This strategy is the most advantageous in an environment of very strong exclusive rights protection for a number of reasons. First, the ability to extract higher rents from the existing inventory of information goods is greatest for firms that (a) have an inventory and (b) rely on asserting exclusive rights as their mode of extracting value. Second, the increased costs of production associated with strong exclusive rights are cushioned by the ability of such firms to rework their existing inventory, rather than trying to work with materials from an evershrinking public domain or paying for every source of inspiration and element of a new composition. The coarsest version of this strategy might be found if Disney were to produce a "winter sports" thirty-minute television program by tying together scenes from existing cartoons, say, one in which Goofy plays hockey followed by a snippet of Donald Duck ice skating, and so on. More subtle, and representative of the type of reuse relevant to the analysis here, would be the case where Disney buys the rights to Winniethe-Pooh, and, after producing an animated version of stories from the original books, then continues to work with the same characters and relationships to create a new film, say, Winnie-the-Pooh--Frankenpooh (or Beauty and the Beast--Enchanted Christmas; or The Little Mermaid--Stormy the Wild Seahorse). The third exclusive-rights-based strategy, which I call "RCA," is barter among the owners of inventories. Patent pools, cross-licensing, and market-sharing agreements among the radio patents holders in 1920-1921, which I describe in chapter 6, are a perfect example. RCA, GE, AT&T, and Westinghouse held blocking patents that prevented each other and anyone else from manufacturing the best radios possible given technology at that time. The four companies entered an agreement to combine their patents and divide the radio equipment and services markets, which they used throughout the 1920s to exclude competitors and to capture precisely the postinnovation monopoly rents sought to be created by patents. +={ RCA strategy } + +Exclusive-rights-based business models, however, represent only a fraction of our information production system. There are both market-based and nonmarket models to sustain and organize information production. Together, these account for a substantial portion of our information output. Indeed, industry surveys concerned with patents have shown that the vast majority of industrial R&D is pursued with strategies that do not rely primarily on patents. This does not mean that most or any of the firms that ,{[pg 45]}, pursue these strategies possess or seek no exclusive rights in their information products. It simply means that their production strategy does not depend on asserting these rights through exclusion. One such cluster of strategies, which I call "Scholarly Lawyers," relies on demand-side effects of access to the information the producer distributes. It relies on the fact that sometimes using an information good that one has produced makes its users seek out a relationship with the author. The author then charges for the relationship, not for the information. Doctors or lawyers who publish in trade journals, become known, and get business as a result are an instance of this strategy. An enormously creative industry, much of which operates on this model, is software. About two-thirds of industry revenues in software development come from activities that the Economic Census describes as: (1) writing, modifying, testing, and supporting software to meet the needs of a particular customer; (2) planning and designing computer systems that integrate computer hardware, software, and communication technologies; (3) on-site management and operation of clients' computer systems and/or data processing facilities; and (4) other professional and technical computer-related advice and services, systems consultants, and computer training. "Software publishing," by contrast, the business model that relies on sales based on copyright, accounts for a little more than one-third of the industry's revenues.~{ In the 2002 Economic Census, compare NAICS categories 5415 (computer systems and related services) to NAICS 5112 (software publishing). Between the 1997 Economic Census and the 2002 census, this ratio remained stable, at about 36 percent in 1997 and 37 percent in 2002. See 2002 Economic Census, "Industry Series, Information, Software Publishers, and Computer Systems, Design and Related Services" (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). }~ Interestingly, this is the model of appropriation that more than a decade ago, Esther Dyson and John Perry Barlow heralded as the future of music and musicians. They argued in the early 1990s for more or less free access to copies of recordings distributed online, which would lead to greater attendance at live gigs. Revenue from performances, rather than recording, would pay artists. +={ demand-side effects of information production ; + Scholarly Lawyers model ; + Barlow, John Perry ; + Dyson, Esther ; + nonexclusion-market production strategies +5 +} + +The most common models of industrial R&D outside of pharmaceuticals, however, depend on supply-side effects of information production. One central reason to pursue research is its effects on firm-specific advantages, like production know-how, which permit the firm to produce more efficiently than competitors and sell better or cheaper competing products. Daily newspapers collectively fund news agencies, and individually fund reporters, because their ability to find information and report it is a necessary input into their product--timely news. As I have already suggested, they do not need copyright to protect their revenues. Those are protected by the short half-life of dailies. The investments come in order to be able to play in the market for daily newspapers. Similarly, the learning curve and knowhow effects in semiconductors are such that early entry into the market for ,{[pg 46]}, a new chip will give the first mover significant advantages over competitors. Investment is then made to capture that position, and the investment is captured by the quasi-rents available from the first-mover advantage. In some cases, innovation is necessary in order to be able to produce at the state of the art. Firms participate in "Learning Networks" to gain the benefits of being at the state of the art, and sharing their respective improvements. However, they can only participate if they innovate. If they do not innovate, they lack the in-house capacity to understand the state of the art and play at it. Their investments are then recouped not from asserting their exclusive rights, but from the fact that they sell into one of a set of markets, access into which is protected by the relatively small number of firms with such absorption capacity, or the ability to function at the edge of the state of the art. Firms of this sort might barter their information for access, or simply be part of a small group of organizations with enough knowledge to exploit the information generated and informally shared by all participants in these learning networks. They obtain rents from the concentrated market structure, not from assertion of property rights.~{ Levin et al., "Appropriating the Returns," 794-796 (secrecy, lead time, and learningcurve advantages regarded as more effective than patents by most firms). See also F. M. Scherer, "Learning by Doing and International Trade in Semiconductors" (faculty research working paper series R94-13, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1994), an empirical study of semiconductor industry suggesting that for industries with steep learning curves, investment in information production is driven by advantages of being first down the learning curve rather than the expectation of legal rights of exclusion. The absorption effect is described in Wesley M. Cohen and Daniel A. Leventhal, "Innovation and Learning: The Two Faces of R&D," The Economic Journal 99 (1989): 569-596. The collaboration effect was initially described in Richard R. Nelson, "The Simple Economics of Basic Scientific Research," Journal of Political Economy 67 (June 1959): 297-306. The most extensive work over the past fifteen years, and the source of the term of learning networks, has been from Woody Powell on knowledge and learning networks. Identifying the role of markets made concentrated by the limited ability to use information, rather than through exclusive rights, was made in F. M. Scherer, "Nordhaus's Theory of Optimal Patent Life: A Geometric Reinterpretation," American Economic Review 62 (1972): 422-427.}~ +={ Know-How model ; + information production, market-based : + without property protections +4 ; + market-based information producers : + without property protections +4 ; + supply-side effects of information production +1 ; + learning networks +} + +An excellent example of a business strategy based on nonexclusivity is IBM's. The firm has obtained the largest number of patents every year from 1993 to 2004, amassing in total more than 29,000 patents. IBM has also, however, been one of the firms most aggressively engaged in adapting its business model to the emergence of free software. Figure 2.1 shows what happened to the relative weight of patent royalties, licenses, and sales in IBM's revenues and revenues that the firm described as coming from "Linuxrelated services." Within a span of four years, the Linux-related services category moved from accounting for practically no revenues, to providing double the revenues from all patent-related sources, of the firm that has been the most patent-productive in the United States. IBM has described itself as investing more than a billion dollars in free software developers, hired programmers to help develop the Linux kernel and other free software; and donated patents to the Free Software Foundation. What this does for the firm is provide it with a better operating system for its server business-- making the servers better, faster, more reliable, and therefore more valuable to consumers. Participating in free software development has also allowed IBM to develop service relationships with its customers, building on free software to offer customer-specific solutions. In other words, IBM has combined both supply-side and demand-side strategies to adopt a nonproprietary business model that has generated more than $2 billion yearly of business ,{[pg 47]}, for the firm. Its strategy is, if not symbiotic, certainly complementary to free software. +={ free software ; + IBM's business strategy ; + open-source software ; + software, open-source +} + +{won_benkler_2_1.png "Figure 2.1: Selected IBM Revenues, 2000-2003" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/ + +I began this chapter with a puzzle--advanced economies rely on nonmarket organizations for information production much more than they do in other sectors. The puzzle reflects the fact that alongside the diversity of market-oriented business models for information production there is a wide diversity of nonmarket models as well. At a broad level of abstraction, I designate this diversity of motivations and organizational forms as "Joe Einstein"--to underscore the breadth of the range of social practices and practitioners of nonmarket production. These include universities and other research institutes; government research labs that publicize their work, or government information agencies like the Census Bureau. They also include individuals, like academics; authors and artists who play to "immortality" rather than seek to maximize the revenue from their creation. Eric von Hippel has for many years documented user innovation in areas ranging from surfboard design to new mechanisms for pushing electric wiring through insulation tiles.~{ Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). }~ The Oratorio Society of New York, whose chorus ,{[pg 48]}, members are all volunteers, has filled Carnegie Hall every December with a performance of Handel's Messiah since the theatre's first season in 1891. Political parties, advocacy groups, and churches are but few of the stable social organizations that fill our information environment with news and views. For symmetry purposes in table 2.1, we also see reliance on internal inventories by some nonmarket organizations, like secret government labs that do not release their information outputs, but use it to continue to obtain public funding. This is what I call "Los Alamos." Sharing in limited networks also occurs in nonmarket relationships, as when academic colleagues circulate a draft to get comments. In the nonmarket, nonproprietary domain, however, these strategies were in the past relatively smaller in scope and significance than the simple act of taking from the public domain and contributing back to it that typifies most Joe Einstein behaviors. Only since the mid-1980s have we begun to see a shift from releasing into the public domain to adoption of commons-binding licensing, like the "copyleft" strategies I describe in chapter 3. What makes these strategies distinct from Joe Einstein is that they formalize the requirement of reciprocity, at least for some set of rights shared. +={ Joe Einstein model ; + nonmarket information producers : + strategies for information production +1 ; + von Hippel, Eric ; + Los Alamos model ; + limited sharing networks +1 ; + sharing : + limited sharing networks +} + +My point is not to provide an exhaustive list of all the ways we produce information. It is simply to offer some texture to the statement that information, knowledge, and culture are produced in diverse ways in contemporary society. Doing so allows us to understand the comparatively limited role that production based purely on exclusive rights--like patents, copyrights, and similar regulatory constraints on the use and exchange of information--has played in our information production system to this day. It is not new or mysterious to suggest that nonmarket production is important to information production. It is not new or mysterious to suggest that efficiency increases whenever it is possible to produce information in a way that allows the producer--whether market actor or not--to appropriate the benefits of production without actually charging a price for use of the information itself. Such strategies are legion among both market and nonmarket actors. Recognizing this raises two distinct questions: First, how does the cluster of mechanisms that make up intellectual property law affect this mix? Second, how do we account for the mix of strategies at any given time? Why, for example, did proprietary, market-based production become so salient in music and movies in the twentieth century, and what is it about the digitally networked environment that could change this mix? ,{[pg 49]}, + +2~ THE EFFECTS OF EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS +={ property ownership : + effects of exclusive rights +4 ; + proprietary rights : + effects of +4 ; + proprietary rights, inefficiency of +4 ; + regulating information, efficiency of +4 ; + efficiency of information regulation +4 ; + economics of information production and innovation : + exclusive rights +4 ; + innovation economics : + exclusive rights +4 ; + inefficiency of information regulation +4 ; + information production economics : + exclusive rights +4 ; + innovation economics : + exclusive rights +4 +} + +Once we recognize that there are diverse strategies of appropriation for information production, we come to see a new source of inefficiency caused by strong "intellectual property"-type rights. Recall that in the mainstream analysis, exclusive rights always cause static inefficiency--that is, they allow producers to charge positive prices for products (information) that have a zero marginal cost. Exclusive rights have a more ambiguous effect dynamically. They raise the expected returns from information production, and thereby are thought to induce investment in information production and innovation. However, they also increase the costs of information inputs. If existing innovations are more likely covered by patent, then current producers will more likely have to pay for innovations or uses that in the past would have been available freely from the public domain. Whether, overall, any given regulatory change that increases the scope of exclusive rights improves or undermines new innovation therefore depends on whether, given the level of appropriability that preceded it, it increased input costs more or less than it increased the prospect of being paid for one's outputs. +={ information appropriation strategies +2 ; + appropriation strategies +2 ; + diversity : + appropriation strategies +2 +} + +The diversity of appropriation strategies adds one more kink to this story. Consider the following very simple hypothetical. Imagine an industry that produces "infowidgets." There are ten firms in the business. Two of them are infowidget publishers on the Romantic Maximizer model. They produce infowidgets as finished goods, and sell them based on patent. Six firms produce infowidgets on supply-side (Know-How) or demand-side (Scholarly Lawyer) effects: they make their Realwidgets or Servicewidgets more efficient or desirable to consumers, respectively. Two firms are nonprofit infowidget producers that exist on a fixed, philanthropically endowed income. Each firm produces five infowidgets, for a total market supply of fifty. Now imagine a change in law that increases exclusivity. Assume that this is a change in law that, absent diversity of appropriation, would be considered efficient. Say it increases input costs by 10 percent and appropriability by 20 percent, for a net expected gain of 10 percent. The two infowidget publishers would each see a 10 percent net gain, and let us assume that this would cause each to increase its efforts by 10 percent and produce 10 percent more infowidgets. Looking at these two firms alone, the change in law caused an increase from ten infowidgets to eleven--a gain for the policy change. Looking at the market as a whole, however, eight firms see an increase of 10 percent in costs, and no gain in appropriability. This is because none of these firms ,{[pg 50]}, actually relies on exclusive rights to appropriate its product's value. If, commensurate with our assumption for the publishers, we assume that this results in a decline in effort and productivity of 10 percent for the eight firms, we would see these firms decline from forty infowidgets to thirty-six, and total market production would decline from fifty infowidgets to forty-seven. + +Another kind of effect for the change in law may be to persuade some of the firms to shift strategies or to consolidate. Imagine, for example, that most of the inputs required by the two publishers were owned by the other infowidget publisher. If the two firms merged into one Mickey, each could use the outputs of the other at its marginal cost--zero--instead of at its exclusive-rights market price. The increase in exclusive rights would then not affect the merged firm's costs, only the costs of outside firms that would have to buy the merged firm's outputs from the market. Given this dynamic, strong exclusive rights drive concentration of inventory owners. We see this very clearly in the increasing sizes of inventory-based firms like Disney. Moreover, the increased appropriability in the exclusive-rights market will likely shift some firms at the margin of the nonproprietary business models to adopt proprietary business models. This, in turn, will increase the amount of information available only from proprietary sources. The feedback effect will further accelerate the rise in information input costs, increasing the gains from shifting to a proprietary strategy and to consolidating larger inventories with new production. + +Given diverse strategies, the primary unambiguous effect of increasing the scope and force of exclusive rights is to shape the population of business strategies. Strong exclusive rights increase the attractiveness of exclusiverights-based strategies at the expense of nonproprietary strategies, whether market-based or nonmarket based. They also increase the value and attraction of consolidation of large inventories of existing information with new production. + +2~ WHEN INFORMATION PRODUCTION MEETS THE COMPUTER NETWORK +={ economics of information production and innovation : + production of computer networks +7 ; + innovation economics : + production over computer networks +7 ; + information production economics : + production over computer networks +7 +} + +Music in the nineteenth century was largely a relational good. It was something people did in the physical presence of each other: in the folk way through hearing, repeating, and improvising; in the middle-class way of buying sheet music and playing for guests or attending public performances; or in the upper-class way of hiring musicians. Capital was widely distributed ,{[pg 51]}, among musicians in the form of instruments, or geographically dispersed in the hands of performance hall (and drawing room) owners. Market-based production depended on performance through presence. It provided opportunities for artists to live and perform locally, or to reach stardom in cultural centers, but without displacing the local performers. With the introduction of the phonograph, a new, more passive relationship to played music was made possible in reliance on the high-capital requirements of recording, copying, and distributing specific instantiations of recorded music--records. What developed was a concentrated, commercial industry, based on massive financial investments in advertising, or preference formation, aimed at getting ever-larger crowds to want those recordings that the recording executives had chosen. In other words, the music industry took on a more industrial model of production, and many of the local venues--from the living room to the local dance hall--came to be occupied by mechanical recordings rather than amateur and professional local performances. This model crowded out some, but not all, of the live-performance-based markets (for example, jazz clubs, piano bars, or weddings), and created new live-performance markets--the megastar concert tour. The music industry shifted from a reliance on Scholarly Lawyer and Joe Einstein models to reliance on Romantic Maximizer and Mickey models. As computers became more music-capable and digital networks became a ubiquitously available distribution medium, we saw the emergence of the present conflict over the regulation of cultural production--the law of copyright--between the twentieth-century, industrial model recording industry and the emerging amateur distribution systems coupled, at least according to its supporters, to a reemergence of decentralized, relation-based markets for professional performance artists. +={ music industry +1 } + +This stylized story of the music industry typifies the mass media more generally. Since the introduction of the mechanical press and the telegraph, followed by the phonograph, film, the high-powered radio transmitter, and through to the cable plant or satellite, the capital costs of fixing information and cultural goods in a transmission medium--a high-circulation newspaper, a record or movie, a radio or television program--have been high and increasing. The high physical and financial capital costs involved in making a widely accessible information good and distributing it to the increasingly larger communities (brought together by better transportation systems and more interlinked economic and political systems) muted the relative role of nonmarket production, and emphasized the role of those firms that could ,{[pg 52]}, muster the financial and physical capital necessary to communicate on a mass scale. Just as these large, industrial-age machine requirements increased the capital costs involved in information and cultural production, thereby triggering commercialization and concentration of much of this sector, so too ubiquitously available cheap processors have dramatically reduced the capital input costs required to fix information and cultural expressions and communicate them globally. By doing so, they have rendered feasible a radical reorganization of our information and cultural production system, away from heavy reliance on commercial, concentrated business models and toward greater reliance on nonproprietary appropriation strategies, in particular nonmarket strategies whose efficacy was dampened throughout the industrial period by the high capital costs of effective communication. + +Information and cultural production have three primary categories of inputs. The first is existing information and culture. We already know that existing information is a nonrival good--that is, its real marginal cost at any given moment is zero. The second major cost is that of the mechanical means of sensing our environment, processing it, and communicating new information goods. This is the high cost that typified the industrial model, and which has drastically declined in computer networks. The third factor is human communicative capacity--the creativity, experience, and cultural awareness necessary to take from the universe of existing information and cultural resources and turn them into new insights, symbols, or representations meaningful to others with whom we converse. Given the zero cost of existing information and the declining cost of communication and processing, human capacity becomes the primary scarce resource in the networked information economy. +={ building on existing information ; + existing information, building on ; + reuse of information ; + capabilities of individuals : + human capacity as resource +4 ; + capacity : + human communication +4 ; + communication : + capacity of +4 ; + cost : + capital for production creative capacity +4 ; + human communicative capacity +4 ; + individual capabilities and action : + human capacity as resource ; + information production inputs : + existing information ; + inputs to production : + existing information ; + production inputs : + existing information +} + +Human communicative capacity, however, is an input with radically different characteristics than those of, say, printing presses or satellites. It is held by each individual, and cannot be "transferred" from one person to another or aggregated like so many machines. It is something each of us innately has, though in divergent quanta and qualities. Individual human capacities, rather than the capacity to aggregate financial capital, become the economic core of our information and cultural production. Some of that human capacity is currently, and will continue to be, traded through markets in creative labor. However, its liberation from the constraints of physical capital leaves creative human beings much freer to engage in a wide range of information and cultural production practices than those they could afford to participate in when, in addition to creativity, experience, cultural awareness ,{[pg 53]}, and time, one needed a few million dollars to engage in information production. From our friendships to our communities we live life and exchange ideas, insights, and expressions in many more diverse relations than those mediated by the market. In the physical economy, these relationships were largely relegated to spaces outside of our economic production system. The promise of the networked information economy is to bring this rich diversity of social life smack into the middle of our economy and our productive lives. + +Let's do a little experiment. Imagine that you were performing a Web search with me. Imagine that we were using Google as our search engine, and that what we wanted to do was answer the questions of an inquisitive six-year-old about Viking ships. What would we get, sitting in front of our computers and plugging in a search request for "Viking Ships"? The first site is Canadian, and includes a collection of resources, essays, and worksheets. An enterprising elementary school teacher at the Gander Academy in Newfoundland seems to have put these together. He has essays on different questions, and links to sites hosted by a wide range of individuals and organizations, such as a Swedish museum, individual sites hosted on geocities, and even to a specific picture of a replica Viking ship, hosted on a commercial site dedicated to selling nautical replicas. In other words, it is a Joe Einstein site that points to other sites, which in turn use either Joe Einstein or Scholarly Lawyer strategies. This multiplicity of sources of information that show up on the very first site is then replicated as one continues to explore the remaining links. The second link is to a Norwegian site called "the Viking Network," a Web ring dedicated to preparing and hosting short essays on Vikings. It includes brief essays, maps, and external links, such as one to an article in Scientific American. "To become a member you must produce an Information Sheet on the Vikings in your local area and send it in electronic format to Viking Network. Your info-sheet will then be included in the Viking Network web." The third site is maintained by a Danish commercial photographer, and hosted in Copenhagen, in a portion dedicated to photographs of archeological finds and replicas of Danish Viking ships. A retired professor from the University of Pittsburgh runs the fourth. The fifth is somewhere between a hobby and a showcase for the services of an individual, independent Web publisher offering publishing-related services. The sixth and seventh are museums, in Norway and Virginia, respectively. The eighth is the Web site of a hobbyists' group dedicated to building Viking Ship replicas. The ninth includes classroom materials and ,{[pg 54]}, teaching guides made freely available on the Internet by PBS, the American Public Broadcasting Service. Certainly, if you perform this search now, as you read this book, the rankings will change from those I saw when I ran it; but I venture that the mix, the range and diversity of producers, and the relative salience of nonmarket producers will not change significantly. + +The difference that the digitally networked environment makes is its capacity to increase the efficacy, and therefore the importance, of many more, and more diverse, nonmarket producers falling within the general category of Joe Einstein. It makes nonmarket strategies--from individual hobbyists to formal, well-funded nonprofits--vastly more effective than they could be in the mass-media environment. The economics of this phenomenon are neither mysterious nor complex. Imagine the grade-school teacher who wishes to put together ten to twenty pages of materials on Viking ships for schoolchildren. Pre-Internet, he would need to go to one or more libraries and museums, find books with pictures, maps, and text, or take his own photographs (assuming he was permitted by the museums) and write his own texts, combining this research. He would then need to select portions, clear the copyrights to reprint them, find a printing house that would set his text and pictures in a press, pay to print a number of copies, and then distribute them to all children who wanted them. Clearly, research today is simpler and cheaper. Cutting and pasting pictures and texts that are digital is cheaper. Depending on where the teacher is located, it is possible that these initial steps would have been insurmountable, particularly for a teacher in a poorly endowed community without easy access to books on the subject, where research would have required substantial travel. Even once these barriers were surmounted, in the precomputer, pre-Internet days, turning out materials that looked and felt like a high quality product, with highresolution pictures and maps, and legible print required access to capitalintensive facilities. The cost of creating even one copy of such a product would likely dissuade the teacher from producing the booklet. At most, he might have produced a mimeographed bibliography, and perhaps some text reproduced on a photocopier. Now, place the teacher with a computer and a high-speed Internet connection, at home or in the school library. The cost of production and distribution of the products of his effort are trivial. A Web site can be maintained for a few dollars a month. The computer itself is widely accessible throughout the developed world. It becomes trivial for a teacher to produce the "booklet"--with more information, available to anyone in the world, anywhere, at any time, as long as he is willing to spend ,{[pg 55]}, some of his free time putting together the booklet rather than watching television or reading a book. +={ nonmarket strategies, effectiveness of +2 ; + technology : + effectiveness of nonmarket strategies +2 +} + +When you multiply these very simple stylized facts by the roughly billion people who live in societies sufficiently wealthy to allow cheap ubiquitous Internet access, the breadth and depth of the transformation we are undergoing begins to become clear. A billion people in advanced economies may have between two billion and six billion spare hours among them, every day. In order to harness these billions of hours, it would take the whole workforce of almost 340,000 workers employed by the entire motion picture and recording industries in the United States put together, assuming each worker worked forty-hour weeks without taking a single vacation, for between three and eight and a half years! Beyond the sheer potential quantitative capacity, however one wishes to discount it to account for different levels of talent, knowledge, and motivation, a billion volunteers have qualities that make them more likely to produce what others want to read, see, listen to, or experience. They have diverse interests--as diverse as human culture itself. Some care about Viking ships, others about the integrity of voting machines. Some care about obscure music bands, others share a passion for baking. As Eben Moglen put it, "if you wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network. It's an emergent property of connected human minds that they create things for one another's pleasure and to conquer their uneasy sense of being too alone."~{ Eben Moglen, "Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright," First Monday (1999), http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_8/moglen/. }~ It is this combination of a will to create and to communicate with others, and a shared cultural experience that makes it likely that each of us wants to talk about something that we believe others will also want to talk about, that makes the billion potential participants in today's online conversation, and the six billion in tomorrow's conversation, affirmatively better than the commercial industrial model. When the economics of industrial production require high up-front costs and low marginal costs, the producers must focus on creating a few superstars and making sure that everyone tunes in to listen or watch them. This requires that they focus on averaging out what consumers are most likely to buy. This works reasonably well as long as there is no better substitute. As long as it is expensive to produce music or the evening news, there are indeed few competitors for top billing, and the star system can function. Once every person on the planet, or even only every person living in a wealthy economy and 10-20 percent of those living in poorer countries, can easily talk to their friends and compatriots, the competition becomes tougher. It does not mean that there is no continued role ,{[pg 56]}, for the mass-produced and mass-marketed cultural products--be they Britney Spears or the broadcast news. It does, however, mean that many more "niche markets"--if markets, rather than conversations, are what they should be called--begin to play an ever-increasing role in the total mix of our cultural production system. The economics of production in a digital environment should lead us to expect an increase in the relative salience of nonmarket production models in the overall mix of our information production system, and it is efficient for this to happen--more information will be produced, and much of it will be available for its users at its marginal cost. +={ diversity : + human communication +1 ; + Moglen, Eben ; + niche markets +} + +The known quirky characteristics of information and knowledge as production goods have always given nonmarket production a much greater role in this production system than was common in capitalist economies for tangible goods. The dramatic decline in the cost of the material means of producing and exchanging information, knowledge, and culture has substantially decreased the costs of information expression and exchange, and thereby increased the relative efficacy of nonmarket production. When these facts are layered over the fact that information, knowledge, and culture have become the central high-value-added economic activities of the most advanced economies, we find ourselves in a new and unfamiliar social and economic condition. Social behavior that traditionally was relegated to the peripheries of the economy has become central to the most advanced economies. Nonmarket behavior is becoming central to producing our information and cultural environment. Sources of knowledge and cultural edification, through which we come to know and comprehend the world, to form our opinions about it, and to express ourselves in communication with others about what we see and believe have shifted from heavy reliance on commercial, concentrated media, to being produced on a much more widely distributed model, by many actors who are not driven by the imperatives of advertising or the sale of entertainment goods. + +2~ STRONG EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS IN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT +={ economics of information production and innovation : + exclusive rights +3 ; + information production economics : + exclusive rights +3 ; + innovation economics : + exclusive rights +3 ; + proprietary rights +3 +} + +We now have the basic elements of a clash between incumbent institutions and emerging social practice. Technologies of information and cultural production initially led to the increasing salience of commercial, industrialmodel production in these areas. Over the course of the twentieth century, ,{[pg 57]}, in some of the most culturally visible industries like movies and music, copyright law coevolved with the industrial model. By the end of the twentieth century, copyright was longer, broader, and vastly more encompassing than it had been at the beginning of that century. Other exclusive rights in information, culture, and the fruits of innovation expanded following a similar logic. Strong, broad, exclusive rights like these have predictable effects. They preferentially improve the returns to business models that rely on exclusive rights, like copyrights and patents, at the expense of information and cultural production outside the market or in market relationships that do not depend on exclusive appropriation. They make it more lucrative to consolidate inventories of existing materials. The businesses that developed around the material capital required for production fed back into the political system, which responded by serially optimizing the institutional ecology to fit the needs of the industrial information economy firms at the expense of other information producers. + +The networked information economy has upset the apple cart on the technical, material cost side of information production and exchange. The institutional ecology, the political framework (the lobbyists, the habits of legislatures), and the legal culture (the beliefs of judges, the practices of lawyers) have not changed. They are as they developed over the course of the twentieth century--centered on optimizing the conditions of those commercial firms that thrive in the presence of strong exclusive rights in information and culture. The outcome of the conflict between the industrial information economy and its emerging networked alternative will determine whether we evolve into a permission culture, as Lessig warns and projects, or into a society marked by social practice of nonmarket production and cooperative sharing of information, knowledge, and culture of the type I describe throughout this book, and which I argue will improve freedom and justice in liberal societies. Chapter 11 chronicles many of the arenas in which this basic conflict is played out. However, for the remainder of this part and part II, the basic economic understanding I offer here is all that is necessary. + +There are diverse motivations and strategies for organizing information production. Their relative attractiveness is to some extent dependent on technology, to some extent on institutional arrangements. The rise that we see today in the efficacy and scope of nonmarket production, and of the peer production that I describe and analyze in the following two chapters, are well within the predictable, given our understanding of the economics of information production. The social practices of information production ,{[pg 58]}, that form the basis of much of the normative analysis I offer in part II are internally sustainable given the material conditions of information production and exchange in the digitally networked environment. These patterns are unfamiliar to us. They grate on our intuitions about how production happens. They grate on the institutional arrangements we developed over the course of the twentieth century to regulate information and cultural production. But that is because they arise from a quite basically different set of material conditions. We must understand these new modes of production. We must learn to evaluate them and compare their advantages and disadvantages to those of the industrial information producers. And then we must adjust our institutional environment to make way for the new social practices made possible by the networked environment. ,{[pg 59]}, + +1~ Chapter 3 - Peer Production and Sharing +={ peer production +63 ; + sharing +63 +} + +At the heart of the economic engine, of the world's most advanced economies, we are beginning to notice a persistent and quite amazing phenomenon. A new model of production has taken root; one that should not be there, at least according to our most widely held beliefs about economic behavior. It should not, the intuitions of the late-twentieth-century American would say, be the case that thousands of volunteers will come together to collaborate on a complex economic project. It certainly should not be that these volunteers will beat the largest and best-financed business enterprises in the world at their own game. And yet, this is precisely what is happening in the software world. + +Industrial organization literature provides a prominent place for the transaction costs view of markets and firms, based on insights of Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson. On this view, people use markets when the gains from doing so, net of transaction costs, exceed the gains from doing the same thing in a managed firm, net of the costs of organizing and managing a firm. Firms emerge when the opposite is true, and transaction costs can best be reduced by ,{[pg 60]}, bringing an activity into a managed context that requires no individual transactions to allocate this resource or that effort. The emergence of free and open-source software, and the phenomenal success of its flagships, the GNU/ Linux operating system, the Apache Web server, Perl, and many others, should cause us to take a second look at this dominant paradigm.~{ For an excellent history of the free software movement and of open-source development, see Glyn Moody, Rebel Code: Inside Linux and the Open Source Revolution (New York: Perseus Publishing, 2001). }~ Free software projects do not rely on markets or on managerial hierarchies to organize production. Programmers do not generally participate in a project because someone who is their boss told them to, though some do. They do not generally participate in a project because someone offers them a price to do so, though some participants do focus on long-term appropriation through money-oriented activities, like consulting or service contracts. However, the critical mass of participation in projects cannot be explained by the direct presence of a price or even a future monetary return. This is particularly true of the all-important, microlevel decisions: who will work, with what software, on what project. In other words, programmers participate in free software projects without following the signals generated by marketbased, firm-based, or hybrid models. In chapter 2 I focused on how the networked information economy departs from the industrial information economy by improving the efficacy of nonmarket production generally. Free software offers a glimpse at a more basic and radical challenge. It suggests that the networked environment makes possible a new modality of organizing production: radically decentralized, collaborative, and nonproprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other without relying on either market signals or managerial commands. This is what I call "commons-based peer production." +={ Coase, Ronald ; + capital for production : + transaction costs ; + commercial model of communication : + transaction costs ; + constraints of information production, monetary : + transaction cost ; + economics of nonmarket production : + transaction costs ; + industrial model of communication : + transaction costs ; + information production, market-based : + transaction costs ; + information production capital : + transaction costs ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + transaction costs ; + market-based information producers : + transaction costs ; + monetary constraints on information production : + transaction costs ; + nonmarket production, economics of : + transaction costs ; + norms (social) : + transaction costs ; + physical capital for production : + transaction costs ; + production capital : + transaction costs ; + regulation by social norms : + transaction costs ; + social relations and norms : + transaction costs ; + strategies for information production : + transaction costs ; + traditional model of communication : + transaction costs ; + transaction costs ; + Williamson, Oliver ; + commons +3 +} + +"Commons" refers to a particular institutional form of structuring the rights to access, use, and control resources. It is the opposite of "property" in the following sense: With property, law determines one particular person who has the authority to decide how the resource will be used. That person may sell it, or give it away, more or less as he or she pleases. "More or less" because property doesn't mean anything goes. We cannot, for example, decide that we will give our property away to one branch of our family, as long as that branch has boys, and then if that branch has no boys, decree that the property will revert to some other branch of the family. That type of provision, once common in English property law, is now legally void for public policy reasons. There are many other things we cannot do with our property--like build on wetlands. However, the core characteristic of property ,{[pg 61]}, as the institutional foundation of markets is that the allocation of power to decide how a resource will be used is systematically and drastically asymmetric. That asymmetry permits the existence of "an owner" who can decide what to do, and with whom. We know that transactions must be made-- rent, purchase, and so forth--if we want the resource to be put to some other use. The salient characteristic of commons, as opposed to property, is that no single person has exclusive control over the use and disposition of any particular resource in the commons. Instead, resources governed by commons may be used or disposed of by anyone among some (more or less well-defined) number of persons, under rules that may range from "anything goes" to quite crisply articulated formal rules that are effectively enforced. +={ property ownership : + control over, as asymmetric +2 ; + asymmetric commons +1 +} + +Commons can be divided into four types based on two parameters. The first parameter is whether they are open to anyone or only to a defined group. The oceans, the air, and highway systems are clear examples of open commons. Various traditional pasture arrangements in Swiss villages or irrigation regions in Spain are now classic examples, described by Eleanor Ostrom, of limited-access common resources--where access is limited only to members of the village or association that collectively "owns" some defined pasturelands or irrigation system.~{ Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). }~ As Carol Rose noted, these are better thought of as limited common property regimes, rather than commons, because they behave as property vis-a-vis the entire world except members ` of the group who together hold them in common. The second parameter is whether a commons system is regulated or unregulated. Practically all well-studied, limited common property regimes are regulated by more or less elaborate rules--some formal, some social-conventional--governing the use of the resources. Open commons, on the other hand, vary widely. Some commons, called open access, are governed by no rule. Anyone can use resources within these types of commons at will and without payment. Air is such a resource, with respect to air intake (breathing, feeding a turbine). However, air is a regulated commons with regard to outtake. For individual human beings, breathing out is mildly regulated by social convention--you do not breath too heavily on another human being's face unless forced to. Air is a more extensively regulated commons for industrial exhalation--in the shape of pollution controls. The most successful and obvious regulated commons in contemporary landscapes are the sidewalks, streets, roads, and highways that cover our land and regulate the material foundation of our ability to move from one place to the other. In all these cases, however, the characteristic of commons is that the constraints, if any, are symmetric ,{[pg 62]}, among all users, and cannot be unilaterally controlled by any single individual. The term "commons-based" is intended to underscore that what is characteristic of the cooperative enterprises I describe in this chapter is that they are not built around the asymmetric exclusion typical of property. Rather, the inputs and outputs of the process are shared, freely or conditionally, in an institutional form that leaves them equally available for all to use as they choose at their individual discretion. This latter characteristic-- that commons leave individuals free to make their own choices with regard to resources managed as a commons--is at the foundation of the freedom they make possible. This is a freedom I return to in the discussion of autonomy. Not all commons-based production efforts qualify as peer production. Any production strategy that manages its inputs and outputs as commons locates that production modality outside the proprietary system, in a framework of social relations. It is the freedom to interact with resources and projects without seeking anyone's permission that marks commons-based production generally, and it is also that freedom that underlies the particular efficiencies of peer production, which I explore in chapter 4. +={ commons : + types of ; + limited-access common resources ; + open commons ; + regulated commons ; + Rose, Carol ; + symmetric commons ; + unregulated commons ; + freedom : + of commons +} + +The term "peer production" characterizes a subset of commons-based production practices. It refers to production systems that depend on individual action that is self-selected and decentralized, rather than hierarchically assigned. "Centralization" is a particular response to the problem of how to make the behavior of many individual agents cohere into an effective pattern or achieve an effective result. Its primary attribute is the separation of the locus of opportunities for action from the authority to choose the action that the agent will undertake. Government authorities, firm managers, teachers in a classroom, all occupy a context in which potentially many individual wills could lead to action, and reduce the number of people whose will is permitted to affect the actual behavior patterns that the agents will adopt. "Decentralization" describes conditions under which the actions of many agents cohere and are effective despite the fact that they do not rely on reducing the number of people whose will counts to direct effective action. A substantial literature in the past twenty years, typified, for example, by Charles Sabel's work, has focused on the ways in which firms have tried to overcome the rigidities of managerial pyramids by decentralizing learning, planning, and execution of the firm's functions in the hands of employees or teams. The most pervasive mode of "decentralization," however, is the ideal market. Each individual agent acts according to his or her will. Coherence and efficacy emerge because individuals signal their wishes, and plan ,{[pg 63]}, their behavior not in cooperation with others, but by coordinating, understanding the will of others and expressing their own through the price system. +={ centralization of communications : + decentralization ; + decentralization of communications ; + ideal market ; + Sabel, Charles +} + +What we are seeing now is the emergence of more effective collective action practices that are decentralized but do not rely on either the price system or a managerial structure for coordination. In this, they complement the increasing salience of uncoordinated nonmarket behavior that we saw in chapter 2. The networked environment not only provides a more effective platform for action to nonprofit organizations that organize action like firms or to hobbyists who merely coexist coordinately. It also provides a platform for new mechanisms for widely dispersed agents to adopt radically decentralized cooperation strategies other than by using proprietary and contractual claims to elicit prices or impose managerial commands. This kind of information production by agents operating on a decentralized, nonproprietary model is not completely new. Science is built by many people contributing incrementally--not operating on market signals, not being handed their research marching orders by a boss--independently deciding what to research, bringing their collaboration together, and creating science. What we see in the networked information economy is a dramatic increase in the importance and the centrality of information produced in this way. + +2~ FREE/OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE +={ free software +7 ; + open-source software +7 ; + software, open-source +7 +} + +The quintessential instance of commons-based peer production has been free software. Free software, or open source, is an approach to software development that is based on shared effort on a nonproprietary model. It depends on many individuals contributing to a common project, with a variety of motivations, and sharing their respective contributions without any single person or entity asserting rights to exclude either from the contributed components or from the resulting whole. In order to avoid having the joint product appropriated by any single party, participants usually retain copyrights in their contribution, but license them to anyone--participant or stranger--on a model that combines a universal license to use the materials with licensing constraints that make it difficult, if not impossible, for any single contributor or third party to appropriate the project. This model of licensing is the most important institutional innovation of the free software movement. Its central instance is the GNU General Public License, or GPL. ,{[pg 64]}, +={ General Public License (GPL) +4 ; + GPL (General Public License) +4 ; + licensing : + GPL (General Public License) +4 +} + +This requires anyone who modifies software and distributes the modified version to license it under the same free terms as the original software. While there have been many arguments about how widely the provisions that prevent downstream appropriation should be used, the practical adoption patterns have been dominated by forms of licensing that prevent anyone from exclusively appropriating the contributions or the joint product. More than 85 percent of active free software projects include some version of the GPL or similarly structured license.~{ Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole, "The Scope of Open Source Licensing" (Harvard NOM working paper no. 02-42, table 1, Cambridge, MA, 2002). The figure is computed out of the data reported in this paper for the number of free software development projects that Lerner and Tirole identify as having "restrictive" or "very restrictive" licenses. }~ + +Free software has played a critical role in the recognition of peer production, because software is a functional good with measurable qualities. It can be more or less authoritatively tested against its market-based competitors. And, in many instances, free software has prevailed. About 70 percent of Web server software, in particular for critical e-commerce sites, runs on the Apache Web server--free software.~{ Netcraft, April 2004 Web Server Survey, http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html. }~ More than half of all back-office e-mail functions are run by one free software program or another. Google, Amazon, and CNN.com, for example, run their Web servers on the GNU/Linux operating system. They do this, presumably, because they believe this peerproduced operating system is more reliable than the alternatives, not because the system is "free." It would be absurd to risk a higher rate of failure in their core business activities in order to save a few hundred thousand dollars on licensing fees. Companies like IBM and Hewlett Packard, consumer electronics manufacturers, as well as military and other mission-critical government agencies around the world have begun to adopt business and service strategies that rely and extend free software. They do this because it allows them to build better equipment, sell better services, or better fulfill their public role, even though they do not control the software development process and cannot claim proprietary rights of exclusion in the products of their contributions. +={ GNU/Linux operating system +3 } + +The story of free software begins in 1984, when Richard Stallman started working on a project of building a nonproprietary operating system he called GNU (GNU's Not Unix). Stallman, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), operated from political conviction. He wanted a world in which software enabled people to use information freely, where no one would have to ask permission to change the software they use to fit their needs or to share it with a friend for whom it would be helpful. These freedoms to share and to make your own software were fundamentally incompatible with a model of production that relies on property rights and markets, he thought, because in order for there to be a market in uses of ,{[pg 65]}, software, owners must be able to make the software unavailable to people who need it. These people would then pay the provider in exchange for access to the software or modification they need. If anyone can make software or share software they possess with friends, it becomes very difficult to write software on a business model that relies on excluding people from software they need unless they pay. As a practical matter, Stallman started writing software himself, and wrote a good bit of it. More fundamentally, he adopted a legal technique that started a snowball rolling. He could not write a whole operating system by himself. Instead, he released pieces of his code under a license that allowed anyone to copy, distribute, and modify the software in whatever way they pleased. He required only that, if the person who modified the software then distributed it to others, he or she do so under the exact same conditions that he had distributed his software. In this way, he invited all other programmers to collaborate with him on this development program, if they wanted to, on the condition that they be as generous with making their contributions available to others as he had been with his. Because he retained the copyright to the software he distributed, he could write this condition into the license that he attached to the software. This meant that anyone using or distributing the software as is, without modifying it, would not violate Stallman's license. They could also modify the software for their own use, and this would not violate the license. However, if they chose to distribute the modified software, they would violate Stallman's copyright unless they included a license identical to his with the software they distributed. This license became the GNU General Public License, or GPL. The legal jujitsu Stallman used--asserting his own copyright claims, but only to force all downstream users who wanted to rely on his contributions to make their own contributions available to everyone else--came to be known as "copyleft," an ironic twist on copyright. This legal artifice allowed anyone to contribute to the GNU project without worrying that one day they would wake up and find that someone had locked them out of the system they had helped to build. +={ Stallman, Richard +2 ; + copyleft +} + +The next major step came when a person with a more practical, rather than prophetic, approach to his work began developing one central component of the operating system--the kernel. Linus Torvalds began to share the early implementations of his kernel, called Linux, with others, under the GPL. These others then modified, added, contributed, and shared among themselves these pieces of the operating system. Building on top of Stallman's foundation, Torvalds crystallized a model of production that was fundamentally ,{[pg 66]}, different from those that preceded it. His model was based on voluntary contributions and ubiquitous, recursive sharing; on small incremental improvements to a project by widely dispersed people, some of whom contributed a lot, others a little. Based on our usual assumptions about volunteer projects and decentralized production processes that have no managers, this was a model that could not succeed. But it did. +={ Linux operating system ; + Torvalds, Linus +} + +It took almost a decade for the mainstream technology industry to recognize the value of free or open-source software development and its collaborative production methodology. As the process expanded and came to encompass more participants, and produce more of the basic tools of Internet connectivity--Web server, e-mail server, scripting--more of those who participated sought to "normalize" it, or, more specifically, to render it apolitical. Free software is about freedom ("free as in free speech, not free beer" is Stallman's epitaph for it). "Open-source software" was chosen as a term that would not carry the political connotations. It was simply a mode of organizing software production that may be more effective than market-based production. This move to depoliticize peer production of software led to something of a schism between the free software movement and the communities of open source software developers. It is important to understand, however, that from the perspective of society at large and the historical trajectory of information production generally the abandonment of political motivation and the importation of free software into the mainstream have not made it less politically interesting, but more so. Open source and its wide adoption in the business and bureaucratic mainstream allowed free software to emerge from the fringes of the software world and move to the center of the public debate about practical alternatives to the current way of doing things. +={ collaboration, open-source +1 } + +So what is open-source software development? The best source for a phenomenology of open-source development continues to be Eric Raymond's /{Cathedral and Bazaar}/, written in 1998. Imagine that one person, or a small group of friends, wants a utility. It could be a text editor, photo-retouching software, or an operating system. The person or small group starts by developing a part of this project, up to a point where the whole utility--if it is simple enough--or some important part of it, is functional, though it might have much room for improvement. At this point, the person makes the program freely available to others, with its source code--instructions in a human-readable language that explain how the software does whatever it does when compiled into a machine-readable language. When others begin ,{[pg 67]}, to use it, they may find bugs, or related utilities that they want to add (e.g., the photo-retouching software only increases size and sharpness, and one of its users wants it to allow changing colors as well). The person who has found the bug or is interested in how to add functions to the software may or may not be the best person in the world to actually write the software fix. Nevertheless, he reports the bug or the new need in an Internet forum of users of the software. That person, or someone else, then thinks that they have a way of tweaking the software to fix the bug or add the new utility. They then do so, just as the first person did, and release a new version of the software with the fix or the added utility. The result is a collaboration between three people--the first author, who wrote the initial software; the second person, who identified a problem or shortcoming; and the third person, who fixed it. This collaboration is not managed by anyone who organizes the three, but is instead the outcome of them all reading the same Internet-based forum and using the same software, which is released under an open, rather than proprietary, license. This enables some of its users to identify problems and others to fix these problems without asking anyone's permission and without engaging in any transactions. +={ Raymond, Eric } + +The most surprising thing that the open source movement has shown, in real life, is that this simple model can operate on very different scales, from the small, three-person model I described for simple projects, up to the many thousands of people involved in writing the Linux kernel and the GNU/ Linux operating system--an immensely difficult production task. SourceForge, the most popular hosting-meeting place of such projects, has close to 100,000 registered projects, and nearly a million registered users. The economics of this phenomenon are complex. In the larger-scale models, actual organization form is more diverse than the simple, three-person model. In particular, in some of the larger projects, most prominently the Linux kernel development process, a certain kind of meritocratic hierarchy is clearly present. However, it is a hierarchy that is very different in style, practical implementation, and organizational role than that of the manager in the firm. I explain this in chapter 4, as part of the analysis of the organizational forms of peer production. For now, all we need is a broad outline of how peer-production projects look, as we turn to observe case studies of kindred production models in areas outside of software. ,{[pg 68]}, + +2~ PEER PRODUCTION OF INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, AND CULTURE GENERALLY + +Free software is, without a doubt, the most visible instance of peer production at the turn of the twenty-first century. It is by no means, however, the only instance. Ubiquitous computer communications networks are bringing about a dramatic change in the scope, scale, and efficacy of peer production throughout the information and cultural production system. As computers become cheaper and as network connections become faster, cheaper, and ubiquitous, we are seeing the phenomenon of peer production of information scale to much larger sizes, performing more complex tasks than were possible in the past for nonprofessional production. To make this phenomenon more tangible, I describe a number of such enterprises, organized to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach throughout the information production and exchange chain. While it is possible to break an act of communication into finer-grained subcomponents, largely we see three distinct functions involved in the process. First, there is an initial utterance of a humanly meaningful statement. Writing an article or drawing a picture, whether done by a professional or an amateur, whether high quality or low, is such an action. Second, there is a separate function of mapping the initial utterances on a knowledge map. In particular, an utterance must be understood as "relevant" in some sense, and "credible." Relevance is a subjective question of mapping an utterance on the conceptual map of a given user seeking information for a particular purpose defined by that individual. Credibility is a question of quality by some objective measure that the individual adopts as appropriate for purposes of evaluating a given utterance. The distinction between the two is somewhat artificial, however, because very often the utility of a piece of information will depend on a combined valuation of its credibility and relevance. I therefore refer to "relevance/accreditation" as a single function for purposes of this discussion, keeping in mind that the two are complementary and not entirely separable functions that an individual requires as part of being able to use utterances that others have uttered in putting together the user's understanding of the world. Finally, there is the function of distribution, or how one takes an utterance produced by one person and distributes it to other people who find it credible and relevant. In the mass-media world, these functions were often, though by no means always, integrated. NBC news produced the utterances, gave them credibility by clearing them on the evening news, and distributed ,{[pg 69]}, them simultaneously. What the Internet is permitting is much greater disaggregation of these functions. +={ accreditation ; + distribution of information ; + filtering ; + information production inputs +13 ; + inputs to production +13 ; + production inputs +13 ; + relevance filtering +} + +3~ Uttering Content + +NASA Clickworkers was "an experiment to see if public volunteers, each working for a few minutes here and there can do some routine science analysis that would normally be done by a scientist or graduate student working for months on end." Users could mark craters on maps of Mars, classify craters that have already been marked, or search the Mars landscape for "honeycomb" terrain. The project was "a pilot study with limited funding, run part-time by one software engineer, with occasional input from two scientists." In its first six months of operation, more than 85,000 users visited the site, with many contributing to the effort, making more than 1.9 million entries (including redundant entries of the same craters, used to average out errors). An analysis of the quality of markings showed "that the automaticallycomputed consensus of a large number of clickworkers is virtually indistinguishable from the inputs of a geologist with years of experience in identifying Mars craters."~{ Clickworkers Results: Crater Marking Activity, July 3, 2001, http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/documents/crater-marking.pdf. }~ The tasks performed by clickworkers (like marking craters) were discrete, each easily performed in a matter of minutes. As a result, users could choose to work for a few minutes doing a single iteration or for hours by doing many. An early study of the project suggested that some clickworkers indeed worked on the project for weeks, but that 37 percent of the work was done by one-time contributors.~{ /{B. Kanefsky, N. G. Barlow, and V. C. Gulick}/, Can Distributed Volunteers Accomplish Massive Data Analysis Tasks? http://www.clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/documents/abstract.pdf. }~ +={ clickworkers project +2 ; + information production inputs : + NASA Clickworkers project +2 ; + inputs to production : + NASA Clickworkers project +2 ; + NASA Clickworkers +2 ; + production inputs NASA Clickworkers project +2 +} + +The clickworkers project was a particularly clear example of how a complex professional task that requires a number of highly trained individuals on full-time salaries can be reorganized so as to be performed by tens of thousands of volunteers in increments so minute that the tasks could be performed on a much lower budget. The low budget would be devoted to coordinating the volunteer effort. However, the raw human capital needed would be contributed for the fun of it. The professionalism of the original scientists was replaced by a combination of high modularization of the task. The organizers broke a large, complex task into small, independent modules. They built in redundancy and automated averaging out of both errors and purposeful erroneous markings--like those of an errant art student who thought it amusing to mark concentric circles on the map. What the NASA scientists running this experiment had tapped into was a vast pool of fiveminute increments of human judgment, applied with motivation to participate in a task unrelated to "making a living." ,{[pg 70]}, + +While clickworkers was a distinct, self-conscious experiment, it suggests characteristics of distributed production that are, in fact, quite widely observable. We have already seen in chapter 2, in our little search for Viking ships, how the Internet can produce encyclopedic or almanac-type information. The power of the Web to answer such an encyclopedic question comes not from the fact that one particular site has all the great answers. It is not an Encyclopedia Britannica. The power comes from the fact that it allows a user looking for specific information at a given time to collect answers from a sufficiently large number of contributions. The task of sifting and accrediting falls to the user, motivated by the need to find an answer to the question posed. As long as there are tools to lower the cost of that task to a level acceptable to the user, the Web shall have "produced" the information content the user was looking for. These are not trivial considerations, but they are also not intractable. As we shall see, some of the solutions can themselves be peer produced, and some solutions are emerging as a function of the speed of computation and communication, which enables more efficient technological solutions. +={ communities : + critical culture and self-reflection +9 ; + culture : + criticality of (self-reflection) +9 +} + +Encyclopedic and almanac-type information emerges on the Web out of the coordinate but entirely independent action of millions of users. This type of information also provides the focus on one of the most successful collaborative enterprises that has developed in the first five years of the twenty-first century, /{Wikipedia}/. /{Wikipedia}/ was founded by an Internet entrepreneur, Jimmy Wales. Wales had earlier tried to organize an encyclopedia named Nupedia, which was built on a traditional production model, but whose outputs were to be released freely: its contributors were to be PhDs, using a formal, peer-reviewed process. That project appears to have failed to generate a sufficient number of high-quality contributions, but its outputs were used in /{Wikipedia}/ as the seeds for a radically new form of encyclopedia writing. Founded in January 2001, /{Wikipedia}/ combines three core characteristics: First, it uses a collaborative authorship tool, Wiki. This platform enables anyone, including anonymous passersby, to edit almost any page in the entire project. It stores all versions, makes changes easily visible, and enables anyone to revert a document to any prior version as well as to add changes, small and large. All contributions and changes are rendered transparent by the software and database. Second, it is a self-conscious effort at creating an encyclopedia--governed first and foremost by a collective informal undertaking to strive for a neutral point of view, within the limits of substantial self-awareness as to the difficulties of such an enterprise. An effort ,{[pg 71]}, to represent sympathetically all views on a subject, rather than to achieve objectivity, is the core operative characteristic of this effort. Third, all the content generated by this collaboration is released under the GNU Free Documentation License, an adaptation of the GNU GPL to texts. The shift in strategy toward an open, peer-produced model proved enormously successful. The site saw tremendous growth both in the number of contributors, including the number of active and very active contributors, and in the number of articles included in the encyclopedia (table 3.1). Most of the early growth was in English, but more recently there has been an increase in the number of articles in many other languages: most notably in German (more than 200,000 articles), Japanese (more than 120,000 articles), and French (about 100,000), but also in another five languages that have between 40,000 and 70,000 articles each, another eleven languages with 10,000 to 40,000 articles each, and thirty-five languages with between 1,000 and 10,000 articles each. +={ critical culture and self-reflection : + Wikipedia project +8 ; + information production inputs : + Wikipedia project +8 ; + inputs to production : + Wikipedia project +8 ; + production inputs : + Wikipedia project +8 ; + self-organization : + Wikipedia project +8 ; + Wikipedia project +8 +} + +The first systematic study of the quality of /{Wikipedia}/ articles was published as this book was going to press. The journal Nature compared 42 science articles from /{Wikipedia}/ to the gold standard of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and concluded that "the difference in accuracy was not particularly great."~{ J. Giles, "Special Report: Internet Encyclopedias Go Head to Head," Nature, December 14, 2005, available at http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html. }~ On November 15, 2004, Robert McHenry, a former editor in chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published an article criticizing /{Wikipedia}/ as "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia."~{ http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html. }~ As an example, McHenry mocked the /{Wikipedia}/ article on Alexander Hamilton. He noted that Hamilton biographers have a problem fixing his birth year--whether it is 1755 or 1757. /{Wikipedia}/ glossed over this error, fixing the date at 1755. McHenry then went on to criticize the way the dates were treated throughout the article, using it as an anchor to his general claim: /{Wikipedia}/ is unreliable because it is not professionally produced. What McHenry did not note was that the other major online encyclopedias--like Columbia or Encarta--similarly failed to deal with the ambiguity surrounding Hamilton's birth date. Only the Britannica did. However, McHenry's critique triggered the /{Wikipedia}/ distributed correction mechanism. Within hours of the publication of McHenry's Web article, the reference was corrected. The following few days saw intensive cleanup efforts to conform all references in the biography to the newly corrected version. Within a week or so, /{Wikipedia}/ had a correct, reasonably clean version. It now stood alone with the Encyclopedia Britannica as a source of accurate basic encyclopedic information. In coming to curse it, McHenry found himself blessing /{Wikipedia}/. He had demonstrated ,{[pg 72]}, precisely the correction mechanism that makes /{Wikipedia}/, in the long term, a robust model of reasonably reliable information. +={ McHenry, Robert } + +!_ Table 3.1: Contributors to Wikipedia, January 2001 - June 2005 + +{table(h; 24, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12)} + |Jan. 2001|Jan. 2002|Jan. 2003|Jan. 2004|July 2004|June 2006 +Contributors* | 10| 472| 2,188| 9,653| 25,011| 48,721 +Active contributors** | 9| 212| 846| 3,228| 8,442| 16,945 +Very active contributors*** | 0| 31| 190| 692| 1,639| 3,016 +No. of English language articles| 25| 16,000| 101,000| 190,000| 320,000| 630,000 +No. of articles, all languages | 25| 19,000| 138,000| 490,000| 862,000|1,600,000 + +\* Contributed at least ten times; \** at least 5 times in last month; \*\** more than 100 times in last month. + +- Perhaps the most interesting characteristic about /{Wikipedia}/ is the selfconscious social-norms-based dedication to objective writing. Unlike some of the other projects that I describe in this chapter, /{Wikipedia}/ does not include elaborate software-controlled access and editing capabilities. It is generally open for anyone to edit the materials, delete another's change, debate the desirable contents, survey archives for prior changes, and so forth. It depends on self-conscious use of open discourse, usually aimed at consensus. While there is the possibility that a user will call for a vote of the participants on any given definition, such calls can, and usually are, ignored by the community unless a sufficiently large number of users have decided that debate has been exhausted. While the system operators and server host-- Wales--have the practical power to block users who are systematically disruptive, this power seems to be used rarely. The project relies instead on social norms to secure the dedication of project participants to objective writing. So, while not entirely anarchic, the project is nonetheless substantially more social, human, and intensively discourse- and trust-based than the other major projects described here. The following fragments from an early version of the self-described essential characteristics and basic policies of /{Wikipedia}/ are illustrative: +={ norms (social) +3 ; + regulation by social norms +3 ; + social regulations and norms +3 +} + +_1 First and foremost, the /{Wikipedia}/ project is self-consciously an encyclopedia-- rather than a dictionary, discussion forum, web portal, etc. /{Wikipedia}/'s participants ,{[pg 73]}, commonly follow, and enforce, a few basic policies that seem essential to keeping the project running smoothly and productively. First, because we have a huge variety of participants of all ideologies, and from around the world, /{Wikipedia}/ is committed to making its articles as unbiased as possible. The aim is not to write articles from a single objective point of view--this is a common misunderstanding of the policy--but rather, to fairly and sympathetically present all views on an issue. See "neutral point of view" page for further explanation. ~{ Yochai Benkler, "Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm," Yale Law Journal 112 (2001): 369. }~ +={ commercial model of communication : + security-related policy +2 ; + industrial model of communication : + security-related policy +2 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + security-related policy +2 ; + policy : + security-related policy +2 ; + security-related policy : + vandalism on Wikipedia +2 ; + traditional model of communication : + security-related policy +2 ; + vandalism on Wikipedia +2 +} + +The point to see from this quotation is that the participants of /{Wikipedia}/ are plainly people who like to write. Some of them participate in other collaborative authorship projects. However, when they enter the common project of /{Wikipedia}/, they undertake to participate in a particular way--a way that the group has adopted to make its product be an encyclopedia. On their interpretation, that means conveying in brief terms the state of the art on the item, including divergent opinions about it, but not the author's opinion. Whether that is an attainable goal is a subject of interpretive theory, and is a question as applicable to a professional encyclopedia as it is to /{Wikipedia}/. As the project has grown, it has developed more elaborate spaces for discussing governance and for conflict resolution. It has developed structures for mediation, and if that fails, arbitration, of disputes about particular articles. + +The important point is that /{Wikipedia}/ requires not only mechanical cooperation among people, but a commitment to a particular style of writing and describing concepts that is far from intuitive or natural to people. It requires self-discipline. It enforces the behavior it requires primarily through appeal to the common enterprise that the participants are engaged in, coupled with a thoroughly transparent platform that faithfully records and renders all individual interventions in the common project and facilitates discourse among participants about how their contributions do, or do not, contribute to this common enterprise. This combination of an explicit statement of common purpose, transparency, and the ability of participants to identify each other's actions and counteract them--that is, edit out "bad" or "faithless" definitions--seems to have succeeded in keeping this community from devolving into inefficacy or worse. A case study by IBM showed, for example, that while there were many instances of vandalism on /{Wikipedia}/, including deletion of entire versions of articles on controversial topics like "abortion," the ability of users to see what was done and to fix it with a single click by reverting to a past version meant that acts of vandalism were ,{[pg 74]}, corrected within minutes. Indeed, corrections were so rapid that vandalism acts and their corrections did not even appear on a mechanically generated image of the abortion definition as it changed over time.~{ IBM Collaborative User Experience Research Group, History Flows: Results (2003), http://www.research.ibm.com/history/results.htm. }~ What is perhaps surprising is that this success occurs not in a tightly knit community with many social relations to reinforce the sense of common purpose and the social norms embodying it, but in a large and geographically dispersed group of otherwise unrelated participants. It suggests that even in a group of this size, social norms coupled with a facility to allow any participant to edit out purposeful or mistaken deviations in contravention of the social norms, and a robust platform for largely unmediated conversation, keep the group on track. + +A very different cultural form of distributed content production is presented by the rise of massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) as immersive entertainment. These fall in the same cultural "time slot" as television shows and movies of the twentieth century. The interesting thing about these types of games is that they organize the production of "scripts" very differently from movies or television shows. In a game like Ultima Online or EverQuest, the role of the commercial provider is not to tell a finished, highly polished story to be consumed start to finish by passive consumers. Rather, the role of the game provider is to build tools with which users collaborate to tell a story. There have been observations about this approach for years, regarding MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MOOs (Multi-User Object Oriented games). The point to understand about MMOGs is that they produce a discrete element of "content" that was in the past dominated by centralized professional production. The screenwriter of an immersive entertainment product like a movie is like the scientist marking Mars craters--a professional producer of a finished good. In MMOGs, this function is produced by using the appropriate software platform to allow the story to be written by the many users as they experience it. The individual contributions of the users/coauthors of the story line are literally done for fun-- they are playing a game. However, they are spending real economic goods-- their attention and substantial subscription fees--on a form of entertainment that uses a platform for active coproduction of a story line to displace what was once passive reception of a finished, commercially and professionally manufactured good. +={ communities : + immersive entertainment +1 ; + computer gaming environment +1 ; + entertainment industry : + immersive +1 ; + games, immersive +1 ; + immersive entertainment +1 ; + information production inputs : + immersive entertainment +1 ; + inputs to production : + immersive entertainment +1 ; + massive multiplayer games ; + MMOGs (massive multiplayer online games) ; + production inputs : + immersive entertainment +1 +} + +By 2003, a company called Linden Lab took this concept a major step forward by building an online game environment called Second Life. Second Life began almost entirely devoid of content. It was tools all the way down. ,{[pg 75]}, Within a matter of months, it had thousands of subscribers, inhabiting a "world" that had thousands of characters, hundreds of thousands of objects, multiple areas, villages, and "story lines." The individual users themselves had created more than 99 percent of all objects in the game environment, and all story lines and substantive frameworks for interaction--such as a particular village or group of theme-based participants. The interactions in the game environment involved a good deal of gift giving and a good deal of trade, but also some very surprising structured behaviors. Some users set up a university, where lessons were given in both in-game skills and in programming. Others designed spaceships and engaged in alien abductions (undergoing one seemed to become a status symbol within the game). At one point, aiming (successfully) to prevent the company from changing its pricing policy, users staged a demonstration by making signs and picketing the entry point to the game; and a "tax revolt" by placing large numbers of "tea crates" around an in-game reproduction of the Washington Monument. Within months, Second Life had become an immersive experience, like a movie or book, but one where the commercial provider offered a platform and tools, while the users wrote the story lines, rendered the "set," and performed the entire play. +={ Second Life game environment } + +3~ Relevance/Accreditation +={ accreditation +10 ; + filtering +10 ; + relevance filtering +10 +} + +How are we to know that the content produced by widely dispersed individuals is not sheer gobbledygook? Can relevance and accreditation itself be produced on a peer-production model? One type of answer is provided by looking at commercial businesses that successfully break off precisely the "accreditation and relevance" piece of their product, and rely on peer production to perform that function. Amazon and Google are probably the two most prominent examples of this strategy. +={ accreditation : + Amazon +1 ; + Amazon +1 ; + filtering : + Amazon +1 ; + relevance filtering : + Amazon +1 +} + +Amazon uses a mix of mechanisms to get in front of their buyers of books and other products that the users are likely to purchase. A number of these mechanisms produce relevance and accreditation by harnessing the users themselves. At the simplest level, the recommendation "customers who bought items you recently viewed also bought these items" is a mechanical means of extracting judgments of relevance and accreditation from the actions of many individuals, who produce the datum of relevance as byproduct of making their own purchasing decisions. Amazon also allows users to create topical lists and track other users as their "friends and favorites." Amazon, like many consumer sites today, also provides users with the ability ,{[pg 76]}, to rate books they buy, generating a peer-produced rating by averaging the ratings. More fundamentally, the core innovation of Google, widely recognized as the most efficient general search engine during the first half of the 2000s, was to introduce peer-based judgments of relevance. Like other search engines at the time, Google used a text-based algorithm to retrieve a given universe of Web pages initially. Its major innovation was its PageRank algorithm, which harnesses peer production of ranking in the following way. The engine treats links from other Web sites pointing to a given Web site as votes of confidence. Whenever someone who authors a Web site links to someone else's page, that person has stated quite explicitly that the linked page is worth a visit. Google's search engine counts these links as distributed votes of confidence in the quality of the page pointed to. Pages that are heavily linked-to count as more important votes of confidence. If a highly linked-to site links to a given page, that vote counts for more than the vote of a site that no one else thinks is worth visiting. The point to take home from looking at Google and Amazon is that corporations that have done immensely well at acquiring and retaining users have harnessed peer production to enable users to find things they want quickly and efficiently. +={ accreditation : + Google ; + communities : + critical culture and self-reflection +1 ; + culture : + criticality of (self-reflection) +1 ; + filtering : + Google ; + Google ; + relevance filtering : + Google +} + +The most prominent example of a distributed project self-consciously devoted to peer production of relevance is the Open Directory Project. The site relies on more than sixty thousand volunteer editors to determine which links should be included in the directory. Acceptance as a volunteer requires application. Quality relies on a peer-review process based substantially on seniority as a volunteer and level of engagement with the site. The site is hosted and administered by Netscape, which pays for server space and a small number of employees to administer the site and set up the initial guidelines. Licensing is free and presumably adds value partly to America Online's (AOL's) and Netscape's commercial search engine/portal and partly through goodwill. Volunteers are not affiliated with Netscape and receive no compensation. They spend time selecting sites for inclusion in the directory (in small increments of perhaps fifteen minutes per site reviewed), producing the most comprehensive, highest-quality human-edited directory of the Web--at this point outshining the directory produced by the company that pioneered human edited directories of the Web: Yahoo!. +={ accreditation : + Open Directory Project (ODP) ; + critical culture and self-reflection : + Open Directory Project ; + filtering : + Open Directory Project (ODP) ; + ODP (Open Directory Project) ; + Open Directory Project (ODP) ; + relevance filtering : + Open Directory Project (ODP) ; + self-organization : + Open Directory Project +} + +Perhaps the most elaborate platform for peer production of relevance and accreditation, at multiple layers, is used by Slashdot. Billed as "News for Nerds," Slashdot has become a leading technology newsletter on the Web, coproduced by hundreds of thousands of users. Slashdot primarily consists ,{[pg 77]}, of users commenting on initial submissions that cover a variety of technology-related topics. The submissions are typically a link to an off-site story, coupled with commentary from the person who submits the piece. Users follow up the initial submission with comments that often number in the hundreds. The initial submissions themselves, and more importantly, the approach to sifting through the comments of users for relevance and accreditation, provide a rich example of how this function can be performed on a distributed, peer-production model. +={ accreditation : + Slashdot +6 ; + filtering : + Slashdot +6 ; + relevance filtering : + Slashdot +6 ; + Slashdot +6 +} + +First, it is important to understand that the function of posting a story from another site onto Slashdot, the first "utterance" in a chain of comments on Slashdot, is itself an act of relevance production. The person submitting the story is telling the community of Slashdot users, "here is a story that `News for Nerds' readers should be interested in." This initial submission of a link is itself very coarsely filtered by editors who are paid employees of Open Source Technology Group (OSTG), which runs a number of similar platforms--like SourceForge, the most important platform for free software developers. OSTG is a subsidiary of VA Software, a software services company. The FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) response to, "how do you verify the accuracy of Slashdot stories?" is revealing: "We don't. You do. If something seems outrageous, we might look for some corroboration, but as a rule, we regard this as the responsibility of the submitter and the audience. This is why it's important to read comments. You might find something that refutes, or supports, the story in the main." In other words, Slashdot very self-consciously is organized as a means of facilitating peer production of accreditation; it is at the comments stage that the story undergoes its most important form of accreditation--peer review ex-post. +={ OSTG (Open Source Technology Group) } + +Filtering and accreditation of comments on Slashdot offer the most interesting case study of peer production of these functions. Users submit comments that are displayed together with the initial submission of a story. Think of the "content" produced in these comments as a cross between academic peer review of journal submissions and a peer-produced substitute for television's "talking heads." It is in the means of accrediting and evaluating these comments that Slashdot's system provides a comprehensive example of peer production of relevance and accreditation. Slashdot implements an automated system to select moderators from the pool of users. Moderators are chosen according to several criteria; they must be logged in (not anonymous), they must be regular users (who use the site averagely, not one-time page loaders or compulsive users), they must have been using ,{[pg 78]}, the site for a while (this defeats people who try to sign up just to moderate), they must be willing, and they must have positive "karma." Karma is a number assigned to a user that primarily reflects whether he or she has posted good or bad comments (according to ratings from other moderators). If a user meets these criteria, the program assigns the user moderator status and the user gets five "influence points" to review comments. The moderator rates a comment of his choice using a drop-down list with words such as "flamebait" and "informative." A positive word increases the rating of a comment one point and a negative word decreases the rating a point. Each time a moderator rates a comment, it costs one influence point, so he or she can only rate five comments for each moderating period. The period lasts for three days and if the user does not use the influence points, they expire. The moderation setup is designed to give many users a small amount of power. This decreases the effect of users with an ax to grind or with poor judgment. The site also implements some automated "troll filters," which prevent users from sabotaging the system. Troll filters stop users from posting more than once every sixty seconds, prevent identical posts, and will ban a user for twenty-four hours if he or she has been moderated down several times within a short time frame. Slashdot then provides users with a "threshold" filter that allows each user to block lower-quality comments. The scheme uses the numerical rating of the comment (ranging from 1 to 5). Comments start out at 0 for anonymous posters, 1 for registered users, and 2 for registered users with good "karma." As a result, if a user sets his or her filter at 1, the user will not see any comments from anonymous posters unless the comments' ratings were increased by a moderator. A user can set his or her filter anywhere from 1 (viewing all of the comments) to 5 (where only the posts that have been upgraded by several moderators will show up). +={ karma (Slashdot) ; + norms (social) : + Slashdot mechanisms for +3 ; + regulation by social norms : + Slashdot mechanisms for +3 ; + social relations and norms : + Slashdot mechanisms for +3 ; + troll filters (Slashdot) +} + +Relevance, as distinct from accreditation, is also tied into the Slashdot scheme because off-topic posts should receive an "off topic" rating by the moderators and sink below the threshold level (assuming the user has the threshold set above the minimum). However, the moderation system is limited to choices that sometimes are not mutually exclusive. For instance, a moderator may have to choose between "funny" ( 1) and "off topic" ( 1) when a post is both funny and off topic. As a result, an irrelevant post can increase in ranking and rise above the threshold level because it is funny or informative. It is unclear, however, whether this is a limitation on relevance, or indeed mimics our own normal behavior, say in reading a newspaper or browsing a library, where we might let our eyes linger longer on a funny or ,{[pg 79]}, informative tidbit, even after we have ascertained that it is not exactly relevant to what we were looking for. + +The primary function of moderation is to provide accreditation. If a user sets a high threshold level, they will only see posts that are considered of high quality by the moderators. Users also receive accreditation through their karma. If their posts consistently receive high ratings, their karma will increase. At a certain karma level, their comments will start off with a rating of 2, thereby giving them a louder voice in the sense that users with a threshold of 2 will now see their posts immediately, and fewer upward moderations are needed to push their comments even higher. Conversely, a user with bad karma from consistently poorly rated comments can lose accreditation by having his or her posts initially start off at 0 or 1. In addition to the mechanized means of selecting moderators and minimizing their power to skew the accreditation system, Slashdot implements a system of peer-review accreditation for the moderators themselves. Slashdot accomplishes this "metamoderation" by making any user that has an account from the first 90 percent of accounts created on the system eligible to evaluate the moderators. Each eligible user who opts to perform metamoderation review is provided with ten random moderator ratings of comments. The user/metamoderator then rates the moderator's rating as either unfair, fair, or neither. The metamoderation process affects the karma of the original moderator, which, when lowered sufficiently by cumulative judgments of unfair ratings, will remove the moderator from the moderation system. +={ metamoderation (Slashdot) +1 } + +Together, these mechanisms allow for distributed production of both relevance and accreditation. Because there are many moderators who can moderate any given comment, and thanks to the mechanisms that explicitly limit the power of any one moderator to overinfluence the aggregate judgment, the system evens out differences in evaluation by aggregating judgments. It then allows individual users to determine what level of accreditation pronounced by this aggregate system fits their particular time and needs by setting their filter to be more or less inclusive. By introducing "karma," the system also allows users to build reputation over time, and to gain greater control over the accreditation of their own work relative to the power of the critics. Users, moderators, and metamoderators are all volunteers. + +The primary point to take from the Slashdot example is that the same dynamic that we saw used for peer production of initial utterances, or content, can be implemented to produce relevance and accreditation. Rather than using the full-time effort of professional accreditation experts, the system ,{[pg 80]}, is designed to permit the aggregation of many small judgments, each of which entails a trivial effort for the contributor, regarding both relevance and accreditation of the materials. The software that mediates the communication among the collaborating peers embeds both the means to facilitate the participation and a variety of mechanisms designed to defend the common effort from poor judgment or defection. + +3~ Value-Added Distribution +={ distribution of information +3 } + +Finally, when we speak of information or cultural goods that exist (content has been produced) and are made usable through some relevance and accreditation mechanisms, there remains the question of distribution. To some extent, this is a nonissue on the Internet. Distribution is cheap. All one needs is a server and large pipes connecting one's server to the world. Nonetheless, this segment of the publication process has also provided us with important examples of peer production, including one of its earliest examples--Project Gutenberg. + +Project Gutenberg entails hundreds of volunteers who scan in and correct books so that they are freely available in digital form. It has amassed more than 13,000 books, and makes the collection available to everyone for free. The vast majority of the "e-texts" offered are public domain materials. The site itself presents the e-texts in ASCII format, the lowest technical common denominator, but does not discourage volunteers from offering the e-texts in markup languages. It contains a search engine that allows a reader to search for typical fields such as subject, author, and title. Project Gutenberg volunteers can select any book that is in the public domain to transform into an e-text. The volunteer submits a copy of the title page of the book to Michael Hart--who founded the project--for copyright research. The volunteer is notified to proceed if the book passes the copyright clearance. The decision on which book to convert to e-text is left up to the volunteer, subject to copyright limitations. Typically, a volunteer converts a book to ASCII format using OCR (optical character recognition) and proofreads it one time in order to screen it for major errors. He or she then passes the ASCII file to a volunteer proofreader. This exchange is orchestrated with very little supervision. The volunteers use a Listserv mailing list and a bulletin board to initiate and supervise the exchange. In addition, books are labeled with a version number indicating how many times they have been proofed. The site encourages volunteers to select a book that has a low number and proof it. The Project Gutenberg proofing process is simple. ,{[pg 81]}, Proofreaders (aside from the first pass) are not expected to have access to the book, but merely review the e-text for self-evident errors. +={ Hart, Michael +1 ; + Project Gutenberg +1 +} + +Distributed Proofreading, a site originally unaffiliated with Project Gutenberg, is devoted to proofing Project Gutenberg e-texts more efficiently, by distributing the volunteer proofreading function in smaller and more information-rich modules. Charles Franks, a computer programmer from Las Vegas, decided that he had a more efficient way to proofread these etexts. He built an interface that allowed volunteers to compare scanned images of original texts with the e-texts available on Project Gutenberg. In the Distributed Proofreading process, scanned pages are stored on the site, and volunteers are shown a scanned page and a page of the e-text simultaneously so that they can compare the e-text to the original page. Because of the fine-grained modularity, proofreaders can come on the site and proof one or a few pages and submit them. By contrast, on the Project Gutenberg site, the entire book is typically exchanged, or at minimum, a chapter. In this fashion, Distributed Proofreading clears the proofing of tens of thousands of pages every month. After a couple of years of working independently, Franks joined forces with Hart. By late 2004, the site had proofread more than five thousand volumes using this method. +={ Franks, Charles ; + distributed production +} + +3~ Sharing of Processing, Storage, and Communications Platforms +={ allocating excess capacity +15 ; + capacity : + sharing +15 ; + excess capacity, sharing +15 ; + reallocating excess capacity +15 ; + sharing +15 : + excess capacity +15 +} + +All the examples of peer production that we have seen up to this point have been examples where individuals pool their time, experience, wisdom, and creativity to form new information, knowledge, and cultural goods. As we look around the Internet, however, we find that users also cooperate in similar loosely affiliated groups, without market signals or managerial commands, to build supercomputers and massive data storage and retrieval systems. In their radical decentralization and reliance on social relations and motivations, these sharing practices are similar to peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. They differ in one important aspect: Users are not sharing their innate and acquired human capabilities, and, unlike information, their inputs and outputs are not public goods. The participants are, instead, sharing material goods that they privately own, mostly personal computers and their components. They produce economic, not public, goods--computation, storage, and communications capacity. +={ supercomputers +1 ; + capacity : + processing (computational) +1 ; + computational capacity +1 ; + processing capacity +1 +} + +As of the middle of 2004, the fastest supercomputer in the world was SETI@home. It ran about 75 percent faster than the supercomputer that ,{[pg 82]}, was then formally known as "the fastest supercomputer in the world": the IBM Blue Gene/L. And yet, there was and is no single SETI@home computer. Instead, the SETI@home project has developed software and a collaboration platform that have enabled millions of participants to pool their computation resources into a single powerful computer. Every user who participates in the project must download a small screen saver. When a user's personal computer is idle, the screen saver starts up, downloads problems for calculation--in SETI@home, these are radio astronomy signals to be analyzed for regularities--and calculates the problem it has downloaded. Once the program calculates a solution, it automatically sends its results to the main site. The cycle continues for as long as, and repeats every time that, the computer is idle from its user's perspective. As of the middle of 2004, the project had harnessed the computers of 4.5 million users, allowing it to run computations at speeds greater than those achieved by the fastest supercomputers in the world that private firms, using full-time engineers, developed for the largest and best-funded government laboratories in the world. SETI@home is the most prominent, but is only one among dozens of similarly structured Internet-based distributed computing platforms. Another, whose structure has been the subject of the most extensive formal analysis by its creators, is Folding@home. As of mid-2004, Folding@home had amassed contributions of about 840,000 processors contributed by more than 365,000 users. +={ SETI@home project +2 ; + distributed computing projects +2 ; + Folding@home project +2 ; + home project +2 +} + +SETI@home and Folding@home provide a good basis for describing the fairly common characteristics of Internet-based distributed computation projects. First, these are noncommercial projects, engaged in pursuits understood as scientific, for the general good, seeking to harness contributions of individuals who wish to contribute to such larger-than-themselves goals. SETI@home helps in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Folding@home helps in protein folding research. Fightaids@home is dedicated to running models that screen compounds for the likelihood that they will provide good drug candidates to fight HIV/AIDS. Genome@home is dedicated to modeling artificial genes that would be created to generate useful proteins. Other sites, like those dedicated to cryptography or mathematics, have a narrower appeal, and combine "altruistic" with hobby as their basic motivational appeal. The absence of money is, in any event, typical of the large majority of active distributed computing projects. Less than one-fifth of these projects mention money at all. Most of those that do mention money refer to the contributors' eligibility for a share of a generally available ,{[pg 83]}, prize for solving a scientific or mathematical challenge, and mix an appeal to hobby and altruism with the promise of money. Only two of about sixty projects active in 2004 were built on a pay-per-contribution basis, and these were quite small-scale by comparison to many of the others. +={ altruism +1 ; + Fightaids@home project ; + Genome@home project +} + +Most of the distributed computing projects provide a series of utilities and statistics intended to allow contributors to attach meaning to their contributions in a variety of ways. The projects appear to be eclectic in their implicit social and psychological theories of the motivations for participation in the projects. Sites describe the scientific purpose of the models and the specific scientific output, including posting articles that have used the calculations. In these components, the project organizers seem to assume some degree of taste for generalized altruism and the pursuit of meaning in contributing to a common goal. They also implement a variety of mechanisms to reinforce the sense of purpose, such as providing aggregate statistics about the total computations performed by the project as a whole. However, the sites also seem to assume a healthy dose of what is known in the anthropology of gift literature as agonistic giving--that is, giving intended to show that the person giving is greater than or more important than others, who gave less. For example, most of the sites allow individuals to track their own contributions, and provide "user of the month"-type rankings. An interesting characteristic of quite a few of these is the ability to create "teams" of users, who in turn compete on who has provided more cycles or work units. SETI@home in particular taps into ready-made nationalisms, by offering country-level statistics. Some of the team names on Folding@home also suggest other, out-of-project bonding measures, such as national or ethnic bonds (for example, Overclockers Australia or Alliance Francophone), technical minority status (for example, Linux or MacAddict4Life), and organizational affiliation (University of Tennessee or University of Alabama), as well as shared cultural reference points (Knights who say Ni!). In addition, the sites offer platforms for simple connectedness and mutual companionship, by offering user fora to discuss the science and the social participation involved. It is possible that these sites are shooting in the dark, as far as motivating sharing is concerned. It also possible, however, that they have tapped into a valuable insight, which is that people behave sociably and generously for all sorts of different reasons, and that at least in this domain, adding reasons to participate--some agonistic, some altruistic, some reciprocity-seeking--does not have a crowding-out effect. +={ agnostic giving } + +Like distributed computing projects, peer-to-peer file-sharing networks are ,{[pg 84]}, an excellent example of a highly efficient system for storing and accessing data in a computer network. These networks of sharing are much less "mysterious," in terms of understanding the human motivation behind participation. Nevertheless, they provide important lessons about the extent to which large-scale collaboration among strangers or loosely affiliated users can provide effective communications platforms. For fairly obvious reasons, we usually think of peer-to-peer networks, beginning with Napster, as a "problem." This is because they were initially overwhelmingly used to perform an act that, by the analysis of almost any legal scholar, was copyright infringement. To a significant extent, they are still used in this form. There were, and continue to be, many arguments about whether the acts of the firms that provided peer-to-peer software were responsible for the violations. However, there has been little argument that anyone who allows thousands of other users to make copies of his or her music files is violating copyright-- hence the public interpretation of the creation of peer-to-peer networks as primarily a problem. From the narrow perspective of the law of copyright or of the business model of the recording industry and Hollywood, this may be an appropriate focus. From the perspective of diagnosing what is happening to our social and economic structure, the fact that the files traded on these networks were mostly music in the first few years of this technology's implementation is little more than a distraction. Let me explain why. +={ file-sharing networks +4 ; + p2p networks +4 ; + peer-to-peer networks +4 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + peer-to-peer networks +4 ; + network topology : + peer-to-peer networks +4 ; + structure of network : + peer-to-peer networks +4 ; + topology, network : + peer-to-peer networks +4 ; + music industry : + peer-to-peer networks and +1 ; + proprietary rights : + peer-to-peer networks and +1 +} + +Imagine for a moment that someone--be it a legislator defining a policy goal or a businessperson defining a desired service--had stood up in mid1999 and set the following requirements: "We would like to develop a new music and movie distribution system. We would like it to store all the music and movies ever digitized. We would like it to be available from anywhere in the world. We would like it to be able to serve tens of millions of users at any given moment." Any person at the time would have predicted that building such a system would cost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars; that running it would require large standing engineering staffs; that managing it so that users could find what they wanted and not drown in the sea of content would require some substantial number of "curators"--DJs and movie buffs--and that it would take at least five to ten years to build. Instead, the system was built cheaply by a wide range of actors, starting with Shawn Fanning's idea and implementation of Napster. Once the idea was out, others perfected the idea further, eliminating the need for even the one centralized feature that Napster included--a list of who had what files on which computer that provided the matchmaking function in the Napster ,{[pg 85]}, network. Since then, under the pressure of suits from the recording industry and a steady and persistent demand for peer-to-peer music software, rapid successive generations of Gnutella, and then the FastTrack clients KaZaa and Morpheus, Overnet and eDonkey, the improvements of BitTorrent, and many others have enhanced the reliability, coverage, and speed of the peer-to-peer music distribution system--all under constant threat of litigation, fines, police searches and even, in some countries, imprisonment of the developers or users of these networks. +={ Fanning, Shawn } + +What is truly unique about peer-to-peer networks as a signal of what is to come is the fact that with ridiculously low financial investment, a few teenagers and twenty-something-year-olds were able to write software and protocols that allowed tens of millions of computer users around the world to cooperate in producing the most efficient and robust file storage and retrieval system in the world. No major investment was necessary in creating a server farm to store and make available the vast quantities of data represented by the media files. The users' computers are themselves the "server farm." No massive investment in dedicated distribution channels made of high-quality fiber optics was necessary. The standard Internet connections of users, with some very intelligent file transfer protocols, sufficed. Architecture oriented toward enabling users to cooperate with each other in storage, search, retrieval, and delivery of files was all that was necessary to build a content distribution network that dwarfed anything that existed before. + +Again, there is nothing mysterious about why users participate in peer-to-peer networks. They want music; they can get it from these networks for free; so they participate. The broader point to take from looking at peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, however, is the sheer effectiveness of large-scale collaboration among individuals once they possess, under their individual control, the physical capital necessary to make their cooperation effective. These systems are not "subsidized," in the sense that they do not pay the full marginal cost of their service. Remember, music, like all information, is a nonrival public good whose marginal cost, once produced, is zero. Moreover, digital files are not "taken" from one place in order to be played in the other. They are replicated wherever they are wanted, and thereby made more ubiquitous, not scarce. The only actual social cost involved at the time of the transmission is the storage capacity, communications capacity, and processing capacity necessary to store, catalog, search, retrieve, and transfer the information necessary to replicate the files from where copies reside to where more copies are desired. As with any nonrival good, if Jane is willing ,{[pg 86]}, to spend the actual social costs involved in replicating the music file that already exists and that Jack possesses, then it is efficient that she do so without paying the creator a dime. It may throw a monkey wrench into the particular way in which our society has chosen to pay musicians and recording executives. This, as we saw in chapter 2, trades off efficiency for longer-term incentive effects for the recording industry. However, it is efficient within the normal meaning of the term in economics in a way that it would not have been had Jane and Jack used subsidized computers or network connections. +={ information production : + nonrivalry ; + production of information : + nonrivalry ; + networks sharing +} + +As with distributed computing, peer-to-peer file-sharing systems build on the fact that individual users own vast quantities of excess capacity embedded in their personal computers. As with distributed computing, peer-to-peer networks developed architectures that allowed users to share this excess capacity with each other. By cooperating in these sharing practices, users construct together systems with capabilities far exceeding those that they could have developed by themselves, as well as the capabilities that even the best-financed corporations could provide using techniques that rely on components they fully owned. The network components owned by any single music delivery service cannot match the collective storage and retrieval capabilities of the universe of users' hard drives and network connections. Similarly, the processors arrayed in the supercomputers find it difficult to compete with the vast computation resource available on the millions of personal computers connected to the Internet, and the proprietary software development firms find themselves competing, and in some areas losing to, the vast pool of programming talent connected to the Internet in the form of participants in free and open source software development projects. +={ capacity : + processing (computational) | storage ; + computational capacity ; + data storage capacity ; + information sharing ; + processing capacity ; + storage capacity ; + connectivity +1 +} + +In addition to computation and storage, the last major element of computer communications networks is connectivity. Here, too, perhaps more dramatically than in either of the two other functionalities, we have seen the development of sharing-based techniques. The most direct transfer of the design characteristics of peer-to-peer networks to communications has been the successful development of Skype--an Internet telephony utility that allows the owners of computers to have voice conversations with each other over the Internet for free, and to dial into the public telephone network for a fee. As of this writing, Skype is already used by more than two million users at any given moment in time. They use a FastTrack-like architecture to share their computing and communications resources to create a global ,{[pg 87]}, telephone system running on top of the Internet. It was created, and is run by, the developers of KaZaa. +={ Skype utility } + +Most dramatically, however, we have seen these techniques emerging in wireless communications. Throughout almost the entire twentieth century, radio communications used a single engineering approach to allow multiple messages to be sent wirelessly in a single geographic area. This approach was to transmit each of the different simultaneous messages by generating separate electromagnetic waves for each, which differed from each other by the frequency of oscillation, or wavelength. The receiver could then separate out the messages by ignoring all electromagnetic energy received at its antenna unless it oscillated at the frequency of the desired message. This engineering technique, adopted by Marconi in 1900, formed the basis of our notion of "spectrum": the range of frequencies at which we know how to generate electromagnetic waves with sufficient control and predictability that we can encode and decode information with them, as well as the notion that there are "channels" of spectrum that are "used" by a communication. For more than half a century, radio communications regulation was thought necessary because spectrum was scarce, and unless regulated, everyone would transmit at all frequencies causing chaos and an inability to send messages. From 1959, when Ronald Coase first published his critique of this regulatory approach, until the early 1990s, when spectrum auctions began, the terms of the debate over "spectrum policy," or wireless communications regulation, revolved around whether the exclusive right to transmit radio signals in a given geographic area should be granted as a regulatory license or a tradable property right. In the 1990s, with the introduction of auctions, we began to see the adoption of a primitive version of a property-based system through "spectrum auctions." By the early 2000s, this system allowed the new "owners" of these exclusive rights to begin to shift what were initially purely mobile telephony systems to mobile data communications as well. +={ Coase, Ronald ; + proprietary rights : + wireless networks ; + wireless communications +2 +} + +By this time, however, the century-old engineering assumptions that underlay the regulation-versus-property conceptualization of the possibilities open for the institutional framework of wireless communications had been rendered obsolete by new computation and network technologies.~{ For the full argument, see Yochai Benkler, "Some Economics of Wireless Communications," Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 16 (2002): 25; and Yochai Benkler, "Overcoming Agoraphobia: Building the Commons of the Digitally Networked Environment," Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 11 (1998): 287. For an excellent overview of the intellectual history of this debate and a contribution to the institutional design necessary to make space for this change, see Kevin Werbach, "Supercommons: Towards a Unified Theory of Wireless Communication," Texas Law Review 82 (2004): 863. The policy implications of computationally intensive radios using wide bands were first raised by George Gilder in "The New Rule of the Wireless," Forbes ASAP, March 29, 1993, and Paul Baran, "Visions of the 21st Century Communications: Is the Shortage of Radio Spectrum for Broadband Networks of the Future a Self Made Problem?" (keynote talk transcript, 8th Annual Conference on Next Generation Networks, Washington, DC, November 9, 1994). Both statements focused on the potential abundance of spectrum, and how it renders "spectrum management" obsolete. Eli Noam was the first to point out that, even if one did not buy the idea that computationally intensive radios eliminated scarcity, they still rendered spectrum property rights obsolete, and enabled instead a fluid, dynamic, real-time market in spectrum clearance rights. See Eli Noam, "Taking the Next Step Beyond Spectrum Auctions: Open Spectrum Access," Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Communications Magazine 33, no. 12 (1995): 66-73; later elaborated in Eli Noam, "Spectrum Auction: Yesterday's Heresy, Today's Orthodoxy, Tomorrow's Anachronism. Taking the Next Step to Open Spectrum Access," Journal of Law and Economics 41 (1998): 765, 778-780. The argument that equipment markets based on a spectrum commons, or free access to frequencies, could replace the role planned for markets in spectrum property rights with computationally intensive equipment and sophisticated network sharing protocols, and would likely be more efficient even assuming that scarcity persists, was made in Benkler, "Overcoming Agoraphobia." Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999) and Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (New York: Random House, 2001) developed a rationale based on the innovation dynamic in support of the economic value of open wireless networks. David Reed, "Comments for FCC Spectrum Task Force on Spectrum Policy," filed with the Federal Communications Commission July 10, 2002, crystallized the technical underpinnings and limitations of the idea that spectrum can be regarded as property. }~ The dramatic decline in computation cost and improvements in digital signal processing, network architecture, and antenna systems had fundamentally changed the design space of wireless communications systems. Instead of having one primary parameter with which to separate out messages--the ,{[pg 88]}, frequency of oscillation of the carrier wave--engineers could now use many different mechanisms to allow much smarter receivers to separate out the message they wanted to receive from all other sources of electromagnetic radiation in the geographic area they occupied. Radio transmitters could now transmit at the same frequency, simultaneously, without "interfering" with each other--that is, without confusing the receivers as to which radiation carried the required message and which did not. Just like automobiles that can share a commons-based medium--the road--and unlike railroad cars, which must use dedicated, owned, and managed railroad tracks--these new radios could share "the spectrum" as a commons. It was no longer necessary, or even efficient, to pass laws--be they in the form of regulations or of exclusive property-like rights--that carved up the usable spectrum into exclusively controlled slices. Instead, large numbers of transceivers, owned and operated by end users, could be deployed and use equipment-embedded protocols to coordinate their communications. + +The reasons that owners would share the excess capacity of their new radios are relatively straightforward in this case. Users want to have wireless connectivity all the time, to be reachable and immediately available everywhere. However, they do not actually want to communicate every few microseconds. They will therefore be willing to purchase and keep turned on equipment that provides them with such connectivity. Manufacturers, in turn, will develop and adhere to standards that will improve capacity and connectivity. As a matter of engineering, what has been called "cooperation gain"--the improved quality of the system gained when the nodes cooperate--is the most promising source of capacity scaling for distributed wireless systems.~{ See Benkler, "Some Economics," 44-47. The term "cooperation gain" was developed by Reed to describe a somewhat broader concept than "diversity gain" is in multiuser information theory. }~ Cooperation gain is easy to understand from day-to-day interactions. When we sit in a lecture and miss a word or two, we might turn to a neighbor and ask, "Did you hear what she said?" In radio systems, this kind of cooperation among the antennae (just like the ears) of neighbors is called antenna diversity, and is the basis for the design of a number of systems to improve reception. We might stand in a loud crowd without being able to shout or walk over to the other end of the room, but ask a friend: "If you see so and so, tell him x"; that friend then bumps into a friend of so and so and tells that person: "If you see so and so, tell him x"; and so forth. When we do this, we are using what in radio engineering is called repeater networks. These kinds of cooperative systems can carry much higher loads without interference, sharing wide swaths of spectrum, ,{[pg 89]}, in ways that are more efficient than systems that rely on explicit market transactions based on property in the right to emit power in discrete frequencies. The design of such "ad hoc mesh networks"--that is, networks of radios that can configure themselves into cooperative networks as need arises, and help each other forward messages and decipher incoming messages over the din of radio emissions--are the most dynamic area in radio engineering today. +={ cooperation gain ; + network topology : + repeater networks +1 ; + repeater networks +1 ; + structure of network : + repeater network +1 ; + topology, network : + repeater networks +1 ; + ad hoc mesh networks +} + +This technological shift gave rise to the fastest-growing sector in the wireless communications arena in the first few years of the twenty-first century-- WiFi and similar unlicensed wireless devices. The economic success of the equipment market that utilizes the few primitive "spectrum commons" available in the United States--originally intended for low-power devices like garage openers and the spurious emissions of microwave ovens--led toward at first slow, and more recently quite dramatic, change in U.S. wireless policy. In the past two years alone, what have been called "commons-based" approaches to wireless communications policy have come to be seen as a legitimate, indeed a central, component of the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC's) wireless policy.~{ Spectrum Policy Task Force Report to the Commission (Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC, 2002); Michael K. Powell, "Broadband Migration III: New Directions in Wireless Policy" (Remarks at the Silicon Flatiron Telecommunications Program, University of Colorado at Boulder, October 30, 2002). }~ We are beginning to see in this space the most prominent example of a system that was entirely oriented toward regulation aimed at improving the institutional conditions of marketbased production of wireless transport capacity sold as a finished good (connectivity minutes), shifting toward enabling the emergence of a market in shareable goods (smart radios) designed to provision transport on a sharing model. +={ commons : + wireless communications as +} + +I hope these detailed examples provide a common set of mental pictures of what peer production looks like. In the next chapter I explain the economics of peer production of information and the sharing of material resources for computation, communications, and storage in particular, and of nonmarket, social production more generally: why it is efficient, how we can explain the motivations that lead people to participate in these great enterprises of nonmarket cooperation, and why we see so much more of it online than we do off-line. The moral and political discussion throughout the remainder of the book does not, however, depend on your accepting the particular analysis I offer in chapter 4 to "domesticate" these phenomena within more or less standard economics. At this point, it is important that the stories have provided a texture for, and established the plausibility of, ,{[pg 90]}, the claim that nonmarket production in general and peer production in particular are phenomena of much wider application than free software, and exist in important ways throughout the networked information economy. For purposes of understanding the political implications that occupy most of this book, that is all that is necessary. ,{[pg 91]}, + +1~ Chapter 4 - The Economics of Social Production +={ economics of nonmarket production +68 ; + nonmarket production, economics of +68 +} + +The increasing salience of nonmarket production in general, and peer production in particular, raises three puzzles from an economics perspective. First, why do people participate? What is their motivation when they work for or contribute resources to a project for which they are not paid or directly rewarded? Second, why now, why here? What, if anything, is special about the digitally networked environment that would lead us to believe that peer production is here to stay as an important economic phenomenon, as opposed to a fad that will pass as the medium matures and patterns of behavior settle toward those more familiar to us from the economy of steel, coal, and temp agencies. Third, is it efficient to have all these people sharing their computers and donating their time and creative effort? Moving through the answers to these questions, it becomes clear that the diverse and complex patterns of behavior observed on the Internet, from Viking ship hobbyists to the developers of the GNU/ Linux operating system, are perfectly consistent with much of our contemporary understanding of human economic behavior. We need to assume no fundamental change in the nature of humanity; ,{[pg 92]}, we need not declare the end of economics as we know it. We merely need to see that the material conditions of production in the networked information economy have changed in ways that increase the relative salience of social sharing and exchange as a modality of economic production. That is, behaviors and motivation patterns familiar to us from social relations generally continue to cohere in their own patterns. What has changed is that now these patterns of behavior have become effective beyond the domains of building social relations of mutual interest and fulfilling our emotional and psychological needs of companionship and mutual recognition. They have come to play a substantial role as modes of motivating, informing, and organizing productive behavior at the very core of the information economy. And it is this increasing role as a modality of information production that ripples through the rest this book. It is the feasibility of producing information, knowledge, and culture through social, rather than market and proprietary relations--through cooperative peer production and coordinate individual action--that creates the opportunities for greater autonomous action, a more critical culture, a more discursively engaged and better informed republic, and perhaps a more equitable global community. +={ behavior : + motivation to produce +11 ; + diversity : + motivation to produce +11 ; + human motivation +11 ; + incentives to produce +11 ; + motivation to produce +11 ; + norms (social) : + motivation within +4 ; + regulation by social norms : + motivation within +4 ; + social relations and norms : + motivation within +4 +} + +2~ MOTIVATION + +Much of economics achieves analytic tractability by adopting a very simple model of human motivation. The basic assumption is that all human motivations can be more or less reduced to something like positive and negative utilities--things people want, and things people want to avoid. These are capable of being summed, and are usually translatable into a universal medium of exchange, like money. Adding more of something people want, like money, to any given interaction will, all things considered, make that interaction more desirable to rational people. While simplistic, this highly tractable model of human motivation has enabled policy prescriptions that have proven far more productive than prescriptions that depended on other models of human motivation--such as assuming that benign administrators will be motivated to serve their people, or that individuals will undertake self-sacrifice for the good of the nation or the commune. + +Of course, this simple model underlying much of contemporary economics is wrong. At least it is wrong as a universal description of human motivation. If you leave a fifty-dollar check on the table at the end of a dinner party at a friend's house, you do not increase the probability that you will ,{[pg 93]}, be invited again. We live our lives in diverse social frames, and money has a complex relationship with these--sometimes it adds to the motivation to participate, sometimes it detracts from it. While this is probably a trivial observation outside of the field of economics, it is quite radical within that analytic framework. The present generation's efforts to formalize and engage it began with the Titmuss-Arrow debate of the early 1970s. In a major work, Richard Titmuss compared the U.S. and British blood supply systems. The former was largely commercial at the time, organized by a mix of private for-profit and nonprofit actors; the latter entirely voluntary and organized by the National Health Service. Titmuss found that the British system had higher-quality blood (as measured by the likelihood of recipients contracting hepatitis from transfusions), less blood waste, and fewer blood shortages at hospitals. Titmuss also attacked the U.S. system as inequitable, arguing that the rich exploited the poor and desperate by buying their blood. He concluded that an altruistic blood procurement system is both more ethical and more efficient than a market system, and recommended that the market be kept out of blood donation to protect the "right to give."~{ Richard M. Titmuss, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), 94. }~ Titmuss's argument came under immediate attack from economists. Most relevant for our purposes here, Kenneth Arrow agreed that the differences in blood quality indicated that the U.S. blood system was flawed, but rejected Titmuss's central theoretical claim that markets reduce donative activity. Arrow reported the alternative hypothesis held by "economists typically," that if some people respond to exhortation/moral incentives (donors), while others respond to prices and market incentives (sellers), these two groups likely behave independently--neither responds to the other's incentives. Thus, the decision to allow or ban markets should have no effect on donative behavior. Removing a market could, however, remove incentives of the "bad blood" suppliers to sell blood, thereby improving the overall quality of the blood supply. Titmuss had not established his hypothesis analytically, Arrow argued, and its proof or refutation would lie in empirical study.~{ Kenneth J. Arrow, "Gifts and Exchanges," Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1972): 343. }~ Theoretical differences aside, the U.S. blood supply system did in fact transition to an allvolunteer system of social donation since the 1970s. In surveys since, blood donors have reported that they "enjoy helping" others, experienced a sense of moral obligation or responsibility, or exhibited characteristics of reciprocators after they or their relatives received blood. +={ Arrow, Kenneth ; + blood donation ; + Titmuss, Richard +} + +A number of scholars, primarily in psychology and economics, have attempted to resolve this question both empirically and theoretically. The most systematic work within economics is that of Swiss economist Bruno Frey ,{[pg 94]}, and various collaborators, building on the work of psychologist Edward Deci.~{ Bruno S. Frey, Not Just for Money: An Economic Theory of Personal Motivation (Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar, 1997); Bruno S. Frey, Inspiring Economics: Human Motivation in Political Economy (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2001), 52-72. An excellent survey of this literature is Bruno S. Frey and Reto Jegen, "Motivation Crowding Theory," Journal of Economic Surveys 15, no. 5 (2001): 589. For a crystallization of the underlying psychological theory, see Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (New York: Plenum, 1985). }~ A simple statement of this model is that individuals have intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivations are imposed on individuals from the outside. They take the form of either offers of money for, or prices imposed on, behavior, or threats of punishment or reward from a manager or a judge for complying with, or failing to comply with, specifically prescribed behavior. Intrinsic motivations are reasons for action that come from within the person, such as pleasure or personal satisfaction. Extrinsic motivations are said to "crowd out" intrinsic motivations because they (a) impair self-determination--that is, people feel pressured by an external force, and therefore feel overjustified in maintaining their intrinsic motivation rather than complying with the will of the source of the extrinsic reward; or (b) impair self-esteem--they cause individuals to feel that their internal motivation is rejected, not valued, and as a result, their self-esteem is diminished, causing them to reduce effort. Intuitively, this model relies on there being a culturally contingent notion of what one "ought" to do if one is a welladjusted human being and member of a decent society. Being offered money to do something you know you "ought" to do, and that self-respecting members of society usually in fact do, implies that the person offering the money believes that you are not a well-adjusted human being or an equally respectable member of society. This causes the person offered the money either to believe the offerer, and thereby lose self-esteem and reduce effort, or to resent him and resist the offer. A similar causal explanation is formalized by Roland Benabou and Jean Tirole, who claim that the person receiving the monetary incentives infers that the person offering the compensation does not trust the offeree to do the right thing, or to do it well of their own accord. The offeree's self-confidence and intrinsic motivation to succeed are reduced to the extent that the offeree believes that the offerer--a manager or parent, for example--is better situated to judge the offeree's abilities.~{ Roland Benabou and Jean Tirole, "Self-Confidence and Social Interactions" (working paper no. 7585, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, March 2000). }~ +={ Frey, Bruno +1 ; + Benabou, Ronald ; + Deci, Edward ; + Tirole, Jean ; + extrinsic motivations +3 ; + intrinsic motivations +6 ; + money : + as demotivator +3 ; + price compensation, as demotivator +3 ; + self-determinims, extrinsic motivation and ; + self-esteem, extrinsic motivation and ; + filtering by information provider. See blocked access financial reward, as demotivator +3 +} + +More powerful than the theoretical literature is the substantial empirical literature--including field and laboratory experiments, econometrics, and surveys--that has developed since the mid-1990s to test the hypotheses of this model of human motivation. Across many different settings, researchers have found substantial evidence that, under some circumstances, adding money for an activity previously undertaken without price compensation reduces, rather than increases, the level of activity. The work has covered contexts as diverse as the willingness of employees to work more or to share their experience and knowledge with team members, of communities to ,{[pg 95]}, accept locally undesirable land uses, or of parents to pick up children from day-care centers punctually.~{ Truman F. Bewley, "A Depressed Labor Market as Explained by Participants," American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) 85 (1995): 250, provides survey data about managers' beliefs about the effects of incentive contracts; Margit Osterloh and Bruno S. Frey, "Motivation, Knowledge Transfer, and Organizational Form," Organization Science 11 (2000): 538, provides evidence that employees with tacit knowledge communicate it to coworkers more efficiently without extrinsic motivations, with the appropriate social motivations, than when money is offered for "teaching" their knowledge; Bruno S. Frey and Felix Oberholzer-Gee, "The Cost of Price Incentives: An Empirical Analysis of Motivation Crowding-Out," American Economic Review 87 (1997): 746; and Howard Kunreuther and Douslar Easterling, "Are Risk-Benefit Tradeoffs Possible in Siting Hazardous Facilities?" American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) 80 (1990): 252-286, describe empirical studies where communities became less willing to accept undesirable public facilities (Not in My Back Yard or NIMBY) when offered compensation, relative to when the arguments made were policy based on the common weal; Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, "A Fine Is a Price," Journal of Legal Studies 29 (2000): 1, found that introducing a fine for tardy pickup of kindergarten kids increased, rather than decreased, the tardiness of parents, and once the sense of social obligation was lost to the sense that it was "merely" a transaction, the parents continued to be late at pickup, even after the fine was removed. }~ The results of this empirical literature strongly suggest that across various domains some displacement or crowding out can be identified between monetary rewards and nonmonetary motivations. This does not mean that offering monetary incentives does not increase extrinsic rewards--it does. Where extrinsic rewards dominate, this will increase the activity rewarded as usually predicted in economics. However, the effect on intrinsic motivation, at least sometimes, operates in the opposite direction. Where intrinsic motivation is an important factor because pricing and contracting are difficult to achieve, or because the payment that can be offered is relatively low, the aggregate effect may be negative. Persuading experienced employees to communicate their tacit knowledge to the teams they work with is a good example of the type of behavior that is very hard to specify for efficient pricing, and therefore occurs more effectively through social motivations for teamwork than through payments. Negative effects of small payments on participation in work that was otherwise volunteer-based are an example of low payments recruiting relatively few people, but making others shift their efforts elsewhere and thereby reducing, rather than increasing, the total level of volunteering for the job. + +The psychology-based alternative to the "more money for an activity will mean more of the activity" assumption implicit in most of these new economic models is complemented by a sociology-based alternative. This comes from one branch of the social capital literature--the branch that relates back to Mark Granovetter's 1974 book, Getting a Job, and was initiated as a crossover from sociology to economics by James Coleman.~{ James S. Coleman, "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital," American Journal of Sociology 94, supplement (1988): S95, S108. For important early contributions to this literature, see Mark Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties," American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973): 1360; Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); Yoram BenPorath, "The F-Connection: Families, Friends and Firms and the Organization of Exchange," Population and Development Review 6 (1980): 1. }~ This line of literature rests on the claim that, as Nan Lin puts it, "there are two ultimate (or primitive) rewards for human beings in a social structure: economic standing and social standing."~{ Nan Lin, Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 150-151. }~ These rewards are understood as instrumental and, in this regard, are highly amenable to economics. Both economic and social aspects represent "standing"--that is, a relational measure expressed in terms of one's capacity to mobilize resources. Some resources can be mobilized by money. Social relations can mobilize others. For a wide range of reasons-- institutional, cultural, and possibly technological--some resources are more readily capable of being mobilized by social relations than by money. If you want to get your nephew a job at a law firm in the United States today, a friendly relationship with the firm's hiring partner is more likely to help than passing on an envelope full of cash. If this theory of social capital is correct, then sometimes you should be willing to trade off financial rewards for social ,{[pg 96]}, capital. Critically, the two are not fungible or cumulative. A hiring partner paid in an economy where monetary bribes for job interviews are standard does not acquire a social obligation. That same hiring partner in that same culture, who is also a friend and therefore forgoes payment, however, probably does acquire a social obligation, tenable for a similar social situation in the future. The magnitude of the social debt, however, may now be smaller. It is likely measured by the amount of money saved from not having to pay the price, not by the value of getting the nephew a job, as it would likely be in an economy where jobs cannot be had for bribes. There are things and behaviors, then, that simply cannot be commodified for market exchange, like friendship. Any effort to mix the two, to pay for one's friendship, would render it something completely different--perhaps a psychoanalysis session in our culture. There are things that, even if commodified, can still be used for social exchange, but the meaning of the social exchange would be diminished. One thinks of borrowing eggs from a neighbor, or lending a hand to friends who are moving their furniture to a new apartment. And there are things that, even when commodified, continue to be available for social exchange with its full force. Consider gamete donations as an example in contemporary American culture. It is important to see, though, that there is nothing intrinsic about any given "thing" or behavior that makes it fall into one or another of these categories. The categories are culturally contingent and cross-culturally diverse. What matters for our purposes here, though, is only the realization that for any given culture, there will be some acts that a person would prefer to perform not for money, but for social standing, recognition, and probably, ultimately, instrumental value obtainable only if that person has performed the action through a social, rather than a market, transaction. +={ Coleman, James ; + Granovetter, Mark ; + Lin, Nan ; + social capital ; + culture : + as motivational context +2 ; + human motivation : + cultural context of +2 ; + incentives to produce : + cultural context +2 ; + motivation to produce : + cultural context +2 +} + +It is not necessary to pin down precisely the correct or most complete theory of motivation, or the full extent and dimensions of crowding out nonmarket rewards by the introduction or use of market rewards. All that is required to outline the framework for analysis is recognition that there is some form of social and psychological motivation that is neither fungible with money nor simply cumulative with it. Transacting within the price system may either increase or decrease the social-psychological rewards (be they intrinsic or extrinsic, functional or symbolic). The intuition is simple. As I have already said, leaving a fifty-dollar check on the table after one has finished a pleasant dinner at a friend's house would not increase the host's ,{[pg 97]}, social and psychological gains from the evening. Most likely, it would diminish them sufficiently that one would never again be invited. A bottle of wine or a bouquet of flowers would, to the contrary, improve the social gains. And if dinner is not intuitively obvious, think of sex. The point is simple. Money-oriented motivations are different from socially oriented motivations. Sometimes they align. Sometimes they collide. Which of the two will be the case is historically and culturally contingent. The presence of money in sports or entertainment reduced the social psychological gains from performance in late-nineteenth-century Victorian England, at least for members of the middle and upper classes. This is reflected in the long-standing insistence on the "amateur" status of the Olympics, or the status of "actors" in the Victorian society. This has changed dramatically more than a century later, where athletes' and popular entertainers' social standing is practically measured in the millions of dollars their performances can command. + +The relative relationships of money and social-psychological rewards are, then, dependent on culture and context. Similar actions may have different meanings in different social or cultural contexts. Consider three lawyers contemplating whether to write a paper presenting their opinion--one is a practicing attorney, the second is a judge, and the third is an academic. For the first, money and honor are often, though not always, positively correlated. Being able to command a very high hourly fee for writing the requested paper is a mode of expressing one's standing in the profession, as well as a means of putting caviar on the table. Yet, there are modes of acquiring esteem--like writing the paper as a report for a bar committee-- that are not improved by the presence of money, and are in fact undermined by it. This latter effect is sharpest for the judge. If a judge is approached with an offer of money for writing an opinion, not only is this not a mark of honor, it is a subversion of the social role and would render corrupt the writing of the opinion. For the judge, the intrinsic "rewards" for writing the opinion when matched by a payment for the product would be guilt and shame, and the offer therefore an expression of disrespect. Finally, if the same paper is requested of the academic, the presence of money is located somewhere in between the judge and the practitioner. To a high degree, like the judge, the academic who writes for money is rendered suspect in her community of scholarship. A paper clearly funded by a party, whose results support the party's regulatory or litigation position, is practically worthless as an academic work. In a mirror image of the practitioner, however, there ,{[pg 98]}, are some forms of money that add to and reinforce an academic's social psychological rewards--peer-reviewed grants and prizes most prominent among them. + +Moreover, individuals are not monolithic agents. While it is possible to posit idealized avaricious money-grubbers, altruistic saints, or social climbers, the reality of most people is a composite of these all, and one that is not like any of them. Clearly, some people are more focused on making money, and others are more generous; some more driven by social standing and esteem, others by a psychological sense of well-being. The for-profit and nonprofit systems probably draw people with different tastes for these desiderata. Academic science and commercial science also probably draw scientists with similar training but different tastes for types of rewards. However, welladjusted, healthy individuals are rarely monolithic in their requirements. We would normally think of someone who chose to ignore and betray friends and family to obtain either more money or greater social recognition as a fetishist of some form or another. We spend some of our time making money, some of our time enjoying it hedonically; some of our time being with and helping family, friends, and neighbors; some of our time creatively expressing ourselves, exploring who we are and what we would like to become. Some of us, because of economic conditions we occupy, or because of our tastes, spend very large amounts of time trying to make money-- whether to become rich or, more commonly, just to make ends meet. Others spend more time volunteering, chatting, or writing. + +For all of us, there comes a time on any given day, week, and month, every year and in different degrees over our lifetimes, when we choose to act in some way that is oriented toward fulfilling our social and psychological needs, not our market-exchangeable needs. It is that part of our lives and our motivational structure that social production taps, and on which it thrives. There is nothing mysterious about this. It is evident to any of us who rush home to our family or to a restaurant or bar with friends at the end of a workday, rather than staying on for another hour of overtime or to increase our billable hours; or at least regret it when we cannot. It is evident to any of us who has ever brought a cup of tea to a sick friend or relative, or received one; to anyone who has lent a hand moving a friend's belongings; played a game; told a joke, or enjoyed one told by a friend. What needs to be understood now, however, is under what conditions these many and diverse social actions can turn into an important modality of economic production. When can all these acts, distinct from our desire for ,{[pg 99]}, money and motivated by social and psychological needs, be mobilized, directed, and made effective in ways that we recognize as economically valuable? + +2~ SOCIAL PRODUCTION: FEASIBILITY CONDITIONS AND ORGANIZATIONAL FORM +={ capacity : + human communication +13 ; + communication : + feasibility conditions for social production +13 ; + cost : + feasibility conditions for social production +13 ; + feasibility conditions or social production +13 ; + human communicative capacity : + feasibility conditions for social production +13 ; + information production : + feasibility conditions for social production +13 ; + nonmarket information producers : + conditions for production +13 ; + nonmarket production, economics of : + feasibility conditions +13 ; + peer production : + feasibility conditions for social production +13 ; + production of information : + feasibility conditions for social production +13 +} + +The core technologically contingent fact that enables social relations to become a salient modality of production in the networked information economy is that all the inputs necessary to effective productive activity are under the control of individual users. Human creativity, wisdom, and life experience are all possessed uniquely by individuals. The computer processors, data storage devices, and communications capacity necessary to make new meaningful conversational moves from the existing universe of information and stimuli, and to render and communicate them to others near and far are also under the control of these same individual users--at least in the advanced economies and in some portions of the population of developing economies. This does not mean that all the physical capital necessary to process, store, and communicate information is under individual user control. That is not necessary. It is, rather, that the majority of individuals in these societies have the threshold level of material capacity required to explore the information environment they occupy, to take from it, and to make their own contributions to it. +={ capabilities of individuals : + as physical capital +1 ; + capital for production : + control of +1 ; + constraints of information production, monetary : + control of +1 ; + individual capabilities and action : + as physical capital +1 ; + information production capital : + control of +1 ; + monetary constraints on information production : + control of +1 ; + physical capital for production : + control of +1 ; + production capital : + control of +1 +} + +There is nothing about computation or communication that naturally or necessarily enables this fact. It is a felicitous happenstance of the fabrication technology of computing machines in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and, it seems, in the reasonably foreseeable future. It is cheaper to build freestanding computers that enable their owners to use a wide and dynamically changing range of information applications, and that are cheap enough that each machine is owned by an individual user or household, than it is to build massive supercomputers with incredibly high-speed communications to yet cheaper simple terminals, and to sell information services to individuals on an on-demand or standardized package model. Natural or contingent, it is nevertheless a fact of the industrial base of the networked information economy that individual users--susceptible as they are to acting on diverse motivations, in diverse relationships, some market-based, some social--possess and control the physical capital necessary to make effective the human capacities they uniquely and individually possess. ,{[pg 100]}, + +Now, having the core inputs of information production ubiquitously distributed in society is a core enabling fact, but it alone cannot assure that social production will become economically significant. Children and teenagers, retirees, and very rich individuals can spend most of their lives socializing or volunteering; most other people cannot. While creative capacity and judgment are universally distributed in a population, available time and attention are not, and human creative capacity cannot be fully dedicated to nonmarket, nonproprietary production all the time. Someone needs to work for money, at least some of the time, to pay the rent and put food on the table. Personal computers too are only used for earnings-generating activities some of the time. In both these resources, there remain large quantities of excess capacity--time and interest in human beings; processing, storage, and communications capacity in computers--available to be used for activities whose rewards are not monetary or monetizable, directly or indirectly. + +For this excess capacity to be harnessed and become effective, the information production process must effectively integrate widely dispersed contributions, from many individual human beings and machines. These contributions are diverse in their quality, quantity, and focus, in their timing and geographic location. The great success of the Internet generally, and peer-production processes in particular, has been the adoption of technical and organizational architectures that have allowed them to pool such diverse efforts effectively. The core characteristics underlying the success of these enterprises are their modularity and their capacity to integrate many finegrained contributions. + +"Modularity" is a property of a project that describes the extent to which it can be broken down into smaller components, or modules, that can be independently produced before they are assembled into a whole. If modules are independent, individual contributors can choose what and when to contribute independently of each other. This maximizes their autonomy and flexibility to define the nature, extent, and timing of their participation in the project. Breaking up the maps of Mars involved in the clickworkers project (described in chapter 3) and rendering them in small segments with a simple marking tool is a way of modularizing the task of mapping craters. In the SETI@home project (see chapter 3), the task of scanning radio astronomy signals is broken down into millions of little computations as a way of modularizing the calculations involved. + +"Granularity" refers to the size of the modules, in terms of the time and effort that an individual must invest in producing them. The five minutes ,{[pg 101]}, required for moderating a comment on Slashdot, or for metamoderating a moderator, is more fine-grained than the hours necessary to participate in writing a bug fix in an open-source project. More people can participate in the former than in the latter, independent of the differences in the knowledge required for participation. The number of people who can, in principle, participate in a project is therefore inversely related to the size of the smallest-scale contribution necessary to produce a usable module. The granularity of the modules therefore sets the smallest possible individual investment necessary to participate in a project. If this investment is sufficiently low, then "incentives" for producing that component of a modular project can be of trivial magnitude. Most importantly for our purposes of understanding the rising role of nonmarket production, the time can be drawn from the excess time we normally dedicate to having fun and participating in social interactions. If the finest-grained contributions are relatively large and would require a large investment of time and effort, the universe of potential contributors decreases. A successful large-scale peer-production project must therefore have a predominate portion of its modules be relatively fine-grained. +={ diversity : + granularity of participation +3 ; + granularity +3 ; + human motivation : + granularity of participation and +3 ; + incentives to produce : + granularity of participation and +3 ; + motivation to produce +3 ; + granularity of participation and +3 ; + modularity +3 ; + organization structure +7 : + granularity +3 | modularity +3 ; + structure of organizations +7 : + granularity +3 | modularity +3 ; + structured production +7 : + granularity +3 | modularity +3 ; + planned modularization +3 +} + +Perhaps the clearest example of how large-grained modules can make projects falter is the condition, as of the middle of 2005, of efforts to peer produce open textbooks. The largest such effort is Wikibooks, a site associated with /{Wikipedia}/, which has not taken off as did its famous parent project. Very few texts there have reached maturity to the extent that they could be usable as a partial textbook, and those few that have were largely written by one individual with minor contributions by others. Similarly, an ambitious initiative launched in California in 2004 still had not gone far beyond an impassioned plea for help by mid-2005. The project that seems most successful as of 2005 was a South African project, Free High School Science Texts (FHSST), founded by a physics graduate student, Mark Horner. As of this writing, that three-year-old project had more or less completed a physics text, and was about halfway through chemistry and mathematics textbooks. The whole FHSST project involves a substantially more managed approach than is common in peer-production efforts, with a core group of dedicated graduate student administrators recruiting contributors, assigning tasks, and integrating the contributions. Horner suggests that the basic limiting factor is that in order to write a high school textbook, the output must comply with state-imposed guidelines for content and form. To achieve these requirements, the various modules must cohere to a degree ,{[pg 102]}, much larger than necessary in a project like /{Wikipedia}/, which can endure high diversity in style and development without losing its utility. As a result, the individual contributions have been kept at a high level of abstraction-- an idea or principle explained at a time. The minimal time commitment required of each contributor is therefore large, and has led many of those who volunteered initially to not complete their contributions. In this case, the guideline requirements constrained the project's granularity, and thereby impeded its ability to grow and capture the necessary thousands of smallgrained contributions. With orders of magnitude fewer contributors, each must be much more highly motivated and available than is necessary in /{Wikipedia}/, Slashdot, and similar successful projects. +={ FHSST (Free High School Science Texts) ; + Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) ; + Horner, Mark ; + Wikibooks project +} + +It is not necessary, however, that each and every chunk or module be fine grained. Free software projects in particular have shown us that successful peer-production projects may also be structured, technically and culturally, in ways that make it possible for different individuals to contribute vastly different levels of effort commensurate with their ability, motivation, and availability. The large free software projects might integrate thousands of people who are acting primarily for social psychological reasons--because it is fun or cool; a few hundred young programmers aiming to make a name for themselves so as to become employable; and dozens of programmers who are paid to write free software by firms that follow one of the nonproprietary strategies described in chapter 2. IBM and Red Hat are the quintessential examples of firms that contribute paid employee time to peer-production projects in this form. This form of link between a commercial firm and a peer production community is by no means necessary for a peer-production process to succeed; it does, however, provide one constructive interface between market- and nonmarket-motivated behavior, through which actions on the two types of motivation can reinforce, rather than undermine, each other. +={ free software : + project modularity and granularity ; + open-source software : + project modularity and granularity ; + software, open-source : + project modularity and granularity +} + +The characteristics of planned modularization of a problem are highly visible and explicit in some peer-production projects--the distributed computing projects like SETI@home are particularly good examples of this. However, if we were to step back and look at the entire phenomenon of Web-based publication from a bird's-eye view, we would see that the architecture of the World Wide Web, in particular the persistence of personal Web pages and blogs and their self-contained, technical independence of each other, give the Web as a whole the characteristics of modularity and variable but fine-grained granularity. Imagine that you were trying to evaluate ,{[pg 103]}, how, if at all, the Web is performing the task of media watchdog. Consider one example, which I return to in chapter 7: The Memory Hole, a Web site created and maintained by Russ Kick, a freelance author and editor. Kick spent some number of hours preparing and filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Defense Department, seeking photographs of coffins of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. He was able to do so over some period, not having to rely on "getting the scoop" to earn his dinner. At the same time, tens of thousands of other individual Web publishers and bloggers were similarly spending their time hunting down stories that moved them, or that they happened to stumble across in their own daily lives. When Kick eventually got the photographs, he could upload them onto his Web site, where they were immediately available for anyone to see. Because each contribution like Kick's can be independently created and stored, because no single permission point or failure point is present in the architecture of the Web--it is merely a way of conveniently labeling documents stored independently by many people who are connected to the Internet and use HTML (hypertext markup language) and HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol)--as an "information service," it is highly modular and diversely granular. Each independent contribution comprises as large or small an investment as its owner-operator chooses to make. Together, they form a vast almanac, trivia trove, and news and commentary facility, to name but a few, produced by millions of people at their leisure--whenever they can or want to, about whatever they want. +={ autonomy : + independence of Web sites ; + democratic societies : + independence of Web sites ; + independence of Web sites ; + individual autonomy : + independence of Web sites ; + Kick, Russ ; + The Memory Hole +} + +The independence of Web sites is what marks their major difference from more organized peer-production processes, where contributions are marked not by their independence but by their interdependence. The Web as a whole requires no formal structure of cooperation. As an "information good" or medium, it emerges as a pattern out of coordinate coexistence of millions of entirely independent acts. All it requires is a pattern recognition utility superimposed over the outputs of these acts--a search engine or directory. Peer-production processes, to the contrary, do generally require some substantive cooperation among users. A single rating of an individual comment on Slashdot does not by itself moderate the comment up or down, neither does an individual marking of a crater. Spotting a bug in free software, proposing a fix, reviewing the proposed fix, and integrating it into the software are interdependent acts that require a level of cooperation. This necessity for cooperation requires peer-production processes to adopt more engaged strategies for assuring that everyone who participates is doing so in ,{[pg 104]}, good faith, competently, and in ways that do not undermine the whole, and weeding out those would-be participants who are not. +={ Slashdot +1 ; + accreditation : + Slashdot +1 ; + filtering : + Slashdot +1 ; + relevance filtering : + Slashdot +1 ; + peer production : + maintenance of cooperation +1 ; + structured production : + maintenance of cooperation +1 +} + +Cooperation in peer-production processes is usually maintained by some combination of technical architecture, social norms, legal rules, and a technically backed hierarchy that is validated by social norms. /{Wikipedia}/ is the strongest example of a discourse-centric model of cooperation based on social norms. However, even /{Wikipedia}/ includes, ultimately, a small number of people with system administrator privileges who can eliminate accounts or block users in the event that someone is being genuinely obstructionist. This technical fallback, however, appears only after substantial play has been given to self-policing by participants, and to informal and quasi-formal communitybased dispute resolution mechanisms. Slashdot, by contrast, provides a strong model of a sophisticated technical system intended to assure that no one can "defect" from the cooperative enterprise of commenting and moderating comments. It limits behavior enabled by the system to avoid destructive behavior before it happens, rather than policing it after the fact. The Slash code does this by technically limiting the power any given person has to moderate anyone else up or down, and by making every moderator the subject of a peer review system whose judgments are enforced technically-- that is, when any given user is described by a sufficiently large number of other users as unfair, that user automatically loses the technical ability to moderate the comments of others. The system itself is a free software project, licensed under the GPL (General Public License)--which is itself the quintessential example of how law is used to prevent some types of defection from the common enterprise of peer production of software. The particular type of defection that the GPL protects against is appropriation of the joint product by any single individual or firm, the risk of which would make it less attractive for anyone to contribute to the project to begin with. The GPL assures that, as a legal matter, no one who contributes to a free software project need worry that some other contributor will take the project and make it exclusively their own. The ultimate quality judgments regarding what is incorporated into the "formal" releases of free software projects provide the clearest example of the extent to which a meritocratic hierarchy can be used to integrate diverse contributions into a finished single product. In the case of the Linux kernel development project (see chapter 3), it was always within the power of Linus Torvalds, who initiated the project, to decide which contributions should be included in a new release, and which should not. But it is a funny sort of hierarchy, whose quirkiness Steve Weber ,{[pg 105]}, well explicates.~{ Steve Weber, The Success of Open Source (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). }~ Torvalds's authority is persuasive, not legal or technical, and certainly not determinative. He can do nothing except persuade others to prevent them from developing anything they want and add it to their kernel, or to distribute that alternative version of the kernel. There is nothing he can do to prevent the entire community of users, or some subsection of it, from rejecting his judgment about what ought to be included in the kernel. Anyone is legally free to do as they please. So these projects are based on a hierarchy of meritocratic respect, on social norms, and, to a great extent, on the mutual recognition by most players in this game that it is to everybody's advantage to have someone overlay a peer review system with some leadership. +={ Wikipedia project ; + Torvalds, Linus ; + Weber, Steve ; + General Public License (GPL) : + See also free software ; + GPL (General Public License) : + See Also free software ; + licensing : + GPL (General Public License) +} + +In combination then, three characteristics make possible the emergence of information production that is not based on exclusive proprietary claims, not aimed toward sales in a market for either motivation or information, and not organized around property and contract claims to form firms or market exchanges. First, the physical machinery necessary to participate in information and cultural production is almost universally distributed in the population of the advanced economies. Certainly, personal computers as capital goods are under the control of numbers of individuals that are orders of magnitude larger than the number of parties controlling the use of massproduction-capable printing presses, broadcast transmitters, satellites, or cable systems, record manufacturing and distribution chains, and film studios and distribution systems. This means that the physical machinery can be put in service and deployed in response to any one of the diverse motivations individual human beings experience. They need not be deployed in order to maximize returns on the financial capital, because financial capital need not be mobilized to acquire and put in service any of the large capital goods typical of the industrial information economy. Second, the primary raw materials in the information economy, unlike the industrial economy, are public goods--existing information, knowledge, and culture. Their actual marginal social cost is zero. Unless regulatory policy makes them purposefully expensive in order to sustain the proprietary business models, acquiring raw materials also requires no financial capital outlay. Again, this means that these raw materials can be deployed for any human motivation. They need not maximize financial returns. Third, the technical architectures, organizational models, and social dynamics of information production and exchange on the Internet have developed so that they allow us to structure the solution to problems--in particular to information production problems--in ways ,{[pg 106]}, that are highly modular. This allows many diversely motivated people to act for a wide range of reasons that, in combination, cohere into new useful information, knowledge, and cultural goods. These architectures and organizational models allow both independent creation that coexists and coheres into usable patterns, and interdependent cooperative enterprises in the form of peer-production processes. +={ computers ; + hardware ; + personal computers ; + physical machinery and computers +} + +Together, these three characteristics suggest that the patterns of social production of information that we are observing in the digitally networked environment are not a fad. They are, rather, a sustainable pattern of human production given the characteristics of the networked information economy. The diversity of human motivation is nothing new. We now have a substantial literature documenting its importance in free and open-source software development projects, from Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole, Rishab Ghosh, Eric Von Hippel and Karim Lakhani, and others. Neither is the public goods nature of information new. What is new are the technological conditions that allow these facts to provide the ingredients of a much larger role in the networked information economy for nonmarket, nonproprietary production to emerge. As long as capitalization and ownership of the physical capital base of this economy remain widely distributed and as long as regulatory policy does not make information inputs artificially expensive, individuals will be able to deploy their own creativity, wisdom, conversational capacities, and connected computers, both independently and in loose interdependent cooperation with others, to create a substantial portion of the information environment we occupy. Moreover, we will be able to do so for whatever reason we choose--through markets or firms to feed and clothe ourselves, or through social relations and open communication with others, to give our lives meaning and context. +={ Lerner, Josh ; + Tirole, Jean ; + Ghosh, Rishab ; + Lakhani, Karim ; + Tirole, Jean,von Hippel, Eric +} + +2~ TRANSACTION COSTS AND EFFICIENCY +={ commercial model of communication : + transaction costs +16 ; + economics of nonmarket production : + transaction costs +16 ; + efficiency of information regulation +16 ; + industrial model of communication : + transaction costs +16 ; + inefficiency of information regulation +16 ; + information production, market-based : + transaction costs +16 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + transaction costs +16 ; + market-based information producers : + transaction costs +16 ; + nonmarket production, economics of : + transaction costs +16 ; + norms (social) : + transaction costs +16 ; + peer production : + sustainability of +16 ; + proprietary rights, inefficiency of +16 ; + regulating information, efficiency of +16 ; + regulation by social norms : + transaction costs +16 ; + social relations and norms : + transaction costs +16 ; + strategies for information production : + transaction costs +16 ; + sustainability of peer production +16 ; + traditional model of communication : + transaction costs +16 ; + transaction costs +16 +} + +For purposes of analyzing the political values that are the concern of most of this book, all that is necessary is that we accept that peer production in particular, and nonmarket information production and exchange in general, are sustainable in the networked information economy. Most of the remainder of the book seeks to evaluate why, and to what extent, the presence of a substantial nonmarket, commons-based sector in the information production system is desirable from the perspective of various aspects of freedom and justice. Whether this sector is "efficient" within the meaning of the ,{[pg 107]}, word in welfare economics is beside the point to most of these considerations. Even a strong commitment to a pragmatic political theory, one that accepts and incorporates into its consideration the limits imposed by material and economic reality, need not aim for "efficient" policy in the welfare sense. It is sufficient that the policy is economically and socially sustainable on its own bottom--in other words, that it does not require constant subsidization at the expense of some other area excluded from the analysis. It is nonetheless worthwhile spending a few pages explaining why, and under what conditions, commons-based peer production, and social production more generally, are not only sustainable but actually efficient ways of organizing information production. + +The efficient allocation of two scarce resources and one public good are at stake in the choice between social production--whether it is peer production or independent nonmarket production--and market-based production. Because most of the outputs of these processes are nonrival goods-- information, knowledge, and culture--the fact that the social production system releases them freely, without extracting a price for using them, means that it would, all other things being equal, be more efficient for information to be produced on a nonproprietary social model, rather than on a proprietary market model. Indeed, all other things need not even be equal for this to hold. It is enough that the net value of the information produced by commons-based social production processes and released freely for anyone to use as they please is no less than the total value of information produced through property-based systems minus the deadweight loss caused by the above-marginal-cost pricing practices that are the intended result of the intellectual property system. + +The two scarce resources are: first, human creativity, time, and attention; and second, the computation and communications resources used in information production and exchange. In both cases, the primary reason to choose among proprietary and nonproprietary strategies, between marketbased systems--be they direct market exchange or firm-based hierarchical production--and social systems, are the comparative transaction costs of each, and the extent to which these transaction costs either outweigh the benefits of working through each system, or cause the system to distort the information it generates so as to systematically misallocate resources. +={ market transactions +3 } + +The first thing to recognize is that markets, firms, and social relations are three distinct transactional frameworks. Imagine that I am sitting in a room and need paper for my printer. I could (a) order paper from a store; (b) call ,{[pg 108]}, the storeroom, if I am in a firm or organization that has one, and ask the clerk to deliver the paper I need; or (c) walk over to a neighbor and borrow some paper. Choice (a) describes the market transactional framework. The store knows I need paper immediately because I am willing to pay for it now. Alternative (b) is an example of the firm as a transactional framework. The paper is in the storeroom because someone in the organization planned that someone else would need paper today, with some probability, and ordered enough to fill that expected need. The clerk in the storeroom gives it to me because that is his job; again, defined by someone who planned to have someone available to deliver paper when someone else in the proper channels of authority says that she needs it. Comparing and improving the efficiency of (a) and (b), respectively, has been a central project in transaction-costs organization theory. We might compare, for example, the costs of taking my call, verifying the credit card information, and sending a delivery truck for my one batch of paper, to the costs of someone planning for the average needs of a group of people like me, who occasionally run out of paper, and stocking a storeroom with enough paper and a clerk to fill our needs in a timely manner. However, notice that (c) is also an alternative transactional framework. I could, rather than incurring the costs of transacting through the market with the local store or of building a firm with sufficient lines of authority to stock and manage the storeroom, pop over to my neighbor and ask for some paper. This would make sense even within an existing firm when, for example, I need two or three pages immediately and do not want to wait for the storeroom clerk to do his rounds, or more generally, if I am working at home and the costs of creating "a firm," stocking a storeroom, and paying a clerk are too high for my neighbors and me. Instead, we develop a set of neighborly social relations, rather than a firm-based organization, to deal with shortfalls during periods when it would be too costly to assure a steady flow of paper from the market--for example, late in the evening, on a weekend, or in a sparsely populated area. + +The point is not, of course, to reduce all social relations and human decency to a transaction-costs theory. Too many such straight planks have already been cut from the crooked timber of humanity to make that exercise useful or enlightening. The point is that most of economics internally has been ignoring the social transactional framework as an alternative whose relative efficiency can be accounted for and considered in much the same way as the relative cost advantages of simple markets when compared to the hierarchical organizations that typify much of our economic activity--firms. ,{[pg 109]}, + +A market transaction, in order to be efficient, must be clearly demarcated as to what it includes, so that it can be priced efficiently. That price must then be paid in equally crisply delineated currency. Even if a transaction initially may be declared to involve sale of "an amount reasonably required to produce the required output," for a "customary" price, at some point what was provided and what is owed must be crystallized and fixed for a formal exchange. The crispness is a functional requirement of the price system. It derives from the precision and formality of the medium of exchange--currency--and the ambition to provide refined representations of the comparative value of marginal decisions through denomination in an exchange medium that represents these incremental value differences. Similarly, managerial hierarchies require a crisp definition of who should be doing what, when, and how, in order to permit the planning and coordination process to be effective. +={ crispness of currency exchange +5 ; + cost : + crispness of +5 ; + culture : + social exchange, crispness of +5 ; + money : + crispness of currency exchange +5 ; + creativity, value of +5 ; + defining price +5 ; + information production inputs : + pricing +5 ; + inputs to production : + pricing +5 ; + medium of exchange +5 ; + pricing +5 ; + production inputs : + pricing +5 ; + specificity of price +5 ; + standardizing creativity +5 +} + +Social exchange, on the other hand, does not require the same degree of crispness at the margin. As Maurice Godelier put it in /{The Enigma of the Gift}/, "the mark of the gift between close friends and relatives . . . is not the absence of obligations, it is the absence of `calculation.' "~{ Maurice Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift, trans. Nora Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 5. }~ There are, obviously, elaborate and formally ritualistic systems of social exchange, in both ancient societies and modern. There are common-property regimes that monitor and record calls on the common pool very crisply. However, in many of the common-property regimes, one finds mechanisms of bounding or fairly allocating access to the common pool that more coarsely delineate the entitlements, behaviors, and consequences than is necessary for a proprietary system. In modern market society, where we have money as a formal medium of precise exchange, and where social relations are more fluid than in traditional societies, social exchange certainly occurs as a fuzzier medium. Across many cultures, generosity is understood as imposing a debt of obligation; but none of the precise amount of value given, the precise nature of the debt to be repaid, or the date of repayment need necessarily be specified. Actions enter into a cloud of goodwill or membership, out of which each agent can understand him- or herself as being entitled to a certain flow of dependencies or benefits in exchange for continued cooperative behavior. This may be an ongoing relationship between two people, a small group like a family or group of friends, and up to a general level of generosity among strangers that makes for a decent society. The point is that social exchange does not require defining, for example, "I will lend you my car and help you move these five boxes on Monday, and in exchange you will feed my ,{[pg 110]}, fish next July," in the same way that the following would: "I will move five boxes on Tuesday for $100, six boxes for $120." This does not mean that social systems are cost free--far from it. They require tremendous investment, acculturation, and maintenance. This is true in this case every bit as much as it is true for markets or states. Once functional, however, social exchanges require less information crispness at the margin. +={ commons : + crispness of social exchange ; + Godelier, Maurice +} + +Both social and market exchange systems require large fixed costs--the setting up of legal institutions and enforcement systems for markets, and creating social networks, norms, and institutions for the social exchange. Once these initial costs have been invested, however, market transactions systematically require a greater degree of precise information about the content of actions, goods, and obligations, and more precision of monitoring and enforcement on a per-transaction basis than do social exchange systems. +={ capital for production : + fixed and initial costs ; + constraints of information production, monetary : + fixed and initial costs ; + information production capital : + fixed and initial costs ; + information sharing : + initial costs ; + monetary constraints on information production : + fixed and initial costs ; + physical capital for production : + fixed and initial costs ; + production capital : + fixed and initial costs ; + fixed costs +} + +This difference between markets and hierarchical organizations, on the one hand, and peer-production processes based on social relations, on the other, is particularly acute in the context of human creative labor--one of the central scarce resources that these systems must allocate in the networked information economy. The levels and focus of individual effort are notoriously hard to specify for pricing or managerial commands, considering all aspects of individual effort and ability--talent, motivation, workload, and focus--as they change in small increments over the span of an individual's full day, let alone months. What we see instead is codification of effort types--a garbage collector, a law professor--that are priced more or less finely. However, we only need to look at the relative homogeneity of law firm starting salaries as compared to the high variability of individual ability and motivation levels of graduating law students to realize that pricing of individual effort can be quite crude. Similarly, these attributes are also difficult to monitor and verify over time, though perhaps not quite as difficult as predicting them ex ante. Pricing therefore continues to be a function of relatively crude information about the actual variability among people. More importantly, as aspects of performance that are harder to fully specify in advance or monitor--like creativity over time given the occurrence of new opportunities to be creative, or implicit know-how--become a more significant aspect of what is valuable about an individual's contribution, market mechanisms become more and more costly to maintain efficiently, and, as a practical matter, simply lose a lot of information. +={ communication : + pricing ; + cost : + pricing ; + human communicative capacity : + pricing ; + capacity : + human communication +} + +People have different innate capabilities; personal, social, and educational histories; emotional frameworks; and ongoing lived experiences, which make ,{[pg 111]}, for immensely diverse associations with, idiosyncratic insights into, and divergent utilization of existing information and cultural inputs at different times and in different contexts. Human creativity is therefore very difficult to standardize and specify in the contracts necessary for either market-cleared or hierarchically organized production. As the weight of human intellectual effort increases in the overall mix of inputs into a given production process, an organization model that does not require contractual specification of the individual effort required to participate in a collective enterprise, and which allows individuals to self-identify for tasks, will be better at gathering and utilizing information about who should be doing what than a system that does require such specification. Some firms try to solve this problem by utilizing market- and social-relations-oriented hybrids, like incentive compensation schemes and employee-of-the-month-type social motivational frameworks. These may be able to improve on firm-only or market-only approaches. It is unclear, though, how well they can overcome the core difficulty: that is, that both markets and firm hierarchies require significant specification of the object of organization and pricing--in this case, human intellectual input. The point here is qualitative. It is not only, or even primarily, that more people can participate in production in a commons-based effort. It is that the widely distributed model of information production will better identify the best person to produce a specific component of a project, considering all abilities and availability to work on the specific module within a specific time frame. With enough uncertainty as to the value of various productive activities, and enough variability in the quality of both information inputs and human creative talent vis-a-vis any set of production ` opportunities, freedom of action for individuals coupled with continuous communications among the pool of potential producers and consumers can generate better information about the most valuable productive actions, and the best human inputs available to engage in these actions at a given time. Markets and firm incentive schemes are aimed at producing precisely this form of self-identification. However, the rigidities associated with collecting and comprehending bids from individuals through these systems (that is, transaction costs) limit the efficacy of self-identification by comparison to a system in which, once an individual self-identifies for a task, he or she can then undertake it without permission, contract, or instruction from another. The emergence of networked organizations (described and analyzed in the work of Charles Sabel and others) suggests that firms are in fact trying to overcome these limitations by developing parallels to the freedom to learn, ,{[pg 112]}, innovate, and act on these innovations that is intrinsic to peer-production processes by loosening the managerial bonds, locating more of the conception and execution of problem solving away from the managerial core of the firm, and implementing these through social, as well as monetary, motivations. However, the need to assure that the value created is captured within the organization limits the extent to which these strategies can be implemented within a single enterprise, as opposed to their implementation in an open process of social production. This effect, in turn, is in some sectors attenuated through the use of what Walter Powell and others have described as learning networks. Engineers and scientists often create frameworks that allow them to step out of their organizational affiliations, through conferences or workshops. By reproducing the social production characteristics of academic exchange, they overcome some of the information loss caused by the boundary of the firm. While these organizational strategies attenuate the problem, they also underscore the degree to which it is widespread and understood by organizations as such. The fact that the direction of the solutions business organizations choose tends to shift elements of the production process away from market- or firm-based models and toward networked social production models is revealing. Now, the self-identification that is central to the relative information efficiency of peer production is not always perfect. Some mechanisms used by firms and markets to codify effort levels and abilities--like formal credentials--are the result of experience with substantial errors or misstatements by individuals of their capacities. To succeed, therefore, peer-production systems must also incorporate mechanisms for smoothing out incorrect self-assessments--as peer review does in traditional academic research or in the major sites like /{Wikipedia}/ or Slashdot, or as redundancy and statistical averaging do in the case of NASA clickworkers. The prevalence of misperceptions that individual contributors have about their own ability and the cost of eliminating such errors will be part of the transaction costs associated with this form of organization. They parallel quality control problems faced by firms and markets. +={ Sabel, Charles ; + capacity : + transaction costs +5 ; + communication : + transaction costs +5 ; + computational capacity : + transaction costs +5 ; + data storage capacity : + transaction costs +5 ; + information sharing : + transaction costs +5 ; + storage capacity : + transaction costs +26 ; + communities : + critical culture and self-reflection ; + critical culture and self-reflection : + self-identification as transaction cost ; + culture : + criticality of (self-reflection) ; + learning networks ; + self-organization : + self-identification as transaction cost ; + Powell, Walter +} + +The lack of crisp specification of who is giving what to whom, and in exchange for what, also bears on the comparative transaction costs associated with the allocation of the second major type of scarce resource in the networked information economy: the physical resources that make up the networked information environment--communications, computation, and storage capacity. It is important to note, however, that these are very different from creativity and information as inputs: they are private goods, not a ,{[pg 113]}, public good like information, and they are standardized goods with well-specified capacities, not heterogeneous and highly uncertain attributes like human creativity at a given moment and context. Their outputs, unlike information, are not public goods. The reasons that they are nonetheless subject to efficient sharing in the networked environment therefore require a different economic explanation. However, the sharing of these material resources, like the sharing of human creativity, insight, and attention, nonetheless relies on both the comparative transaction costs of markets and social relations and the diversity of human motivation. + +Personal computers, wireless transceivers, and Internet connections are "shareable goods." The basic intuition behind the concept of shareable goods is simple. There are goods that are "lumpy": given a state of technology, they can only be produced in certain discrete bundles that offer discontinuous amounts of functionality or capacity. In order to have any ability to run a computation, for example, a consumer must buy a computer processor. These, in turn, only come in discrete units with a certain speed or capacity. One could easily imagine a world where computers are very large and their owners sell computation capacity to consumers "on demand," whenever they needed to run an application. That is basically the way the mainframe world of the 1960s and 1970s worked. However, the economics of microchip fabrication and of network connections over the past thirty years, followed by storage technology, have changed that. For most functions that users need, the price-performance trade-off favors stand-alone, general-purpose personal computers, owned by individuals and capable of running locally most applications users want, over remote facilities capable of selling on-demand computation and storage. So computation and storage today come in discrete, lumpy units. You can decide to buy a faster or slower chip, or a larger or smaller hard drive, but once you buy them, you have the capacity of these machines at your disposal, whether you need it or not. +={ computers : + as shareable, lumpy goods +2 ; + hardware : + as shareable, lumpy goods +2 ; + lumpy goods +2 ; + personal computers : + as shareable, lumpy goods +2 ; + physical machinery and computers : + as shareable, lumpy goods +2 ; + shareable goods +2 +} + +Lumpy goods can, in turn, be fine-, medium-, or large-grained. A large-grained good is one that is so expensive it can only be used by aggregating demand for it. Industrial capital equipment, like a steam engine, is of this type. Fine-grained goods are of a granularity that allows consumers to buy precisely as much of the goods needed for the amount of capacity they require. Medium-grained goods are small enough for an individual to justify buying for her own use, given their price and her willingness and ability to pay for the functionality she plans to use. A personal computer is a medium-grained lumpy good in the advanced economies and among the more well-to-do ,{[pg 114]}, in poorer countries, but is a large-grained capital good for most people in poor countries. If, given the price of such a good and the wealth of a society, a large number of individuals buy and use such medium-grained lumpy goods, that society will have a large amount of excess capacity "out there," in the hands of individuals. Because these machines are put into service to serve the needs of individuals, their excess capacity is available for these individuals to use as they wish--for their own uses, to sell to others, or to share with others. It is the combination of the fact that these machines are available at prices (relative to wealth) that allow users to put them in service based purely on their value for personal use, and the fact that they have enough capacity to facilitate additionally the action and fulfill the needs of others, that makes them "shareable." If they were so expensive that they could only be bought by pooling the value of a number of users, they would be placed in service either using some market mechanism to aggregate that demand, or through formal arrangements of common ownership by all those whose demand was combined to invest in purchasing the resource. If they were so finely grained in their capacity that there would be nothing left to share, again, sharing would be harder to sustain. The fact that they are both relatively inexpensive and have excess capacity makes them the basis for a stable model of individual ownership of resources combined with social sharing of that excess capacity. +={ fine-grained goods ; + medium-grained goods ; + large-grained goods ; + diversity : + granularity of participation +1 ; + granularity : + of lumpy goods +1 ; + human motivation : + granularity of participation and +1 ; + incentives to produce : + granularity of participation and +1 ; + motivation to produce : + granularity of participation and +1 ; + organization structure : + granularity +1 ; + structure of organizations : + granularity +1 ; + structured production : + granularity +1 ; + allocating excess capacity +3 ; + capacity : + sharing +3 ; + efficiency of information regulation : + capacity reallocation +3 ; + excess capacity, sharing +3 ; + inefficiency of information regulation : + capacity reallocation +3 ; + proprietary rights, inefficiency of : + capacity reallocation +3 ; + reallocating excess capacity +3 ; + reallocation +3 ; + sharing : + excess capacity +} + +Because social sharing requires less precise specification of the transactional details with each transaction, it has a distinct advantage over market-based mechanisms for reallocating the excess capacity of shareable goods, particularly when they have small quanta of excess capacity relative to the amount necessary to achieve the desired outcome. For example, imagine that there are one thousand people in a population of computer owners. Imagine that each computer is capable of performing one hundred computations per second, and that each computer owner needs to perform about eighty operations per second. Every owner, in other words, has twenty operations of excess capacity every second. Now imagine that the marginal transaction costs of arranging a sale of these twenty operations--exchanging PayPal (a widely used low-cost Internet-based payment system) account information, insurance against nonpayment, specific statement of how much time the computer can be used, and so forth--cost ten cents more than the marginal transaction costs of sharing the excess capacity socially. John wants to render a photograph in one second, which takes two hundred operations per second. Robert wants to model the folding of proteins, which takes ten thousand ,{[pg 115]}, operations per second. For John, a sharing system would save fifty cents--assuming he can use his own computer for half of the two hundred operations he needs. He needs to transact with five other users to "rent" their excess capacity of twenty operations each. Robert, on the other hand, needs to transact with five hundred individual owners in order to use their excess capacity, and for him, using a sharing system is fifty dollars cheaper. The point of the illustration is simple. The cost advantage of sharing as a transactional framework relative to the price system increases linearly with the number of transactions necessary to acquire the level of resources necessary for an operation. If excess capacity in a society is very widely distributed in small dollops, and for any given use of the excess capacity it is necessary to pool the excess capacity of thousands or even millions of individual users, the transaction-cost advantages of the sharing system become significant. + +The transaction-cost effect is reinforced by the motivation crowding out theory. When many discrete chunks of excess capacity need to be pooled, each distinct contributor cannot be paid a very large amount. Motivation crowding out theory would predict that when the monetary rewards to an activity are low, the negative effect of crowding out the social-psychological motivation will weigh more heavily than any increased incentive that is created by the promise of a small payment to transfer one's excess capacity. The upshot is that when the technological state results in excess capacity of physical capital being widely distributed in small dollops, social sharing can outperform secondary markets as a mechanism for harnessing that excess capacity. This is so because of both transaction costs and motivation. Fewer owners will be willing to sell their excess capacity cheaply than to give it away for free in the right social context and the transaction costs of selling will be higher than those of sharing. +={ behavior : + motivation to produce +1 ; + diversity : + motivation to produce +1 ; + human motivation : + crowding out theory ; + incentives to produce : + crowding out theory ; + motivation to produce : + crowding out theory +} + +From an efficiency perspective, then, there are clear reasons to think that social production systems--both peer production of information, knowledge, and culture and sharing of material resources--can be more efficient than market-based systems to motivate and allocate both human creative effort and the excess computation, storage, and communications capacity that typify the networked information economy. That does not mean that all of us will move out of market-based productive relationships all of the time. It does mean that alongside our market-based behaviors we generate substantial amounts of human creativity and mechanical capacity. The transaction costs of clearing those resources through the price system or through ,{[pg 116]}, firms are substantial, and considerably larger for the marginal transaction than clearing them through social-sharing mechanisms as a transactional framework. With the right institutional framework and peer-review or quality-control mechanisms, and with well-modularized organization of work, social sharing is likely to identify the best person available for a job and make it feasible for that person to work on that job using freely available information inputs. Similarly, social transactional frameworks are likely to be substantially less expensive than market transactions for pooling large numbers of discrete, small increments of the excess capacity of the personal computer processors, hard drives, and network connections that make up the physical capital base of the networked information economy. In both cases, given that much of what is shared is excess capacity from the perspective of the contributors, available to them after they have fulfilled some threshold level of their market-based consumption requirements, social-sharing systems are likely to tap in to social psychological motivations that money cannot tap, and, indeed, that the presence of money in a transactional framework could nullify. Because of these effects, social sharing and collaboration can provide not only a sustainable alternative to market-based and firm-based models of provisioning information, knowledge, culture, and communications, but also an alternative that more efficiently utilizes the human and physical capital base of the networked information economy. A society whose institutional ecology permitted social production to thrive would be more productive under these conditions than a society that optimized its institutional environment solely for market- and firm-based production, ignoring its detrimental effects to social production. + +2~ THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL PRODUCTION IN THE DIGITALLY NETWORKED ENVIRONMENT +={ economics of nonmarket production : + emergence in digital networks +18 ; + nonmarket information producers : + emergence of social production +18 ; + nonmarket production, economics of : + emergence in digital networks +18 ; + sharing : + emergence of social production +18 +} + +There is a curious congruence between the anthropologists of the gift and mainstream economists today. Both treat the gift literature as being about the periphery, about societies starkly different from modern capitalist societies. As Godelier puts it, "What a contrast between these types of society, these social and mental universes, and today's capitalist society where the majority of social relations are impersonal (involving the individual as citizen and the state, for instance), and where the exchange of things and services is conducted for the most part in an anonymous marketplace, leaving little room for an economy and moral code based on gift-giving."~{ Godelier, The Enigma, 106. }~ And yet, ,{[pg 117]}, sharing is everywhere around us in the advanced economies. Since the 1980s, we have seen an increasing focus, in a number of literatures, on production practices that rely heavily on social rather than price-based or governmental policies. These include, initially, the literature on social norms and social capital, or trust.~{ In the legal literature, Robert Ellickson, Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), is the locus classicus for showing how social norms can substitute for law. For a bibliography of the social norms literature outside of law, see Richard H. McAdams, "The Origin, Development, and Regulation of Norms," Michigan Law Review 96 (1997): 338n1, 339n2. Early contributions were: Edna Ullman-Margalit, The Emergence of Norms (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977); James Coleman, "Norms as Social Capital," in Economic Imperialism: The Economic Approach Applied Outside the Field of Economics, ed. Peter Bernholz and Gerard Radnitsky (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1987), 133-155; Sally E. Merry, "Rethinking Gossip and Scandal," in Toward a Theory of Social Control, Fundamentals, ed. Donald Black (New York: Academic Press, 1984). }~ Both these lines of literature, however, are statements of the institutional role of social mechanisms for enabling market exchange and production. More direct observations of social production and exchange systems are provided by the literature on social provisioning of public goods-- like social norm enforcement as a dimension of policing criminality, and the literature on common property regimes.~{ On policing, see Robert C. Ellickson, "Controlling Chronic Misconduct in City Spaces: Of Panhandlers, Skid Rows, and Public-Space Zoning," Yale Law Journal 105 (1996): 1165, 1194-1202; and Dan M. Kahan, "Between Economics and Sociology: The New Path of Deterrence," Michigan Law Review 95 (1997): 2477. }~ The former are limited by their focus on public goods provisioning. The latter are usually limited by their focus on discretely identifiable types of resources--common pool resources-- that must be managed as among a group of claimants while retaining a proprietary outer boundary toward nonmembers. The focus of those who study these phenomena is usually on relatively small and tightly knit communities, with clear boundaries between members and nonmembers.~{ An early and broad claim in the name of commons in resources for communication and transportation, as well as human community building--like roads, canals, or social-gathering places--is Carol Rose, "The Comedy of the Commons: Custom, Commerce, and Inherently Public Property," University Chicago Law Review 53 (1986): 711. Condensing around the work of Elinor Ostrom, a more narrowly defined literature developed over the course of the 1990s: Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Another seminal study was James M. Acheson, The Lobster Gangs of Maine (New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1988). A brief intellectual history of the study of common resource pools and common property regimes can be found in Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, "Ideas, Artifacts, Facilities, and Content: Information as a Common-Pool Resource," Law & Contemporary Problems 66 (2003): 111. }~ +={ Godelier, Maurice ; + gifts +1 +} + +These lines of literature point to an emerging understanding of social production and exchange as an alternative to markets and firms. Social production is not limited to public goods, to exotic, out-of-the-way places like surviving medieval Spanish irrigation regions or the shores of Maine's lobster fishing grounds, or even to the ubiquitous phenomenon of the household. As SETI@home and Slashdot suggest, it is not necessarily limited to stable communities of individuals who interact often and know each other, or who expect to continue to interact personally. Social production of goods and services, both public and private, is ubiquitous, though unnoticed. It sometimes substitutes for, and sometimes complements, market and state production everywhere. It is, to be fanciful, the dark matter of our economic production universe. + +Consider the way in which the following sentences are intuitively familiar, yet as a practical matter, describe the provisioning of goods or services that have well-defined NAICS categories (the categories used by the Economic Census to categorize economic sectors) whose provisioning through the markets is accounted for in the Economic Census, but that are commonly provisioned in a form consistent with the definition of sharing--on a radically distributed model, without price or command. + +block{ + +NAICS 624410624410 [Babysitting services, child day care] + "John, could you pick up Bobby today when you take Lauren to soccer? +I have a conference call I have to make." ,{[pg 118]}, + "Are you doing homework with Zoe today, or shall I?" + +}block + +block{ + +NAICS 484210 [Trucking used household, office, or institutional +furniture and equipment] + "Jane, could you lend a hand moving this table to the dining room?" + "Here, let me hold the elevator door for you, this looks heavy." + +}block + +block{ + +NAICS 484122 [Trucking, general freight, long-distance, +less-than-truckload] + "Jack, do you mind if I load my box of books in your trunk so +you can drop it off at my brother's on your way to Boston?" + +}block + +block{ + +NAICS 514110 [Traffic reporting services] + "Oh, don't take I-95, it's got horrible construction traffic to +exit 39." + +}block + +block{ + +NAICS 711510 [Newspaper columnists, independent (freelance)] + "I don't know about Kerry, he doesn't move me, I think he should be +more aggressive in criticizing Bush on Iraq." + +}block + +block{ + +NAICS 621610 [Home health-care services] + "Can you please get me my medicine? I'm too wiped to get up." + "Would you like a cup of tea?" + +}block + +block{ + +NAICS 561591 [Tourist information bureaus] + "Excuse me, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?" + +}block + +block{ + +NAICS 561321 [Temporary help services] + "I've got a real crunch on the farm, can you come over on Saturday +and lend a hand?" + "This is crazy, I've got to get this document out tonight, could you +lend me a hand with proofing and pulling it all together tonight?" + +}block + +block{ + +NAICS 71 [Arts, entertainment, and recreation] + "Did you hear the one about the Buddhist monk, the Rabbi, and +the Catholic priest...?" + "Roger, bring out your guitar...." + "Anybody up for a game of...?" + +}block + +The litany of examples generalizes through a combination of four dimensions that require an expansion from the current focus of the literatures related to social production. First, they relate to production of goods and services, not only of norms or rules. Social relations provide the very motivations for, and information relating to, production and exchange, not only the institutional framework for organizing action, which itself is motivated, informed, and organized by markets or managerial commands. Second, they relate to all kinds of goods, not only public goods. In particular, the paradigm cases of free software development and distributed computing involve labor and shareable goods--each plainly utilizing private goods as inputs, ,{[pg 119]}, and, in the case of distributed computing, producing private goods as outputs. Third, at least some of them relate not only to relations of production within well-defined communities of individuals who have repeated interactions, but extend to cover baseline standards of human decency. These enable strangers to ask one another for the time or for directions, enable drivers to cede the road to each other, and enable strangers to collaborate on software projects, on coauthoring an online encyclopedia, or on running simulations of how proteins fold. Fourth, they may either complement or substitute for market and state production systems, depending on the social construction of mixed provisioning. It is hard to measure the weight that social and sharing-based production has in the economy. Our intuitions about capillary systems would suggest that the total volume of boxes or books moved or lifted, instructions given, news relayed, and meals prepared by family, friends, neighbors, and minimally decent strangers would be very high relative to the amount of substitutable activity carried on through market exchanges or state provisioning. +={ capabilities of individuals : + as modality of production +5 ; + individual capabilities and action : + as modality of production +5 ; + information production inputs : + individual action as modality +5 ; + inputs to production : + individual action as modality +5 ; + production inputs : + individual action as modality +5 +} + +Why do we, despite the ubiquity of social production, generally ignore it as an economic phenomenon, and why might we now reconsider its importance? A threshold requirement for social sharing to be a modality of economic production, as opposed to one purely of social reproduction, is that sharing-based action be effective. Efficacy of individual action depends on the physical capital requirements for action to become materially effective, which, in turn, depend on technology. Effective action may have very low physical capital requirements, so that every individual has, by natural capacity, "the physical capital" necessary for action. Social production or sharing can then be ubiquitous (though in practice, it may not). Vocal cords to participate in a sing-along or muscles to lift a box are obvious examples. When the capital requirements are nontrivial, but the capital good is widely distributed and available, sharing can similarly be ubiquitous and effective. This is true both when the shared resource or good is the capacity of the capital good itself--as in the case of shareable goods--and when some widely distributed human capacity is made effective through the use of the widely distributed capital goods--as in the case of human creativity, judgment, experience, and labor shared in online peer-production processes--in which participants contribute using the widespread availability of connected computers. When use of larger-scale physical capital goods is a threshold requirement of effective action, we should not expect to see widespread reliance on decentralized sharing as a standard modality of production. Industrial ,{[pg 120]}, mass-manufacture of automobiles, steel, or plastic toys, for example, is not the sort of thing that is likely to be produced on a social-sharing basis, because of the capital constraints. This is not to say that even for large-scale capital projects, like irrigation systems and dams, social production systems cannot step into the breach. We have those core examples in the common-property regime literature, and we have worker-owned firms as examples of mixed systems. However, those systems tend to replicate the characteristics of firm, state, or market production--using various combinations of quotas, scrip systems, formal policing by "professional" officers, or management within worker-owned firms. By comparison, the "common property" arrangements described among lobster gangs of Maine or fishing groups in Japan, where capital requirements are much lower, tend to be more social-relations-based systems, with less formalized or crisp measurement of contributions to, and calls on, the production system. +={ sharing : + technology dependence of +1 ; + technology : + dependence on, for sharing +1 | enabling social sharing as production modality +4 +} + +To say that sharing is technology dependent is not to deny that it is a ubiquitous human phenomenon. Sharing is so deeply engrained in so many of our cultures that it would be difficult to argue that with the "right" (or perhaps "wrong") technological contingencies, it would simply disappear. My claim, however, is narrower. It is that the relative economic role of sharing changes with technology. There are technological conditions that require more or less capital, in larger or smaller packets, for effective provisioning of goods, services, and resources the people value. As these conditions change, the relative scope for social-sharing practices to play a role in production changes. When goods, services, and resources are widely dispersed, their owners can choose to engage with each other through social sharing instead of through markets or a formal, state-based relationship, because individuals have available to them the resources necessary to engage in such behavior without recourse to capital markets or the taxation power of the state. If technological changes make the resources necessary for effective action rare or expensive, individuals may wish to interact in social relations, but they can now only do so ineffectively, or in different fields of endeavor that do not similarly require high capitalization. Large-packet, expensive physical capital draws the behavior into one or the other of the modalities of production that can collect the necessary financial capital--through markets or taxation. Nothing, however, prevents change from happening in the opposite direction. Goods, services, and resources that, in the industrial stage of the information economy required large-scale, concentrated capital investment to provision, are now subject to a changing technological environment ,{[pg 121]}, that can make sharing a better way of achieving the same results than can states, markets, or their hybrid, regulated industries. + +Because of changes in the technology of the industrial base of the most advanced economies, social sharing and exchange is becoming a common modality of production at their very core--in the information, culture, education, computation, and communications sectors. Free software, distributed computing, ad hoc mesh wireless networks, and other forms of peer production offer clear examples of large-scale, measurably effective sharing practices. The highly distributed capital structure of contemporary communications and computation systems is largely responsible for this increased salience of social sharing as a modality of economic production in that environment. By lowering the capital costs required for effective individual action, these technologies have allowed various provisioning problems to be structured in forms amenable to decentralized production based on social relations, rather than through markets or hierarchies. + +My claim is not, of course, that we live in a unique moment of humanistic sharing. It is, rather, that our own moment in history suggests a more general observation. The technological state of a society, in particular the extent to which individual agents can engage in efficacious production activities with material resources under their individual control, affects the opportunities for, and hence the comparative prevalence and salience of, social, market-- both price-based and managerial--and state production modalities. The capital cost of effective economic action in the industrial economy shunted sharing to its economic peripheries--to households in the advanced economies, and to the global economic peripheries that have been the subject of the anthropology of gift or the common-property regime literatures. The emerging restructuring of capital investment in digital networks--in particular, the phenomenon of user-capitalized computation and communications capabilities--are at least partly reversing that effect. Technology does not determine the level of sharing. It does, however, set threshold constraints on the effective domain of sharing as a modality of economic production. Within the domain of the practically feasible, the actual level of sharing practices will be culturally driven and cross-culturally diverse. + +Most practices of production--social or market-based--are already embedded in a given technological context. They present no visible "problem" to solve or policy choice to make. We do not need to be focused consciously on improving the conditions under which friends lend a hand to each other to move boxes, make dinner, or take kids to school. We feel no need to ,{[pg 122]}, reconsider the appropriateness of market-based firms as the primary modality for the production of automobiles. However, in moments where a field of action is undergoing a technological transition that changes the opportunities for sharing as a modality of production, understanding that sharing is a modality of production becomes more important, as does understanding how it functions as such. This is so, as we are seeing today, when prior technologies have already set up market- or state-based production systems that have the law and policy-making systems already designed to fit their requirements. While the prior arrangement may have been the most efficient, or even may have been absolutely necessary for the incumbent production system, its extension under new technological conditions may undermine, rather than improve, the capacity of a society to produce and provision the goods, resources, or capacities that are the object of policy analysis. This is, as I discuss in part III, true of wireless communications regulation, or "spectrum management," as it is usually called; of the regulation of information, knowledge, and cultural production, or "intellectual property," as it is usually now called; and it may be true of policies for computation and wired communications networks, as distributed computing and the emerging peer-to-peer architectures suggest. + +2~ THE INTERFACE OF SOCIAL PRODUCTION AND MARKET-BASED BUSINESSES +={ commercial model of communication : + relationship with social producers +6 ; + industrial model of communication : + relationship with social producers +6 ; + information production, market-based : + relationship with social producers +6 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + relationship with social producers +6 ; + market-based information producers : + relationship with social producers +6 ; + nonmarket information producers : + relationship with nonmarket information producers (cont.) market-based businesses +6 ; + peer production : + relationship with market-based business +6 ; + social production, relationship with market-based business +6 ; + traditional model of communication : + relationship with social producers +6 +} + +The rise of social production does not entail a decline in market-based production. Social production first and foremost harnesses impulses, time, and resources that, in the industrial information economy, would have been wasted or used purely for consumption. Its immediate effect is therefore likely to increase overall productivity in the sectors where it is effective. But that does not mean that its effect on market-based enterprises is neutral. A newly effective form of social behavior, coupled with a cultural shift in tastes as well as the development of new technological and social solution spaces to problems that were once solved through market-based firms, exercises a significant force on the shape and conditions of market action. Understanding the threats that these developments pose to some incumbents explains much of the political economy of law in this area, which will occupy chapter 11. At the simplest level, social production in general and peer production in particular present new sources of competition to incumbents that produce information goods for which there are now socially produced substitutes. ,{[pg 123]}, Open source software development, for example, first received mainstream media attention in 1998 due to publication of a leaked internal memorandum from Microsoft, which came to be known as The Halloween Memo. In it, a Microsoft strategist identified the open source methodology as the one major potential threat to the company's dominance over the desktop. As we have seen since, definitively in the Web server market and gradually in segments of the operating system market, this prediction proved prescient. Similarly, /{Wikipedia}/ now presents a source of competition to online encyclopedias like Columbia, Grolier, or Encarta, and may well come to be seen as an adequate substitute for Britannica as well. Most publicly visible, peer-to-peer file sharing networks have come to compete with the recording industry as an alternative music distribution system, to the point where the longterm existence of that industry is in question. Some scholars like William Fisher, and artists like Jenny Toomey and participants in the Future of Music Coalition, are already looking for alternative ways of securing for artists a living from the music they make. +={ community clusters : + market and nonmarket producers +1 ; + Fisher, William (Terry) ; + Toomey, Jenny ; + The Halloween Memo +} + +The competitive threat from social production, however, is merely a surface phenomenon. Businesses often face competition or its potential, and this is a new source, with new economics, which may or may not put some of the incumbents out of business. But there is nothing new about entrants with new business models putting slow incumbents out of business. More basic is the change in opportunity spaces, the relationships of firms to users, and, indeed, the very nature of the boundary of the firm that those businesses that are already adapting to the presence and predicted persistence of social production are exhibiting. Understanding the opportunities social production presents for businesses begins to outline how a stable social production system can coexist and develop a mutually reinforcing relationship with market-based organizations that adapt to and adopt, instead of fight, them. +={ capacity : + opportunities created by social production +4 ; + opportunities created by social production +4 +} + +Consider the example I presented in chapter 2 of IBM's relationship to the free and open source software development community. IBM, as I explained there, has shown more than $2 billion a year in "Linux-related revenues." Prior to IBM's commitment to adapting to what the firm sees as the inevitability of free and open source software, the company either developed in house or bought from external vendors the software it needed as part of its hardware business, on the one hand, and its software services-- customization, enterprise solutions, and so forth--on the other hand. In each case, the software development follows a well-recognized supply chain model. Through either an employment contract or a supply contract the ,{[pg 124]}, company secures a legal right to require either an employee or a vendor to deliver a given output at a given time. In reliance on that notion of a supply chain that is fixed or determined by a contract, the company turns around and promises to its clients that it will deliver the integrated product or service that includes the contracted-for component. With free or open source software, that relationship changes. IBM is effectively relying for its inputs on a loosely defined cloud of people who are engaged in productive social relations. It is making the judgment that the probability that a sufficiently good product will emerge out of this cloud is high enough that it can undertake a contractual obligation to its clients, even though no one in the cloud is specifically contractually committed to it to produce the specific inputs the firm needs in the time-frame it needs it. This apparent shift from a contractually deterministic supply chain to a probabilistic supply chain is less dramatic, however, than it seems. Even when contracts are signed with employees or suppliers, they merely provide a probability that the employee or the supplier will in fact supply in time and at appropriate quality, given the difficulties of coordination and implementation. A broad literature in organization theory has developed around the effort to map the various strategies of collaboration and control intended to improve the likelihood that the different components of the production process will deliver what they are supposed to: from early efforts at vertical integration, to relational contracting, pragmatic collaboration, or Toyota's fabled flexible specialization. The presence of a formalized enforceable contract, for outputs in which the supplier can claim and transfer a property right, may change the probability of the desired outcome, but not the fact that in entering its own contract with its clients, the company is making a prediction about the required availability of necessary inputs in time. When the company turns instead to the cloud of social production for its inputs, it is making a similar prediction. And, as with more engaged forms of relational contracting, pragmatic collaborations, or other models of iterated relations with co-producers, the company may engage with the social process in order to improve the probability that the required inputs will in fact be produced in time. In the case of companies like IBM or Red Hat, this means, at least partly, paying employees to participate in the open source development projects. But managing this relationship is tricky. The firms must do so without seeking to, or even seeming to seek to, take over the project; for to take over the project in order to steer it more "predictably" toward the firm's needs is to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. For IBM and more recently Nokia, supporting ,{[pg 125]}, the social processes on which they rely has also meant contributing hundreds of patents to the Free Software Foundation, or openly licensing them to the software development community, so as to extend the protective umbrella created by these patents against suits by competitors. As the companies that adopt this strategic reorientation become more integrated into the peer-production process itself, the boundary of the firm becomes more porous. Participation in the discussions and governance of open source development projects creates new ambiguity as to where, in relation to what is "inside" and "outside" of the firm boundary, the social process is. In some cases, a firm may begin to provide utilities or platforms for the users whose outputs it then uses in its own products. The Open Source Development Group (OSDG), for example, provides platforms for Slashdot and SourceForge. In these cases, the notion that there are discrete "suppliers" and "consumers," and that each of these is clearly demarcated from the other and outside of the set of stable relations that form the inside of the firm becomes somewhat attenuated. +={ free software : + as competition to market-based business ; + open-source software : + as competition to market-based business ; + software, open-source : + as competition to market based business ; + IBM's business strategy +1 ; + management, changing relationships of +3 +} + +As firms have begun to experience these newly ambiguous relationships with individuals and social groups, they have come to wrestle with questions of leadership and coexistence. Businesses like IBM, or eBay, which uses peer production as a critical component of its business ecology--the peer reviewed system of creating trustworthiness, without which person-to-person transactions among individual strangers at a distance would be impossible-- have to structure their relationship to the peer-production processes that they co-exist with in a helpful and non-threatening way. Sometimes, as we saw in the case of IBM's contributions to the social process, this may mean support without attempting to assume "leadership" of the project. Sometimes, as when peer production is integrated more directly into what is otherwise a commercially created and owned platform--as in the case of eBay--the relationship is more like that of a peer-production leader than of a commercial actor. Here, the critical and difficult point for business managers to accept is that bringing the peer-production community into the newly semi-porous boundary of the firm--taking those who used to be customers and turning them into participants in a process of co-production-- changes the relationship of the firm's managers and its users. Linden Labs, which runs Second Life, learned this in the context of the tax revolt described in chapter 3. Users cannot be ordered around like employees. Nor can they be simply advertised-to and manipulated, or even passively surveyed, like customers. To do that would be to lose the creative and generative social ,{[pg 126]}, character that makes integration of peer production into a commercial business model so valuable for those businesses that adopt it. Instead, managers must be able to identify patterns that emerge in the community and inspire trust that they are correctly judging the patterns that are valuable from the perspective of the users, not only the enterprise, so that the users in fact coalesce around and extend these patterns. + +The other quite basic change wrought by the emergence of social production, from the perspective of businesses, is a change in taste. Active users require and value new and different things than passive consumers did. The industrial information economy specialized in producing finished goods, like movies or music, to be consumed passively, and well-behaved appliances, like televisions, whose use was fully specified at the factory door. The emerging businesses of the networked information economy are focusing on serving the demand of active users for platforms and tools that are much more loosely designed, late-binding--that is, optimized only at the moment of use and not in advance--variable in their uses, and oriented toward providing users with new, flexible platforms for relationships. Personal computers, camera phones, audio and video editing software, and similar utilities are examples of tools whose value increases for users as they are enabled to explore new ways to be creative and productively engaged with others. In the network, we are beginning to see business models emerge to allow people to come together, like MeetUp, and to share annotations of Web pages they read, like del.icio.us, or photographs they took, like Flickr. Services like Blogger and Technorati similarly provide platforms for the new social and cultural practices of personal journals, or the new modes of expression described in chapters 7 and 8. +={ active vs. passive consumers +1 ; + consumer surplus : + See capacity, sharing consumerism, active vs. passive +1 ; + diversity : + changes in taste ; + participatory culture : + See also culture passive vs. active consumers +1 ; + users as consumers +1 ; + taste, changes in +} + +The overarching point is that social production is reshaping the market conditions under which businesses operate. To some of the incumbents of the industrial information economy, the pressure from social production is experienced as pure threat. It is the clash between these incumbents and the new practices that was most widely reported in the media in the first five years of the twenty-first century, and that has driven much of policy making, legislation, and litigation in this area. But the much more fundamental effect on the business environment is that social production is changing the relationship of firms to individuals outside of them, and through this changing the strategies that firms internally are exploring. It is creating new sources of inputs, and new tastes and opportunities for outputs. Consumers are changing into users--more active and productive than the consumers of the ,{[pg 127]}, industrial information economy. The change is reshaping the relationships necessary for business success, requiring closer integration of users into the process of production, both in inputs and outputs. It requires different leadership talents and foci. By the time of this writing, in 2005, these new opportunities and adaptations have begun to be seized upon as strategic advantages by some of the most successful companies working around the Internet and information technology, and increasingly now around information and cultural production more generally. Eric von Hippel's work has shown how the model of user innovation has been integrated into the business model of innovative firms even in sectors far removed from either the network or from information production--like designing kite-surfing equipment or mountain bikes. As businesses begin to do this, the platforms and tools for collaboration improve, the opportunities and salience of social production increases, and the political economy begins to shift. And as these firms and social processes coevolve, the dynamic accommodation they are developing provides us with an image of what the future stable interface between market-based businesses and the newly salient social production is likely to look like. ,{[pg 128]}, ,{[pg 129]}, +={ von Hippel, Eric } + +:B~ Part Two - The Political Economy of Property and Commons + +1~p2 Introduction +={ commons +5 ; + property ownership +5 +} + +How a society produces its information environment goes to the very core of freedom. Who gets to say what, to whom? What is the state of the world? What counts as credible information? How will different forms of action affect the way the world can become? These questions go to the foundations of effective human action. They determine what individuals understand to be the range of options open to them, and the range of consequences to their actions. They determine what is understood to be open for debate in a society, and what is considered impossible as a collective goal or a collective path for action. They determine whose views count toward collective action, and whose views are lost and never introduced into the debate of what we should do as political entities or social communities. Freedom depends on the information environment that those individuals and societies occupy. Information underlies the very possibility of individual self-direction. Information and communication constitute the practices that enable a community to form a common range of understandings of what is at stake and what paths are open for the taking. They are constitutive ,{[pg 130]}, components of both formal and informal mechanisms for deciding on collective action. Societies that embed the emerging networked information economy in an institutional ecology that accommodates nonmarket production, both individual and cooperative, will improve the freedom of their constituents along all these dimensions. +={ freedom } + +The networked information economy makes individuals better able to do things for and by themselves, and makes them less susceptible to manipulation by others than they were in the mass-media culture. In this sense, the emergence of this new set of technical, economic, social, and institutional relations can increase the relative role that each individual is able to play in authoring his or her own life. The networked information economy also promises to provide a much more robust platform for public debate. It enables citizens to participate in public conversation continuously and pervasively, not as passive recipients of "received wisdom" from professional talking heads, but as active participants in conversations carried out at many levels of political and social structure. Individuals can find out more about what goes on in the world, and share it more effectively with others. They can check the claims of others and produce their own, and they can be heard by others, both those who are like-minded and opponents. At a more foundational level of collective understanding, the shift from an industrial to a networked information economy increases the extent to which individuals can become active participants in producing their own cultural environment. It opens the possibility of a more critical and reflective culture. + +Unlike the relationship of information production to freedom, the relationship between the organization of information production and distributive justice is not intrinsic. However, the importance of knowledge in contemporary economic production makes a change in the modality of information production important to justice as well. The networked information economy can provide opportunities for global development and for improvements in the justice of distribution of opportunities and capacities everywhere. Economic opportunity and welfare today--of an individual, a social group, or a nation--depend on the state of knowledge and access to opportunities to learn and apply practical knowledge. Transportation networks, global financial markets, and institutional trade arrangements have made material resources and outputs capable of flowing more efficiently from any one corner of the globe to another than they were at any previous period. Economic welfare and growth now depend more on knowledge and social ,{[pg 131]}, organization than on natural sources. Knowledge transfer and social reform, probably more than any other set of changes, can affect the economic opportunities and material development of different parts of the global economic system, within economies both advanced and less developed. The emergence of a substantial nonmarket sector in the networked information economy offers opportunities for providing better access to knowledge and information as input from, and better access for information outputs of, developing and less-developed economies and poorer geographic and social sectors in the advanced economies. Better access to knowledge and the emergence of less capital-dependent forms of productive social organization offer the possibility that the emergence of the networked information economy will open up opportunities for improvement in economic justice, on scales both global and local. +={ economic opportunity ; + human welfare ; + welfare +} + +The basic intuition and popular belief that the Internet will bring greater freedom and global equity has been around since the early 1990s. It has been the technophile's basic belief, just as the horrors of cyberporn, cybercrime, or cyberterrorism have been the standard gut-wrenching fears of the technophobe. The technophilic response is reminiscent of claims made in the past for electricity, for radio, or for telegraph, expressing what James Carey described as "the mythos of the electrical sublime." The question this part of the book explores is whether this claim, given the experience of the past decade, can be sustained on careful analysis, or whether it is yet another instance of a long line of technological utopianism. The fact that earlier utopias were overly optimistic does not mean that these previous technologies did not in fact alter the conditions of life--material, social, and intellectual. They did, but they did so differently in different societies, and in ways that diverged from the social utopias attached to them. Different nations absorbed and used these technologies differently, diverging in social and cultural habits, but also in institutional strategies for adoption--some more state-centric, others more market based; some more controlled, others less so. Utopian or at least best-case conceptions of the emerging condition are valuable if they help diagnose the socially and politically significant attributes of the emerging networked information economy correctly and allow us to form a normative conception of their significance. At a minimum, with these in hand, we can begin to design our institutional response to the present technological perturbation in order to improve the conditions of freedom and justice over the next few decades. ,{[pg 132]}, +={ Carey, James } + +The chapters in this part focus on major liberal commitments or concerns. Chapter 5 addresses the question of individual autonomy. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 address democratic participation: first in the political public sphere and then, more broadly, in the construction of culture. Chapter 9 deals with justice and human development. Chapter 10 considers the effects of the networked information economy on community. ,{[pg 133]}, + +1~ Chapter 5 - Individual Freedom: Autonomy, Information, and Law +={ autonomy +64 ; + individual autonomy +64 +} + +The emergence of the networked information economy has the potential to increase individual autonomy. First, it increases the range and diversity of things that individuals can do for and by themselves. It does this by lifting, for one important domain of life, some of the central material constraints on what individuals can do that typified the industrial information economy. The majority of materials, tools, and platforms necessary for effective action in the information environment are in the hands of most individuals in advanced economies. Second, the networked information economy provides nonproprietary alternative sources of communications capacity and information, alongside the proprietary platforms of mediated communications. This decreases the extent to which individuals are subject to being acted upon by the owners of the facilities on which they depend for communications. The construction of consumers as passive objects of manipulation that typified television culture has not disappeared overnight, but it is losing its dominance in the information environment. Third, the networked information environment qualitatively increases the range and diversity of information ,{[pg 134]}, available to individuals. It does so by enabling sources commercial and noncommercial, mainstream and fringe, domestic or foreign, to produce information and communicate with anyone. This diversity radically changes the universe of options that individuals can consider as open for them to pursue. It provides them a richer basis to form critical judgments about how they could live their lives, and, through this opportunity for critical reflection, why they should value the life they choose. + +2~ FREEDOM TO DO MORE FOR ONESELF, BY ONESELF, AND WITH OTHERS + +Rory Cejas was a twenty-six-year-old firefighter/paramedic with the Miami Fire Department in 2003, when he enlisted the help of his brother, wife, and a friend to make a Star Wars-like fan film. Using a simple camcorder and tripod, and widely available film and image generation and editing software on his computer, he made a twenty-minute film he called /{The Jedi Saga}/. The film is not a parody. It is not social criticism. It is a straightforward effort to make a movie in the genre of /{Star Wars}/, using the same type of characters and story lines. In the predigital world, it would have been impossible, as a practical matter, for Cejas to do this. It would have been an implausible part of his life plan to cast his wife as a dark femme fatale, or his brother as a Jedi Knight, so they could battle shoulder-to-shoulder, light sabers drawn, against a platoon of Imperial clone soldiers. And it would have been impossible for him to distribute the film he had made to friends and strangers. The material conditions of cultural production have changed, so that it has now become part of his feasible set of options. He needs no help from government to do so. He needs no media access rules that give him access to fancy film studios. He needs no cable access rules to allow him to distribute his fantasy to anyone who wants to watch it. The new set of feasible options open to him includes not only the option passively to sit in the theatre or in front of the television and watch the images created by George Lucas, but also the option of trying his hand at making this type of film by himself. +={ Cejas, Rory +1 ; + Jedi Saga, The +1 ; + Lucas, George +1 +} + +/{Jedi Saga}/ will not be a blockbuster. It is not likely to be watched by many people. Those who do watch it are not likely to enjoy it in the same way that they enjoyed any of Lucas's films, but that is not its point. When someone like Cejas makes such a film, he is not displacing what Lucas does. He is changing what he himself does--from sitting in front of a screen that ,{[pg 135]}, is painted by another to painting his own screen. Those who watch it will enjoy it in the same way that friends and family enjoy speaking to each other or singing together, rather than watching talking heads or listening to Talking Heads. Television culture, the epitome of the industrial information economy, structured the role of consumers as highly passive. While media scholars like John Fiske noted the continuing role of viewers in construing and interpreting the messages they receive, the role of the consumer in this model is well defined. The media product is a finished good that they consume, not one that they make. Nowhere is this clearer than in the movie theatre, where the absence of light, the enveloping sound, and the size of the screen are all designed to remove the viewer as agent, leaving only a set of receptors--eyes, ears--through which to receive the finished good that is the movie. There is nothing wrong with the movies as one mode of entertainment. The problem emerges, however, when the movie theatre becomes an apt metaphor for the relationship the majority of people have with most of the information environment they occupy. That increasing passivity of television culture came to be a hallmark of life for most people in the late stages of the industrial information economy. The couch potato, the eyeball bought and sold by Madison Avenue, has no part in making the information environment he or she occupies. +={ active vs. passive consumers +1 ; + consumer surplus : + See capacity, sharing consumerism, active vs. passive +1 ; + culture : + of television ; + Fiske, John ; + participatory culture : + See also culture passive vs. active consumers ; + television : + culture of +} + +Perhaps no single entertainment product better symbolizes the shift that the networked information economy makes possible from television culture than the massive multiplayer online game. These games are typified by two central characteristics. First, they offer a persistent game environment. That is, any action taken or "object" created anywhere in the game world persists over time, unless and until it is destroyed by some agent in the game; and it exists to the same extent for all players. Second, the games are effectively massive collaboration platforms for thousands, tens of thousands--or in the case of Lineage, the most popular game in South Korea, more than four million--users. These platforms therefore provide individual players with various contexts in which to match their wits and skills with other human players. The computer gaming environment provides a persistent relational database of the actions and social interactions of players. The first games that became mass phenomena, like Ultima Online or Everquest, started with an already richly instantiated context. Designers of these games continue to play a large role in defining the range of actions and relations feasible for players. The basic medieval themes, the role of magic and weapons, and the types and ranges of actions that are possible create much of the context, and ,{[pg 136]}, therefore the types of relationships pursued. Still, these games leave qualitatively greater room for individual effort and personal taste in producing the experience, the relationships, and hence the story line, relative to a television or movie experience. Second Life, a newer game by Linden Labs, offers us a glimpse into the next step in this genre of immersive entertainment. Like other massively multiplayer online games, Second Life is a persistent collaboration platform for its users. Unlike other games, however, Second Life offers only tools, with no story line, stock objects, or any cultural or meaning-oriented context whatsoever. Its users have created 99 percent of the objects in the game environment. The medieval village was nothing but blank space when they started. So was the flying vehicle design shop, the futuristic outpost, or the university, where some of the users are offering courses in basic programming skills and in-game design. Linden Labs charges a flat monthly subscription fee. Its employees focus on building tools that enable users to do everything from basic story concept down to the finest details of their own appearance and of objects they use in the game world. The in-game human relationships are those made by the users as they interact with each other in this immersive entertainment experience. The game's relationship to its users is fundamentally different from that of the movie or television studio. Movies and television seek to control the entire experience--rendering the viewer inert, but satisfied. Second Life sees the users as active makers of the entertainment environment that they occupy, and seeks to provide them with the tools they need to be so. The two models assume fundamentally different conceptions of play. Whereas in front of the television, the consumer is a passive receptacle, limited to selecting which finished good he or she will consume from a relatively narrow range of options, in the world of Second Life, the individual is treated as a fundamentally active, creative human being, capable of building his or her own fantasies, alone and in affiliation with others. +={ communities : + immersive entertainment ; + computer gaming environment ; + entertainment industry : + immersive ; + games, immersive ; + immersive entertainment ; + massive multiplayer games ; + MMOGs (massive multiplayer online games) ; + Second Life game environment +} + +Second Life and /{Jedi Saga}/ are merely examples, perhaps trivial ones, within the entertainment domain. They represent a shift in possibilities open both to human beings in the networked information economy and to the firms that sell them the tools for becoming active creators and users of their information environment. They are stark examples because of the centrality of the couch potato as the image of human action in television culture. Their characteristics are representative of the shift in the individual's role that is typical of the networked information economy in general and of peer production in particular. Linus Torvalds, the original creator of the Linux kernel ,{[pg 137]}, development community, was, to use Eric Raymond's characterization, a designer with an itch to scratch. Peer-production projects often are composed of people who want to do something in the world and turn to the network to find a community of peers willing to work together to make that wish a reality. Michael Hart had been working in various contexts for more than thirty years when he--at first gradually, and more recently with increasing speed--harnessed the contributions of hundreds of volunteers to Project Gutenberg in pursuit of his goal to create a globally accessible library of public domain e-texts. Charles Franks was a computer programmer from Las Vegas when he decided he had a more efficient way to proofread those e-texts, and built an interface that allowed volunteers to compare scanned images of original texts with the e-texts available on Project Gutenberg. After working independently for a couple of years, he joined forces with Hart. Franks's facility now clears the volunteer work of more than one thousand proofreaders, who proof between two hundred and three hundred books a month. Each of the thousands of volunteers who participate in free software development projects, in /{Wikipedia}/, in the Open Directory Project, or in any of the many other peer-production projects, is living some version, as a major or minor part of their lives, of the possibilities captured by the stories of a Linus Torvalds, a Michael Hart, or /{The Jedi Saga}/. Each has decided to take advantage of some combination of technical, organizational, and social conditions within which we have come to live, and to become an active creator in his or her world, rather than merely to accept what was already there. The belief that it is possible to make something valuable happen in the world, and the practice of actually acting on that belief, represent a qualitative improvement in the condition of individual freedom. They mark the emergence of new practices of self-directed agency as a lived experience, going beyond mere formal permissibility and theoretical possibility. +={ Project Gutenberg ; + Torvalds, Linus ; + Franks, Charles ; + Hart, Michael ; + Raymond, Eric +} + +Our conception of autonomy has not only been forged in the context of the rise of the democratic, civil rights?respecting state over its major competitors as a political system. In parallel, we have occupied the context of the increasing dominance of market-based industrial economy over its competitors. The culture we have developed over the past century is suffused with images that speak of the loss of agency imposed by that industrial economy. No cultural image better captures the way that mass industrial production reduced workers to cogs and consumers to receptacles than the one-dimensional curves typical of welfare economics--those that render human beings as mere production and demand functions. Their cultural, if ,{[pg 138]}, not intellectual, roots are in Fredrick Taylor's Theory of Scientific Management: the idea of abstracting and defining all motions and actions of employees in the production process so that all the knowledge was in the system, while the employees were barely more than its replaceable parts. Taylorism, ironically, was a vast improvement over the depredations of the first industrial age, with its sweatshops and child labor. It nonetheless resolved into the kind of mechanical existence depicted in Charlie Chaplin's tragic-comic portrait, Modern Times. While the grind of industrial Taylorism seems far from the core of the advanced economies, shunted as it is now to poorer economies, the basic sense of alienation and lack of effective agency persists. Scott Adams's Dilbert comic strip, devoted to the life of a white-collar employee in a nameless U.S. corporation, thoroughly alienated from the enterprise, crimped by corporate hierarchy, resisting in all sorts of ways-- but trapped in a cubicle--powerfully captures this sense for the industrial information economy in much the same way that Chaplin's Modern Times did for the industrial economy itself. +={ industrial age : + reduction of individual autonomy +1 ; + Adams, Scott ; + Chaplin, Charlie ; + Taylor, Fredrick +} + +In the industrial economy and its information adjunct, most people live most of their lives within hierarchical relations of production, and within relatively tightly scripted possibilities after work, as consumers. It did not necessarily have to be this way. Michael Piore and Charles Sabel's Second Industrial Divide and Roberto Mangabeira Unger's False Necessity were central to the emergence of a "third way" literature that developed in the 1980s and 1990s to explore the possible alternative paths to production processes that did not depend so completely on the displacement of individual agency by hierarchical production systems. The emergence of radically decentralized, nonmarket production provides a new outlet for the attenuation of the constrained and constraining roles of employees and consumers. It is not limited to Northern Italian artisan industries or imagined for emerging economies, but is at the very heart of the most advanced market economies. Peer production and otherwise decentralized nonmarket production can alter the producer/consumer relationship with regard to culture, entertainment, and information. We are seeing the emergence of the user as a new category of relationship to information production and exchange. Users are individuals who are sometimes consumers and sometimes producers. They are substantially more engaged participants, both in defining the terms of their productive activity and in defining what they consume and how they consume it. In these two great domains of life--production and consumption, work and play--the networked information economy promises to enrich individual ,{[pg 139]}, autonomy substantively by creating an environment built less around control and more around facilitating action. +={ Sabel, Charles ; + Mangabeira Unger, Roberto ; + Piore, Michael +} + +The emergence of radically decentralized nonmarket production in general and of peer production in particular as feasible forms of action opens new classes of behaviors to individuals. Individuals can now justifiably believe that they can in fact do things that they want to do, and build things that they want to build in the digitally networked environment, and that this pursuit of their will need not, perhaps even cannot, be frustrated by insurmountable cost or an alien bureaucracy. Whether their actions are in the domain of political organization (like the organizers of MoveOn.org), or of education and professional attainment (as with the case of Jim Cornish, who decided to create a worldwide center of information on the Vikings from his fifth-grade schoolroom in Gander, Newfoundland), the networked information environment opens new domains for productive life that simply were not there before. In doing so, it has provided us with new ways to imagine our lives as productive human beings. Writing a free operating system or publishing a free encyclopedia may have seemed quixotic a mere few years ago, but these are now far from delusional. Human beings who live in a material and social context that lets them aspire to such things as possible for them to do, in their own lives, by themselves and in loose affiliation with others, are human beings who have a greater realm for their agency. We can live a life more authored by our own will and imagination than by the material and social conditions in which we find ourselves. At least we can do so more effectively than we could until the last decade of the twentieth century. + +This new practical individual freedom, made feasible by the digital environment, is at the root of the improvements I describe here for political participation, for justice and human development, for the creation of a more critical culture, and for the emergence of the networked individual as a more fluid member of community. In each of these domains, the improvements in the degree to which these liberal commitments are honored and practiced emerge from new behaviors made possible and effective by the networked information economy. These behaviors emerge now precisely because individuals have a greater degree of freedom to act effectively, unconstrained by a need to ask permission from anyone. It is this freedom that increases the salience of nonmonetizable motivations as drivers of production. It is this freedom to seek out whatever information we wish, to write about it, and to join and leave various projects and associations with others that underlies ,{[pg 140]}, the new efficiencies we see in the networked information economy. These behaviors underlie the cooperative news and commentary production that form the basis of the networked public sphere, and in turn enable us to look at the world as potential participants in discourse, rather than as potential viewers only. They are at the root of making a more transparent and reflective culture. They make possible the strategies I suggest as feasible avenues to assure equitable access to opportunities for economic participation and to improve human development globally. + +Treating these new practical opportunities for action as improvements in autonomy is not a theoretically unproblematic proposition. For all its intuitive appeal and centrality, autonomy is a notoriously nebulous concept. In particular, there are deep divisions within the literature as to whether it is appropriate to conceive of autonomy in substantive terms--as Gerald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, and Joel Feinberg most prominently have, and as I have here--or in formal terms. Formal conceptions of autonomy are committed to assuming that all people have the capacity for autonomous choice, and do not go further in attempting to measure the degree of freedom people actually exercise in the world in which they are in fact constrained by circumstances, both natural and human. This commitment is not rooted in some stubborn unwillingness to recognize the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that actually constrain our choices. Rather, it comes from the sense that only by treating people as having these capacities and abilities can we accord them adequate respect as free, rational beings, and avoid sliding into overbearing paternalism. As Robert Post put it, while autonomy may well be something that needs to be "achieved" as a descriptive matter, the "structures of social authority" will be designed differently depending on whether or not individuals are treated as autonomous. "From the point of view of the designer of the structure, therefore, the presence or absence of autonomy functions as an axiomatic and foundational principle."~{ Robert Post, "Meiklejohn's Mistake: Individual Autonomy and the Reform of Public Discourse," University of Colorado Law Review 64 (1993): 1109, 1130-1132. }~ Autonomy theory that too closely aims to understand the degree of autonomy people actually exercise under different institutional arrangements threatens to form the basis of an overbearing benevolence that would undermine the very possibility of autonomous action. +={ autonomy : + formal conception of +3 ; + formal autonomy theory +3 ; + individual autonomy : + formal conception of +3 ; + Dworkin, Gerard ; + Post, Robert ; + Raz, Joseph ; + Feinberg, Joel +} + +While the fear of an overbearing bureaucracy benevolently guiding us through life toward becoming more autonomous is justifiable, the formal conception of autonomy pays a high price in its bluntness as a tool to diagnose the autonomy implications of policy. Given how we are: situated, ,{[pg 141]}, context-bound, messy individuals, it would be a high price to pay to lose the ability to understand how law and policy actually affect whatever capacity we do have to be the authors of our own life choices in some meaningful sense. We are individuals who have the capacity to form beliefs and to change them, to form opinions and plans and defend them--but also to listen to arguments and revise our beliefs. We experience some decisions as being more free than others; we mock or lament ourselves when we find ourselves trapped by the machine or the cubicle, and we do so in terms of a sense of helplessness, a negation of freedom, not only, or even primarily, in terms of lack of welfare; and we cherish whatever conditions those are that we experience as "free" precisely for that freedom, not for other reasons. Certainly, the concerns with an overbearing state, whether professing benevolence or not, are real and immediate. No one who lives with the near past of the totalitarianism of the twentieth century or with contemporary authoritarianism and fundamentalism can belittle these. But the great evils that the state can impose through formal law should not cause us to adopt methodological commitments that would limit our ability to see the many ways in which ordinary life in democratic societies can nonetheless be more or less free, more or less conducive to individual self-authorship. + +If we take our question to be one concerned with diagnosing the condition of freedom of individuals, we must observe the conditions of life from a first-person, practical perspective--that is, from the perspective of the person whose autonomy we are considering. If we accept that all individuals are always constrained by personal circumstances both physical and social, then the way to think about autonomy of human agents is to inquire into the relative capacity of individuals to be the authors of their lives within the constraints of context. From this perspective, whether the sources of constraint are private actors or public law is irrelevant. What matters is the extent to which a particular configuration of material, social, and institutional conditions allows an individual to be the author of his or her life, and to what extent these conditions allow others to act upon the individual as an object of manipulation. As a means of diagnosing the conditions of individual freedom in a given society and context, we must seek to observe the extent to which people are, in fact, able to plan and pursue a life that can reasonably be described as a product of their own choices. It allows us to compare different conditions, and determine that a certain condition allows individuals to do more for themselves, without asking permission from anyone. In this sense, we can say that the conditions that enabled Cejas ,{[pg 142]}, to make /{Jedi Saga}/ are conditions that made him more autonomous than he would have been without the tools that made that movie possible. It is in this sense that the increased range of actions we can imagine for ourselves in loose affiliation with others--like creating a Project Gutenberg--increases our ability to imagine and pursue life plans that would have been impossible in the recent past. +={ Cejas, Rory } + +From the perspective of the implications of autonomy for how people act in the digital environment, and therefore how they are changing the conditions of freedom and justice along the various dimensions explored in these chapters, this kind of freedom to act is central. It is a practical freedom sufficient to sustain the behaviors that underlie the improvements in these other domains. From an internal perspective of the theory of autonomy, however, this basic observation that people can do more by themselves, alone or in loose affiliation with others, is only part of the contribution of the networked information economy to autonomy, and a part that will only be considered an improvement by those who conceive of autonomy as a substantive concept. The implications of the networked information economy for autonomy are, however, broader, in ways that make them attractive across many conceptions of autonomy. To make that point, however, we must focus more specifically on law as the source of constraint, a concern common to both substantive and formal conceptions of autonomy. As a means of analyzing the implications of law to autonomy, the perspective offered here requires that we broaden our analysis beyond laws that directly limit autonomy. We must also look to laws that structure the conditions of action for individuals living within the ambit of their effect. In particular, where we have an opportunity to structure a set of core resources necessary for individuals to perceive the state of the world and the range of possible actions, and to communicate their intentions to others, we must consider whether the way we regulate these resources will create systematic limitations on the capacity of individuals to control their own lives, and in their susceptibility to manipulation and control by others. Once we recognize that there cannot be a person who is ideally "free," in the sense of being unconstrained or uncaused by the decisions of others, we are left to measure the effects of all sorts of constraints that predictably flow from a particular legal arrangement, in terms of the effect they have on the relative role that individuals play in authoring their own lives. ,{[pg 143]}, + +2~ AUTONOMY, PROPERTY, AND COMMONS +={ culture : + security of context +5 ; + freedom : + property and commons +5 ; + norms (social) : + property, commons, and autonomy +5 ; + property ownership : + autonomy and +5 ; + regulation by social norms : + property, commons, and autonomy +5 ; + security of context +5 ; + social relations and norms : + property, commons, and autonomy +5 +} + +The first legal framework whose role is altered by the emergence of the networked information economy is the property-like regulatory structure of patents, copyrights, and similar exclusion mechanisms applicable to information, knowledge, and culture. Property is usually thought in liberal theory to enhance, rather than constrain, individual freedom, in two quite distinct ways. First, it provides security of material context--that is, it allows one to know with some certainty that some set of resources, those that belong to her, will be available for her to use to execute her plans over time. This is the core of Kant's theory of property, which relies on a notion of positive liberty, the freedom to do things successfully based on life plans we can lay for ourselves. Second, property and markets provide greater freedom of action for the individual owner as compared both, as Marx diagnosed, to the feudal arrangements that preceded them, and, as he decidedly did not but Hayek did, to the models of state ownership and regulation that competed with them throughout most of the twentieth century. +={ Hayek, Friedrich ; + Kant, Immanuel ; + Marx, Karl +} + +Markets are indeed institutional spaces that enable a substantial degree of free choice. "Free," however, does not mean "anything goes." If John possesses a car and Jane possesses a gun, a market will develop only if John is prohibited from running Jane over and taking her gun, and also if Jane is prohibited from shooting at John or threatening to shoot him if he does not give her his car. A market that is more or less efficient will develop only if many other things are prohibited to, or required of, one or both sides--like monopolization or disclosure. Markets are, in other words, structured relationships intended to elicit a particular datum--the comparative willingness and ability of agents to pay for goods or resources. The most basic set of constraints that structure behavior in order to enable markets are those we usually call property. Property is a cluster of background rules that determine what resources each of us has when we come into relations with others, and, no less important, what "having" or "lacking" a resource entails in our relations with these others. These rules impose constraints on who can do what in the domain of actions that require access to resources that are the subjects of property law. They are aimed to crystallize asymmetries of power over resources, which then form the basis for exchanges--I will allow you to do X, which I am asymmetrically empowered to do (for example, watch television using this cable system), and you, in turn, will allow me to do Y, which you are asymmetrically empowered to do (for example, receive payment ,{[pg 144]}, from your bank account). While a necessary precondition for markets, property also means that choice in markets is itself not free of constraints, but is instead constrained in a particular pattern. It makes some people more powerful with regard to some things, and must constrain the freedom of action of others in order to achieve this asymmetry.~{ This conception of property was first introduced and developed systematically by Robert Lee Hale in the 1920s and 1930s, and was more recently integrated with contemporary postmodern critiques of power by Duncan Kennedy, Sexy Dressing Etc.: Essays on the Power and Politics of Cultural Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). }~ + +Commons are an alternative form of institutional space, where human agents can act free of the particular constraints required for markets, and where they have some degree of confidence that the resources they need for their plans will be available to them. Both freedom of action and security of resource availability are achieved in very different patterns than they are in property-based markets. As with markets, commons do not mean that anything goes. Managing resources as commons does, however, mean that individuals and groups can use those resources under different types of constraints than those imposed by property law. These constraints may be social, physical, or regulatory. They may make individuals more free or less so, in the sense of permitting a greater or lesser freedom of action to choose among a range of actions that require access to resources governed by them than would property rules in the same resources. Whether having a particular type of resource subject to a commons, rather than a property-based market, enhances freedom of action and security, or harms them, is a context-specific question. It depends on how the commons is structured, and how property rights in the resource would have been structured in the absence of a commons. The public spaces in New York City, like Central Park, Union Square, or any sidewalk, afford more people greater freedom than does a private backyard--certainly to all but its owner. Given the diversity of options that these public spaces make possible as compared to the social norms that neighbors enforce against each other, they probably offer more freedom of action than a backyard offers even to its owner in many loosely urban and suburban communities. Swiss pastures or irrigation districts of the type that Elinor Ostrom described as classic cases of long-standing sustainable commons offer their participants security of holdings at least as stable as any property system, but place substantial traditional constraints on who can use the resources, how they can use them, and how, if at all, they can transfer their rights and do something completely different. These types of commons likely afford their participants less, rather than more, freedom of action than would have been afforded had they owned the same resource in a market-alienable property arrangement, although they retain security in much the same way. Commons, like the air, the sidewalk, the road and highway, the ,{[pg 145]}, ocean, or the public beach, achieve security on a very different model. I can rely on the resources so managed in a probabilistic, rather than deterministic sense. I can plan to meet my friends for a picnic in the park, not because I own the park and can direct that it be used for my picnic, but because I know there will be a park, that it is free for me to use, and that there will be enough space for us to find a corner to sit in. This is also the sort of security that allows me to plan to leave my house at some hour, and plan to be at work at some other hour, relying not on owning the transportation path, but on the availability to me of the roads and highways on symmetric terms to its availability to everyone else. If we look more closely, we will see that property and markets also offer only a probabilistic security of context, whose parameters are different--for example, the degree of certainty we have as to whether the resource we rely on as our property will be stolen or damaged, whether it will be sufficient for what we need, or if we need more, whether it will be available for sale and whether we will be able to afford it. +={ commons : + autonomy and +2 ; + Ostrom, Elinor +} + +Like property and markets, then, commons provide both freedom of action and security of context. They do so, however, through the imposition of different constraints than do property and market rules. In particular, what typifies all these commons in contradistinction to property is that no actor is empowered by law to act upon another as an object of his or her will. I can impose conditions on your behavior when you are walking on my garden path, but I have no authority to impose on you when you walk down the sidewalk. Whether one or the other of the two systems, used exclusively, will provide "greater freedom" in some aggregate sense is not a priori determinable. It will depend on the technical characteristics of the resource, the precise contours of the rules of, respectively, the proprietary market and the commons, and the distribution of wealth in society. Given the diversity of resources and contexts, and the impossibility of a purely "anything goes" absence of rules for either system, some mix of the two different institutional frameworks is likely to provide the greatest diversity of freedom to act in a material context. This diversity, in turn, enables the greatest freedom to plan action within material contexts, allowing individuals to trade off the availabilities of, and constraints on, different resources to forge a context sufficiently provisioned to enable them to execute their plans, while being sufficiently unregulated to permit them to do so. Freedom inheres in diversity of constraint, not in the optimality of the balance of freedom and constraint represented by any single institutional arrangement. It is the diversity of constraint that allows individuals to plan to live out different ,{[pg 146]}, portions and aspects of their lives in different institutional contexts, taking advantage of the different degrees of freedom and security they make possible. + +In the context of information, knowledge, and culture, because of the nonrivalry of information and its characteristic as input as well as output of the production process, the commons provides substantially greater security of context than it does when material resources, like parks or roadways, are at stake. Moreover, peer production and the networked information economy provide an increasingly robust source of new information inputs. This reduces the risk of lacking resources necessary to create new expressions or find out new things, and renders more robust the freedom to act without being susceptible to constraint from someone who holds asymmetrically greater power over the information resources one needs. As to information, then, we can say with a high degree of confidence that a more expansive commons improves individual autonomy, while enclosure of the public domain undermines it. This is less determinate with communications systems. Because computers and network connections are rival goods, there is less certainty that a commons will deliver the required resources. Under present conditions, a mixture of commons-based and proprietary communications systems is likely to improve autonomy. If, however, technological and social conditions change so that, for example, sharing on the model of peer-to-peer networks, distributed computation, or wireless mesh networks will be able to offer as dependable a set of communications and computation resources as the Web offers information and knowledge resources, the relative attractiveness of commons-oriented communications policies will increase from the perspective of autonomy. +={ autonomy : + information environment, structure of ; + individual autonomy : + information environment, structure of ; + network topology : + autonomy and ; + structure of network : + autonomy and ; + topology, network : + autonomy and +} + +% watch may belong only to next section, if so remove + +2~ AUTONOMY AND THE INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT +={ autonomy : + information environment, structure of +24 ; + individual autonomy : + information environment, structure of +24 ; + network topology : + autonomy and +24 ; + structure of network : + autonomy and +24 ; + topology, network : + autonomy and +24 +} + +The structure of our information environment is constitutive of our autonomy, not only functionally significant to it. While the capacity to act free of constraints is most immediately and clearly changed by the networked information economy, information plays an even more foundational role in our very capacity to make and pursue life plans that can properly be called our own. A fundamental requirement of self-direction is the capacity to perceive the state of the world, to conceive of available options for action, to connect actions to consequences, to evaluate alternative outcomes, and to ,{[pg 147]}, decide upon and pursue an action accordingly. Without these, no action, even if mechanically self-directed in the sense that my brain consciously directs my body to act, can be understood as autonomous in any normatively interesting sense. All of the components of decision making prior to action, and those actions that are themselves communicative moves or require communication as a precondition to efficacy, are constituted by the information and communications environment we, as agents, occupy. Conditions that cause failures at any of these junctures, which place bottlenecks, failures of communication, or provide opportunities for manipulation by a gatekeeper in the information environment, create threats to the autonomy of individuals in that environment. The shape of the information environment, and the distribution of power within it to control information flows to and from individuals, are, as we have seen, the contingent product of a combination of technology, economic behavior, social patterns, and institutional structure or law. + +In 1999, Cisco Systems issued a technical white paper, which described a new router that the company planned to sell to cable broadband providers. In describing advantages that these new "policy routers" offer cable providers, the paper explained that if the provider's users want to subscribe to a service that "pushes" information to their computer: "You could restrict the incoming push broadcasts as well as subscribers' outgoing access to the push site to discourage its use. At the same time, you could promote your own or a partner's services with full speed features to encourage adoption of your services."~{ White Paper, "Controlling Your Network, A Must for Cable Operators" (1999), http://www.cptech.org/ecom/openaccess/cisco1.html. }~ +={ access : + systematically blocked by policy routers +3 ; + blocked access : + autonomy and +7 | policy routers +3 ; + capacity : + policy routers +3 ; + Cisco policy routers +3 ; + culture : + shaping perceptions of others +7 ; + information flow : + controlling with policy routers +3 ; + information production inputs : + systematically blocked by policy routers +3 ; + inputs to production : + systematically blocked by policy routers +3 ; + manipulating perceptions of others +7 ; + perceptions of others, shaping +7 ; + policy routers +3 ; + production inputs : + systematically blocked by policy routers +3 ; + routers, controlling information flow with +3 ; + shaping perceptions of others +7 +} + +In plain English, the broadband provider could inspect the packets flowing to and from a customer, and decide which packets would go through faster and more reliably, and which would slow down or be lost. Its engineering purpose was to improve quality of service. However, it could readily be used to make it harder for individual users to receive information that they want to subscribe to, and easier for them to receive information from sites preferred by the provider--for example, the provider's own site, or sites of those who pay the cable operator for using this function to help "encourage" users to adopt their services. There are no reports of broadband providers using these capabilities systematically. But occasional events, such as when Canada's second largest telecommunications company blocked access for all its subscribers and those of smaller Internet service providers that relied on its network to the website of the Telecommunications Workers Union in 2005, suggest that the concern is far from imaginary. ,{[pg 148]}, + +It is fairly clear that the new router increases the capacity of cable operators to treat their subscribers as objects, and to manipulate their actions in order to make them act as the provider wills, rather than as they would have had they had perfect information. It is less obvious whether this is a violation of, or a decrease in, the autonomy of the users. At one extreme, imagine the home as a black box with no communications capabilities save one--the cable broadband connection. Whatever comes through that cable is, for all practical purposes, "the state of the world," as far as the inhabitants of that home know. In this extreme situation, the difference between a completely neutral pipe that carries large amounts of information indiscriminately, and a pipe finely controlled by the cable operator is a large one, in terms of the autonomy of the home's inhabitants. If the pipe is indiscriminate, then the choices of the users determine what they know; decisions based on that knowledge can be said to be autonomous, at least to the extent that whether they are or are not autonomous is a function of the state of the agent's knowledge when forming a decision. If the pipe is finely controlled and purposefully manipulated by the cable operator, by contrast, then decisions that individuals make based on the knowledge they acquire through that pipe are substantially a function of the choices of the controller of the pipe, not of the users. At the other extreme, if each agent has dozens of alternative channels of communication to the home, and knows how the information flow of each one is managed, then the introduction of policy routers into one or some of those channels has no real implications for the agent's autonomy. While it may render one or more channels manipulable by their provider, the presence of alternative, indiscriminate channels, on the one hand, and of competition and choice among various manipulated channels, on the other hand, attenuates the extent to which the choices of the provider structure the universe of information within which the individual agent operates. The provider no longer can be said to shape the individual's choices, even if it tries to shape the information environment observable through its channel with the specific intent of manipulating the actions of users who view the world through its pipe. With sufficient choice among pipes, and sufficient knowledge about the differences between pipes, the very choice to use the manipulated pipe can be seen as an autonomous act. The resulting state of knowledge is self-selected by the user. Even if that state of knowledge then is partial and future actions constrained by it, the limited range of options is itself an expression of the user's autonomy, not a hindrance on it. For example, consider the following: Odysseus and his men mix different ,{[pg 149]}, forms of freedom and constraint in the face of the Sirens. Odysseus maintains his capacity to acquire new information by leaving his ears unplugged, but binds himself to stay on the ship by having his men tie him to the mast. His men choose the same course at the same time, but bind themselves to the ship by having Odysseus stop their ears with wax, so that they do not get the new information--the siren songs--that might change their minds and cause them not to stay the course. Both are autonomous when they pass by the Sirens, though both are free only because of their current incapacity. Odysseus's incapacity to jump into the water and swim to the Sirens and his men's incapacity to hear the siren songs are a result of their autonomously chosen past actions. + +The world we live in is neither black box nor cornucopia of well-specified communications channels. However, characterizing the range of possible configurations of the communications environment we occupy as lying on a spectrum from one to the other provides us with a framework for describing the degree to which actual conditions of a communications environment are conducive to individual autonomy. More important perhaps, it allows us to characterize policy and law that affects the communications environment as improving or undermining individual autonomy. Law can affect the range of channels of communications available to individuals, as well as the rules under which they are used. How many communications channels and sources of information can an individual receive? How many are available for him or her to communicate with others? Who controls these communications channels? What does control over the communications channels to an agent entail? What can the controller do, and what can it not? All of these questions are the subject of various forms of policy and law. Their implications affect the degree of autonomy possessed by individuals operating with the institutional-technical-economic framework thus created. + +There are two primary types of effects that information law can have on personal autonomy. The first type is concerned with the relative capacity of some people systematically to constrain the perceptions or shape the preferences of others. A law that systematically gives some people the power to control the options perceived by, or the preferences of, others, is a law that harms autonomy. Government regulation of the press and its propaganda that attempts to shape its subjects' lives is a special case of this more general concern. This concern is in some measure quantitative, in the sense that a greater degree of control to which one is subject is a greater offense to autonomy. More fundamentally, a law that systematically makes one adult ,{[pg 150]}, susceptible to the control of another offends the autonomy of the former. Law has created the conditions for one person to act upon another as an object. This is the nonpragmatic offense to autonomy committed by abortion regulations upheld in /{Planned Parenthood v. Casey}/ --such as requirements that women who seek abortions listen to lectures designed to dissuade them. These were justified by the plurality there, not by the claim that they did not impinge on a woman's autonomy, but that the state's interest in the potential life of a child trumps the autonomy of the pregnant woman. +={ information production inputs : + propaganda ; + inputs to production : + propaganda ; + manipulating perceptions of others : + with propaganda ; + perceptions of others, shaping : + with propaganda ; + production inputs : + propaganda ; + propaganda ; + shaping perceptions of others : + with propaganda +} + +The second type of effect that law can have on autonomy is to reduce significantly the range and variety of options open to people in society generally, or to certain classes of people. This is different from the concern with government intervention generally. It is not focused on whether the state prohibits these options, but only on whether the effect of the law is to remove options. It is less important whether this effect is through prohibition or through a set of predictable or observable behavioral adaptations among individuals and organizations that, as a practical matter, remove these options. I do not mean to argue for the imposition of restraints, in the name of autonomy, on any lawmaking that results in a removal of any single option, irrespective of the quantity and variety of options still open. Much of law does that. Rather, the autonomy concern is implicated by laws that systematically and significantly reduce the number, and more important, impoverish the variety, of options open to people in the society for which the law is passed. +={ behavior : + number and variety of options +2 ; + diversity : + of behavioral options +2 ; + freedom : + behavioral options +2 ; + number of behavioral options +2 ; + options, behavioral +2 ; + variety of behavioral options +2 +} + +"Number and variety" is intended to suggest two dimensions of effect on the options open to an individual. The first is quantitative. For an individual to author her own life, she must have a significant set of options from which to choose; otherwise, it is the choice set--or whoever, if anyone, made it so--and not the individual, that is governing her life. This quantitative dimension, however, does not mean that more choices are always better, from the individual's perspective. It is sufficient that the individual have some adequate threshold level of options in order for him or her to exercise substantive self-authorship, rather than being authored by circumstances. Beyond that threshold level, additional options may affect one's welfare and success as an autonomous agent, but they do not so constrain an individual's choices as to make one not autonomous. Beyond quantitative adequacy, the options available to an individual must represent meaningfully different paths, not merely slight variations on a theme. Qualitatively, autonomy requires the availability of options in whose adoption or rejection the individual ,{[pg 151]}, can practice critical reflection and life choices. In order to sustain the autonomy of a person born and raised in a culture with a set of socially embedded conventions about what a good life is, one would want a choice set that included at least some unconventional, non-mainstream, if you will, critical options. If all the options one has--even if, in a purely quantitative sense, they are "adequate"--are conventional or mainstream, then one loses an important dimension of self-creation. The point is not that to be truly autonomous one necessarily must be unconventional. Rather, if self-governance for an individual consists in critical reflection and re-creation by making choices over the course of his life, then some of the options open must be different from what he would choose simply by drifting through life, adopting a life plan for no reason other than that it is accepted by most others. A person who chooses a conventional life in the presence of the option to live otherwise makes that conventional life his or her own in a way that a person who lives a conventional life without knowing about alternatives does not. + +As long as our autonomy analysis of information law is sensitive to these two effects on information flow to, from, and among individuals and organizations in the regulated society, it need not conflict with the concerns of those who adopt the formal conception of autonomy. It calls for no therapeutic agenda to educate adults in a wide range of options. It calls for no one to sit in front of educational programs. It merely focuses on two core effects that law can have through the way it structures the relationships among people with regard to the information environment they occupy. If a law--passed for any reason that may or may not be related to autonomy concerns--creates systematic shifts of power among groups in society, so that some have a greater ability to shape the perceptions of others with regard to available options, consequences of action, or the value of preferences, then that law is suspect from an autonomy perspective. It makes the choices of some people less their own and more subject to manipulation by those to whom the law gives the power to control perceptions. Furthermore, a law that systematically and severely limits the range of options known to individuals is one that imposes a normative price, in terms of autonomy, for whatever value it is intended to deliver. As long as the focus of autonomy as an institutional design desideratum is on securing the best possible information flow to the individual, the designer of the legal structure need not assume that individuals are not autonomous, or have failures of autonomy, in order to serve autonomy. All the designer need assume is that individuals ,{[pg 152]}, will not act in order to optimize the autonomy of their neighbors. Law then responds by avoiding institutional designs that facilitate the capacity of some groups of individuals to act on others in ways that are systematically at the expense of the ability of those others to control their own lives, and by implementing policies that predictably diversify the set of options that all individuals are able to see as open to them. + +Throughout most of the 1990s and currently, communications and information policy around the globe was guided by a wish to "let the private sector lead," interpreted in large measure to mean that various property and property-like regulatory frameworks should be strengthened, while various regulatory constraints on property-like rights should be eased. The drive toward proprietary, market-based provisioning of communications and information came from disillusionment with regulatory systems and state-owned communications networks. It saw the privatization of national postal, telephone, and telegraph authorities (PTTs) around the world. Even a country with a long tradition of state-centric communications policy, like France, privatized much of its telecommunications systems. In the United States, this model translated into efforts to shift telecommunications from the regulated monopoly model it followed throughout most of the twentieth century to a competitive market, and to shift Internet development from being primarily a government-funded exercise, as it had been from the late 1960s to the mid 1990s, to being purely private property, market based. This model was declared in the Clinton administration's 1993 National Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action, which pushed for privatization of Internet deployment and development. It was the basis of that administration's 1995 White Paper on Intellectual Property, which mapped the most aggressive agenda ever put forward by any American administration in favor of perfect enclosure of the public domain; and it was in those years when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) first implemented spectrum auctions aimed at more thorough privatization of wireless communications in the United States. The general push for stronger intellectual property rights and more marketcentric telecommunications systems also became a central tenet of international trade regimes, pushing similar policies in smaller and developing economies. +={ commons : + wireless communications as +3 ; + privatization : + of communications and information systems +3 ; + wireless communications : + privatization vs. commons +3 +} + +The result of the push toward private provisioning and deregulation has led to the emergence of a near-monopolistic market structure for wired physical broadband services. By the end of 2003, more than 96 percent of homes and small offices in the United States that had any kind of "high-speed" ,{[pg 153]}, Internet services received their service from either their incumbent cable operator or their incumbent local telephone company. If one focuses on the subset of these homes and offices that get service that provides more substantial room for autonomous communicative action--that is, those that have upstream service at high-speed, enabling them to publish and participate in online production efforts and not simply to receive information at high speeds--the picture is even more dismal. Less than 2 percent of homes and small offices receive their broadband connectivity from someone other than their cable carrier or incumbent telephone carrier. More than 83 percent of these users get their access from their cable operator. Moreover, the growth rate in adoption of cable broadband and local telephone digital subscriber line (DSL) has been high and positive, whereas the growth rate of the few competing platforms, like satellite broadband, has been stagnant or shrinking. The proprietary wired environment is gravitating toward a high-speed connectivity platform that will be either a lopsided duopoly, or eventually resolve into a monopoly platform.~{ Data are all based on FCC Report on High Speed Services, Appendix to Fourth 706 Report NOI (Washington, DC: Federal Communications Commission, December 2003). }~ These owners are capable, both technically and legally, of installing the kind of policy routers with which I opened the discussion of autonomy and information law--routers that would allow them to speed up some packets and slow down or reject others in ways intended to shape the universe of information available to users of their networks. +={ broadband networks : + market structure of ; + monopoly : + wired environment as ; + wired communications : + market structure of ; + proprietary rights : + wireless networks +2 +} + +The alternative of building some portions of our telecommunications and information production and exchange systems as commons was not understood in the mid-1990s, when the policy that resulted in this market structure for communications was developed. As we saw in chapter 3, however, wireless communications technology has progressed to the point where it is now possible for users to own equipment that cooperates in mesh networks to form a "last-mile" infrastructure that no one other than the users own. Radio networks can now be designed so that their capital structure more closely approximates the Internet and personal computer markets, bringing with it a greater scope for commons-based peer production of telecommunications infrastructure. Throughout most of the twentieth century, wireless communications combined high-cost capital goods (radio transmitters and antennae towers) with cheaper consumer goods (radio receivers), using regulated proprietary infrastructure, to deliver a finished good of wireless communications on an industrial model. Now WiFi is marking the possibility of an inversion of the capital structure of wireless communication. We see end-user equipment manufacturers like Intel, Cisco, and others producing ,{[pg 154]}, and selling radio "transceivers" that are shareable goods. By using ad hoc mesh networking techniques, some early versions of which are already being deployed, these transceivers allow their individual owners to cooperate and coprovision their own wireless communications network, without depending on any cable carrier or other wired provider as a carrier of last resort. Almost the entire debate around spectrum policy and the relative merits of markets and commons in wireless policy is conducted today in terms of efficiency and innovation. A common question these days is which of the two approaches will lead to greater growth of wireless communications capacity and will more efficiently allocate the capacity we already have. I have contributed my fair share of this form of analysis, but the question that concerns us here is different. We must ask what, if any, are the implications of the emergence of a feasible, sustainable model of a commons-based physical infrastructure for the first and last mile of the communications environment, in terms of individual autonomy? +={ efficiency of information regulation : + wireless communications policy ; + inefficiency of information regulation : + wireless communications policy ; + innovation : + wireless communications policy ; + proprietary rights : + wireless communications policy ; + reallocation : + wireless communications policy +} + +The choice between proprietary and commons-based wireless data networks takes on new significance in light of the market structure of the wired network, and the power it gives owners of broadband networks to control the information flow into the vast majority of homes. Commons-based wireless systems become the primary legal form of communications capacity that does not systematically subject its users to manipulation by an infrastructure owner. + +Imagine a world with four agents--A, B, C, and D--connected to each other by a communications network. Each component, or route, of the network could be owned or unowned. If all components are unowned, that is, are organized as a commons, each agent has an equal privilege to use any component of the network to communicate with any other agent. If all components are owned, the owner of any network component can deny to any other agent use of that network component to communicate with anyone else. This translates in the real world into whether or not there is a "spectrum owner" who "owns" the link between any two users, or whether the link is simply a consequence of the fact that two users are communicating with each other in a way that no one has a right to prevent them from doing. + +In this simple model, if the network is unowned, then for any communication all that is required is a willing sender and a willing recipient. No third agent gets a say as to whether any other pair will communicate with each other. Each agent determines independently of the others whether to ,{[pg 155]}, participate in a communicative exchange, and communication occurs whenever all its participants, and only they, agree to communicate with each other. For example, A can exchange information with B, as long as B consents. The only person who has a right to prevent A from receiving information from, or sending information to, B, is B, in the exercise of B's own autonomous choice whether to change her information environment. Under these conditions, neither A nor B is subject to control of her information environment by others, except where such control results from denying her the capacity to control the information environment of another. If all network components are owned, on the other hand, then for any communication there must be a willing sender, a willing recipient, and a willing infrastructure owner. In a pure property regime, infrastructure owners have a say over whether, and the conditions under which, others in their society will communicate with each other. It is precisely the power to prevent others from communicating that makes infrastructure ownership a valuable enterprise: One can charge for granting one's permission to communicate. For example, imagine that D owns all lines connecting A to B directly or through D, and C owns all lines connecting A or B to C. As in the previous scenario, A wishes to exchange information with B. Now, in addition to B, A must obtain either C's or D's consent. A now functions under two distinct types of constraint. The first, as before, is a constraint imposed by B's autonomy: A cannot change B's information environment (by exchanging information with her) without B's consent. The second constraint is that A must persuade an owner of whatever carriage medium connects A to B to permit A and B to communicate. The communication is not sent to or from C or D. It does not change C's or D's information environment, and that is not A's intention. C and D's ability to consent or withhold consent is not based on the autonomy principle. It is based, instead, on an instrumental calculus: namely, that creating such property rights in infrastructure will lead to the right incentives for the deployment of infrastructure necessary for A and B to communicate in the first place. +={ computers : + infrastructure ownership +1 ; + hardware : + infrastructure ownership +1 ; + permission to communicate +1 ; + personal computers : + infrastructure ownership +1 ; + physical machinery and computers : + infrastructure ownership +1 ; + proprietary rights : + infrastructure ownership +1 ; + information sharing : + infrastructure ownership +} + +Now imagine that D owns the entire infrastructure. If A wants to get information from B or to communicate to C in order to persuade C to act in a way that is beneficial to A, A needs D's permission. D may grant or withhold permission, and may do so either for a fee or upon the imposition of conditions on the communication. Most significantly, D can choose to prevent anyone from communicating with anyone else, or to expose each participant to the communications of only some, but not all, members of ,{[pg 156]}, society. This characteristic of her ownership gives D the power to shape A's information environment by selectively exposing A to information in the form of communications from others. Most commonly, we might see this where D decides that B will pay more if all infrastructure is devoted to permitting B to communicate her information to A and C, rather than any of it used to convey A's statements to C. D might then refuse to carry A's message to C and permit only B to communicate to A and C. The point is that from A's perspective, A is dependent upon D's decisions as to what information can be carried on the infrastructure, among whom, and in what directions. To the extent of that dependence, A's autonomy is compromised. We might call the requirement that D can place on A as a precondition to using the infrastructure an "influence exaction." +={ access : + influence exaction +1 ; + blocked access : + influence exaction +1 ; + culture : + influence exaction +1 ; + influence exaction +1 ; + manipulating perceptions of others : + influence exaction +1 ; + perceptions of others, shaping : + influence exaction +1 ; + shaping perceptions of others : + influence exaction +1 +} + +The magnitude of the negative effect on autonomy, or of the influence exaction, depends primarily on (a) the degree to which it is hard or easy to get around D's facility, and (b) the degree of transparency of the exaction. Compare, for example, Cisco's policy router for cable broadband, which allows the cable operator to speed up and slow down packets based on its preferences, to Amazon's brief experiment in 1998-1999 with accepting undisclosed payments from publishers in exchange for recommending their books. If a cable operator programs its routers to slow down packets of competitors, or of information providers that do not pay, this practice places a significant exaction on users. First, the exaction is entirely nontransparent. There are many reasons that different sites load at different speeds, or even fail to load altogether. Users, the vast majority of whom are unaware that the provider could, if it chose, regulate the flow of information to them, will assume that it is the target site that is failing, not that their own service provider is manipulating what they can see. Second, there is no genuine work-around. Cable broadband covers roughly two-thirds of the home market, in many places without alternative; and where there is an alternative, there is only one--the incumbent telephone company. Without one of these noncompetitive infrastructure owners, the home user has no broadband access to the Internet. In Amazon's case, the consumer outrage when the practice was revealed focused on the lack of transparency. Users had little objection to clearly demarcated advertisement. The resistance was to the nontransparent manipulation of the recommendation system aimed at causing the consumers to act in ways consistent with Amazon's goals, rather than their own. In that case, however, there were alternatives. There are many different places from which to find book reviews and recommendations, and ,{[pg 157]}, at the time, barnesandnoble.com was already available as an online bookseller--and had not significantly adopted similar practices. The exaction was therefore less significant. Moreover, once the practice was revealed, Amazon publicly renounced it and began to place advertisements in a clearly recognizable separate category. The lesson was not lost on others. When Google began at roughly the same time as a search engine, it broke with the then common practice of selling search-result location. When the company later introduced advertised links, it designed its interface to separate out clearly the advertisements from the algorithm-based results, and to give the latter more prominent placement than the former. This does not necessarily mean that any search engine that accepts payments for linking is necessarily bad. A search engine like Overture, which explicitly and publicly returns results ranked according to which, among the sites retrieved, paid Overture the most, has its own value for consumers looking for commercial sites. A transparent, nonmonopolistic option of this sort increases, rather than decreases, the freedom of users to find the information they want and act on it. The problem would be with search engines that mix the two strategies and hide the mix, or with a monopolistic search engine. +={ access : + systematically blocked by policy routers ; + blocked access : + policy routers ; + capacity : + policy routers ; + Cisco policy routers : + influence exaction ; + information flow : + controlling with policy routers ; + information production inputs : + systematically blocked by policy routers ; + inputs to production : + systematically blocked by policy routers ; + policy routers : + influence exaction ; + production inputs : + systematically blocked by policy routers ; + routers, controlling information flow with : + influence exaction +} + +Because of the importance of the possibility to work around the owned infrastructure, the degree of competitiveness of any market in such infrastructure is important. Before considering the limits of even competitive markets by comparison to commons, however, it is important to recognize that a concern with autonomy provides a distinct justification for the policy concern with media concentration. To understand the effects of concentration, we can think of freedom from constraint as a dimension of welfare. Just as we have no reason to think that in a concentrated market, total welfare, let alone consumer welfare, will be optimal, we also have no reason to think that a component of welfare--freedom from constraint as a condition to access one's communicative environment--will be optimal. Moreover, when we use a "welfare" calculus as a metaphor for the degree of autonomy users have in the system, we must optimize not total welfare, as we do in economic analysis, but only what in the metaphorical calculus would count as "consumer surplus." In the domain of influence and autonomy, only "consumer surplus" counts as autonomy enhancing. "Producer surplus," the degree of successful imposition of influence on others as a condition of service, translates in an autonomy calculus into control exerted by some people (providers) over others (consumers). It reflects the successful negation of autonomy. The monopoly case therefore presents a new normative ,{[pg 158]}, dimension of the well-known critiques of media concentration. Why, however, is this not solely an analysis of media concentration? Why does a competitive market in infrastructure not solve the autonomy deficit of property? +={ accreditation : + concentration of mass-media power ; + allocating excess capacity ; + capacity : + sharing ; + community clusters : + communications infrastructure +3 ; + concentration of mass-media power ; + excess capacity, sharing ; + filtering : + concentration of mass-media power ; + first-best preferences, mass media and : + concentration of mass-media power ; + human welfare : + freedom from constraint +2 ; + media concentration ; + reallocating excess capacity ; + relevance filtering : + concentration of mass-media power ; + sharing : + excess capacity ; + welfare : + freedom from constraint +2 ; + processors. See computer producer surplus +} + +If we make standard assumptions of perfectly competitive markets and apply them to our A-B-D example, one would think that the analysis must change. D no longer has monopoly power. We would presume that the owners of infrastructure would be driven by competition to allocate infrastructure to uses that users value most highly. If one owner "charges" a high price in terms of conditions imposed on users, say to forgo receiving certain kinds of speech uncongenial to the owner, then the users will go to a competitor who does not impose that condition. This standard market response is far from morally irrelevant if one is concerned with autonomy. If, in fact, every individual can choose precisely the package of influence exactions and the cash-to-influence trade-off under which he or she is willing to communicate, then the autonomy deficit that I suggest is created by property rights in communications infrastructure is minimal. If all possible degrees of freedom from the influence of others are available to autonomous individuals, then respecting their choices, including their decisions to subject themselves to the influence of others in exchange for releasing some funds so they are available for other pursuits, respects their autonomy. +={ access : + influence exaction +2 ; + blocked access : + influence exaction +1 ; + Cisco policy routers : + influence exaction +2 ; + culture : + influence exaction +2 ; + influence exaction +2 ; + manipulating perceptions of others : + influence exaction +2 ; + perceptions of others, shaping : + influence exaction +2 ; + policy routers : + influence exaction +2 ; + routers, controlling information flow with : + influence exaction +2 ; + shaping perceptions of others : + influence exaction +2 +} + +Actual competition, however, will not eliminate the autonomy deficit of privately owned communications infrastructure, for familiar reasons. The most familiar constraint on the "market will solve it" hunch is imposed by transaction costs--in particular, information-gathering and negotiation costs. Influence exactions are less easily homogenized than prices expressed in currency. They will therefore be more expensive to eliminate through transactions. Some people value certain kinds of information lobbed at them positively; others negatively. Some people are more immune to suggestion, others less. The content and context of an exaction will have a large effect on its efficacy as a device for affecting the choices of the person subject to its influence, and these could change from communication to communication for the same person, let alone for different individuals. Both users and providers have imperfect information about the users' susceptibility to manipulated information flows; they have imperfect information about the value that each user would place on being free of particular exactions. Obtaining the information necessary to provide a good fit for each consumer's preferences regarding the right influence-to-cash ratio for a given service ,{[pg 159]}, would be prohibitively expensive. Even if the information were obtained, negotiating the precise cash-to-influence trade-off would be costly. Negotiation also may fail because of strategic behavior. The consumer's ideal outcome is to labor under an exaction that is ineffective. If the consumer can reduce the price by submitting to constraints on communication that would affect an average consumer, but will not change her agenda or subvert her capacity to author her life, she has increased her welfare without compromising her autonomy. The vendor's ideal outcome, however, is that the influence exaction be effective--that it succeed in changing the recipient's preferences or her agenda to fit those of the vendor. The parties, therefore, will hide their true beliefs about whether a particular condition to using proprietary infrastructure is of a type that is likely to be effective at influencing the particular recipient. Under anything less than a hypothetical and practically unattainable perfect market in communications infrastructure services, users of a proprietary infrastructure will face a less-than-perfect menu of influence exactions that they must accept before they can communicate using owned infrastructure. +={ policy : + property-based +3 ; + privatization : + of communications and information systems +3 +} + +Adopting a regulatory framework under which all physical means of communication are based on private property rights in the infrastructure will therefore create a cost for users, in terms of autonomy. This cost is the autonomy deficit of exclusive reliance on proprietary models. If ownership of infrastructure is concentrated, or if owners can benefit from exerting political, personal, cultural, or social influence over others who seek access to their infrastructure, they will impose conditions on use of the infrastructure that will satisfy their will to exert influence. If agents other than owners (advertisers, tobacco companies, the U.S. drug czar) value the ability to influence users of the infrastructure, then the influence-exaction component of the price of using the infrastructure will be sold to serve the interests of these third parties. To the extent that these influence exactions are effective, a pure private-property regime for infrastructure allows owners to constrain the autonomy of users. The owners can do this by controlling and manipulating the users' information environment to shape how they perceive their life choices in ways that make them more likely to act in a manner that the owners prefer. + +The traditional progressive or social-democratic response to failures of property-based markets has been administrative regulation. In the area of communications, these responses have taken the form of access regulations-- ranging from common carriage to more limited right-of-reply, fairness ,{[pg 160]}, doctrine-type regulations. Perfect access regulation--in particular, common-carrier obligations--like a perfectly competitive market, could in principle alleviate the autonomy deficit of property. Like markets, however, actual regulation that limits the powers that go with property in infrastructure suffers from a number of limitations. First, the institutional details of the common-carriage regime can skew incentives for what types of communications will be available, and with what degree of freedom. If we learned one thing from the history of American communications policy in the twentieth century, it is that regulated entities are adept at shaping their services, pricing, and business models to take advantage of every weakness in the common-carriage regulatory system. They are even more adept at influencing the regulatory process to introduce lucrative weaknesses into the regulatory system. At present, cable broadband has succeeded in achieving a status almost entirely exempt from access requirements that might mitigate its power to control how the platform is used, and broadband over legacy telephone systems is increasingly winning a parallel status of unregulated semi-monopoly. Second, the organization that owns the infrastructure retains the same internal incentives to control content as it would in the absence of common carriage and will do so to the extent that it can sneak by any imperfections in either the carriage regulations or their enforcement. Third, as long as the network is built to run through a central organizational clearinghouse, that center remains a potential point at which regulators can reassert control or delegate to owners the power to prevent unwanted speech by purposefully limiting the scope of the common-carriage requirements. +={ common-carriage regulatory system } + +As a practical matter, then, if all wireless systems are based on property, just like the wired systems are, then wireless will offer some benefits through the introduction of some, albeit imperfect, competition. However, it will not offer the autonomy-enhancing effects that a genuine diversity of constraint can offer. If, on the other hand, policies currently being experimented with in the United States do result in the emergence of a robust, sustainable wireless communications infrastructure, owned and shared by its users and freely available to all under symmetric technical constraints, it will offer a genuinely alternative communications platform. It may be as technically good as the wired platforms for all users and uses, or it may not. Nevertheless, because of its radically distributed capitalization, and its reliance on commons rendered sustainable by equipment-embedded technical protocols, rather than on markets that depend on institutionally created asymmetric power over communications, a commons-based wireless system will offer an ,{[pg 161]}, infrastructure that operates under genuinely different institutional constraints. Such a system can become an infrastructure of first and last resort for uses that would not fit the constraints of the proprietary market, or for users who find the price-to-influence exaction bundles offered in the market too threatening to their autonomy. + +The emerging viability of commons-based strategies for the provisioning of communications, storage, and computation capacity enables us to take a practical, real world look at the autonomy deficit of a purely property-based communications system. As we compare property to commons, we see that property, by design, introduces a series of legal powers that asymmetrically enable owners of infrastructure to exert influence over users of their systems. This asymmetry is necessary for the functioning of markets. Predictably and systematically, however, it allows one group of actors--owners--to act upon another group of actors--consumers--as objects of manipulation. No single idiom in contemporary culture captures this characteristic better than the term "the market in eyeballs," used to describe the market in advertising slots. Commons, on the other hand, do not rely on asymmetric constraints. They eliminate points of asymmetric control over the resources necessary for effective communication, thereby eliminating the legal bases of the objectification of others. These are not spaces of perfect freedom from all constraints. However, the constraints they impose are substantively different from those generated by either the property system or by an administrative regulatory system. Their introduction alongside proprietary networks therefore diversifies the constraints under which individuals operate. By offering alternative transactional frameworks for alternative information flows, these networks substantially and qualitatively increase the freedom of individuals to perceive the world through their own eyes, and to form their own perceptions of what options are open to them and how they might evaluate alternative courses of action. + +2~ AUTONOMY, MASS MEDIA, AND NONMARKET INFORMATION PRODUCERS + +The autonomy deficit of private communications and information systems is a result of the formal structure of property as an institutional device and the role of communications and information systems as basic requirements in the ability of individuals to formulate purposes and plan actions to fit their lives. The gains flow directly from the institutional characteristics of ,{[pg 162]}, commons. The emergence of the networked information economy makes one other important contribution to autonomy. It qualitatively diversifies the information available to individuals. Information, knowledge, and culture are now produced by sources that respond to a myriad of motivations, rather than primarily the motivation to sell into mass markets. Production is organized in any one of a myriad of productive organizational forms, rather than solely the for-profit business firm. The supplementation of the profit motive and the business organization by other motivations and organizational forms--ranging from individual play to large-scale peer-production projects--provides not only a discontinuously dramatic increase in the number of available information sources but, more significantly, an increase in available information sources that are qualitatively different from others. + +Imagine three storytelling societies: the Reds, the Blues, and the Greens. Each society follows a set of customs as to how they live and how they tell stories. Among the Reds and the Blues, everyone is busy all day, and no one tells stories except in the evening. In the evening, in both of these societies, everyone gathers in a big tent, and there is one designated storyteller who sits in front of the audience and tells stories. It is not that no one is allowed to tell stories elsewhere. However, in these societies, given the time constraints people face, if anyone were to sit down in the shade in the middle of the day and start to tell a story, no one else would stop to listen. Among the Reds, the storyteller is a hereditary position, and he or she alone decides which stories to tell. Among the Blues, the storyteller is elected every night by simple majority vote. Every member of the community is eligible to offer him- or herself as that night's storyteller, and every member is eligible to vote. Among the Greens, people tell stories all day, and everywhere. Everyone tells stories. People stop and listen if they wish, sometimes in small groups of two or three, sometimes in very large groups. Stories in each of these societies play a very important role in understanding and evaluating the world. They are the way people describe the world as they know it. They serve as testing grounds to imagine how the world might be, and as a way to work out what is good and desirable and what is bad and undesirable. The societies are isolated from each other and from any other source of information. + +Now consider Ron, Bob, and Gertrude, individual members of the Reds, Blues, and Greens, respectively. Ron's perception of the options open to him and his evaluation of these options are largely controlled by the hereditary storyteller. He can try to contact the storyteller to persuade him to tell ,{[pg 163]}, different stories, but the storyteller is the figure who determines what stories are told. To the extent that these stories describe the universe of options Ron knows about, the storyteller defines the options Ron has. The storyteller's perception of the range of options largely will determine the size and diversity of the range of options open to Ron. This not only limits the range of known options significantly, but it also prevents Ron from choosing to become a storyteller himself. Ron is subjected to the storyteller's control to the extent that, by selecting which stories to tell and how to tell them, the storyteller can shape Ron's aspirations and actions. In other words, both the freedom to be an active producer and the freedom from the control of another are constrained. Bob's autonomy is constrained not by the storyteller, but by the majority of voters among the Blues. These voters select the storyteller, and the way they choose will affect Bob's access to stories profoundly. If the majority selects only a small group of entertaining, popular, pleasing, or powerful (in some other dimension, like wealth or political power) storytellers, then Bob's perception of the range of options will be only slightly wider than Ron's, if at all. The locus of power to control Bob's sense of what he can and cannot do has shifted. It is not the hereditary storyteller, but rather the majority. Bob can participate in deciding which stories can be told. He can offer himself as a storyteller every night. He cannot, however, decide to become a storyteller independently of the choices of a majority of Blues, nor can he decide for himself what stories he will hear. He is significantly constrained by the preferences of a simple majority. Gertrude is in a very different position. First, she can decide to tell a story whenever she wants to, subject only to whether there is any other Green who wants to listen. She is free to become an active producer except as constrained by the autonomy of other individual Greens. Second, she can select from the stories that any other Green wishes to tell, because she and all those surrounding her can sit in the shade and tell a story. No one person, and no majority, determines for her whether she can or cannot tell a story. No one can unilaterally control whose stories Gertrude can listen to. And no one can determine for her the range and diversity of stories that will be available to her from any other member of the Greens who wishes to tell a story. + +The difference between the Reds, on the one hand, and the Blues or Greens, on the other hand, is formal. Among the Reds, only the storyteller may tell the story as a matter of formal right, and listeners only have a choice of whether to listen to this story or to no story at all. Among the ,{[pg 164]}, Blues and the Greens anyone may tell a story as a matter of formal right, and listeners, as a matter of formal right, may choose from whom they will hear. The difference between the Reds and the Blues, on the one hand, and the Greens, on the other hand, is economic. In the former, opportunities for storytelling are scarce. The social cost is higher, in terms of stories unavailable for hearing, or of choosing one storyteller over another. The difference between the Blues and the Greens, then, is not formal, but practical. The high cost of communication created by the Blues' custom of listening to stories only in the evening, in a big tent, together with everyone else, makes it practically necessary to select "a storyteller" who occupies an evening. Since the stories play a substantive role in individuals' perceptions of how they might live their lives, that practical difference alters the capacity of individual Blues and Greens to perceive a wide and diverse set of options, as well as to exercise control over their perceptions and evaluations of options open for living their lives and to exercise the freedom themselves to be storytellers. The range of stories Bob is likely to listen to, and the degree to which he can choose unilaterally whether he will tell or listen, and to which story, are closer, as a practical matter, to those of Ron than to those of Gertrude. Gertrude has many more stories and storytelling settings to choose from, and many more instances where she can offer her own stories to others in her society. She, and everyone else in her society, can be exposed to a wider variety of conceptions of how life can and ought to be lived. This wider diversity of perceptions gives her greater choice and increases her ability to compose her own life story out of the more varied materials at her disposal. She can be more self-authored than either Ron or Bob. This diversity replicates, in large measure, the range of perceptions of how one might live a life that can be found among all Greens, precisely because the storytelling customs make every Green a potential storyteller, a potential source of information and inspiration about how one might live one's life. +={ diversity +5 } + +All this could sound like a morality tale about how wonderfully the market maximizes autonomy. The Greens easily could sound like Greenbacks, rather than like environmentalists staking out public parks as information commons. However, this is not the case in the industrial information economy, where media markets have high entry barriers and large economies of scale. It is costly to start up a television station, not to speak of a network, a newspaper, a cable company, or a movie distribution system. It is costly to produce the kind of content delivered over these systems. Once production costs or the costs of laying a network are incurred, the additional marginal ,{[pg 165]}, cost of making information available to many users, or of adding users to the network, is much smaller than the initial cost. This is what gives information and cultural products and communications facilities supply-side economies of scale and underlies the industrial model of producing them. The result is that the industrial information economy is better stylized by the Reds and Blues rather than by the Greens. While there is no formal limitation on anyone producing and disseminating information products, the economic realities limit the opportunities for storytelling in the mass-mediated environment and make storytelling opportunities a scarce good. It is very costly to tell stories in the mass-mediated environment. Therefore, most storytellers are commercial entities that seek to sell their stories to the audience. Given the discussion earlier in this chapter, it is fairly straightforward to see how the Greens represent greater freedom to choose to become an active producer of one's own information environment. It is similarly clear that they make it exceedingly difficult for any single actor to control the information flow to any other actor. We can now focus on how the story provides a way of understanding the justification and contours of the third focus of autonomy-respecting policy: the requirement that government not limit the quantity and diversity of information available. +={ autonomy : + mass media and +1 ; + capital for production : + production costs as limiting ; + commercial model of communication : + autonomy and +1 ; + constraints of information production, monetary : + production costs as limiting ; + cost : + of production, as limiting ; + individual autonomy : + mass media and +1 ; + industrial model of communication : + autonomy and +1 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + autonomy and +1 ; + monetary constraints on information production : + production costs as limiting ; + money : + cost of production as limiting ; + information production capital : + production costs as limiting ; + physical capital for production : + production costs as limiting ; + production capital : + production costs as limiting ; + traditional model of communication : + autonomy and +1 ; + diversity : + mass-mediated environments +1 +} + +The fact that our mass-mediated environment is mostly commercial makes it more like the Blues than the Reds. These outlets serve the tastes of the majority--expressed in some combination of cash payment and attention to advertising. I do not offer here a full analysis--covered so well by Baker in Media, Markets, and Democracy--as to why mass-media markets do not reflect the preferences of their audiences very well. Presented here is a tweak of an older set of analyses of whether monopoly or competition is better in mass-media markets to illustrate the relationship between markets, channels, and diversity of content. In chapter 6, I describe in greater detail the SteinerBeebe model of diversity and number of channels. For our purposes here, it is enough to note that this model shows how advertiser-supported media tend to program lowest-common-denominator programs, intended to "capture the eyeballs" of the largest possible number of viewers. These media do not seek to identify what viewers intensely want to watch, but tend to clear programs that are tolerable enough to viewers so that they do not switch off their television. The presence or absence of smaller-segment oriented television depends on the shape of demand in an audience, the number of channels available to serve that audience, and the ownership structure. The relationship between diversity of content and diversity of structure or ownership ,{[pg 166]}, is not smooth. It occurs in leaps. Small increases in the number of outlets continue to serve large clusters of low-intensity preferences--that is, what people find acceptable. A new channel that is added will more often try to take a bite out of a large pie represented by some lowest-commondenominator audience segment than to try to serve a new niche market. Only after a relatively high threshold number of outlets are reached do advertiser-supported media have sufficient reason to try to capture much smaller and higher-intensity preference clusters--what people are really interested in. The upshot is that if all storytellers in society are profit maximizing and operate in a market, the number of storytellers and venues matters tremendously for the diversity of stories told in a society. It is quite possible to have very active market competition in how well the same narrow set of stories are told, as opposed to what stories are told, even though there are many people who would rather hear different stories altogether, but who are in clusters too small, too poor, or too uncoordinated to persuade the storytellers to change their stories rather than their props. +={ Baker, Edwin } + +The networked information economy is departing from the industrial information economy along two dimensions that suggest a radical increase in the number of storytellers and the qualitative diversity of stories told. At the simplest level, the cost of a channel is so low that some publication capacity is becoming available to practically every person in society. Ranging from an e-mail account, to a few megabytes of hosting capacity to host a subscriber's Web site, to space on a peer-to-peer distribution network available for any kind of file (like FreeNet or eDonkey), individuals are now increasingly in possession of the basic means necessary to have an outlet for their stories. The number of channels is therefore in the process of jumping from some infinitesimally small fraction of the population--whether this fraction is three networks or five hundred channels almost does not matter by comparison--to a number of channels roughly equal to the number of users. This dramatic increase in the number of channels is matched by the fact that the low costs of communications and production enable anyone who wishes to tell a story to do so, whether or not the story they tell will predictably capture enough of a paying (or advertising-susceptible) audience to recoup production costs. Self-expression, religious fervor, hobby, community seeking, political mobilization, any one of the many and diverse reasons that might drive us to want to speak to others is now a sufficient reason to enable us to do so in mediated form to people both distant and close. The basic filter of marketability has been removed, allowing anything ,{[pg 167]}, that emerges out of the great diversity of human experience, interest, taste, and expressive motivation to flow to and from everyone connected to everyone else. Given that all diversity within the industrial information economy needed to flow through the marketability filter, the removal of that filter marks a qualitative increase in the range and diversity of life options, opinions, tastes, and possible life plans available to users of the networked information economy. + +The image of everyone being equally able to tell stories brings, perhaps more crisply than any other image, two critical objections to the attractiveness of the networked information economy: quality and cacophony. The problem of quality is easily grasped, but is less directly connected to autonomy. Having many high school plays and pickup basketball games is not the same as having Hollywood movies or the National Basketball Association (NBA). The problem of quality understood in these terms, to the extent that the shift from industrial to networked information production in fact causes it, does not represent a threat to autonomy as much as a welfare cost of making the autonomy-enhancing change. More troubling from the perspective of autonomy is the problem of information overload, which is related to, but distinct from, production quality. The cornucopia of stories out of which each of us can author our own will only enhance autonomy if it does not resolve into a cacophony of meaningless noise. How, one might worry, can a system of information production enhance the ability of an individual to author his or her life, if it is impossible to tell whether this or that particular story or piece of information is credible, or whether it is relevant to the individual's particular experience? Will individuals spend all their time sifting through mounds of inane stories and fairy tales, instead of evaluating which life is best for them based on a small and manageable set of credible and relevant stories? None of the philosophical accounts of substantive autonomy suggests that there is a linearly increasing relationship between the number of options open to an individual--or in this case, perceivable by an individual--and that person's autonomy. Information overload and decision costs can get in the way of actually living one's autonomously selected life. + +The quality problem is often raised in public discussions of the Internet, and takes the form of a question: Where will high-quality information products, like movies, come from? This form of the objection, while common, is underspecified normatively and overstated descriptively. First, it is not at all clear what might be meant by "quality," insofar as it is a characteristic of ,{[pg 168]}, information, knowledge, and cultural production that is negatively affected by the shift from an industrial to a networked information economy. Chapter 2 explains that information has always been produced in various modalities, not only in market-oriented organizations and certainly not in proprietary strategies. Political theory is not "better" along any interesting dimension when written by someone aiming to maximize her own or her publisher's commercial profits. Most of the commercial, proprietary online encyclopedias are not better than /{Wikipedia}/ along any clearly observable dimension. Moreover, many information and cultural goods are produced on a relational model, rather than a packaged-goods model. The emergence of the digitally networked environment does not much change their economics or sustainability. Professional theatre that depends on live performances is an example, as are musical performances. To the extent, therefore, that the emergence of substantial scope for nonmarket, distributed production in a networked information economy places pressure on "quality," it is quality of a certain kind. The threatened desiderata are those that are uniquely attractive about industrially produced mass-market products. The high-production-cost Hollywood movie or television series are the threatened species. Even that species is not entirely endangered, and the threat varies for different industries, as explained in some detail in chapter 11. Some movies, particularly those currently made for video release only, may well, in fact, recede. However, truly high-production-value movies will continue to have a business model through release windows other than home video distribution. Independently, the pressure on advertising-supported television from multichannel video-- cable and satellite--on the other hand, is pushing for more low-cost productions like reality TV. That internal development in mass media, rather than the networked information economy, is already pushing industrial producers toward low-cost, low-quality productions. Moreover, as a large section of chapter 7 illustrates, peer production and nonmarket production are producing desirable public information--news and commentary--that offer qualities central to democratic discourse. Chapter 8 discusses how these two forms of production provide a more transparent and plastic cultural environment--both central to the individual's capacity for defining his or her goals and options. What emerges in the networked information environment, therefore, will not be a system for low-quality amateur mimicry of existing commercial products. What will emerge is space for much more expression, from diverse sources and of diverse qualities. Freedom--the freedom to speak, but also to be free from manipulation and to be cognizant ,{[pg 169]}, of many and diverse options--inheres in this radically greater diversity of information, knowledge, and culture through which to understand the world and imagine how one could be. +={ high-production value content } + +Rejecting the notion that there will be an appreciable loss of quality in some absolute sense does not solve the deeper problem of information overload, or having too much information to be able to focus or act upon it. Having too much information with no real way of separating the wheat from the chaff forms what we might call the Babel objection. Individuals must have access to some mechanism that sifts through the universe of information, knowledge, and cultural moves in order to whittle them down to a manageable and usable scope. The question then becomes whether the networked information economy, given the human need for filtration, actually improves the information environment of individuals relative to the industrial information economy. There are three elements to the answer: First, as a baseline, it is important to recognize the power that inheres in the editorial function. The extent to which information overload inhibits autonomy relative to the autonomy of an individual exposed to a well-edited information flow depends on how much the editor who whittles down the information flow thereby gains power over the life of the user of the editorial function, and how he or she uses that power. Second, there is the question of whether users can select and change their editor freely, or whether the editorial function is bundled with other communicative functions and sold by service providers among which users have little choice. Finally, there is the understanding that filtration and accreditation are themselves information goods, like any other, and that they too can be produced on a commonsbased, nonmarket model, and therefore without incurring the autonomy deficit that a reintroduction of property to solve the Babel objection would impose. +={ accreditation +8 ; + Babel objection +9 ; + filtering +8 ; + information overload and Babel objection +9 ; + relevance filtering +8 +} + +Relevance filtration and accreditation are integral parts of all communications. A communication must be relevant for a given sender to send to a given recipient and relevant for the recipient to receive. Accreditation further filters relevant information for credibility. Decisions of filtration for purposes of relevance and accreditation are made with reference to the values of the person filtering the information, not the values of the person receiving the information. For instance, the editor of a cable network newsmagazine decides whether a given story is relevant to send out. The owner of the cable system decides whether it is, in the aggregate, relevant to its viewers to see that newsmagazine on its system. Only if both so decide, does each viewer ,{[pg 170]}, get the residual choice of whether to view the story. Of the three decisions that must coincide to mark the newsmagazine as relevant to the viewer, only one is under the control of the individual recipient. And, while the editor's choice might be perceived in some sense as inherent to the production of the information, the cable operator's choice is purely a function of its role as proprietor of the infrastructure. The point to focus on is that the recipient's judgment is dependent on the cable operator's decision as to whether to release the program. The primary benefit of proprietary systems as mechanisms of avoiding the problem of information overload or the Babel objection is precisely the fact that the individual cannot exercise his own judgment as to all the programs that the cable operator--or other commercial intermediary between someone who makes a statement and someone who might receive it--has decided not to release. +={ culture : + shaping perceptions of others +1 ; + manipulating perceptions of others +1 ; + perceptions of others, shaping +1 ; + shaping perceptions of others +1 +} + +As with any flow, control over a necessary passageway or bottleneck in the course of a communication gives the person controlling that point the power to direct the entire flow downstream from it. This power enables the provision of a valuable filtration service, which promises the recipient that he or she will not spend hours gazing at irrelevant materials. However, filtration only enhances the autonomy of users if the editor's notions of relevance and quality resemble those of the sender and the recipient. Imagine a recipient who really wants to be educated about African politics, but also likes sports. Under perfect conditions, he would seek out information on African politics most of the time, with occasional searches for information on sports. The editor, however, makes her money by selling advertising. For her, the relevant information is whatever will keep the viewer's attention most closely on the screen while maintaining a pleasantly acquisitive mood. Given a choice between transmitting information about famine in Sudan, which she worries will make viewers feel charitable rather than acquisitive, and transmitting a football game that has no similar adverse effects, she will prefer the latter. The general point should be obvious. For purposes of enhancing the autonomy of the user, the filtering and accreditation function suffers from an agency problem. To the extent that the values of the editor diverge from those of the user, an editor who selects relevant information based on her values and plans for the users does not facilitate user autonomy, but rather imposes her own preferences regarding what should be relevant to users given her decisions about their life choices. A parallel effect occurs with accreditation. An editor might choose to treat as credible a person whose views or manner of presentation draw audiences, rather than necessary ,{[pg 171]}, the wisest or best-informed of commentators. The wide range in quality of talking heads on television should suffice as an example. The Babel objection may give us good reason to pause before we celebrate the networked information economy, but it does not provide us with reasons to celebrate the autonomy effects of the industrial information economy. +={ behavior : + number and variety of options ; + blocked access : + autonomy and +1 ; + diversity : + of behavioral options ; + freedom : + behavioral options ; + options, behavioral ; + variety of behavioral options ; + number of behavioral options +} + +The second component of the response to the Babel objection has to do with the organization of filtration and accreditation in the industrial information economy. The cable operator owns its cable system by virtue of capital investment and (perhaps) expertise in laying cables, hooking up homes, and selling video services. However, it is control over the pipeline into the home that gives it the editorial role in the materials that reach the home. Given the concentrated economics of cable systems, this editorial power is not easy to replace and is not subject to open competition. The same phenomenon occurs with other media that are concentrated and where the information production and distribution functions are integrated with relevance filtration and accreditation: from one-newspaper towns to broadcasters or cable broadband service providers. An edited environment that frees the individual to think about and choose from a small selection of information inputs becomes less attractive when the editor takes on that role as a result of the ownership of carriage media, a large printing press, or copyrights in existing content, rather than as a result of selection by the user as a preferred editor or filter. The existence of an editor means that there is less information for an individual to process. It does not mean that the values according to which the information was pared down are those that the user would have chosen absent the tied relationship between editing and either proprietary content production or carriage. +={ accreditation : + as distributed system +1 ; + distributed filtering and accreditation +1 ; + filtering : + as distributed system +1 ; + relevance filtering : + as distributed system +1 +} + +Finally, and most important, just like any other form of information, knowledge, and culture, relevance and accreditation can be, and are, produced in a distributed fashion. Instead of relying on the judgment of a record label and a DJ of a commercial radio station for what music is worth listening to, users can compare notes as to what they like, and give music to friends whom they think will like it. This is the virtue of music file-sharing systems as distribution systems. Moreover, some of the most interesting experiments in peer production described in chapter 3 are focused on filtration. From the discussions of /{Wikipedia}/ to the moderation and metamoderation scheme of Slashdot, and from the sixty thousand volunteers that make up the Open Directory Project to the PageRank system used by Google, the means of filtering data are being produced within the networked information ,{[pg 172]}, economy using peer production and the coordinate patterns of nonproprietary production more generally. The presence of these filters provides the most important answer to the Babel objection. The presence of filters that do not depend on proprietary control, and that do not bundle proprietary content production and carriage services with filtering, offers a genuinely distinct approach toward presenting autonomous individuals with a choice among different filters that reflect genuinely diverse motivations and organizational forms of the providers. + +Beyond the specific efforts at commons-based accreditation and relevance filtration, we are beginning to observe empirically that patterns of use of the Internet and the World Wide Web exhibit a significant degree of order. In chapter 7, I describe in detail and apply the literature that has explored network topology to the Babel objection in the context of democracy and the emerging networked public sphere, but its basic lesson applies here as well. In brief, the structure of linking on the Internet suggests that, even without quasi-formal collaborative filtering, the coordinate behavior of many autonomous individuals settles on an order that permits us to make sense of the tremendous flow of information that results from universal practical ability to speak and create. We observe the Web developing an order--with high-visibility nodes, and clusters of thickly connected "regions" where groups of Web sites accredit each other by mutual referencing. The high-visibility Web sites provide points of condensation for informing individual choices, every bit as much as they form points of condensation for public discourse. The enormous diversity of topical and context-dependent clustering, whose content is nonetheless available for anyone to reach from anywhere, provides both a way of slicing through the information and rendering it comprehensible, and a way of searching for new sources of information beyond those that one interacts with as a matter of course. The Babel objection is partly solved, then, by the fact that people tend to congregate around common choices. We do this not as a result of purposeful manipulation, but rather because in choosing whether or not to read something, we probably give some weight to whether or not other people have chosen to read it. Unless one assumes that individual human beings are entirely dissimilar from each other, then the fact that many others have chosen to read something is a reasonable signal that it may be worthwhile for me to read. This phenomenon is both universal--as we see with the fact that Google successfully provides useful ranking by aggregating all judgments around the Web as to the relevance of any given Web site--and recursively ,{[pg 173]}, present within interest-based and context-based clusters or groups. The clustering and actual degree distribution in the Web suggests, however, that people do not simply follow the herd--they will not read whatever a majority reads. Rather, they will make additional rough judgments about which other people's preferences are most likely to predict their own, or which topics to look in. From these very simple rules--other people share something with me in their tastes, and some sets of other people share more with me than others--we see the Babel objection solved on a distributed model, without anyone exerting formal legal control or practical economic power. +={ network topology ; + structure of network ; + topology, network +} + +Why, however, is this not a simple reintroduction of heteronomy, of dependence on the judgment of others that subjects individuals to their control? The answer is that, unlike with proprietary filters imposed at bottlenecks or gateways, attention-distribution patterns emerge from many small-scale, independent choices where free choice exists. They are not easily manipulable by anyone. Significantly, the millions of Web sites that do not have high traffic do not "go out of business." As Clay Shirky puts it, while my thoughts about the weekend are unlikely to be interesting to three random users, they may well be interesting, and a basis for conversation, for three of my close friends. The fact that power law distributions of attention to Web sites result from random distributions of interests, not from formal or practical bottlenecks that cannot be worked around, means that whenever an individual chooses to search based on some mechanism other than the simplest, thinnest belief that individuals are all equally similar and dissimilar, a different type of site will emerge as highly visible. Topical sites cluster, unsurprisingly, around topical preference groups; one site does not account for all readers irrespective of their interests. We, as individuals, also go through an iterative process of assigning a likely relevance to the judgments of others. Through this process, we limit the information overload that would threaten to swamp our capacity to know; we diversify the sources of information to which we expose ourselves; and we avoid a stifling dependence on an editor whose judgments we cannot circumvent. We might spend some of our time using the most general, "human interest has some overlap" algorithm represented by Google for some things, but use political common interest, geographic or local interest, hobbyist, subject matter, or the like, to slice the universe of potential others with whose judgments we will choose to affiliate for any given search. By a combination of random searching and purposeful deployment of social mapping--who is likely to be interested in what is relevant to me now--we can solve the Babel objection while subjecting ,{[pg 174]}, ourselves neither to the legal and market power of proprietors of communications infrastructure or media products nor to the simple judgments of the undifferentiated herd. These observations have the virtue of being not only based on rigorous mathematical and empirical studies, as we see in chapter 7, but also being more consistent with intuitive experience of anyone who has used the Internet for any decent length of time. We do not degenerate into mindless meandering through a cacophonous din. We find things we want quite well. We stumble across things others suggest to us. When we do go on an unplanned walk, within a very short number of steps we either find something interesting or go back to looking in ways that are more self-conscious and ordered. +={ Shirky, Clay } + +The core response to the Babel objection is, then, to accept that filtration is crucial to an autonomous individual. Nonetheless, that acknowledgement does not suggest that the filtration and accreditation systems that the industrial information economy has in fact produced, tied to proprietary control over content production and exchange, are the best means to protect autonomous individuals from the threat of paralysis due to information overload. Property in infrastructure and content affords control that can be used to provide filtration. To that extent, property provides the power for some people to shape the will-formation processes of others. The adoption of distributed information-production systems--both structured as cooperative peer-production enterprises and unstructured coordinate results of individual behavior, like the clustering of preferences around Web sites--does not mean that filtration and accreditation lose their importance. It only means that autonomy is better served when these communicative functions, like others, are available from a nonproprietary, open model of production alongside the proprietary mechanisms of filtration. Being autonomous in this context does not mean that we have to make all the information, read it all, and sift through it all by ourselves. It means that the combination of institutional and practical constraints on who can produce information, who can access it, and who can determine what is worth reading leaves each individual with a substantial role in determining what he shall read, and whose judgment he shall adhere to in sifting through the information environment, for what purposes, and under what circumstances. As always in the case of autonomy for context-bound individuals, the question is the relative role that individuals play, not some absolute, context-independent role that could be defined as being the condition of freedom. + +The increasing feasibility of nonmarket, nonproprietary production of information, ,{[pg 175]}, knowledge, and culture, and of communications and computation capacity holds the promise of increasing the degree of autonomy for individuals in the networked information economy. By removing basic capital and organizational constraints on individual action and effective cooperation, the networked information economy allows individuals to do more for and by themselves, and to form associations with others whose help they require in pursuing their plans. We are beginning to see a shift from the highly constrained roles of employee and consumer in the industrial economy, to more flexible, self-authored roles of user and peer participant in cooperative ventures, at least for some part of life. By providing as commons a set of core resources necessary for perceiving the state of the world, constructing one's own perceptions of it and one's own contributions to the information environment we all occupy, the networked information economy diversifies the set of constraints under which individuals can view the world and attenuates the extent to which users are subject to manipulation and control by the owners of core communications and information systems they rely on. By making it possible for many more diversely motivated and organized individuals and groups to communicate with each other, the emerging model of information production provides individuals with radically different sources and types of stories, out of which we can work to author our own lives. Information, knowledge, and culture can now be produced not only by many more people than could do so in the industrial information economy, but also by individuals and in subjects and styles that could not pass the filter of marketability in the mass-media environment. The result is a proliferation of strands of stories and of means of scanning the universe of potential stories about how the world is and how it might become, leaving individuals with much greater leeway to choose, and therefore a much greater role in weaving their own life tapestry. ,{[pg 176]}, + +1~ Chapter 6 - Political Freedom Part 1: The Trouble with Mass Media +={ commercial mass media : + See also traditional model of communication commercial mass media, political freedom and +53 ; + mass media, political freedom and +53 ; + political freedom, mass media and +53 +} + +Modern democracies and mass media have coevolved throughout the twentieth century. The first modern national republics--the early American Republic, the French Republic from the Revolution to the Terror, the Dutch Republic, and the early British parliamentary monarchy--preexisted mass media. They provide us with some model of the shape of the public sphere in a republic without mass media, what Jurgen Habermas called the bourgeois public sphere. However, the expansion of democracies in complex modern societies has largely been a phenomenon of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries--in particular, the post-World War II years. During this period, the platform of the public sphere was dominated by mass media--print, radio, and television. In authoritarian regimes, these means of mass communication were controlled by the state. In democracies, they operated either under state ownership, with varying degrees of independence from the sitting government, or under private ownership financially dependent on advertising markets. We do not, therefore, have examples of complex modern democracies whose public sphere is built on a platform that is widely ,{[pg 177]}, distributed and independent of both government control and market demands. The Internet as a technology, and the networked information economy as an organizational and social model of information and cultural production, promise the emergence of a substantial alternative platform for the public sphere. The networked public sphere, as it is currently developing, suggests that it will have no obvious points of control or exertion of influence--either by fiat or by purchase. It seems to invert the mass-media model in that it is driven heavily by what dense clusters of users find intensely interesting and engaging, rather than by what large swathes of them find mildly interesting on average. And it promises to offer a platform for engaged citizens to cooperate and provide observations and opinions, and to serve as a watchdog over society on a peer-production model. +={ democratic societies +1 ; + networked public sphere : + defined +4 ; + public sphere +4 +} + +% ={Habermas, Jurgen} + +The claim that the Internet democratizes is hardly new. "Everyone a pamphleteer" has been an iconic claim about the Net since the early 1990s. It is a claim that has been subjected to significant critique. What I offer, therefore, in this chapter and the next is not a restatement of the basic case, but a detailed analysis of how the Internet and the emerging networked information economy provide us with distinct improvements in the structure of the public sphere over the mass media. I will also explain and discuss the solutions that have emerged within the networked environment itself to some of the persistent concerns raised about democracy and the Internet: the problems of information overload, fragmentation of discourse, and the erosion of the watchdog function of the media. + +For purposes of considering political freedom, I adopt a very limited definition of "public sphere." The term is used in reference to the set of practices that members of a society use to communicate about matters they understand to be of public concern and that potentially require collective action or recognition. Moreover, not even all communications about matters of potential public concern can be said to be part of the public sphere. Communications within self-contained relationships whose boundaries are defined independently of the political processes for collective action are "private," if those communications remain purely internal. Dinner-table conversations, grumblings at a bridge club, or private letters have that characteristic, if they occur in a context where they are not later transmitted across the associational boundaries to others who are not part of the family or the bridge club. Whether these conversations are, or are not, part of the public sphere depends on the actual communications practices in a given society. The same practices can become an initial step in generating public opinion ,{[pg 178]}, in the public sphere if they are nodes in a network of communications that do cross associational boundaries. A society with a repressive regime that controls the society-wide communications facilities nonetheless may have an active public sphere if social networks and individual mobility are sufficient to allow opinions expressed within discrete associational settings to spread throughout a substantial portion of the society and to take on political meaning for those who discuss them. The public sphere is, then, a sociologically descriptive category. It is a term for signifying how, if at all, people in a given society speak to each other in their relationship as constituents about what their condition is and what they ought or ought not to do as a political unit. This is a purposefully narrow conception of the public sphere. It is intended to focus on the effects of the networked environment on what has traditionally been understood to be political participation in a republic. I postpone consideration of a broader conception of the public sphere, and of the political nature of who gets to decide meaning and how cultural interpretations of the conditions of life and the alternatives open to a society are created and negotiated in a society until chapter 8. +={ private communications } + +The practices that define the public sphere are structured by an interaction of culture, organization, institutions, economics, and technical communications infrastructure. The technical platforms of ink and rag paper, handpresses, and the idea of a postal service were equally present in the early American Republic, Britain, and France of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, the degree of literacy, the social practices of newspaper reading, the relative social egalitarianism as opposed to elitism, the practices of political suppression or subsidy, and the extent of the postal system led to a more egalitarian, open public sphere, shaped as a network of smaller-scale local clusters in the United States, as opposed to the more tightly regulated and elitist national and metropolis-centered public spheres of France and Britain. The technical platforms of mass-circulation print and radio were equally available in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, in Britain, and in the United States in the 1930s. Again, however, the vastly different political and legal structures of the former created an authoritarian public sphere, while the latter two, both liberal public spheres, differed significantly in the business organization and economic model of production, the legal framework and the cultural practices of reading and listening-- leading to the then still elitist overlay on the public sphere in Britain relative to a more populist public sphere in the United States. +={ commercial mass media : + as platform for public sphere +3 | structure of +3 ; + commercial model of communication : + emerging role of mass media +3 | structure of mass media +3 ; + industrial model of communication : + emerging role of mass media +3 | structure of mass media +3 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + emerging role of mass media +3 | structure of mass media +3 ; + mass media : + as platform for public sphere +3 | structure of +3 ; + mass media : + commercial platform for public sphere +3 ; + networked public sphere : + mass-media platform for +3 ; + political freedom, mass media and : + commercial platform for public sphere +3 ; + public sphere : + mass media platform for +3 ; + structure of mass media +3 ; + traditional model of communication : + emerging role of mass media +3 | structure of mass media +3 +} + +Mass media structured the public sphere of the twentieth century in all ,{[pg 179]}, advanced modern societies. They combined a particular technical architecture, a particular economic cost structure, a limited range of organizational forms, two or three primary institutional models, and a set of cultural practices typified by consumption of finished media goods. The structure of the mass media resulted in a relatively controlled public sphere--although the degree of control was vastly different depending on whether the institutional model was liberal or authoritarian--with influence over the debate in the public sphere heavily tilted toward those who controlled the means of mass communications. The technical architecture was a one-way, hub-and-spoke structure, with unidirectional links to its ends, running from the center to the periphery. A very small number of production facilities produced large amounts of identical copies of statements or communications, which could then be efficiently sent in identical form to very large numbers of recipients. There was no return loop to send observations or opinions back from the edges to the core of the architecture in the same channel and with similar salience to the communications process, and no means within the massmedia architecture for communication among the end points about the content of the exchanges. Communications among the individuals at the ends were shunted to other media--personal communications or telephones-- which allowed communications among the ends. However, these edge media were either local or one-to-one. Their social reach, and hence potential political efficacy, was many orders of magnitude smaller than that of the mass media. + +The economic structure was typified by high-cost hubs and cheap, ubiquitous, reception-only systems at the ends. This led to a limited range of organizational models available for production: those that could collect sufficient funds to set up a hub. These included: state-owned hubs in most countries; advertising-supported commercial hubs in some of the liberal states, most distinctly in the United States; and, particularly for radio and television, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) model or hybrid models like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Canada. The role of hybrid and purely commercial, advertising-supported media increased substantially around the globe outside the United States in the last two to three decades of the twentieth century. Over the course of the century, there also emerged civil-society or philanthropy-supported hubs, like the party presses in Europe, nonprofit publications like Consumer Reports (later, in the United States), and, more important, public radio and television. The oneway technical architecture and the mass-audience organizational model underwrote ,{[pg 180]}, the development of a relatively passive cultural model of media consumption. Consumers (or subjects, in authoritarian systems) at the ends of these systems would treat the communications that filled the public sphere as finished goods. These were to be treated not as moves in a conversation, but as completed statements whose addressees were understood to be passive: readers, listeners, and viewers. + +The Internet's effect on the public sphere is different in different societies, depending on what salient structuring components of the existing public sphere its introduction perturbs. In authoritarian countries, it is the absence of a single or manageably small set of points of control that is placing the greatest pressure on the capacity of the regimes to control their public sphere, and thereby to simplify the problem of controlling the actions of the population. In liberal countries, the effect of the Internet operates through its implications for economic cost and organizational form. In both cases, however, the most fundamental and potentially long-standing effect that Internet communications are having is on the cultural practice of public communication. The Internet allows individuals to abandon the idea of the public sphere as primarily constructed of finished statements uttered by a small set of actors socially understood to be "the media" (whether state owned or commercial) and separated from society, and to move toward a set of social practices that see individuals as participating in a debate. Statements in the public sphere can now be seen as invitations for a conversation, not as finished goods. Individuals can work their way through their lives, collecting observations and forming opinions that they understand to be practically capable of becoming moves in a broader public conversation, rather than merely the grist for private musings. + +2~ DESIGN CHARACTERISTICS OF A COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM FOR A LIBERAL PUBLIC PLATFORM OR A LIBERAL PUBLIC SPHERE +={ commercial mass media : + design characteristics of liberal public sphere +8 ; + liberal societies : + design of public sphere +8 ; + mass media, political freedom and : + design characteristics of liberal public sphere +8 ; + networked public sphere : + liberal, design characteristics of +8 ; + political freedom, mass media and : + design characteristics of liberal public sphere +8 ; + public sphere : + liberal, design characteristics of +8 +} + +How is private opinion about matters of collective, formal, public action formed? How is private opinion communicated to others in a form and in channels that allow it to be converted into a public, political opinion, and a position worthy of political concern by the formal structures of governance of a society? How, ultimately, is such a political and public opinion converted into formal state action? These questions are central to understanding how ,{[pg 181]}, individuals in complex contemporary societies, located at great distances from each other and possessing completely different endowments of material, intellectual, social, and formal ties and capabilities, can be citizens of the same democratic polity rather than merely subjects of a more or less responsive authority. In the idealized Athenian agora or New England town hall, the answers are simple and local. All citizens meet in the agora, they speak in a way that all relevant citizens can hear, they argue with each other, and ultimately they also constitute the body that votes and converts the opinion that emerges into a legitimate action of political authority. Of course, even in those small, locally bounded polities, things were never quite so simple. Nevertheless, the idealized version does at least give us a set of functional characteristics that we might seek in a public sphere: a place where people can come to express and listen to proposals for agenda items--things that ought to concern us as members of a polity and that have the potential to become objects of collective action; a place where we can make and gather statements of fact about the state of our world and about alternative courses of action; where we can listen to opinions about the relative quality and merits of those facts and alternative courses of action; and a place where we can bring our own concerns to the fore and have them evaluated by others. + +Understood in this way, the public sphere describes a social communication process. Habermas defines the public sphere as "a network for communicating information and points of view (i.e., opinions expressing affirmative or negative attitudes)"; which, in the process of communicating this information and these points of view, filters and synthesizes them "in such a way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions."~{ Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, Contributions to Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). }~ Taken in this descriptive sense, the public sphere does not relate to a particular form of public discourse that is normatively attractive from some perspective or another. It defines a particular set of social practices that are necessary for the functioning of any complex social system that includes elements of governing human beings. There are authoritarian public spheres, where communications are regimented and controlled by the government in order to achieve acquiescence and to mobilize support, rather than relying solely on force to suppress dissent and opposition. There are various forms of liberal public spheres, constituted by differences in the political and communications systems scattered around liberal democracies throughout the world. The BBC or the state-owned televisions throughout postwar Western European democracies, for example, constituted the public spheres in different ,{[pg 182]}, ways than did the commercial mass media that dominated the American public sphere. As advertiser-supported mass media have come to occupy a larger role even in places where they were not dominant before the last quarter of the twentieth century, the long American experience with this form provides useful insight globally. +={ Habermas, Jurgen } + +In order to consider the relative advantages and failures of various platforms for a public sphere, we need to define a minimal set of desiderata that such a platform must possess. My point is not to define an ideal set of constraints and affordances of the public sphere that would secure legitimacy or would be most attractive under one conception of democracy or another. Rather, my intention is to define a design question: What characteristics of a communications system and practices are sufficiently basic to be desired by a wide range of conceptions of democracy? With these in hand, we will be able to compare the commercial mass media and the emerging alternatives in the digitally networked environment. + +/{Universal Intake}/. Any system of government committed to the idea that, in principle, the concerns of all those governed by that system are equally respected as potential proper subjects for political action and that all those governed have a say in what government should do requires a public sphere that can capture the observations of all constituents. These include at least their observations about the state of the world as they perceive and understand it, and their opinions of the relative desirability of alternative courses of action with regard to their perceptions or those of others. It is important not to confuse "universal intake" with more comprehensive ideas, such as that every voice must be heard in actual political debates, or that all concerns deserve debate and answer. Universal intake does not imply these broader requirements. It is, indeed, the role of filtering and accreditation to whittle down what the universal intake function drags in and make it into a manageable set of political discussion topics and interventions. However, the basic requirement of a public sphere is that it must in principle be susceptible to perceiving and considering the issues of anyone who believes that their condition is a matter appropriate for political consideration and collective action. The extent to which that personal judgment about what the political discourse should be concerned with actually coincides with what the group as a whole will consider in the public sphere is a function of the filtering and accreditation functions. ,{[pg 183]}, +={ information production inputs : + universal intake +1 ; + inputs to production : + universal intake +1 ; + production inputs : + universal intake +1 ; + universal intake +1 +} + +/{Filtering for Potential Political Relevance}/. Not everything that someone considers to be a proper concern for collective action is perceived as such by most other participants in the political debate. A public sphere that has some successful implementation of universal intake must also have a filter to separate out those matters that are plausibly within the domain of organized political action and those that are not. What constitutes the range of plausible political topics is locally contingent, changes over time, and is itself a contested political question, as was shown most obviously by the "personal is political" feminist intellectual campaign. While it left "my dad won't buy me the candy I want" out of the realm of the political, it insisted on treating "my husband is beating me" as critically relevant in political debate. An overly restrictive filtering system is likely to impoverish a public sphere and rob it of its capacity to develop legitimate public opinion. It tends to exclude views and concerns that are in fact held by a sufficiently large number of people, or to affect people in sufficiently salient ways that they turn out, in historical context, to place pressure on the political system that fails to consider them or provide a legitimate answer, if not a solution. A system that is too loose tends to fail because it does not allow a sufficient narrowing of focus to provide the kind of sustained attention and concentration necessary to consider a matter and develop a range of public opinions on it. +={ filtering +1 ; + relevance filtering +1 +} + +/{Filtering for Accreditation}/. Accreditation is different from relevance, requires different kinds of judgments, and may be performed in different ways than basic relevance filtering. A statement like "the president has sold out space policy to Martians" is different from "my dad won't buy me the candy I want." It is potentially as relevant as "the president has sold out energy policy to oil companies." What makes the former a subject for entertainment, not political debate, is its lack of credibility. Much of the function of journalistic professional norms is to create and preserve the credibility of the professional press as a source of accreditation for the public at large. Parties provide a major vehicle for passing the filters of both relevance and accreditation. Academia gives its members a source of credibility, whose force (ideally) varies with the degree to which their statements come out of, and pertain to, their core roles as creators of knowledge through their disciplinary constraints. Civil servants in reasonably professional systems can provide a source of accreditation. Large corporations have come to play such a role, though with greater ambiguity. The emerging role of nongovernment organizations ,{[pg 184]}, (NGOs), very often is intended precisely to preorganize opinion that does not easily pass the relevant public sphere's filters of relevance and accreditation and provide it with a voice that will. Note that accreditation of a move in political discourse is very different from accreditation of a move in, for example, academic discourse, because the objective of each system is different. In academic discourse, the fact that a large number of people hold a particular opinion ("the universe was created in seven days") does not render that opinion credible enough to warrant serious academic discussion. In political discourse, say, about public school curricula, the fact that a large number of people hold the same view and are inclined to have it taught in public schools makes that claim highly relevant and "credible." In other words, it is credible that this could become a political opinion that forms a part of public discourse with the potential to lead to public action. Filters, both for relevance and accreditation, provide a critical point of control over the debate, and hence are extremely important design elements. +={ accreditation ; + opinion, public : + synthesis of +} + +/{Synthesis of "Public Opinion."}/ The communications system that offers the platform for the public sphere must also enable the synthesis of clusters of individual opinion that are sufficiently close and articulated to form something more than private opinions held by some number of individuals. How this is done is tricky, and what counts as "public opinion" may vary among different theories of democracy. In deliberative conceptions, this might make requirements of the form of discourse. Civic republicans would focus on open deliberation among people who see their role as deliberating about the common good. Habermas would focus on deliberating under conditions that assure the absence of coercion, while Bruce Ackerman would admit to deliberation only arguments formulated so as to be neutral as among conceptions of the good. In pluralist conceptions, like John Rawls's in Political Liberalism, which do not seek ultimately to arrive at a common understanding but instead seek to peaceably clear competing positions as to how we ought to act as a polity, this might mean the synthesis of a position that has sufficient overlap among those who hold it that they are willing to sign on to a particular form of statement in order to get the bargaining benefits of scale as an interest group with a coherent position. That position then comes to the polls and the bargaining table as one that must be considered, overpowered, or bargained with. In any event, the platform has to provide some capacity to synthesize the finely disparate and varied versions of beliefs and positions held by actual individuals into articulated positions amenable for ,{[pg 185]}, consideration and adoption in the formal political sphere and by a system of government, and to render them in ways that make them sufficiently salient in the overall mix of potential opinions to form a condensation point for collective action. +={ Habermas, Jurgen ; + Ackerman, Bruce ; + clusters in network topology : + synthesis of public opinion ; + accreditation ; + opinion, public : + synthesis of ; + public opinion : + synthesis of ; + synthesis of public opinion ; + Rawls, John +} + +/{Independence from Government Control}/. The core role of the political public sphere is to provide a platform for converting privately developed observations, intuitions, and opinions into public opinions that can be brought to bear in the political system toward determining collective action. One core output of these communications is instructions to the administration sitting in government. To the extent that the platform is dependent on that same sitting government, there is a basic tension between the role of debate in the public sphere as issuing instructions to the executive and the interests of the sitting executive to retain its position and its agenda and have it ratified by the public. This does not mean that the communications system must exclude government from communicating its positions, explaining them, and advocating them. However, when it steps into the public sphere, the locus of the formation and crystallization of public opinion, the sitting administration must act as a participant in explicit conversation, and not as a platform controller that can tilt the platform in its direction. +={ government : + independence from control of ; + independence from government control ; + policy : + independence from government control +} + +2~ THE EMERGENCE OF THE COMMERCIAL MASS-MEDIA PLATFORM FOR THE PUBLIC SPHERE +={ commercial model of communication : + emerging role of mass media +1 ; + industrial model of communication : + emerging role of mass media +1 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + emerging role of mass media +1 ; + mass media : + as platform for public sphere +1 ; + mass media, political freedom and : + commercial platform for public sphere +1 ; + networked public sphere : + mass-media platform for +1 ; + political freedom, mass media and : + commercial platform for public sphere +1 ; + public sphere : + mass media platform for +1 ; + traditional model of communication : + emerging role of mass media +1 +} + +Throughout the twentieth century, the mass media have played a fundamental constitutive role in the construction of the public sphere in liberal democracies. Over this period, first in the United States and later throughout the world, the commercial, advertising-supported form of mass media has become dominant in both print and electronic media. Sometimes, these media have played a role that has drawn admiration as "the fourth estate." Here, the media are seen as a critical watchdog over government processes, and as a major platform for translating the mobilization of social movements into salient, and ultimately actionable, political statements. These same media, however, have also drawn mountains of derision for the power they wield, as well as fail to wield, and for the shallowness of public communication they promote in the normal course of the business of selling eyeballs to advertisers. Nowhere was this clearer than in the criticism of the large role that television came to play in American public culture and its public ,{[pg 186]}, sphere. Contemporary debates bear the imprint of the three major networks, which in the early 1980s still accounted for 92 percent of television viewers and were turned on and watched for hours a day in typical American homes. These inspired works like Neil Postman's /{Amusing Ourselves to Death or Robert Putnam's claim, in Bowling Alone}/, that television seemed to be the primary identifiable discrete cause of the decline of American civic life. Nevertheless, whether positive or negative, variants of the mass-media model of communications have been dominant throughout the twentieth century, in both print and electronic media. The mass-media model has been the dominant model of communications in both democracies and their authoritarian rivals throughout the period when democracy established itself, first against monarchies, and later against communism and fascism. To say that mass media were dominant is not to say that only technical systems of remote communications form the platform of the public sphere. As Theda Skocpol and Putnam have each traced in the context of the American and Italian polities, organizations and associations of personal civic involvement form an important platform for public participation. And yet, as both have recorded, these platforms have been on the decline. So "dominant" does not mean sole, but instead means overridingly important in the structuring of the public sphere. It is this dominance, not the very existence, of mass media that is being challenged by the emergence of the networked public sphere. +={ commercial press +2 ; + newspapers +2 ; + press, commercial +2 ; + print media, commercial +2 ; + radio +13 ; + Postman, Neil ; + television ; + commercial mass media : + as platform for public sphere +1 +} + +The roots of the contemporary industrial structure of mass media presage both the attractive and unattractive aspects of the media we see today. Pioneered by the Dutch printers of the seventeenth century, a commercial press that did not need to rely on government grants and printing contracts, or on the church, became a source of a constant flow of heterodox literature and political debate.~{ Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Jeremey Popkin, News and Politics in the Age of Revolution: Jean Luzac's Gazzette de Leyde (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). }~ However, a commercial press has always also been sensitive to the conditions of the marketplace--costs, audience, and competition. In seventeenth-century England, the Stationers' Monopoly provided its insiders enough market protection from competitors that its members were more than happy to oblige the Crown with a compliant press in exchange for monopoly. It was only after the demise of that monopoly that a genuinely political press appeared in earnest, only to be met by a combination of libel prosecutions, high stamp taxes, and outright bribery and acquisition by government.~{ Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 33-46. }~ These, like the more direct censorship and sponsorship relationships that typified the prerevolutionary French press, kept newspapers and gazettes relatively compliant, and their distribution largely limited to elite audiences. Political dissent did not form part of a stable and ,{[pg 187]}, independent market-based business model. As Paul Starr has shown, the evolution of the British colonies in America was different. While the first century or so of settlement saw few papers, and those mostly "authorized" gazettes, competition began to increase over the course of the eighteenth century. The levels of literacy, particularly in New England, were exceptionally high, the population was relatively prosperous, and the regulatory constraints that applied in England, including the Stamp Tax of 1712, did not apply in the colonies. As second and third newspapers emerged in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, and were no longer supported by the colonial governments through postal franchises, the public sphere became more contentious. This was now a public sphere whose voices were self-supporting, like Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette. The mobilization of much of this press during the revolutionary era, and the broad perception that it played an important role in constituting the American public, allowed the commercial press to continue to play an independent and critical role after the revolution as well, a fate not shared by the brief flowering of the press immediately after the French Revolution. A combination of high literacy and high government tolerance, but also of postal subsidies, led the new United States to have a number and diversity of newspapers unequalled anywhere else, with a higher weekly circulation by 1840 in the 17-million-strong United States than in all of Europe with its population then of 233 million. By 1830, when Tocqueville visited America, he was confronted with a widespread practice of newspaper reading--not only in towns, but in farflung farms as well, newspapers that were a primary organizing mechanism for political association.~{ Starr, Creation of the Media, 48-62, 86-87. }~ +={ Starr, Paul +1 ; + Franklin, Benjamin ; + Tocqueville, Alexis, de ; + de Tocqueville, Alexis ; + large-circulation press +1 +} + +This widespread development of small-circulation, mostly local, competitive commercial press that carried highly political and associational news and opinion came under pressure not from government, but from the economies of scale of the mechanical press, the telegraph, and the ever-expanding political and economic communities brought together by rail and industrialization. Harold Innis argued more than half a century ago that the increasing costs of mechanical presses, coupled with the much-larger circulation they enabled and the availability of a flow of facts from around the world through telegraph, reoriented newspapers toward a mass-circulation, relatively low-denominator advertising medium. These internal economies, as Alfred Chandler and, later, James Beniger showed in their work, intersected with the vast increase in industrial output, which in turn required new mechanisms of demand management--in other words, more sophisticated ,{[pg 188]}, advertising to generate and channel demand. In the 1830s, the Sun and Herald were published in New York on large-circulation scales, reducing prices to a penny a copy and shifting content from mostly politics and business news to new forms of reporting: petty crimes from the police courts, human-interest stories, and outright entertainment-value hoaxes.~{ Starr, Creation of the Media, 131-133. }~ The startup cost of founding such mass-circulation papers rapidly increased over the second quarter of the nineteenth century, as figure 6.1 illustrates. James Gordon Bennett founded the Herald in 1835, with an investment of five hundred dollars, equal to a little more than $10,400 in 2005 dollars. By 1840, the necessary investment was ten to twenty times greater, between five and ten thousand dollars, or $106,000?$212,000 in 2005 terms. By 1850, that amount had again grown tenfold, to $100,000, about $2.38 million in 2005.~{ Starr, Creation of the Media, 135. }~ In the span of fifteen years, the costs of starting a newspaper rose from a number that many could conceive of spending for a wide range of motivations using a mix of organizational forms, to something that required a more or less industrial business model to recoup a very substantial financial investment. The new costs reflected mutually reinforcing increases in organizational cost (because of the professionalization of the newspaper publishing model) and the introduction of high-capacity, higher-cost equipment: electric presses (1839); the Hoe double-cylinder rotary press (1846), which raised output from the five hundred to one thousand sheets per hour of the early steam presses (up from 250 sheets for the handpress) to twelve thousand sheets per hour; and eventually William Bullock's roll-fed rotary press that produced twelve thousand complete newspapers per hour by 1865. The introduction of telegraph and the emergence of news agencies--particularly the Associated Press (AP) in the United States and Reuters in England--completed the basic structure of the commercial printed press. These characteristics--relatively high cost, professional, advertising supported, dependent on access to a comparatively small number of news agencies (which, in the case of the AP, were often used to anticompetitive advantage by their members until the midtwentieth-century antitrust case)--continued to typify print media. With the introduction of competition from radio and television, these effects tended to lead to greater concentration, with a majority of papers facing no local competition, and an ever-increasing number of papers coming under the joint ownership of a very small number of news publishing houses. +={ Beniger, James ; + Chandler, Alfred ; + Titmuss, Richard ; + Bennett, James Gorden ; + Bullock, William +} + +{won_benkler_6_1.png "Figure 6.1: Start-up Costs of a Daily Newspaper, 1835-1850 (in 2005 dollars)" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu + +% moved image above paragraph instead of at start of page 189 of original text, joined logical paragraph ending page 188 and continued on page 189 after image + +The introduction of radio was the next and only serious potential inflection point, prior to the emergence of the Internet, at which some portion of the public sphere could have developed away from the advertiser- ,{[pg 189]}, supported mass-media model. In most of Europe, radio followed the path of state-controlled media, with variable degrees of freedom from the executive at different times and places. Britain developed the BBC, a public organization funded by government-imposed levies, but granted sufficient operational freedom to offer a genuine platform for a public sphere, as opposed to a reflection of the government's voice and agenda. While this model successfully developed what is perhaps the gold standard of broadcast journalism, it also grew as a largely elite institution throughout much of the twentieth century. The BBC model of state-based funding and monopoly with genuine editorial autonomy became the basis of the broadcast model in a number of former colonies: Canada and Australia adopted a hybrid model in the 1930s. This included a well-funded public broadcaster, but did not impose a monopoly in its favor, allowing commercial broadcasters to grow alongside it. Newly independent former colonies in the postwar era that became democracies, like India and Israel, adopted the model with monopoly, levy-based funding, and a degree of editorial independence. The most currently visible adoption of a hybrid model based on some state funding but with editorial freedom is Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite station partly funded by the Emir of Qatar, but apparently free to pursue its own editorial policy, whose coverage stands in sharp contrast to that of the state-run broadcasters ,{[pg 190]}, in the region. In none of these BBC-like places did broadcast diverge from the basic centralized communications model of the mass media, but it followed a path distinct from the commercial mass media. Radio, and later television, was a more tightly controlled medium than was the printed press; its intake, filtering, and synthesis of public discourse were relatively insulated from the pressure of both markets, which typified the American model, and politics, which typified the state-owned broadcasters. These were instead controlled by the professional judgments of their management and journalists, and showed both the high professionalism that accompanied freedom along both those dimensions and the class and professional elite filters that typify those who control the media under that organizational model. The United States took a different path that eventually replicated, extended, and enhanced the commercial, advertiser-supported mass-media model originated in the printed press. This model was to become the template for the development of similar broadcasters alongside the state-owned and independent BBC-model channels adopted throughout much of the rest of the world, and of programming production for newer distribution technologies, like cable and satellite stations. The birth of radio as a platform for the public sphere in the United States was on election night in 1920.~{ The following discussion of the birth of radio is adapted from Yochai Benkler, "Overcoming Agoraphobia: Building the Commons of the Digitally Networked Environment," Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 11 (Winter 1997-1998): 287. That article provides the detailed support for the description. The major secondary works relied on are Erik Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966-1970); Gleason Archer, History of Radio to 1926 (New York: Arno Press, 1971); and Philip T. Rosen, Modern Stentors: Radio Broadcasters and the Federal Government, 1920-1934 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980). }~ Two stations broadcast the election returns as their launchpad for an entirely new medium--wireless broadcast to a wide audience. One was the Detroit News amateur station, 8MK, a broadcast that was framed and understood as an internal communication of a technical fraternity--the many amateurs who had been trained in radio communications for World War I and who then came to form a substantial and engaged technical community. The other was KDKA Pittsburgh, launched by Westinghouse as a bid to create demand for radio receivers of a kind that it had geared up to make during the war. Over the following four or five years, it was unclear which of these two models of communication would dominate the new medium. By 1926, however, the industrial structure that would lead radio to follow the path of commercial, advertiser-supported, concentrated mass media, dependent on government licensing and specializing in influencing its own regulatory oversight process was already in place. +={ BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) ; + monopoly : + radio broadcasting ; + KDKA Pittsburgh ; + radio : + as public sphere platform +} + +Although this development had its roots in the industrial structure of radio production as it emerged from the first two decades of innovation and businesses in the twentieth century, it was shaped significantly by political-regulatory choices during the 1920s. At the turn of the twentieth century, radio was seen exclusively as a means of wireless telegraphy, emphasizing ,{[pg 191]}, ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communications. Although some amateurs experimented with voice programs, broadcast was a mode of point-to-point communications; entertainment was not seen as its function until the 1920s. The first decade and a half of radio in the United States saw rapid innovation and competition, followed by a series of patent suits aimed to consolidate control over the technology. By 1916, the ideal transmitter based on technology available at the time required licenses of patents held by Marconi, AT&T, General Electric (GE), and a few individuals. No licenses were in fact granted. The industry had reached stalemate. When the United States joined the war, however, the navy moved quickly to break the stalemate, effectively creating a compulsory cross-licensing scheme for war production, and brought in Westinghouse, the other major potential manufacturer of vacuum tubes alongside GE, as a participant in the industry. The two years following the war saw intervention by the U.S. government to assure that American radio industry would not be controlled by British Marconi because of concerns in the navy that British control over radio would render the United States vulnerable to the same tactic Britain used against Germany at the start of the war--cutting off all transoceanic telegraph communications. The navy brokered a deal in 1919 whereby a new company was created-- the Radio Corporation of America (RCA)--which bought Marconi's American business. By early 1920, RCA, GE, and AT&T entered into a patent cross-licensing model that would allow each to produce for a market segment: RCA would control transoceanic wireless telegraphy, while GE and AT&T's Western Electric subsidiary would make radio transmitters and sell them under the RCA brand. This left Westinghouse with production facilities developed for the war, but shut out of the existing equipment markets by the patent pool. Launching KDKA Pittsburgh was part of its response: Westinghouse would create demand for small receivers that it could manufacture without access to the patents held by the pool. The other part of its strategy consisted of acquiring patents that, within a few months, enabled Westinghouse to force its inclusion in the patent pool, redrawing the market division map to give Westinghouse 40 percent of the receiving equipment market. The first part of Westinghouse's strategy, adoption of broadcasting to generate demand for receivers, proved highly successful and in the long run more important. Within two years, there were receivers in 10 percent of American homes. Throughout the 1920s, equipment sales were big business. +={ KDKA Pittsburgh +1 ; + AT&T ; + GE (General Electric) ; + licensing : + radio +3 ; + Marconi ; + proprietary rights : + radio patents ; + radio : + patents ; + RCA (Radio Corporation of America) ; + Westinghouse +1 +} + +Radio stations, however, were not dominated by the equipment manufacturers, or by anyone else for that matter, in the first few years. While the ,{[pg 192]}, equipment manufacturers did build powerful stations like KDKA Pittsburgh, WJZ Newark, KYW Chicago (Westinghouse), and WGY Schenectady (GE), they did not sell advertising, but rather made their money from equipment sales. These stations did not, in any meaningful sense of the word, dominate the radio sphere in the first few years of radio, as the networks would indeed come to do within a decade. In November 1921, the first five licenses were issued by the Department of Commerce under the new category of "broadcasting" of "news, lectures, entertainment, etc." Within eight months, the department had issued another 453 licenses. Many of these went to universities, churches, and unions, as well as local shops hoping to attract business with their broadcasts. Universities, seeing radio as a vehicle for broadening their role, began broadcasting lectures and educational programming. Seventy-four institutes of higher learning operated stations by the end of 1922. The University of Nebraska offered two-credit courses whose lectures were transmitted over the air. Churches, newspapers, and department stores each forayed into this new space, much as we saw the emergence of Web sites for every organization over the course of the mid-1990s. Thousands of amateurs were experimenting with technical and format innovations. While receivers were substantially cheaper than transmitters, it was still possible to assemble and sell relatively cheap transmitters, for local communications, at prices sufficiently low that thousands of individual amateurs could take to the air. At this point in time, then, it was not yet foreordained that radio would follow the mass-media model, with a small number of well-funded speakers and hordes of passive listeners. Within a short period, however, a combination of technology, business practices, and regulatory decisions did in fact settle on the model, comprised of a small number of advertiser-supported national networks, that came to typify the American broadcast system throughout most of the rest of the century and that became the template for television as well. +={ university-owned-radio } + +Herbert Hoover, then secretary of commerce, played a pivotal role in this development. Throughout the first few years after the war, Hoover had positioned himself as the champion of making control over radio a private market affair, allying himself both with commercial radio interests and with the amateurs against the navy and the postal service, each of which sought some form of nationalization of radio similar to what would happen more or less everywhere else in the world. In 1922, Hoover assembled the first of four annual radio conferences, representing radio manufacturers, broadcasters, and some engineers and amateurs. This forum became Hoover's primary ,{[pg 193]}, stage. Over the next four years, he used its annual meeting to derive policy recommendations, legitimacy, and cooperation for his regulatory action, all without a hint of authority under the Radio Act of 1912. Hoover relied heavily on the rhetoric of public interest and on the support of amateurs to justify his system of private broadcasting coordinated by the Department of Commerce. From 1922 on, however, he followed a pattern that would systematically benefit large commercial broadcasters over small ones; commercial broadcasters over educational and religious broadcasters; and the one-to-many broadcasts over the point-to-point, small-scale wireless telephony and telegraphy that the amateurs were developing. After January 1922, the department inserted a limitation on amateur licenses, excluding from their coverage the broadcast of "weather reports, market reports, music, concerts, speeches, news or similar information or entertainment." This, together with a Department of Commerce order to all amateurs to stop broadcasting at 360 meters (the wave assigned broadcasting), effectively limited amateurs to shortwave radiotelephony and telegraphy in a set of frequencies then thought to be commercially insignificant. In the summer, the department assigned broadcasters, in addition to 360 meters, another band, at 400 meters. Licenses in this Class B category were reserved for transmitters operating at power levels of 500-1,000 watts, who did not use phonograph records. These limitations on Class B licenses made the newly created channel a feasible home only to broadcasters who could afford the much-more-expensive, high-powered transmitters and could arrange for live broadcasts, rather than simply play phonograph records. The success of this new frequency was not immediate, because many receivers could not tune out stations broadcasting at the two frequencies in order to listen to the other. Hoover, failing to move Congress to amend the radio law to provide him with the power necessary to regulate broadcasting, relied on the recommendations of the Second Radio Conference in 1923 as public support for adopting a new regime, and continued to act without legislative authority. He announced that the broadcast band would be divided in three: high-powered (500-1,000 watts) stations serving large areas would have no interference in those large areas, and would not share frequencies. They would transmit on frequencies between 300 and 545 meters. Medium-powered stations served smaller areas without interference, and would operate at assigned channels between 222 and 300 meters. The remaining low-powered stations would not be eliminated, as the bigger actors wanted, but would remain at 360 meters, with limited hours of operation and geographic reach. Many of these lower-powered broadcasters ,{[pg 194]}, were educational and religious institutions that perceived Hoover's allocation as a preference for the RCA-GE-AT&T-Westinghouse alliance. Despite his protestations against commercial broadcasting ("If a speech by the President is to be used as the meat in a sandwich of two patent medicine advertisements, there will be no radio left"), Hoover consistently reserved clear channels and issued high-power licenses to commercial broadcasters. The final policy action based on the radio conferences came in 1925, when the Department of Commerce stopped issuing licenses. The result was a secondary market in licenses, in which some religious and educational stations were bought out by commercial concerns. These purchases further gravitated radio toward commercial ownership. The licensing preference for stations that could afford high-powered transmitters, long hours of operation, and compliance with high technical constraints continued after the Radio Act of 1927. As a practical matter, it led to assignment of twenty-one out of the twentyfour clear channel licenses created by the Federal Radio Commission to the newly created network-affiliated stations. +={ Hoover, Herbert ; + AT&T +3 ; + proprietary rights : + radio patents +1 ; + radio : + patents +1 ; + advertiser-supported media +3 +} + +Over the course of this period, tensions also began to emerge within the patent alliance. The phenomenal success of receiver sales tempted Western Electric into that market. In the meantime, AT&T, almost by mistake, began to challenge GE, Westinghouse, and RCA in broadcasting as an outgrowth of its attempt to create a broadcast common-carriage facility. Despite the successes of broadcast and receiver sales, it was not clear in 1922-1923 how the cost of setting up and maintaining stations would be paid for. In England, a tax was levied on radio sets, and its revenue used to fund the BBC. No such proposal was considered in the United States, but the editor of Radio Broadcast proposed a national endowed fund, like those that support public libraries and museums, and in 1924, a committee of New York businessmen solicited public donations to fund broadcasters (the response was so pitiful that the funds were returned to their donors). AT&T was the only company to offer a solution. Building on its telephone service experience, it offered radio telephony to the public for a fee. Genuine wireless telephony, even mobile telephony, had been the subject of experimentation since the second decade of radio, but that was not what AT&T offered. In February 1922, AT&T established WEAF in New York, a broadcast station over which AT&T was to provide no programming of its own, but instead would enable the public or program providers to pay on a per-time basis. AT&T treated this service as a form of wireless telephony so that it would fall, under the patent alliance agreements of 1920, under the exclusive control of AT&T. ,{[pg 195]}, +={ radio telephony ; + toll broadcasting +2 ; + broadcasting, radio. See radio broadcasting, toll +2 ; + toll broadcasting +2 +} + +RCA, Westinghouse, and GE could not compete in this area. "Toll broadcasting" was not a success by its own terms. There was insufficient demand for communicating with the public to sustain a full schedule that would justify listeners tuning into the station. As a result, AT&T produced its own programming. In order to increase the potential audience for its transmissions while using its advantage in wired facilities, AT&T experimented with remote transmissions, such as live reports from sports events, and with simultaneous transmissions of its broadcasts by other stations, connected to its New York feed by cable. In its effort to launch toll broadcasting, AT&T found itself by mid-1923 with the first functioning precursor to an advertiser-supported broadcast network. +={ GE (General Electric) +1 ; + RCA (Radio Corporation of America) +1 ; + Westinghouse +1 +} + +The alliance members now threatened each other: AT&T threatened to enter into receiver manufacturing and broadcast, and the RCA alliance, with its powerful stations, threatened to adopt "toll broadcasting," or advertiser-supported radio. The patent allies submitted their dispute to an arbitrator, who was to interpret the 1920 agreements, reached at a time of wireless telegraphy, to divide the spoils of the broadcast world of 1924. In late 1924, the arbitrator found for RCA-GE-Westinghouse on almost all issues. Capitalizing on RCA's difficulties with the antitrust authorities and congressional hearings over aggressive monopolization practices in the receiving set market, however, AT&T countered that if the 1920 agreements meant what the arbitrator said they meant, they were a combination in restraint of trade to which AT&T would not adhere. Bargaining in the shadow of the mutual threats of contract and antitrust actions, the former allies reached a solution that formed the basis of future radio broadcasting. AT&T would leave broadcasting. A new company, owned by RCA, GE, and Westinghouse would be formed, and would purchase AT&T's stations. The new company would enter into a long-term contract with AT&T to provide the long-distance communications necessary to set up the broadcast network that David Sarnoff envisioned as the future of broadcast. This new entity would, in 1926, become the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). AT&T's WEAF station would become the center of one of NBC's two networks, and the division arrived at would thereafter form the basis of the broadcast system in the United States. +={ monopoly : + radio broadcasting +1 ; + NBC (National Broadcasting Company) ; + Sarnoff, David +} + +By the middle of 1926, then, the institutional and organizational elements that became the American broadcast system were, to a great extent, in place. The idea of government monopoly over broadcasting, which became dominant in Great Britain, Europe, and their former colonies, was forever abandoned. ,{[pg 196]}, The idea of a private-property regime in spectrum, which had been advocated by commercial broadcasters to spur investment in broadcast, was rejected on the backdrop of other battles over conservation of federal resources. The Radio Act of 1927, passed by Congress in record speed a few months after a court invalidated Hoover's entire regulatory edifice as lacking legal foundation, enacted this framework as the basic structure of American broadcast. A relatively small group of commercial broadcasters and equipment manufacturers took the lead in broadcast development. A governmental regulatory agency, using a standard of "the public good," allocated frequency, time, and power assignments to minimize interference and to resolve conflicts. The public good, by and large, correlated to the needs of commercial broadcasters and their listeners. Later, the broadcast networks supplanted the patent alliance as the primary force to which the Federal Radio Commission paid heed. The early 1930s still saw battles over the degree of freedom that these networks had to pursue their own commercial interests, free of regulation (studied in Robert McChesney's work).~{ Robert Waterman McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). }~ By that point, however, the power of the broadcasters was already too great to be seriously challenged. Interests like those of the amateurs, whose romantic pioneering mantle still held strong purchase on the process, educational institutions, and religious organizations continued to exercise some force on the allocation and management of the spectrum. However, they were addressed on the periphery of the broadcast platform, leaving the public sphere to be largely mediated by a tiny number of commercial entities running a controlled, advertiser-supported platform of mass media. Following the settlement around radio, there were no more genuine inflection points in the structure of mass media. Television followed radio, and was even more concentrated. Cable networks and satellite networks varied to some extent, but retained the basic advertiser-supported model, oriented toward luring the widest possible audience to view the advertising that paid for the programming. +={ mass media : + as platform for public sphere ; + McChesney, Robert ; + Radio Act of 1927 +} + +2~ BASIC CRITIQUES OF MASS MEDIA +={ mass media : + as platform for public sphere +3 ; + commercial mass media : + criticisms +22 ; + commercial mass media : + basic critiques of +22 ; + mass media : + basic critiques of +22 ; + mass media, political freedom and +22 ; + political freedom, mass media and : + criticisms +22 +} + +The cluster of practices that form the mass-media model was highly conducive to social control in authoritarian countries. The hub-and-spoke technical architecture and unidirectional endpoint-reception model of these systems made it very simple to control, by controlling the core--the state-owned television, radio, and newspapers. The high cost of providing ,{[pg 197]}, high-circulation statements meant that subversive publications were difficult to make and communicate across large distances and to large populations of potential supporters. Samizdat of various forms and channels have existed in most if not all authoritarian societies, but at great disadvantage relative to public communication. The passivity of readers, listeners, and viewers coincided nicely with the role of the authoritarian public sphere--to manage opinion in order to cause the widest possible willing, or at least quiescent, compliance, and thereby to limit the need for using actual repressive force. + +In liberal democracies, the same technical and economic cost characteristics resulted in a very different pattern of communications practices. However, these practices relied on, and took advantage of, some of the very same basic architectural and cost characteristics. The practices of commercial mass media in liberal democracies have been the subject of a vast literature, criticizing their failures and extolling their virtues as a core platform for the liberal public sphere. There have been three primary critiques of these media: First, their intake has been seen as too limited. Too few information collection points leave too many views entirely unexplored and unrepresented because they are far from the concerns of the cadre of professional journalists, or cannot afford to buy their way to public attention. The debates about localism and diversity of ownership of radio and television stations have been the clearest policy locus of this critique in the United States. They are based on the assumption that local and socially diverse ownership of radio stations will lead to better representation of concerns as they are distributed in society. Second, concentrated mass media has been criticized as giving the owners too much power--which they either employ themselves or sell to the highest bidder--over what is said and how it is evaluated. Third, the advertising-supported media needs to attract large audiences, leading programming away from the genuinely politically important, challenging, and engaging, and toward the titillating or the soothing. This critique has emphasized the tension between business interests and journalistic ethics, and the claims that market imperatives and the bottom line lead to shoddy or cowering reporting; quiescence in majority tastes and positions in order to maximize audience; spectacle rather than substantive conversation of issues even when political matters are covered; and an emphasis on entertainment over news and analysis. +={ access : + large-audience programming | limited by mass media +3 | systematically blocked by policy routers +3 ; + accreditation : + of mass media owners ; + advertiser-supported media : + denominator programming ; + alertness, undermined by commercialism ; + blocked access : + large-audience programming | mass media and +3 | policy routers +3 ; + capacity : + diversity of content in large audience media | policy routers +3 ; + Cisco policy routers +3 ; + commercialism, undermining political concern ; + concentration of mass-media power ; + diversity : + large-audience programming ; + ethic (journalistic) vs. business necessity ; + exercise of programming power ; + filtering : + concentration of mass-media power +1 ; + first-best preferences : + large-audience programming | power of mass media owners ; + information flow : + controlling with policy routers +3 | limited by mass media +3 | large-audience programming ; + information production inputs : + large-audience programming | limited by mass media +3 | systematically blocked by policy routers +3 | universal intake +3 ; + inputs to production : + large-audience programming | limited by mass media +3 | systematically blocked by policy routers +3 | universal intake +3 ; + inertness, political ; + journalism, undermined by commercialism ; + large-audience programming ; + limited intake of mass media +3 ; + lowest-common-denominator programming ; + owners of mass media, power of ; + policy : + independence from government control +1 ; + policy routers +3 ; + political concern, undermined by commercialism ; + power of mass media owners ; + production inputs : + large-audience programming | limited by mass media +3 | systematically blocked by policy routers +3 | universal intake +3 ; + relevance filtering : + power of mass media owners ; + routers, controlling information flow with +3 ; + television : + large-audience programming ; + universal intake +3 +} + +% (index) policy routers mentioned much, locate properly re-check!!! + +Three primary defenses or advantages have also been seen in these media: first is their independence from government, party, or upper-class largesse, particularly against the background of the state-owned media in authoritarian ,{[pg 198]}, regimes, and given the high cost of production and communication, commercial mass media have been seen as necessary to create a public sphere grounded outside government. Second is the professionalism and large newsrooms that commercial mass media can afford to support to perform the watchdog function in complex societies. Because of their market-based revenues, they can replace universal intake with well-researched observations that citizens would not otherwise have made, and that are critical to a well-functioning democracy. Third, their near-universal visibility and independence enable them to identify important issues percolating in society. They can provide a platform to put them on the public agenda. They can express, filter, and accredit statements about these issues, so that they become well-specified subjects and feasible objects for public debate among informed citizens. That is to say, the limited number of points to which all are tuned and the limited number of "slots" available for speaking on these media form the basis for providing the synthesis required for public opinion and raising the salience of matters of public concern to the point of potential collective action. In the remainder of this chapter, I will explain the criticisms of the commercial mass media in more detail. I then take up in chapter 7 the question of how the Internet in general, and the rise of nonmarket and cooperative individual production in the networked information economy in particular, can solve or alleviate those problems while fulfilling some of the important roles of mass media in democracies today. +={ government : + independence from control of ; + independence from government control ; + commercial model of communication : + emerging role of mass media +2 ; + industrial model of communication : + emerging role of mass media +2 ; + industrial ecology of digital environment : + emerging role of mass media +2 ; + networked public sphere : + mass-media platform for +2 ; + political freedom, media and : + commercial platform for public sphere +2 ; + producers professionalism, mass media ; + public sphere +2 ; + traditional model of communication : + emerging role of mass media +2 ; + visibility of mass media +} + +% ={commercial mass media:as platform for public sphere} + +3~ Mass Media as a Platform for the Public Sphere +={ commercial mass media : + as platform for public sphere +1 ; + mass media, political freedom and : + commercial platform for public sphere +1 +} + +The structure of mass media as a mode of communications imposes a certain set of basic characteristics on the kind of public conversation it makes possible. First, it is always communication from a small number of people, organized into an even smaller number of distinct outlets, to an audience several orders of magnitude larger, unlimited in principle in its membership except by the production capacity of the media itself--which, in the case of print, may mean the number of copies, and in radio, television, cable, and the like, means whatever physical-reach constraints, if any, are imposed by the technology and business organizational arrangements used by these outlets. In large, complex, modern societies, no one knows everything. The initial function of a platform for the public sphere is one of intake--taking into the system the observations and opinions of as many members of society as possible as potential objects of public concern and consideration. The ,{[pg 199]}, radical difference between the number of intake points the mass media have and the range and diversity of human existence in large complex societies assures a large degree of information loss at the intake stage. Second, the vast difference between the number of speakers and the number of listeners, and the finished-goods style of mass-media products, imposes significant constraints on the extent to which these media can be open to feedback-- that is, to responsive communications that are tied together as a conversation with multiple reciprocal moves from both sides of the conversation. Third, the immense and very loosely defined audience of mass media affects the filtering and synthesis functions of the mass media as a platform for the public sphere. One of the observations regarding the content of newspapers in the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries was the shift they took as their circulation increased--from party-oriented, based in relatively thick communities of interest and practice, to fact- and sensation-oriented, with content that made thinner requirements on their users in order to achieve broader and more weakly defined readership. Fourth, and finally, because of the high costs of organizing these media, the functions of intake, sorting for relevance, accrediting, and synthesis are all combined in the hands of the same media operators, selected initially for their capacity to pool the capital necessary to communicate the information to wide audiences. While all these functions are necessary for a usable public sphere, the correlation of capacity to pool capital resources with capacity to offer the best possible filtering and synthesis is not obvious. In addition to basic structural constraints that come from the characteristic of a communications modality that can properly be called "mass media," there are also critiques that arise more specifically from the business models that have characterized the commercial mass media over the course of most of the twentieth century. Media markets are relatively concentrated, and the most common business model involves selling the attention of large audiences to commercial advertisers. +={ accreditation : + capacity for, by mass media ; + advertiser-supported media +7 ; + capacity : + mass media limits on ; + clusters in network topology : + synthesis of public opinion ; + feedback and intake limits of mass media ; + filtering : + capacity for by mass media | concentration of mass-media power +7 ; + opinion, public : + synthesis of ; + public opinion : + synthesis of ; + relevance filtering : + capacity for, by mass media | power of mass media owners +7 ; + responsive communications ; + synthesis of public opinion : + See also accreditation +} + +3~ Media Concentration: The Power of Ownership and Money +={ accreditation : + power of mass media owners +6 ; + concentration of mass-media power +6 ; + first-best preferences, mass media and : + of mass media owners +6 ; + owners of mass media, power of +6 ; + power of mass media owners +6 +} + +The Sinclair Broadcast Group is one of the largest owners of television broadcast stations in the United States. The group's 2003 Annual Report proudly states in its title, "Our Company. Your Message. 26 Million Households"; that is, roughly one quarter of U.S. households. Sinclair owns and operates or provides programming and sales to sixty-two stations in the United States, including multiple local affiliates of NBC, ABC, CBS, and ,{[pg 200]}, Fox. In April 2004, ABC News's program Nightline dedicated a special program to reading the names of American service personnel who had been killed in the Iraq War. The management of Sinclair decided that its seven ABC affiliates would not air the program, defending its decision because the program "appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."~{ "Names of U.S. Dead Read on Nightline," Associated Press Report, May 1, 2004, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4864247/. }~ At the time, the rising number of American casualties in Iraq was already a major factor in the 2004 presidential election campaign, and both ABC's decision to air the program, and Sinclair's decision to refuse to carry it could be seen as interventions by the media in setting the political agenda and contributing to the public debate. It is difficult to gauge the politics of a commercial organization, but one rough proxy is political donations. In the case of Sinclair, 95 percent of the donations made by individuals associated with the company during the 2004 election cycle went to Republicans, while only 5 percent went to Democrats.~{ The numbers given here are taken from The Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.opensecrets.org/, and are based on information released by the Federal Elections Commission. }~ Contributions of Disney, on the other hand, the owner of the ABC network, split about seventy-thirty in favor of contribution to Democrats. It is difficult to parse the extent to which political leanings of this sort are personal to the executives and professional employees who make decisions about programming, and to what extent these are more organizationally self-interested, depending on the respective positions of the political parties on the conditions of the industry's business. In some cases, it is quite obvious that the motives are political. When one looks, for example, at contributions by Disney's film division, they are distributed 100 percent in favor of Democrats. This mostly seems to reflect the large contributions of the Weinstein brothers, who run the semi-independent studio Miramax, which also distributed Michael Moore's politically explosive criticism of the Bush administration, Fahrenheit 9/11, in 2004. Sinclair's contributions were aligned with, though more skewed than, those of the National Association of Broadcasters political action committee, which were distributed 61 percent to 39 percent in favor of Republicans. Here the possible motivation is that Republicans have espoused a regulatory agenda at the Federal Communications Commission that allows broadcasters greater freedom to consolidate and to operate more as businesses and less as public trustees. +={ exercise of programming power +5 ; + SBG (Sinclair Broadcast Group) ; + Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG) ; + Moore, Michael +} + +The basic point is not, of course, to trace the particular politics of one programming decision or another. It is the relative power of those who manage the mass media when it so dominates public discourse as to shape public perceptions and public debate. This power can be brought to bear throughout the components of the platform, from the intake function (what ,{[pg 201]}, facts about the world are observed) to the filtration and synthesis (the selection of materials, their presentation, and the selection of who will debate them and in what format). These are all central to forming the agenda that the public perceives, choreographing the discussion, the range of opinions perceived and admitted into the conversation, and through these, ultimately, choreographing the perceived consensus and the range of permissible debate. One might think of this as "the Berlusconi effect." Thinking in terms of a particular individual, known for a personal managerial style, who translated the power of control over media into his election as prime minister of his country symbolizes well the concern, but of course does not exhaust the problem, which is both broader and more subtle than the concern with the possibility that mass media will be owned by individuals who would exert total control over these media and translate their control into immediate political power, manufacturing and shaping the appearance of a public sphere, rather than providing a platform for one. +={ Berlusconi effect } + +The power of the commercial mass media depends on the degree of concentration in mass-media markets. A million equally watched channels do not exercise power. Concentration is a common word used to describe the power media exercise when there are only few outlets, but a tricky one because it implies two very distinct phenomena. The first is a lack of competition in a market, to a degree sufficient to allow a firm to exercise power over its pricing. This is the antitrust sense. The second, very different concern might be called "mindshare." That is, media is "concentrated" when a small number of media firms play a large role as the channel from and to a substantial majority of readers, viewers, and listeners in a given politically relevant social unit. + +If one thinks that commercial firms operating in a market will always "give the audience what it wants" and that what the audience wants is a fully representative cross-section of all observations and opinions relevant to public discourse, then the antitrust sense would be the only one that mattered. A competitive market would force any market actor simply to reflect the range of available opinions actually held in the public. Even by this measure, however, there continue to be debates about how one should define the relevant market and what one is measuring. The more one includes all potential nationally available sources of information, newspapers, magazines, television, radio, satellite, cable, and the like, the less concentrated the market seems. However, as Eli Noam's recent work on local media concentration has argued, treating a tiny television station on Long Island as equivalent to ,{[pg 202]}, WCBS in New York severely underrepresents the power of mass media over their audience. Noam offered the most comprehensive analysis currently available of the patterns of concentration where media are actually accessed-- locally, where people live--from 1984 to 2001-2002. Most media are consumed locally--because of the cost of national distribution of paper newspapers, and because of the technical and regulatory constraints on nationwide distribution of radio and television. Noam computed two measures of market concentration for each of thirty local markets: the HerfindahlHirschman Index (HHI), a standard method used by the Department of Justice to measure market concentration for antitrust purposes; and what he calls a C4 index--that is, the market share of the top four firms in a market, and C1, the share of the top single firm in the market. He found that, based on the HHI index, all the local media markets are highly concentrated. In the standard measure, a market with an index of less than 1,000 is not concentrated, a market with an index of 1,000-1,800 is moderately concentrated, and a market with an index of above 1,800 on the HHI is highly concentrated. Noam found that local radio, which had an index below 1,000 between 1984 and 1992, rose over the course of the following years substantially. Regulatory restrictions were loosened over the course of the 1990s, resulting by the end of the decade in an HHI index measure of 2,400 for big cities, and higher for medium-sized and small markets. And yet, radio is less concentrated than local multichannel television (cable and satellite) with an HHI of 6,300, local magazines with an HHI of 6,859, and local newspapers with an HHI of 7,621. The only form of media whose concentration has declined to less than highly concentrated (HHI 1,714) is local television, as the rise of new networks and local stations' viability on cable has moved us away from the three-network world of 1984. It is still the case, however, that the top four television stations capture 73 percent of the viewers in most markets, and 62 percent in large markets. The most concentrated media in local markets are newspapers, which, except for the few largest markets, operate on a one-newspaper town model. C1 concentration has grown in this area to 83 percent of readership for the leading papers, and an HHI of 7,621. +={ Noam, Eli ; + commercial press ; + HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) ; + newspapers : + market concentration ; + press, commercial ; + radio : + market concentration ; + television : + market concentration +} + +The degree of concentration in media markets supports the proposition that owners of media can either exercise power over the programming they provide or what they write, or sell their power over programming to those who would like to shape opinions. Even if one were therefore to hold the Pollyannaish view that market-based media in a competitive market would ,{[pg 203]}, be constrained by competition to give citizens what they need, as Ed Baker put it, there is no reason to think the same in these kinds of highly concentrated markets. As it turns out, a long tradition of scholarship has also developed the claim that even without such high levels of concentration in the antitrust sense, advertiser-supported media markets are hardly good mechanisms for assuring that the contents of the media provide a good reflection of the information citizens need to know as members of a polity, the range of opinions and views about what ought to occupy the public, and what solutions are available to those problems that are perceived and discussed.~{ A careful catalog of these makes up the first part of C. Edwin Baker, Media, Markets, and Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). }~ First, we have long known that advertiser-supported media suffer from more or less well-defined failures, purely as market mechanisms, at representing the actual distribution of first-best preferences of audiences. As I describe in more detail in the next section, whether providers in any market structure, from monopoly to full competition, will even try to serve firstbest preferences of their audience turns out to be a function of the distribution of actual first-best and second-best preferences, and the number of "channels." Second, there is a systematic analytic problem with defining consumer demand for information. Perfect information is a precondition to an efficient market, not its output. In order for consumers to value information or an opinion fully, they must know it and assimilate it to their own worldview and understanding. However, the basic problem to be solved by media markets is precisely to select which information people will value if they in fact come to know it, so it is impossible to gauge the value of a unit of information before it has been produced, and hence to base production decisions on actual existing user preferences. The result is that, even if media markets were perfectly competitive, a substantial degree of discretion and influence would remain in the hands of commercial media owners. +={ Baker, Edwin ; + advertiser-supported media : + reflection of consumer preference ; + constraints on behavior : + See autonomy, freedom consumer demand for information ; + demand for information, consumer ; + information, perfect ; + perfect information +} + +The actual cultural practice of mass-media production and consumption is more complex than either the view of "efficient media markets" across the board or the general case against media concentration and commercialism. Many of the relevant companies are public companies, answerable to at least large institutional shareholders, and made up of managements that need not be monolithic in their political alignment or judgment as to the desirability of making political gains as opposed to market share. Unless there is economic or charismatic leadership of the type of a William Randolph Hearst or a Rupert Murdoch, organizations usually have complex structures, with varying degrees of freedom for local editors, reporters, and midlevel managers to tug and pull at the fabric of programming. Different media companies ,{[pg 204]}, also have different business models, and aim at different market segments. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post do not aim at the same audience as most daily local newspapers in the United States. They are aimed at elites, who want to buy newspapers that can credibly claim to embody highly professional journalism. This requires separation of editorial from business decisions--at least for some segments of the newspapers that are critical in attracting those readers. The degree to which the Berlusconi effect in its full-blown form of individual or self-consciously directed political power through shaping of the public sphere will apply is not one that can necessarily be answered as a matter of a priori theoretical framework for all mass media. Instead, it is a concern, a tendency, whose actual salience in any given public sphere or set of firms is the product of historical contingency, different from one country to another and one period to another. It will depend on the strategies of particular companies and their relative mindshare in a society. However, it is clear and structurally characteristic of mass media that a society that depends for its public sphere on a relatively small number of actors, usually firms, to provide most of the platform of its public sphere, is setting itself up for, at least, a form of discourse elitism. In other words, those who are on the inside of the media will be able to exert substantially greater influence over the agenda, the shape of the conversation, and through these the outcomes of public discourse, than other individuals or groups in society. Moreover, for commercial organizations, this power could be sold--and as a business model, one should expect it to be. The most direct way to sell influence is explicit political advertising, but just as we see "product placement" in movies as a form of advertising, we see advertiser influence on the content of the editorial materials. Part of this influence is directly substantive and political. Another is the source of the second critique of commercial mass media. +={ Hearst, William Randolph ; + Murdoch, Rupert ; + Berlusconi effect ; + business decisions vs. editorial decisions ; + editorial filtering : + See relevance filtering editorial vs. business decisions ; + ethic (journalistic) vs. business necessity +10 ; + journalism, undermined by commercialism +10 ; + political concern, undermined by commercialism +10 +} + +3~ Commercialism, Journalism, and Political Inertness +={ access : + large-audience programming +9 ; + advertiser-supported media : + denominator programming +9 ; + alertness, undermined by commercialism +9 ; + blocked access : + large-audience programming ; + capacity : + diversity of content in large-audience media +9 ; + commercialism, undermining political concern +9 ; + diversity : + large-audience programming +9 ; + first-best preferences, mass media and : + large-audience programming +9 ; + inertness, political +9 ; + information flow : + large-audience programming +9 ; + information production inputs : + large-audience programming +9 ; + inputs to production : + large-audience programming +9 ; + large-audience programming +9 ; + production inputs : + large-audience programming +9 ; + television : + large-audience programming +9 +} + +The second cluster of concerns about the commercial mass media is the degree to which their commercialism undermines their will and capacity to provide a platform for public, politically oriented discourse. The concern is, in this sense, the opposite of the concern with excessive power. Rather than the fear that the concentrated mass media will exercise its power to pull opinion in its owners' interest, the fear is that the commercial interests of these media will cause them to pull content away from matters of genuine ,{[pg 205]}, political concern altogether. It is typified in a quote offered by Ben Bagdikian, attributed to W. R. Nelson, publisher of the Kansas City Star in 1915: "Newspapers are read at the breakfast table and dinner tables. God's great gift to man is appetite. Put nothing in the paper that will destroy it."~{ Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, 5th ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 118. }~ Examples abound, but the basic analytic structure of the claim is fairly simple and consists of three distinct components. First, advertiser-supported media need to achieve the largest audience possible, not the most engaged or satisfied audience possible. This leads such media to focus on lowest-common-denominator programming and materials that have broad second-best appeal, rather than trying to tailor their programming to the true first-best preferences of well-defined segments of the audience. Second, issues of genuine public concern and potential political contention are toned down and structured as a performance between iconic representations of large bodies of opinion, in order to avoid alienating too much of the audience. This is the reemergence of spectacle that Habermas identified in The Transformation of the Public Sphere. The tendency toward lowest-common-denominator programming translates in the political sphere into a focus on fairly well-defined, iconic views, and to avoidance of genuinely controversial material, because it is easier to lose an audience by offending its members than by being only mildly interesting. The steady structuring of the media as professional, commercial, and one way over 150 years has led to a pattern whereby, when political debate is communicated, it is mostly communicated as performance. Someone represents a party or widely known opinion, and is juxtaposed with others who similarly represent alternative widely known views. These avatars of public opinion then enact a clash of opinion, orchestrated in order to leave the media neutral and free of blame, in the eyes of their viewers, for espousing an offensively partisan view. Third, and finally, this business logic often stands in contradiction to journalistic ethic. While there are niche markets for high-end journalism and strong opinion, outlets that serve those markets are specialized. Those that cater to broader markets need to subject journalistic ethic to business necessity, emphasizing celebrities or local crime over distant famines or a careful analysis of economic policy. +={ Habermas, Jurgen ; + Nelson, W. R. ; + lowest-common-denominator programming +8 ; + Bagdikian, Ben ; + communication : + through performance ; + controversy, avoidance of ; + iconic representations of opinion ; + opinion, public : + iconic representations of ; + performance as means of communication ; + public opinion : + iconic representations of +} + +The basic drive behind programming choices in advertising-supported mass media was explored in the context of the problem of "program diversity" and competition. It relies on a type of analysis introduced by Peter Steiner in 1952. The basic model argued that advertiser-supported media are sensitive only to the number of viewers, not the intensity of their satisfaction. This created an odd situation, where competitors would tend to divide ,{[pg 206]}, among them the largest market segments, and leave smaller slices of the audience unserved, whereas a monopolist would serve each market segment, in order of size, until it ran out of channels. Because it has no incentive to divide all the viewers who want, for example, sitcoms, among two or more stations, a monopolist would program a sitcom on one channel, and the next-most-desired program on the next channel. Two competitors, on the other hand, would both potentially program sitcoms, if dividing those who prefer sitcoms in half still yields a larger total audience size than airing the next-most-desired program. To illustrate this effect with a rather extreme hypothetical example, imagine that we are in a television market of 10 million viewers. Suppose that the distribution of preferences in the audience is as follows: 1,000,000 want to watch sitcoms; 750,000 want sports; 500,000 want local news; 250,000 want action movies; 9,990 are interested in foreign films; and 9,980 want programs on gardening. The stark drop-off between action movies and foreign films and gardening is intended to reflect the fact that the 7.5 million potential viewers who do not fall into one of the first four clusters are distributed in hundreds of small clusters, none commanding more than 10,000 viewers. Before we examine why this extreme assumption is likely correct, let us first see what happens if it were. Table 6.1 presents the programming choices that would typify those of competing channels, based on the number of channels competing and the distribution of preferences in the audience. It reflects the assumptions that each programmer wants to maximize the number of viewers of its channel and that the viewers are equally likely to watch one channel as another if both offer the same type of programming. The numbers in parentheses next to the programming choice represent the number of viewers the programmer can hope to attract given these assumptions, not including the probability that some of the 7.5 million viewers outside the main clusters will also tune in. In this extreme example, one would need a system with more than 250 channels in order to start seeing something other than sitcoms, sports, local news, and action movies. Why, however, is such a distribution likely, or even plausible? The assumption is not intended to represent an actual distribution of what people most prefer to watch. Rather, it reflects the notion that many people have best preferences, fallback preferences, and tolerable options. Their first-best preferences reflect what they really want to watch, and people are highly diverse in this dimension. Their fallback and tolerable preferences reflect the kinds of things they would be willing to watch if nothing else is available, rather than getting up off the sofa and going to a local cafe or reading a book. ,{[pg 207]}, +={ steiner, Peter } + +!_ Table 6.1: Distribution of Channels Hypothetical + +table(h; c2: 10, 90){ + +No. of channels +Programming Available (in thousands of viewers) + +1 +sitcom (1000) + +2 +sitcom (1000), sports (750) + +3 +sitcom (1000 or 500), sports (750), indifferent between sitcoms and local news (500) + +4 +sitcom (500), sports (750), sitcom (500), local news (500) + +5 +sitcom (500), sports (375), sitcom (500), local news (500), sports (375) + +6 +sitcom (333), sports (375), sitcom (333), local news (500), sports (375), sitcom (333) + +7 +sitcom (333), sports (375), sitcom (333), local news (500), sports (375), sitcom (333), action movies (250) + +8 +sitcom (333), sports (375), sitcom (333), local news (250), sports (375), sitcom (333), action movies (250), local news (250) + +9 +sitcom (250), sports (375), sitcom (250), local news (250), sports (375), sitcom (250), action movies (250), local news (250), sitcom (250) + +*** +*** + +250 +100 channels of sitcom (10); 75 channels of sports (10); 50 channels of local news (10); 25 channels of action movies (10) + +251 +100 channels of sitcom (10); 75 channels of sports (10); 50 channels of local news (10); 25 channels of action movies (10); 1 foreign film channel (9.99) + +252 +100 channels of sitcom (10); 75 channels of sports (10); 50 channels of local news (10); 25 channels of action movies (10); 1 foreign film channel (9.99); 1 gardening channel (9.98) + +}table + +Here represented by sitcoms, sports, and the like, fallback options are more widely shared, even among people whose first-best preferences differ widely, because they represent what people will tolerate before switching, a much less strict requirement than what they really want. This assumption follows Jack Beebe's refinement of Steiner's model. Beebe established that media monopolists would show nothing but common-denominator programs and that competition among broadcasters would begin to serve the smaller preference clusters only if a large enough number of channels were available. Such a model would explain the broad cultural sense of Bruce Springsteen's song, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)," and why we saw the emergence of channels like Black Entertainment Television, Univision (Spanish channel in the United States), or The History Channel only when cable systems significantly expanded channel capacity, as well as why direct- ,{[pg 208]}, broadcast satellite and, more recently, digital cable offerings were the first venue for twenty-four-hour-a-day cooking channels and smaller minority-language channels.~{ Peter O. Steiner, "Program Patterns and Preferences, and the Workability of Competition in Radio Broadcasting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics 66 (1952): 194. The major other contribution in this literature is Jack H. Beebe, "Institutional Structure and Program Choices in Television Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics 91 (1977): 15. A parallel line of analysis of the relationship between programming and the market structure of broadcasting began with Michael Spence and Bruce Owen, "Television Programming, Monopolistic Competition, and Welfare," The Quarterly Journal of Economics 91 (1977): 103. For an excellent review of this literature, see Matthew L. Spitzer, "Justifying Minority Preferences in Broadcasting," South California Law Review 64 (1991): 293, 304-319. }~ +={ Beebe, Jack ; + monopoly : + breadth of programming under +} + +While this work was developed in the context of analyzing media diversity of offerings, it provides a foundation for understanding the programming choices of all advertiser-supported mass media, including the press, in domains relevant to the role they play as a platform for the public sphere. It provides a framework for understanding, but also limiting, the applicability of the idea that mass media will put nothing in the newspaper that will destroy the reader's appetite. Controversial views and genuinely disturbing images, descriptions, or arguments have a higher likelihood of turning readers, listeners, and viewers away than entertainment, mildly interesting and amusing human-interest stories, and a steady flow of basic crime and courtroom dramas, and similar fare typical of local television newscasts and newspapers. On the other hand, depending on the number of channels, there are clearly market segments for people who are "political junkies," or engaged elites, who can support some small number of outlets aimed at that crowd. The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal are examples in print, programs like Meet the Press or Nightline and perhaps channels like CNN and Fox News are examples of the possibility and limitations of this exception to the general entertainment-oriented, noncontroversial, and politically inert style of commercial mass media. The dynamic of programming to the lowest common denominator can, however, iteratively replicate itself even within relatively news- and elite-oriented media outlets. Even among news junkies, larger news outlets must cater relatively to the mainstream of its intended audience. Too strident a position or too probing an inquiry may slice the market segment to which they sell too thin. This is likely what leads to the common criticism, from both the Right and Left, that the same media are too "liberal" and too "conservative," respectively. By contrast, magazines, whose business model can support much lower circulation levels, exhibit a substantially greater will for political engagement and analysis than even the relatively political-readership-oriented, larger-circulation mass media. By definition, however, the media that cater to these niche markets serve only a small segment of the political community. Fox News in the United States appears to be a powerful counterexample to this trend. It is difficult to pinpoint why. The channel likely represents a composite of the Berlusconi effect, the high market segmentation made possible by high-capacity cable ,{[pg 209]}, systems, the very large market segment of Republicans, and the relatively polarized tone of American political culture since the early 1990s. + +The mass-media model as a whole, with the same caveat for niche markets, does not lend itself well to in-depth discussion and dialog. High professionalism can, to some extent, compensate for the basic structural problem of a medium built on the model of a small number of producers transmitting to an audience that is many orders of magnitude larger. The basic problem occurs at the intake and synthesis stages of communication. However diligent they may be, a small number of professional reporters, embedded as they are within social segments that are part of social, economic, and political elites, are a relatively stunted mechanism for intake. If one seeks to collect the wide range of individual observations, experiences, and opinions that make up the actual universe of concerns and opinions of a large public as a basic input into the public sphere, before filtering, the centralized model of mass media provides a limited means of capturing those insights. On the back end of the communication of public discourse, concentrated media of necessity must structure most "participants" in the debate as passive recipients of finished messages and images. That is the core characteristic of mass media: Content is produced prior to transmission in a relatively small number of centers, and when finished is then transmitted to a mass audience, which consumes it. This is the basis of the claim of the role of professional journalism to begin with, separating it from nonprofessional observations of those who consume its products. The result of this basic structure of the media product is that discussion and analysis of issues of common concern is an iconic representation of discussion, a choreographed enactment of public debate. The participants are selected for the fact that they represent wellunderstood, well-defined positions among those actually prevalent in a population, the images and stories are chosen to represent issues, and the public debate that is actually facilitated (and is supposedly where synthesis of the opinions in public debate actually happens) is in fact an already presynthesized portrayal of an argument among avatars of relatively large segments of opinion as perceived by the journalists and stagers of the debate. In the United States, this translates into fairly standard formats of "on the left X, on the right Y," or "the Republicans' position" versus "the Democrats' position." It translates into "photo-op" moments of publicly enacting an idea, a policy position, or a state of affairs--whether it is a president landing on an aircraft carrier to represent security and the successful completion of a ,{[pg 210]}, controversial war, or a candidate hunting with his buddies to represent a position on gun control. It is important to recognize that by describing these characteristics, I am not identifying failures of imagination, thoughtfulness, or professionalism on the part of media organizations. These are simply characteristics of a mass-mediated public sphere; modes of communication that offer the path of least resistance given the characteristics of the production and distribution process of mass media, particularly commercial mass media. There are partial exceptions, as there are to the diversity of content or the emphasis on entertainment value, but these do not reflect what most citizens read, see, or hear. The phenomenon of talk radio and call-in shows represents a very different, but certainly not more reflective form. They represent the pornography and violence of political discourse--a combination of exhibitionism and voyeurism intended to entertain us with opportunities to act out suppressed desires and to glimpse what we might be like if we allowed ourselves more leeway from what it means to be a well-socialized adult. +={ iconic representations of opinion ; + opinion, public : + iconic representations of ; + public opinion : + iconic representations of +} + +The two basic critiques of commercial mass media coalesce on the conflict between journalistic ethics and the necessities of commercialism. If professional journalists seek to perform a robust watchdog function, to inform their readers and viewers, and to provoke and explore in depth, then the dynamics of both power and lowest-common-denominator appeal push back. Different organizations, with different degrees of managerial control, editorial independence, internal organizational culture, and freedom from competitive pressures, with different intended market segments, will resolve these tensions differently. A quick reading of the conclusions of some media scholarship, and more commonly, arguments made in public debates over the media, would tend to lump "the media" as a single entity, with a single set of failures. In fact, unsurprisingly, the literature suggests substantial heterogeneity among organizations and media. Television seems to be the worst culprit on the dimension of political inertness. Print media, both magazines and some newspapers, include significant variation in the degree to which they fit these general models of failure. + +As we turn now to consider the advantages of the introduction of Internet communications, we shall see how this new model can complement the mass media and alleviate its worst weaknesses. In particular, the discussion focuses on the emergence of the networked information economy and the relatively larger role it makes feasible for nonmarket actors and for radically distributed production of information and culture. One need not adopt the position ,{[pg 211]}, that the commercial mass media are somehow abusive, evil, corporate-controlled giants, and that the Internet is the ideal Jeffersonian republic in order to track a series of genuine improvements represented by what the new emerging modalities of public communication can do as platforms for the public sphere. Greater access to means of direct individual communications, to collaborative speech platforms, and to nonmarket producers more generally can complement the commercial mass media and contribute to a significantly improved public sphere. ,{[pg 212]}, + +1~ Chapter 7 - Political Freedom Part 2: Emergence of the Networked Public Sphere +={ networked public sphere +108 ; + political freedom, public sphere and +108 ; + public sphere +108 +} + +The fundamental elements of the difference between the networked information economy and the mass media are network architecture and the cost of becoming a speaker. The first element is the shift from a hub-and-spoke architecture with unidirectional links to the end points in the mass media, to distributed architecture with multidirectional connections among all nodes in the networked information environment. The second is the practical elimination of communications costs as a barrier to speaking across associational boundaries. Together, these characteristics have fundamentally altered the capacity of individuals, acting alone or with others, to be active participants in the public sphere as opposed to its passive readers, listeners, or viewers. For authoritarian countries, this means that it is harder and more costly, though not perhaps entirely impossible, to both be networked and maintain control over their public spheres. China seems to be doing too good a job of this in the middle of the first decade of this century for us to say much more than that it is harder to maintain control, and therefore that at least in some authoritarian regimes, control will be looser. In ,{[pg 213]}, liberal democracies, ubiquitous individual ability to produce information creates the potential for near-universal intake. It therefore portends significant, though not inevitable, changes in the structure of the public sphere from the commercial mass-media environment. These changes raise challenges for filtering. They underlie some of the critiques of the claims about the democratizing effect of the Internet that I explore later in this chapter. Fundamentally, however, they are the roots of possible change. Beginning with the cost of sending an e-mail to some number of friends or to a mailing list of people interested in a particular subject, to the cost of setting up a Web site or a blog, and through to the possibility of maintaining interactive conversations with large numbers of people through sites like Slashdot, the cost of being a speaker in a regional, national, or even international political conversation is several orders of magnitude lower than the cost of speaking in the mass-mediated environment. This, in turn, leads to several orders of magnitude more speakers and participants in conversation and, ultimately, in the public sphere. +={ democratizing effects of Internet +7 ; + Internet : + democratizing effects of +7 +} + +The change is as much qualitative as it is quantitative. The qualitative change is represented in the experience of being a potential speaker, as opposed to simply a listener and voter. It relates to the self-perception of individuals in society and the culture of participation they can adopt. The easy possibility of communicating effectively into the public sphere allows individuals to reorient themselves from passive readers and listeners to potential speakers and participants in a conversation. The way we listen to what we hear changes because of this; as does, perhaps most fundamentally, the way we observe and process daily events in our lives. We no longer need to take these as merely private observations, but as potential subjects for public communication. This change affects the relative power of the media. It affects the structure of intake of observations and views. It affects the presentation of issues and observations for discourse. It affects the way issues are filtered, for whom and by whom. Finally, it affects the ways in which positions are crystallized and synthesized, sometimes still by being amplified to the point that the mass media take them as inputs and convert them into political positions, but occasionally by direct organization of opinion and action to the point of reaching a salience that drives the political process directly. + +The basic case for the democratizing effect of the Internet, as seen from the perspective of the mid-1990s, was articulated in an opinion of the /{U.S. Supreme Court in Reno v. ACLU}/: ,{[pg 214]}, + +_1 The Web is thus comparable, from the readers' viewpoint, to both a vast library including millions of readily available and indexed publications and a sprawling mall offering goods and services. From the publishers' point of view, it constitutes a vast platform from which to address and hear from a world-wide audience of millions of readers, viewers, researchers, and buyers. Any person or organization with a computer connected to the Internet can "publish" information. Publishers include government agencies, educational institutions, commercial entities, advocacy groups, and individuals. . . . + +_1 Through the use of chat rooms, any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox. Through the use of Web pages, mail exploders, and newsgroups, the same individual can become a pamphleteer. As the District Court found, "the content on the Internet is as diverse as human thought."~{ /{Reno v. ACLU}/, 521 U.S. 844, 852-853, and 896-897 (1997). }~ + +The observations of what is different and unique about this new medium relative to those that dominated the twentieth century are already present in the quotes from the Court. There are two distinct types of effects. The first, as the Court notes from "the readers' perspective," is the abundance and diversity of human expression available to anyone, anywhere, in a way that was not feasible in the mass-mediated environment. The second, and more fundamental, is that anyone can be a publisher, including individuals, educational institutions, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), alongside the traditional speakers of the mass-media environment--government and commercial entities. + +Since the end of the 1990s there has been significant criticism of this early conception of the democratizing effects of the Internet. One line of critique includes variants of the Babel objection: the concern that information overload will lead to fragmentation of discourse, polarization, and the loss of political community. A different and descriptively contradictory line of critique suggests that the Internet is, in fact, exhibiting concentration: Both infrastructure and, more fundamentally, patterns of attention are much less distributed than we thought. As a consequence, the Internet diverges from the mass media much less than we thought in the 1990s and significantly less than we might hope. + +I begin the chapter by offering a menu of the core technologies and usage patterns that can be said, as of the middle of the first decade of the twentyfirst century, to represent the core Internet-based technologies of democratic discourse. I then use two case studies to describe the social and economic practices through which these tools are implemented to construct the public ,{[pg 215]}, sphere, and how these practices differ quite radically from the mass-media model. On the background of these stories, we are then able to consider the critiques that have been leveled against the claim that the Internet democratizes. Close examination of the application of networked information economy to the production of the public sphere suggests that the emerging networked public sphere offers significant improvements over one dominated by commercial mass media. Throughout the discussion, it is important to keep in mind that the relevant comparison is always between the public sphere that we in fact had throughout the twentieth century, the one dominated by mass media, that is the baseline for comparison, not the utopian image of the "everyone a pamphleteer" that animated the hopes of the 1990s for Internet democracy. Departures from the naïve utopia are not signs that the Internet does not democratize, after all. They are merely signs that the medium and its analysis are maturing. + +2~ BASIC TOOLS OF NETWORKED COMMUNICATION +={ communication diversity : + See diversity communication tools +8 ; + Internet : + technologies of +8 ; + networked public sphere : + basic communication tools +8 ; + political freedom, public sphere and : + basic communication tools +8 ; + public sphere : + basic communication tools +8 ; + technology +8 +} + +Analyzing the effect of the networked information environment on public discourse by cataloging the currently popular tools for communication is, to some extent, self-defeating. These will undoubtedly be supplanted by new ones. Analyzing this effect without having a sense of what these tools are or how they are being used is, on the other hand, impossible. This leaves us with the need to catalog what is, while trying to abstract from what is being used to what relationships of information and communication are emerging, and from these to transpose to a theory of the networked information economy as a new platform for the public sphere. + +E-mail is the most popular application on the Net. It is cheap and trivially easy to use. Basic e-mail, as currently used, is not ideal for public communications. While it provides a cheap and efficient means of communicating with large numbers of individuals who are not part of one's basic set of social associations, the presence of large amounts of commercial spam and the amount of mail flowing in and out of mailboxes make indiscriminate e-mail distributions a relatively poor mechanism for being heard. E-mails to smaller groups, preselected by the sender for having some interest in a subject or relationship to the sender, do, however, provide a rudimentary mechanism for communicating observations, ideas, and opinions to a significant circle, on an ad hoc basis. Mailing lists are more stable and self-selecting, and ,{[pg 216]}, therefore more significant as a basic tool for the networked public sphere. Some mailing lists are moderated or edited, and run by one or a small number of editors. Others are not edited in any significant way. What separates mailing lists from most Web-based uses is the fact that they push the information on them into the mailbox of subscribers. Because of their attention limits, individuals restrict their subscriptions, so posting on a mailing list tends to be done by and for people who have self-selected as having a heightened degree of common interest, substantive or contextual. It therefore enhances the degree to which one is heard by those already interested in a topic. It is not a communications model of one-to-many, or few-to-many as broadcast is to an open, undefined class of audience members. Instead, it allows one, or a few, or even a limited large group to communicate to a large but limited group, where the limit is self-selection as being interested or even immersed in a subject. +={ discussion lists (electronic) ; + distribution lists (electronic) ; + e-mail ; + mailing lists (electronic) ; + Web +4 +} + +The World Wide Web is the other major platform for tools that individuals use to communicate in the networked public sphere. It enables a wide range of applications, from basic static Web pages, to, more recently, blogs and various social-software-mediated platforms for large-scale conversations of the type described in chapter 3--like Slashdot. Static Web pages are the individual's basic "broadcast" medium. They allow any individual or organization to present basic texts, sounds, and images pertaining to their position. They allow small NGOs to have a worldwide presence and visibility. They allow individuals to offer thoughts and commentaries. They allow the creation of a vast, searchable database of information, observations, and opinions, available at low cost for anyone, both to read and write into. This does not yet mean that all these statements are heard by the relevant others to whom they are addressed. Substantial analysis is devoted to that problem, but first let us complete the catalog of tools and information flow structures. +={ blogs +3 ; + static Web pages +1 ; + writable Web +3 +} + +One Web-based tool and an emerging cultural practice around it that extends the basic characteristics of Web sites as media for the political public sphere are Web logs, or blogs. Blogs are a tool and an approach to using the Web that extends the use of Web pages in two significant ways. Technically, blogs are part of a broader category of innovations that make the web "writable." That is, they make Web pages easily capable of modification through a simple interface. They can be modified from anywhere with a networked computer, and the results of writing onto the Web page are immediately available to anyone who accesses the blog to read. This technical change resulted in two divergences from the cultural practice of Web sites ,{[pg 217]}, in the 1990s. First, they allowed the evolution of a journal-style Web page, where individual short posts are added to the Web site in short or large intervals. As practice has developed over the past few years, these posts are usually archived chronologically. For many users, this means that blogs have become a form of personal journal, updated daily or so, for their own use and perhaps for the use of a very small group of friends. What is significant about this characteristic from the perspective of the construction of the public sphere is that blogs enable individuals to write to their Web pages in journalism time--that is, hourly, daily, weekly--whereas Web page culture that preceded it tended to be slower moving: less an equivalent of reportage than of the essay. Today, one certainly finds individuals using blog software to maintain what are essentially static Web pages, to which they add essays or content occasionally, and Web sites that do not use blogging technology but are updated daily. The public sphere function is based on the content and cadence--that is, the use practice--not the technical platform. + +The second critical innovation of the writable Web in general and of blogs in particular was the fact that in addition to the owner, readers/users could write to the blog. Blogging software allows the person who runs a blog to permit some, all, or none of the readers to post comments to the blog, with or without retaining power to edit or moderate the posts that go on, and those that do not. The result is therefore not only that many more people write finished statements and disseminate them widely, but also that the end product is a weighted conversation, rather than a finished good. It is a conversation because of the common practice of allowing and posting comments, as well as comments to these comments. Blog writers--bloggers-- often post their own responses in the comment section or address comments in the primary section. Blog-based conversation is weighted, because the culture and technical affordances of blogging give the owner of the blog greater weight in deciding who gets to post or comment and who gets to decide these questions. Different blogs use these capabilities differently; some opt for broader intake and discussion on the board, others for a more tightly edited blog. In all these cases, however, the communications model or information-flow structure that blogs facilitate is a weighted conversation that takes the form of one or a group of primary contributors/authors, together with some larger number, often many, secondary contributors, communicating to an unlimited number of many readers. + +The writable Web also encompasses another set of practices that are distinct, but that are often pooled in the literature together with blogs. These ,{[pg 218]}, are the various larger-scale, collaborative-content production systems available on the Web, of the type described in chapter 3. Two basic characteristics make sites like Slashdot or /{Wikipedia}/ different from blogs. First, they are intended for, and used by, very large groups, rather than intended to facilitate a conversation weighted toward one or a small number of primary speakers. Unlike blogs, they are not media for individual or small group expression with a conversation feature. They are intrinsically group communication media. They therefore incorporate social software solutions to avoid deterioration into chaos--peer review, structured posting privileges, reputation systems, and so on. Second, in the case of Wikis, the conversation platform is anchored by a common text. From the perspective of facilitating the synthesis of positions and opinions, the presence of collaborative authorship of texts offers an additional degree of viscosity to the conversation, so that views "stick" to each other, must jostle for space, and accommodate each other. In the process, the output is more easily recognizable as a collective output and a salient opinion or observation than where the form of the conversation is more free-flowing exchange of competing views. +={ collaborative authorship } + +Common to all these Web-based tools--both static and dynamic, individual and cooperative--are linking, quotation, and presentation. It is at the very core of the hypertext markup language (HTML) to make referencing easy. And it is at the very core of a radically distributed network to allow materials to be archived by whoever wants to archive them, and then to be accessible to whoever has the reference. Around these easy capabilities, the cultural practice has emerged to reference through links for easy transition from your own page or post to the one you are referring to--whether as inspiration or in disagreement. This culture is fundamentally different from the mass-media culture, where sending a five-hundred-page report to millions of users is hard and expensive. In the mass media, therefore, instead of allowing readers to read the report alongside its review, all that is offered is the professional review in the context of a culture that trusts the reviewer. On the Web, linking to original materials and references is considered a core characteristic of communication. The culture is oriented toward "see for yourself." Confidence in an observation comes from a combination of the reputation of the speaker as it has emerged over time, reading underlying sources you believe you have some competence to evaluate for yourself, and knowing that for any given referenced claim or source, there is some group of people out there, unaffiliated with the reviewer or speaker, who will have access to the source and the means for making their disagreement with the ,{[pg 219]}, speaker's views known. Linking and "see for yourself" represent a radically different and more participatory model of accreditation than typified the mass media. +={ hyperlinking on the Web ; + linking on the Web ; + network topology : + quoting on Web ; + quoting on Web ; + referencing on the Web ; + structure of network : + quoting on Web ; + topology, network : + quoting on Web ; + Web : + quoting from other sites ; + wireless communications : + quoting from other sites +} + +Another dimension that is less well developed in the United States than it is in Europe and East Asia is mobility, or the spatial and temporal ubiquity of basic tools for observing and commenting on the world we inhabit. Dan Gillmor is clearly right to include these basic characteristics in his book We the Media, adding to the core tools of what he describes as a transformation in journalism, short message service (SMS), and mobile connected cameras to mailing lists, Web logs, Wikis, and other tools. The United States has remained mostly a PC-based networked system, whereas in Europe and Asia, there has been more substantial growth in handheld devices, primarily mobile phones. In these domains, SMS--the "e-mail" of mobile phones--and camera phones have become critical sources of information, in real time. In some poor countries, where cell phone minutes remain very (even prohibitively) expensive for many users and where landlines may not exist, text messaging is becoming a central and ubiquitous communication tool. What these suggest to us is a transition, as the capabilities of both systems converge, to widespread availability of the ability to register and communicate observations in text, audio, and video, wherever we are and whenever we wish. Drazen Pantic tells of how listeners of Internet-based Radio B-92 in Belgrade reported events in their neighborhoods after the broadcast station had been shut down by the Milosevic regime. Howard Rheingold describes in Smart Mobs how citizens of the Philippines used SMS to organize real-time movements and action to overthrow their government. In a complex modern society, where things that matter can happen anywhere and at any time, the capacities of people armed with the means of recording, rendering, and communicating their observations change their relationship to the events that surround them. Whatever one sees and hears can be treated as input into public debate in ways that were impossible when capturing, rendering, and communicating were facilities reserved to a handful of organizations and a few thousands of their employees. +={ Gilmore, Dan ; + Pantic, Drazen ; + Rheingold, Howard ; + mobile phones ; + text messaging +} + +2~ NETWORKED INFORMATION ECONOMY MEETS THE PUBLIC SPHERE +={ information economy : + effects on public sphere +21 ; + networked information economy : + effects on public sphere +21 +} + +The networked public sphere is not made of tools, but of social production practices that these tools enable. The primary effect of the Internet on the ,{[pg 220]}, public sphere in liberal societies relies on the information and cultural production activity of emerging nonmarket actors: individuals working alone and cooperatively with others, more formal associations like NGOs, and their feedback effect on the mainstream media itself. These enable the networked public sphere to moderate the two major concerns with commercial mass media as a platform for the public sphere: (1) the excessive power it gives its owners, and (2) its tendency, when owners do not dedicate their media to exert power, to foster an inert polity. More fundamentally, the social practices of information and discourse allow a very large number of actors to see themselves as potential contributors to public discourse and as potential actors in political arenas, rather than mostly passive recipients of mediated information who occasionally can vote their preferences. In this section, I offer two detailed stories that highlight different aspects of the effects of the networked information economy on the construction of the public sphere. The first story focuses on how the networked public sphere allows individuals to monitor and disrupt the use of mass-media power, as well as organize for political action. The second emphasizes in particular how the networked public sphere allows individuals and groups of intense political engagement to report, comment, and generally play the role traditionally assigned to the press in observing, analyzing, and creating political salience for matters of public interest. The case studies provide a context both for seeing how the networked public sphere responds to the core failings of the commercial, mass-media-dominated public sphere and for considering the critiques of the Internet as a platform for a liberal public sphere. + +Our first story concerns Sinclair Broadcasting and the 2004 U.S. presidential election. It highlights the opportunities that mass-media owners have to exert power over the public sphere, the variability within the media itself in how this power is used, and, most significant for our purposes here, the potential corrective effect of the networked information environment. At its core, it suggests that the existence of radically decentralized outlets for individuals and groups can provide a check on the excessive power that media owners were able to exercise in the industrial information economy. +={ blogs : + Sinclair Broadcasting case study +6 ; + boycott of Sinclair Broadcasting +6 ; + SBG (Sinclair Broadcast Group) +6 ; + Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG) +6 +} + +Sinclair, which owns major television stations in a number of what were considered the most competitive and important states in the 2004 election-- including Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, and Iowa--informed its staff and stations that it planned to preempt the normal schedule of its sixty-two stations to air a documentary called Stolen Honor: The Wounds That Never Heal, as a news program, a week and a half before the elections.~{ Elizabeth Jensen, "Sinclair Fires Journalist After Critical Comments," Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2004. }~ The documentary ,{[pg 221]}, was reported to be a strident attack on Democratic candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War service. One reporter in Sinclair's Washington bureau, who objected to the program and described it as "blatant political propaganda," was promptly fired.~{ Jensen, "Sinclair Fires Journalist"; Sheridan Lyons, "Fired Reporter Tells Why He Spoke Out," Baltimore Sun, October 29, 2004. }~ The fact that Sinclair owns stations reaching one quarter of U.S. households, that it used its ownership to preempt local broadcast schedules, and that it fired a reporter who objected to its decision, make this a classic "Berlusconi effect" story, coupled with a poster-child case against media concentration and the ownership of more than a small number of outlets by any single owner. The story of Sinclair's plans broke on Saturday, October 9, 2004, in the Los Angeles Times. Over the weekend, "official" responses were beginning to emerge in the Democratic Party. The Kerry campaign raised questions about whether the program violated election laws as an undeclared "in-kind" contribution to the Bush campaign. By Tuesday, October 12, the Democratic National Committee announced that it was filing a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), while seventeen Democratic senators wrote a letter to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), demanding that the commission investigate whether Sinclair was abusing the public trust in the airwaves. Neither the FEC nor the FCC, however, acted or intervened throughout the episode. +={ accreditation : + concentration of mass-media power +5 | power of mass media owners +5 ; + Berlusconi effect +5 ; + capacity : + networked public sphere reaction +5 ; + commercial mass media : + corrective effects of network environment +5 ; + concentration of mass-media power : + corrective effects of network environment +5 ; + culture : + shaping perceptions of others +5 ; + exercise of programming power : + corrective effects of network environment +5 ; + filtering : + corrective effects of network environment ; + first-best preferences, mass media and : + concentration of mass-media power +5 | power of mass media owners +5 ; + information production inputs : + propaganda +5 ; + inputs to production : + propaganda +5 ; + manipulating perceptions of others : + with propaganda +5 ; + mass media : + corrective effects of network environment +5 ; + media concentration : + corrective effects of network environment +5 ; + owners of mass media, power of : + corrective effects of network environment +5 ; + perceptions of others, shaping : + with propaganda +5 ; + power of mass media owners : + corrective effects of network environment +5 ; + production inputs : + propaganda +5 ; + propaganda : + Stolen Honor documentary +5 ; + relevance filtering : + concentration of mass-media power +5 | power of mass media owners +5 ; + shaping perceptions of others : + with propaganda +5 ; + Stolen Honor documentary +5 +} + +Alongside these standard avenues of response in the traditional public sphere of commercial mass media, their regulators, and established parties, a very different kind of response was brewing on the Net, in the blogosphere. On the morning of October 9, 2004, the Los Angeles Times story was blogged on a number of political blogs--Josh Marshall on talkingpointsmemo. com, Chris Bower on MyDD.com, and Markos Moulitsas on dailyKos.com. By midday that Saturday, October 9, two efforts aimed at organizing opposition to Sinclair were posted in the dailyKos and MyDD. A "boycottSinclair" site was set up by one individual, and was pointed to by these blogs. Chris Bowers on MyDD provided a complete list of Sinclair stations and urged people to call the stations and threaten to picket and boycott. By Sunday, October 10, the dailyKos posted a list of national advertisers with Sinclair, urging readers to call them. On Monday, October 11, MyDD linked to that list, while another blog, theleftcoaster.com, posted a variety of action agenda items, from picketing affiliates of Sinclair to suggesting that readers oppose Sinclair license renewals, providing a link to the FCC site explaining the basic renewal process and listing public-interest organizations to work with. That same day, another individual, Nick Davis, started a Web site, ,{[pg 222]}, BoycottSBG.com, on which he posted the basic idea that a concerted boycott of local advertisers was the way to go, while another site, stopsinclair.org, began pushing for a petition. In the meantime, TalkingPoints published a letter from Reed Hundt, former chairman of the FCC, to Sinclair, and continued finding tidbits about the film and its maker. Later on Monday, TalkingPoints posted a letter from a reader who suggested that stockholders of Sinclair could bring a derivative action. By 5:00 a.m. on the dawn of Tuesday, October 12, however, TalkingPoints began pointing toward Davis's database on BoycottSBG.com. By 10:00 that morning, Marshall posted on TalkingPoints a letter from an anonymous reader, which began by saying: "I've worked in the media business for 30 years and I guarantee you that sales is what these local TV stations are all about. They don't care about license renewal or overwhelming public outrage. They care about sales only, so only local advertisers can affect their decisions." This reader then outlined a plan for how to watch and list all local advertisers, and then write to the sales managers--not general managers--of the local stations and tell them which advertisers you are going to call, and then call those. By 1:00 p.m. Marshall posted a story of his own experience with this strategy. He used Davis's database to identify an Ohio affiliate's local advertisers. He tried to call the sales manager of the station, but could not get through. He then called the advertisers. The post is a "how to" instruction manual, including admonitions to remember that the advertisers know nothing of this, the story must be explained, and accusatory tones avoided, and so on. Marshall then began to post letters from readers who explained with whom they had talked--a particular sales manager, for example--and who were then referred to national headquarters. He continued to emphasize that advertisers were the right addressees. By 5:00 p.m. that same Tuesday, Marshall was reporting more readers writing in about experiences, and continued to steer his readers to sites that helped them to identify their local affiliate's sales manager and their advertisers.~{ The various posts are archived and can be read, chronologically, at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_10.php. }~ +={ Bower, Chris ; + dailyKos.com site ; + Davis, Nick +1 ; + Marshall, Josh ; + Moulitas, Markos ; + MyDD.com site ; + TalkingPoints site ; + BoycottSBG.com site +1 ; + Hundt, Reed +} + +By the morning of Wednesday, October 13, the boycott database already included eight hundred advertisers, and was providing sample letters for users to send to advertisers. Later that day, BoycottSBG reported that some participants in the boycott had received reply e-mails telling them that their unsolicited e-mail constituted illegal spam. Davis explained that the CANSPAM Act, the relevant federal statute, applied only to commercial spam, and pointed users to a law firm site that provided an overview of CANSPAM. By October 14, the boycott effort was clearly bearing fruit. Davis ,{[pg 223]}, reported that Sinclair affiliates were threatening advertisers who cancelled advertisements with legal action, and called for volunteer lawyers to help respond. Within a brief period, he collected more than a dozen volunteers to help the advertisers. Later that day, another blogger at grassroots nation.com had set up a utility that allowed users to send an e-mail to all advertisers in the BoycottSBG database. By the morning of Friday, October 15, Davis was reporting more than fifty advertisers pulling ads, and three or four mainstream media reports had picked up the boycott story and reported on it. That day, an analyst at Lehman Brothers issued a research report that downgraded the expected twelve-month outlook for the price of Sinclair stock, citing concerns about loss of advertiser revenue and risk of tighter regulation. Mainstream news reports over the weekend and the following week systematically placed that report in context of local advertisers pulling their ads from Sinclair. On Monday, October 18, the company's stock price dropped by 8 percent (while the S&P 500 rose by about half a percent). The following morning, the stock dropped a further 6 percent, before beginning to climb back, as Sinclair announced that it would not show Stolen Honor, but would provide a balanced program with only portions of the documentary and one that would include arguments on the other side. On that day, the company's stock price had reached its lowest point in three years. The day after the announced change in programming decision, the share price bounced back to where it had been on October 15. There were obviously multiple reasons for the stock price losses, and Sinclair stock had been losing ground for many months prior to these events. Nonetheless, as figure 7.1 demonstrates, the market responded quite sluggishly to the announcements of regulatory and political action by the Democratic establishment earlier in the week of October 12, by comparison to the precipitous decline and dramatic bounce-back surrounding the market projections that referred to advertising loss. While this does not prove that the Weborganized, blog-driven and -facilitated boycott was the determining factor, as compared to fears of formal regulatory action, the timing strongly suggests that the efficacy of the boycott played a very significant role. + +The first lesson of the Sinclair Stolen Honor story is about commercial mass media themselves. The potential for the exercise of inordinate power by media owners is not an imaginary concern. Here was a publicly traded firm whose managers supported a political party and who planned to use their corporate control over stations reaching one quarter of U.S. households, many in swing states, to put a distinctly political message in front of this large audience. ,{[pg 224]}, + +{won_benkler_7_1.png "Figure 7.1: Sinclair Stock, October 8?November 5, 2004" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu + +- We also learn, however, that in the absence of monopoly, such decisions do not determine what everyone sees or hears, and that other mass-media outlets will criticize each other under these conditions. This criticism alone, however, cannot stop a determined media owner from trying to exert its influence in the public sphere, and if placed as Sinclair was, in locations with significant political weight, such intervention could have substantial influence. Second, we learn that the new, network-based media can exert a significant counterforce. They offer a completely new and much more widely open intake basin for insight and commentary. The speed with which individuals were able to set up sites to stake out a position, to collect and make available information relevant to a specific matter of public concern, and to provide a platform for others to exchange views about the appropriate political strategy and tactics was completely different from anything that the economics and organizational structure of mass media make feasible. The third lesson is about the internal dynamics of the networked public sphere. Filtering and synthesis occurred through discussion, trial, and error. Multiple proposals for action surfaced, and the practice of linking allowed most anyone interested who connected to one of the nodes in the network to follow ,{[pg 225]}, quotations and references to get a sense of the broad range of proposals. Different people could coalesce on different modes of action--150,000 signed the petition on stopsinclair.org, while others began to work on the boycott. Setting up the mechanism was trivial, both technically and as a matter of cost--something a single committed individual could choose to do. Pointing and adoption provided the filtering, and feedback about the efficacy, again distributed through a system of cross-references, allowed for testing and accreditation of this course of action. High-visibility sites, like Talkingpointsmemo or the dailyKos, offered transmissions hubs that disseminated information about the various efforts and provided a platform for interest-group-wide tactical discussions. It remains ambiguous to what extent these dispersed loci of public debate still needed mass-media exposure to achieve broad political salience. BoycottSBG.com received more than three hundred thousand unique visitors during its first week of operations, and more than one million page views. It successfully coordinated a campaign that resulted in real effects on advertisers in a large number of geographically dispersed media markets. In this case, at least, mainstream media reports on these efforts were few, and the most immediate "transmission mechanism" of their effect was the analyst's report from Lehman, not the media. It is harder to judge the extent to which those few mainstream media reports that did appear featured in the decision of the analyst to credit the success of the boycott efforts. The fact that mainstream media outlets may have played a role in increasing the salience of the boycott does not, however, take away from the basic role played by these new mechanisms of bringing information and experience to bear on a broad public conversation combined with a mechanism to organize political action across many different locations and social contexts. +={ BoycottSBG.com site } + +Our second story focuses not on the new reactive capacity of the networked public sphere, but on its generative capacity. In this capacity, it begins to outline the qualitative change in the role of individuals as potential investigators and commentators, as active participants in defining the agenda and debating action in the public sphere. This story is about Diebold Election Systems (one of the leading manufacturers of electronic voting machines and a subsidiary of one of the foremost ATM manufacturers in the world, with more than $2 billion a year in revenue), and the way that public criticism of its voting machines developed. It provides a series of observations about how the networked information economy operates, and how it allows large numbers of people to participate in a peer-production enterprise of ,{[pg 226]}, news gathering, analysis, and distribution, applied to a quite unsettling set of claims. While the context of the story is a debate over electronic voting, that is not what makes it pertinent to democracy. The debate could have centered on any corporate and government practice that had highly unsettling implications, was difficult to investigate and parse, and was largely ignored by mainstream media. The point is that the networked public sphere did engage, and did successfully turn something that was not a matter of serious public discussion to a public discussion that led to public action. +={ capacity : + networked public sphere generation +12 ; + Diebold Election Systems +12 ; + electronic voting machines (case study) +12 ; + information production : + networked public sphere capacity for +12 ; + networked public sphere : + Diebold Election Systems case study +12 ; + peer production : + electronic voting machines (case study) +12 ; + policy : + Diebold Election Systems case study +12 ; + production of information : + networked public sphere capacity for +12 ; + public sphere : + Diebold Election Systems case study +12 ; + voting, electronic +12 +} + +Electronic voting machines were first used to a substantial degree in the United States in the November 2002 elections. Prior to, and immediately following that election, there was sparse mass-media coverage of electronic voting machines. The emphasis was mostly on the newness, occasional slips, and the availability of technical support staff to help at polls. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution story, entitled "Georgia Puts Trust in Electronic Voting, Critics Fret about Absence of Paper Trails,"~{ Duane D. Stanford, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 31, 2002, 1A. }~ is not atypical of coverage at the time, which generally reported criticism by computer engineers, but conveyed an overall soothing message about the efficacy of the machines and about efforts by officials and companies to make sure that all would be well. The New York Times report of the Georgia effort did not even mention the critics.~{ Katherine Q. Seelye, "The 2002 Campaign: The States; Georgia About to Plunge into Touch-Screen Voting," New York Times, October 30, 2002, A22. }~ The Washington Post reported on the fears of failure with the newness of the machines, but emphasized the extensive efforts that the manufacturer, Diebold, was making to train election officials and to have hundreds of technicians available to respond to failure.~{ Edward Walsh, "Election Day to Be Test of Voting Process," Washington Post, November 4, 2002, A1. }~ After the election, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the touch-screen machines were a hit, burying in the text any references to machines that highlighted the wrong candidates or the long lines at the booths, while the Washington Post highlighted long lines in one Maryland county, but smooth operation elsewhere. Later, the Post reported a University of Maryland study that surveyed users and stated that quite a few needed help from election officials, compromising voter privacy.~{ Washington Post, December 12, 2002. }~ Given the centrality of voting mechanisms for democracy, the deep concerns that voting irregularities determined the 2000 presidential elections, and the sense that voting machines would be a solution to the "hanging chads" problem (the imperfectly punctured paper ballots that came to symbolize the Florida fiasco during that election), mass-media reports were remarkably devoid of any serious inquiry into how secure and accurate voting machines were, and included a high quotient of soothing comments from election officials who bought the machines and executives of the manufacturers who sold them. No mass-media outlet sought to go ,{[pg 227]}, behind the claims of the manufacturers about their machines, to inquire into their security or the integrity of their tallying and transmission mechanisms against vote tampering. No doubt doing so would have been difficult. These systems were protected as trade secrets. State governments charged with certifying the systems were bound to treat what access they had to the inner workings as confidential. Analyzing these systems requires high degrees of expertise in computer security. Getting around these barriers is difficult. However, it turned out to be feasible for a collection of volunteers in various settings and contexts on the Net. + +In late January 2003, Bev Harris, an activist focused on electronic voting machines, was doing research on Diebold, which has provided more than 75,000 voting machines in the United States and produced many of the machines used in Brazil's purely electronic voting system. Harris had set up a whistle-blower site as part of a Web site she ran at the time, blackboxvoting.com. Apparently working from a tip, Harris found out about an openly available site where Diebold stored more than forty thousand files about how its system works. These included specifications for, and the actual code of, Diebold's machines and vote-tallying system. In early February 2003, Harris published two initial journalistic accounts on an online journal in New Zealand, Scoop.com--whose business model includes providing an unedited platform for commentators who wish to use it as a platform to publish their materials. She also set up a space on her Web site for technically literate users to comment on the files she had retrieved. In early July of that year, she published an analysis of the results of the discussions on her site, which pointed out how access to the Diebold open site could have been used to affect the 2002 election results in Georgia (where there had been a tightly contested Senate race). In an editorial attached to the publication, entitled "Bigger than Watergate," the editors of Scoop claimed that what Harris had found was nothing short of a mechanism for capturing the U.S. elections process. They then inserted a number of lines that go to the very heart of how the networked information economy can use peer production to play the role of watchdog: +={ Harris, Bev } + +_1 We can now reveal for the first time the location of a complete online copy of the original data set. As we anticipate attempts to prevent the distribution of this information we encourage supporters of democracy to make copies of these files and to make them available on websites and file sharing networks: http://users.actrix.co.nz/dolly/. As many of the files are zip password protected you may need some assistance in opening them, we have found that the utility available at ,{[pg 228]}, the following URL works well: http://www.lostpassword.com. Finally some of the zip files are partially damaged, but these too can be read by using the utility at: http://www.zip-repair.com/. At this stage in this inquiry we do not believe that we have come even remotely close to investigating all aspects of this data; i.e., there is no reason to believe that the security flaws discovered so far are the only ones. Therefore we expect many more discoveries to be made. We want the assistance of the online computing community in this enterprise and we encourage you to file your findings at the forum HERE [providing link to forum]. + +A number of characteristics of this call to arms would have been simply infeasible in the mass-media environment. They represent a genuinely different mind-set about how news and analysis are produced and how censorship and power are circumvented. First, the ubiquity of storage and communications capacity means that public discourse can rely on "see for yourself" rather than on "trust me." The first move, then, is to make the raw materials available for all to see. Second, the editors anticipated that the company would try to suppress the information. Their response was not to use a counterweight of the economic and public muscle of a big media corporation to protect use of the materials. Instead, it was widespread distribution of information--about where the files could be found, and about where tools to crack the passwords and repair bad files could be found-- matched with a call for action: get these files, copy them, and store them in many places so they cannot be squelched. Third, the editors did not rely on large sums of money flowing from being a big media organization to hire experts and interns to scour the files. Instead, they posed a challenge to whoever was interested--there are more scoops to be found, this is important for democracy, good hunting!! Finally, they offered a platform for integration of the insights on their own forum. This short paragraph outlines a mechanism for radically distributed storage, distribution, analysis, and reporting on the Diebold files. + +As the story unfolded over the next few months, this basic model of peer production of investigation, reportage, analysis, and communication indeed worked. It resulted in the decertification of some of Diebold's systems in California, and contributed to a shift in the requirements of a number of states, which now require voting machines to produce a paper trail for recount purposes. The first analysis of the Diebold system based on the files Harris originally found was performed by a group of computer scientists at the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University and released ,{[pg 229]}, as a working paper in late July 2003. The Hopkins Report, or Rubin Report as it was also named after one of its authors, Aviel Rubin, presented deep criticism of the Diebold system and its vulnerabilities on many dimensions. The academic credibility of its authors required a focused response from Diebold. The company published a line-by-line response. Other computer scientists joined in the debate. They showed the limitations and advantages of the Hopkins Report, but also where the Diebold response was adequate and where it provided implicit admission of the presence of a number of the vulnerabilities identified in the report. The report and comments to it sparked two other major reports, commissioned by Maryland in the fall of 2003 and later in January 2004, as part of that state's efforts to decide whether to adopt electronic voting machines. Both studies found a wide range of flaws in the systems they examined and required modifications (see figure 7.2). +={ Harris, Bev +1 ; + Rubin, Aviel ; + Hopkins Report +} + +Meanwhile, trouble was brewing elsewhere for Diebold. In early August 2003, someone provided Wired magazine with a very large cache containing thousands of internal e-mails of Diebold. Wired reported that the e-mails were obtained by a hacker, emphasizing this as another example of the laxity of Diebold's security. However, the magazine provided neither an analysis of the e-mails nor access to them. Bev Harris, the activist who had originally found the Diebold materials, on the other hand, received the same cache, and posted the e-mails and memos on her site. Diebold's response was to threaten litigation. Claiming copyright in the e-mails, the company demanded from Harris, her Internet service provider, and a number of other sites where the materials had been posted, that the e-mails be removed. The e-mails were removed from these sites, but the strategy of widely distributed replication of data and its storage in many different topological and organizationally diverse settings made Diebold's efforts ultimately futile. The protagonists from this point on were college students. First, two students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and quickly students in a number of other universities in the United States, began storing the e-mails and scouring them for evidence of impropriety. In October 2003, Diebold proceeded to write to the universities whose students were hosting the materials. The company invoked provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that require Web-hosting companies to remove infringing materials when copyright owners notify them of the presence of these materials on their sites. The universities obliged, and required the students to remove the materials from their sites. The students, however, did not disappear quietly into the ,{[pg 230]}, night. + +{won_benkler_7_2.png "Figure 7.2: Analysis of the Diebold Source Code Materials" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu + +- On October 21, 2003, they launched a multipronged campaign of what they described as "electronic civil disobedience." First, they kept moving the files from one student to another's machine, encouraging students around the country to resist the efforts to eliminate the material. Second, they injected the materials into FreeNet, the anticensorship peer-to-peer publication network, and into other peer-to-peer file-sharing systems, like eDonkey and BitTorrent. Third, supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the primary civil-rights organizations concerned with Internet freedom, the students brought suit against Diebold, seeking a judicial declaration that their posting of the materials was privileged. They won both the insurgent campaign and the formal one. As a practical matter, the materials remained publicly available throughout this period. As a matter of law, the litigation went badly enough for Diebold that the company issued a letter promising not to sue the students. The court nonetheless awarded the students damages and attorneys' fees because it found that Diebold had "knowingly and materially misrepresented" that the publication of the e-mail archive was a copyright violation in its letters to the Internet service providers.~{ /{Online Policy Group v. Diebold}/, Inc., 337 F. Supp. 2d 1195 (2004). }~ ,{[pg 231]}, + +Central from the perspective of understanding the dynamics of the networked public sphere is not, however, the court case--it was resolved almost a year later, after most of the important events had already unfolded--but the efficacy of the students' continued persistent publication in the teeth of the cease-and-desist letters and the willingness of the universities to comply. The strategy of replicating the files everywhere made it impracticable to keep the documents from the public eye. And the public eye, in turn, scrutinized. Among the things that began to surface as users read the files were internal e-mails recognizing problems with the voting system, with the security of the FTP site from which Harris had originally obtained the specifications of the voting systems, and e-mail that indicated that the machines implemented in California had been "patched" or updated after their certification. That is, the machines actually being deployed in California were at least somewhat different from the machines that had been tested and certified by the state. This turned out to have been a critical find. +={ Harris, Bev } + +California had a Voting Systems Panel within the office of the secretary of state that reviewed and certified voting machines. On November 3, 2003, two weeks after the students launched their electronic disobedience campaign, the agenda of the panel's meeting was to include a discussion of proposed modifications to one of Diebold's voting systems. Instead of discussing the agenda item, however, one of the panel members made a motion to table the item until the secretary of state had an opportunity to investigate, because "It has come to our attention that some very disconcerting information regarding this item [sic] and we are informed that this company, Diebold, may have installed uncertified software in at least one county before it was certified."~{ California Secretary of State Voting Systems Panel, Meeting Minutes, November 3, 2003, http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/vsp_min_110303.pdf. }~ The source of the information is left unclear in the minutes. A later report in Wired cited an unnamed source in the secretary of state's office as saying that somebody within the company had provided this information. The timing and context, however, suggest that it was the revelation and discussion of the e-mail memoranda online that played that role. Two of the members of the public who spoke on the record mention information from within the company. One specifically mentions the information gleaned from company e-mails. In the next committee meeting, on December 16, 2003, one member of the public who was in attendance specifically referred to the e-mails on the Internet, referencing in particular a January e-mail about upgrades and changes to the certified systems. By that December meeting, the independent investigation by the secretary of state had found systematic discrepancies between the systems actually installed ,{[pg 232]}, and those tested and certified by the state. The following few months saw more studies, answers, debates, and the eventual decertification of many of the Diebold machines installed in California (see figures 7.3a and 7.3b). + +The structure of public inquiry, debate, and collective action exemplified by this story is fundamentally different from the structure of public inquiry and debate in the mass-media-dominated public sphere of the twentieth century. The initial investigation and analysis was done by a committed activist, operating on a low budget and with no financing from a media company. The output of this initial inquiry was not a respectable analysis by a major player in the public debate. It was access to raw materials and initial observations about them, available to start a conversation. Analysis then emerged from a widely distributed process undertaken by Internet users of many different types and abilities. In this case, it included academics studying electronic voting systems, activists, computer systems practitioners, and mobilized students. When the pressure from a well-financed corporation mounted, it was not the prestige and money of a Washington Post or a New York Times that protected the integrity of the information and its availability for public scrutiny. It was the radically distributed cooperative efforts of students and peer-to-peer network users around the Internet. These efforts were, in turn, nested in other communities of cooperative production--like the free software community that developed some of the applications used to disseminate the e-mails after Swarthmore removed them from the students' own site. There was no single orchestrating power--neither party nor professional commercial media outlet. There was instead a series of uncoordinated but mutually reinforcing actions by individuals in different settings and contexts, operating under diverse organizational restrictions and affordances, to expose, analyze, and distribute criticism and evidence for it. The networked public sphere here does not rely on advertising or capturing large audiences to focus its efforts. What became salient for the public agenda and shaped public discussion was what intensely engaged active participants, rather than what kept the moderate attention of large groups of passive viewers. Instead of the lowest-common-denominator focus typical of commercial mass media, each individual and group can--and, indeed, most likely will--focus precisely on what is most intensely interesting to its participants. Instead of iconic representation built on the scarcity of time slots and space on the air or on the page, we see the emergence of a "see for yourself" culture. Access to underlying documents and statements, and to ,{[pg 233]}, the direct expression of the opinions of others, becomes a central part of the medium. + +{won_benkler_7_3a.png "Figure 7.3a: Diebold Internal E-mails Discovery and Distribution" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu + +2~ CRITIQUES OF THE CLAIMS THAT THE INTERNET HAS DEMOCRATIZING EFFECTS +={ democratizing effects of Internet : + critiques of claims of +12 ; + Internet : + democratizing effect of +12 ; + networked public sphere : + critiques that Internet democratizes +12 ; + political freedom, public sphere and : + critiques that Internet democratizes +12 ; + public sphere : + critiques that Internet democratizes +12 +} + +It is common today to think of the 1990s, out of which came the Supreme Court's opinion in /{Reno v. ACLU}/, as a time of naïve optimism about the Internet, expressing in political optimism the same enthusiasm that drove the stock market bubble, with the same degree of justifiability. An ideal liberal public sphere did not, in fact, burst into being from the Internet, fully grown like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. The detailed criticisms of the early claims about the democratizing effects of the Internet can be characterized as variants of five basic claims: + +{won_benkler_7_3b.png "Figure 7.3b: Internal E-mails Translated to Political and Judicial Action" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu + +1. /{Information overload.}/ A basic problem created when everyone can speak is that there will be too many statements, or too much information. Too ,{[pg 234]}, many observations and too many points of view make the problem of sifting through them extremely difficult, leading to an unmanageable din. This overall concern, a variant of the Babel objection, underlies three more specific arguments: that money will end up dominating anyway, that there will be fragmentation of discourse, and that fragmentation of discourse will lead to its polarization. +={ Babel objection ; + information overload and Babel objection +} + +/{Money will end up dominating anyway.}/ A point originally raised by Eli Noam is that in this explosively large universe, getting attention will be as difficult as getting your initial message out in the mass-media context, if not more so. The same means that dominated the capacity to speak in the mass-media environment--money--will dominate the capacity to be heard on the Internet, even if it no longer controls the capacity to speak. +={ money : + as dominant factor +} + +/{Fragmentation of attention and discourse.}/ A point raised most explicitly by Cass Sunstein in Republic.com is that the ubiquity of information and the absence of the mass media as condensation points will impoverish public discourse by fragmenting it. There will be no public sphere. ,{[pg 235]}, Individuals will view the world through millions of personally customized windows that will offer no common ground for political discourse or action, except among groups of highly similar individuals who customize their windows to see similar things. +={ Sunstein, Cass +1 ; + attention fragmentation ; + communities : + fragmentation of ; + diversity : + fragmentation of communication ; + fragmentation of communication ; + norms (social) : + fragmentation of communication ; + regulation by social norms : + fragmentation of communication ; + social relations and norms : + fragmentation of communication +} + +/{Polarization.}/ A descriptively related but analytically distinct critique of Sunstein's was that the fragmentation would lead to polarization. When information and opinions are shared only within groups of likeminded participants, he argued, they tend to reinforce each other's views and beliefs without engaging with alternative views or seeing the concerns and critiques of others. This makes each view more extreme in its own direction and increases the distance between positions taken by opposing camps. +={ polarization } + +2. /{Centralization of the Internet.}/ A second-generation criticism of the democratizing effects of the Internet is that it turns out, in fact, not to be as egalitarian or distributed as the 1990s conception had suggested. First, there is concentration in the pipelines and basic tools of communications. Second, and more intractable to policy, even in an open network, a high degree of attention is concentrated on a few top sites--a tiny number of sites are read by the vast majority of readers, while many sites are never visited by anyone. In this context, the Internet is replicating the massmedia model, perhaps adding a few channels, but not genuinely changing anything structural. +={ accreditation : + concentration of mass-media power +1 ; + centralization of communications ; + concentration of mass-media power +1 ; + filtering : + concentration of mass-media power +1 ; + first-best preferences, mass media and : + concentration of mass-media power ; + Internet : + centralization of ; + media concentration ; + relevance filtering : + concentration of mass-media power +} + +Note that the concern with information overload is in direct tension with the second-generation concerns. To the extent that the concerns about Internet concentration are correct, they suggest that the information overload is not a deep problem. Sadly, from the perspective of democracy, it turns out that according to the concentration concern, there are few speakers to which most people listen, just as in the mass-media environment. While this means that the supposed benefits of the networked public sphere are illusory, it also means that the information overload concerns about what happens when there is no central set of speakers to whom most people listen are solved in much the same way that the mass-media model deals with the factual diversity of information, opinion, and observations in large societies--by consigning them to public oblivion. The response to both sets of concerns will therefore require combined consideration of a series of questions: To what extent are the claims of concentration correct? How do they solve the information overload ,{[pg 236]}, problem? To what extent does the observed concentration replicate the mass-media model? +={ Babel objection ; + information overload and Babel objection +} + +3. /{Centrality of commercial mass media to the Fourth Estate function.}/ The importance of the press to the political process is nothing new. It earned the press the nickname "the Fourth Estate" (a reference to the three estates that made up the prerevolutionary French Estates-General, the clergy, nobility, and townsmen), which has been in use for at least a hundred and fifty years. In American free speech theory, the press is often described as fulfilling "the watchdog function," deriving from the notion that the public representatives must be watched over to assure they do the public's business faithfully. In the context of the Internet, the concern, most clearly articulated by Neil Netanel, has been that in the modern complex societies in which we live, commercial mass media are critical for preserving the watchdog function of the media. Big, sophisticated, well-funded government and corporate market actors have enormous resources at their disposal to act as they please and to avoid scrutiny and democratic control. Only similarly big, powerful, independently funded media organizations, whose basic market roles are to observe and criticize other large organizations, can match these established elite organizational actors. Individuals and collections of volunteers talking to each other may be nice, but they cannot seriously replace well-funded, economically and politically powerful media. +={ Netanel, Neil ; + filtering : + watchdog functionality ; + networked public sphere : + watchdog functionality ; + peer production : + watchdog functionality ; + political freedom, public sphere and : + watchdog functionality ; + public sphere : + watchdog functionality ; + relevance filtering : + watchdog functionality ; + watchdog functionality +} + +4. /{Authoritarian countries can use filtering and monitoring to squelch Internet use.}/ A distinct set of claims and their critiques have to do with the effects of the Internet on authoritarian countries. The critique is leveled at a basic belief supposedly, and perhaps actually, held by some cyberlibertarians, that with enough access to Internet tools freedom will burst out everywhere. The argument is that China, more than any other country, shows that it is possible to allow a population access to the Internet-- it is now home to the second-largest national population of Internet users--and still control that use quite substantially. +={ authoritarian control ; + blocked access : + authoritarian control ; + filtering : + by authoritarian countries ; + government : + authoritarian control ; + monitoring, authoritarian ; + relevance filtering : + by authoritarian countries +} + +5. /{Digital divide.}/ While the Internet may increase the circle of participants in the public sphere, access to its tools is skewed in favor of those who already are well-off in society--in terms of wealth, race, and skills. I do not respond to this critique in this chapter. First, in the United States, this is less stark today than it was in the late 1990s. Computers and Internet connections are becoming cheaper and more widely available in public libraries and schools. As they become more central to life, they ,{[pg 237]}, seem to be reaching higher penetration rates, and growth rates among underrepresented groups are higher than the growth rate among the highly represented groups. The digital divide with regard to basic access within advanced economies is important as long as it persists, but seems to be a transitional problem. Moreover, it is important to recall that the democratizing effects of the Internet must be compared to democracy in the context of mass media, not in the context of an idealized utopia. Computer literacy and skills, while far from universal, are much more widely distributed than the skills and instruments of mass-media production. Second, I devote chapter 9 to the question of how and why the emergence specifically of nonmarket production provides new avenues for substantial improvements in equality of access to various desiderata that the market distributes unevenly, both within advanced economies and globally, where the maldistribution is much more acute. While the digital divide critique can therefore temper our enthusiasm for how radical the change represented by the networked information economy may be in terms of democracy, the networked information economy is itself an avenue for alleviating maldistribution. +={ digital divide ; + human welfare : + digital divide ; + welfare : + digital divide +} + +The remainder of this chapter is devoted to responding to these critiques, providing a defense of the claim that the Internet can contribute to a more attractive liberal public sphere. As we work through these objections, we can develop a better understanding of how the networked information economy responds to or overcomes the particular systematic failures of mass media as platforms for the public sphere. Throughout this analysis, it is comparison of the attractiveness of the networked public sphere to that baseline--the mass-media-dominated public sphere--not comparison to a nonexistent ideal public sphere or to the utopia of "everyone a pamphleteer," that should matter most to our assessment of its democratic promise. + +2~ IS THE INTERNET TOO CHAOTIC, TOO CONCENTRATED, OR NEITHER? +={ accreditation : + concentration of mass-media power +7 ; + Babel objection +7 ; + centralization of communications +7 ; + channels, transmission : + See transport channel policy chaotic, Internet as +7 ; + concentration of mass-media power +7 ; + filtering : + concentration of mass-media power +7 ; + filtering : + concentration of mass-media power +7 ; + first-best preferences, mass media and : + concentration of mass-media power +7 ; + information overload and Babel objection +7 ; + Internet : + centralization of +7 ; + media concentration +7 ; + networked public sphere : + Internet as concentrated vs. chaotic +7 ; + political freedom, public sphere and : + Internet as concentrated vs. chaotic +7 ; + public sphere : + Internet as concentrated vs. chaotic +7 ; + relevance filtering : + concentration of mass-media power +7 +} + +The first-generation critique of the claims that the Internet democratizes focused heavily on three variants of the information overload or Babel objection. The basic descriptive proposition that animated the Supreme Court in /{Reno v. ACLU}/ was taken as more or less descriptively accurate: Everyone would be equally able to speak on the Internet. However, this basic observation ,{[pg 238]}, was then followed by a descriptive or normative explanation of why this development was a threat to democracy, or at least not much of a boon. The basic problem that is diagnosed by this line of critique is the problem of attention. When everyone can speak, the central point of failure becomes the capacity to be heard--who listens to whom, and how that question is decided. Speaking in a medium that no one will actually hear with any reasonable likelihood may be psychologically satisfying, but it is not a move in a political conversation. Noam's prediction was, therefore, that there would be a reconcentration of attention: money would reemerge in this environment as a major determinant of the capacity to be heard, certainly no less, and perhaps even more so, than it was in the mass-media environment.~{ Eli Noam, "Will the Internet Be Bad for Democracy?" (November 2001), http://www.citi.columbia.edu/elinoam/articles/int_bad_dem.htm. }~ Sunstein's theory was different. He accepted Nicholas Negroponte's prediction that people would be reading "The Daily Me," that is, that each of us would create highly customized windows on the information environment that would be narrowly tailored to our unique combination of interests. From this assumption about how people would be informed, he spun out two distinct but related critiques. The first was that discourse would be fragmented. With no six o'clock news to tell us what is on the public agenda, there would be no public agenda, just a fragmented multiplicity of private agendas that never coalesce into a platform for political discussion. The second was that, in a fragmented discourse, individuals would cluster into groups of self-reinforcing, self-referential discussion groups. These types of groups, he argued from social scientific evidence, tend to render their participants' views more extreme and less amenable to the conversation across political divides necessary to achieve reasoned democratic decisions. +={ Negroponte, Nicholas ; + Noam, Eli +1 ; + attention fragmentation +1 ; + communities : + fragmentation of +1 ; + diversity : + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + norms (social) : + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + regulation by social norms : + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + social relations and norms : + fragmentation of communication +1 +} + +Extensive empirical and theoretical studies of actual use patterns of the Internet over the past five to eight years has given rise to a second-generation critique of the claim that the Internet democratizes. According to this critique, attention is much more concentrated on the Internet than we thought a few years ago: a tiny number of sites are highly linked, the vast majority of "speakers" are not heard, and the democratic potential of the Internet is lost. If correct, these claims suggest that Internet use patterns solve the problem of discourse fragmentation that Sunstein was worried about. Rather than each user reading a customized and completely different "newspaper," the vast majority of users turn out to see the same sites. In a network with a small number of highly visible sites that practically everyone reads, the discourse fragmentation problem is resolved. Because they are seen by most people, the polarization problem too is solved--the highly visible sites are ,{[pg 239]}, not small-group interactions with homogeneous viewpoints. While resolving Sunstein's concerns, this pattern is certainly consistent with Noam's prediction that money would have to be paid to reach visibility, effectively replicating the mass-media model. While centralization would resolve the Babel objection, it would do so only at the expense of losing much of the democratic promise of the Net. + +Therefore, we now turn to the question: Is the Internet in fact too chaotic or too concentrated to yield a more attractive democratic discourse than the mass media did? I suggest that neither is the case. At the risk of appearing a chimera of Goldilocks and Pangloss, I argue instead that the observed use of the network exhibits an order that is not too concentrated and not too chaotic, but rather, if not "just right," at least structures a networked public sphere more attractive than the mass-media-dominated public sphere. + +There are two very distinct types of claims about Internet centralization. The first, and earlier, has the familiar ring of media concentration. It is the simpler of the two, and is tractable to policy. The second, concerned with the emergent patterns of attention and linking on an otherwise open network, is more difficult to explain and intractable to policy. I suggest, however, that it actually stabilizes and structures democratic discourse, providing a better answer to the fears of information overload than either the mass media or any efforts to regulate attention to matters of public concern. + +The media-concentration type argument has been central to arguments about the necessity of open access to broadband platforms, made most forcefully over the past few years by Lawrence Lessig. The argument is that the basic instrumentalities of Internet communications are subject to concentrated markets. This market concentration in basic access becomes a potential point of concentration of the power to influence the discourse made possible by access. Eli Noam's recent work provides the most comprehensive study currently available of the degree of market concentration in media industries. It offers a bleak picture.~{ Eli Noam, "The Internet Still Wide, Open, and Competitive?" Paper presented at The Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, September 2003, http://www.tprc.org/papers/2003/200/noam_TPRC2003.pdf. }~ Noam looked at markets in basic infrastructure components of the Internet: Internet backbones, Internet service providers (ISPs), broadband providers, portals, search engines, browser software, media player software, and Internet telephony. Aggregating across all these sectors, he found that the Internet sector defined in terms of these components was, throughout most of the period from 1984 to 2002, concentrated according to traditional antitrust measures. Between 1992 and 1998, however, this sector was "highly concentrated" by the Justice Department's measure of market concentration for antitrust purposes. Moreover, the power ,{[pg 240]}, of the top ten firms in each of these markets, and in aggregate for firms that had large market segments in a number of these markets, shows that an ever-smaller number of firms were capturing about 25 percent of the revenues in the Internet sector. A cruder, but consistent finding is the FCC's, showing that 96 percent of homes and small offices get their broadband access either from their incumbent cable operator or their incumbent local telephone carrier.~{ Federal Communications Commission, Report on High Speed Services, December 2003. }~ It is important to recognize that these findings are suggesting potential points of failure for the networked information economy. They are not a critique of the democratic potential of the networked public sphere, but rather show us how we could fail to develop it by following the wrong policies. +={ Lessig, Lawrence (Larry) ; + access : + broadband services, concentration of +1 ; + broadband networks : + concentration in access services +1 ; + concentration in broadband access services +1 +} + +The risk of concentration in broadband access services is that a small number of firms, sufficiently small to have economic power in the antitrust sense, will control the markets for the basic instrumentalities of Internet communications. Recall, however, that the low cost of computers and the open-ended architecture of the Internet protocol itself are the core enabling facts that have allowed us to transition from the mass-media model to the networked information model. As long as these basic instrumentalities are open and neutral as among uses, and are relatively cheap, the basic economics of nonmarket production described in part I should not change. Under competitive conditions, as technology makes computation and communications cheaper, a well-functioning market should ensure that outcome. Under oligopolistic conditions, however, there is a threat that the network will become too expensive to be neutral as among market and nonmarket production. If basic upstream network connections, server space, and up-to-date reading and writing utilities become so expensive that one needs to adopt a commercial model to sustain them, then the basic economic characteristic that typifies the networked information economy--the relatively large role of nonproprietary, nonmarket production--will have been reversed. However, the risk is not focused solely or even primarily on explicit pricing. One of the primary remaining scarce resources in the networked environment is user time and attention. As chapter 5 explained, owners of communications facilities can extract value from their users in ways that are more subtle than increasing price. In particular, they can make some sites and statements easier to reach and see--more prominently displayed on the screen, faster to load--and sell that relative ease to those who are willing to pay.~{ See Eszter Hargittai, "The Changing Online Landscape: From Free-For-All to Commercial Gatekeeping," http://www.eszter.com/research/pubs/hargittai-onlinelandscape.pdf. }~ In that environment, nonmarket sites are systematically disadvantaged irrespective of the quality of their content. ,{[pg 241]}, + +The critique of concentration in this form therefore does not undermine the claim that the networked information economy, if permitted to flourish, will improve the democratic public sphere. It underscores the threat of excessive monopoly in infrastructure to the sustainability of the networked public sphere. The combination of observations regarding market concentration and an understanding of the importance of a networked public sphere to democratic societies suggests that a policy intervention is possible and desirable. Chapter 11 explains why the relevant intervention is to permit substantial segments of the core common infrastructure--the basic physical transport layer of wireless or fiber and the software and standards that run communications--to be produced and provisioned by users and managed as a commons. + +2~ ON POWER LAW DISTRIBUTIONS, NETWORK TOPOLOGY, AND BEING HEARD +={ concentration of Web attention +29 ; + distribution of information : + power law distribution of site connections +29 ; + hyperlinking on the Web : + power law distribution of site connections +29 ; + Internet : + power law distribution of site connections +29 ; + linking on the Web : + power law distribution of site connections +29 ; + network topology : + power law distribution of site connections +29 ; + networked public sphere : + topology and connectivity of +29 ; + political freedom, public sphere and : + topology and connectivity of +29 ; + power law distribution of Web connections +29 ; + public sphere : + topology and connectivity of +29 ; + referencing on the Web : + power law distribution of Web site connections +29 ; + structure of network : + power law distribution of Web site connections +29 ; + topology, network : + power law distribution of Web site connections +29 ; + Web : + power law distribution of Web site connections +29 ; + wireless communications : + power law distribution of Web site connections +29 +} + +A much more intractable challenge to the claim that the networked information economy will democratize the public sphere emerges from observations of a set or phenomena that characterize the Internet, the Web, the blogosphere, and, indeed, most growing networks. In order to extract information out of the universe of statements and communications made possible by the Internet, users are freely adopting practices that lead to the emergence of a new hierarchy. Rather than succumb to the "information overload" problem, users are solving it by congregating in a small number of sites. This conclusion is based on a new but growing literature on the likelihood that a Web page will be linked to by others. The distribution of that probability turns out to be highly skew. That is, there is a tiny probability that any given Web site will be linked to by a huge number of people, and a very large probability that for a given Web site only one other site, or even no site, will link to it. This fact is true of large numbers of very different networks described in physics, biology, and social science, as well as in communications networks. If true in this pure form about Web usage, this phenomenon presents a serious theoretical and empirical challenge to the claim that Internet communications of the sorts we have seen here meaningfully decentralize democratic discourse. It is not a problem that is tractable to policy. We cannot as a practical matter force people to read different things than what they choose to read; nor should we wish to. If users avoid information overload by focusing on a small subset of sites in an otherwise ,{[pg 242]}, open network that allows them to read more or less whatever they want and whatever anyone has written, policy interventions aimed to force a different pattern would be hard to justify from the perspective of liberal democratic theory. + +The sustained study of the distribution of links on the Internet and the Web is relatively new--only a few years old. There is significant theoretical work in a field of mathematics called graph theory, or network topology, on power law distributions in networks, on skew distributions that are not pure power law, and on the mathematically related small-worlds phenomenon in networks. The basic intuition is that, if indeed a tiny minority of sites gets a large number of links, and the vast majority gets few or no links, it will be very difficult to be seen unless you are on the highly visible site. Attention patterns make the open network replicate mass media. While explaining this literature over the next few pages, I show that what is in fact emerging is very different from, and more attractive than, the mass-media-dominated public sphere. + +While the Internet, the Web, and the blogosphere are indeed exhibiting much greater order than the freewheeling, "everyone a pamphleteer" image would suggest, this structure does not replicate a mass-media model. We are seeing a newly shaped information environment, where indeed few are read by many, but clusters of moderately read sites provide platforms for vastly greater numbers of speakers than were heard in the mass-media environment. Filtering, accreditation, synthesis, and salience are created through a system of peer review by information affinity groups, topical or interest based. These groups filter the observations and opinions of an enormous range of people, and transmit those that pass local peer review to broader groups and ultimately to the polity more broadly, without recourse to market-based points of control over the information flow. Intense interest and engagement by small groups that share common concerns, rather than lowest-commondenominator interest in wide groups that are largely alienated from each other, is what draws attention to statements and makes them more visible. This makes the emerging networked public sphere more responsive to intensely held concerns of a much wider swath of the population than the mass media were capable of seeing, and creates a communications process that is more resistant to corruption by money. + +In what way, first, is attention concentrated on the Net? We are used to seeing probability distributions that describe social phenomena following a Gaussian distribution: where the mean and the median are the same and the ,{[pg 243]}, probabilities fall off symmetrically as we describe events that are farther from the median. This is the famous Bell Curve. Some phenomena, however, observed initially in Pareto's work on income distribution and Zipf 's on the probability of the use of English words in text and in city populations, exhibit completely different probability distributions. These distributions have very long "tails"--that is, they are characterized by a very small number of very high-yield events (like the number of words that have an enormously high probability of appearing in a randomly chosen sentence, like "the" or "to") and a very large number of events that have a very low probability of appearing (like the probability that the word "probability" or "blogosphere" will appear in a randomly chosen sentence). To grasp intuitively how unintuitive such distributions are to us, we could think of radio humorist Garrison Keillor's description of the fictitious Lake Wobegon, where "all the children are above average." That statement is amusing because we assume intelligence follows a normal distribution. If intelligence were distributed according to a power law, most children there would actually be below average--the median is well below the mean in such distributions (see figure 7.4). Later work by Herbert Simon in the 1950s, and by Derek de Solla Price in the 1960s, on cumulative advantage in scientific citations~{ Derek de Solla Price, "Networks of Scientific Papers," Science 149 (1965): 510; Herbert Simon, "On a Class of Skew Distribution Function," Biometrica 42 (1955): 425-440, reprinted in Herbert Simon, Models of Man Social and Rational: Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting (New York: Garland, 1957). }~ presaged an emergence at the end of the 1990s of intense interest in power law characterizations of degree distributions, or the number of connections any point in a network has to other points, in many kinds of networks--from networks of neurons and axons, to social networks and communications and information networks. +={ de Solla Price, Derek ; + Solla Price, Derek (de Solla Price) ; + Keillor, Garrison ; + Pareto, Vilfredo ; + Simon, Herbert ; + Zipf, George +} + +{won_benkler_7_4.png "Figure 7.4: Illustration of How Normal Distribution and Power Law Distribution Would Differ in Describing How Many Web Sites Have Few or Many Links Pointing at Them" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu + +% image moved above paragraph from start of original books page 244 + +The Internet and the World Wide Web offered a testable setting, where large-scale investigation could be done automatically by studying link structure (who is linked-in to and by whom, who links out and to whom, how these are related, and so on), and where the practical applications of better understanding were easily articulated--such as the design of better search engines. In 1999, Albert-László Barabasi and Reka Albert published a paper in /{Science}/ showing that a variety of networked phenomena have a predictable topology: The distribution of links into and out of nodes on the network follows a power law. There is a very low probability that any vertex, or node, in the network will be very highly connected to many others, and a very large probability that a very large number of nodes will be connected only very loosely, or perhaps not at all. Intuitively, a lot of Web sites link to information that is located on Yahoo!, while very few link to any randomly selected individual's Web site. Barabasi and Albert hypothesized a mechanism ,{[pg 244]}, for this distribution to evolve, which they called "preferential attachment." That is, new nodes prefer to attach to already well-attached nodes. Any network that grows through the addition of new nodes, and in which nodes preferentially attach to nodes that are already well attached, will eventually exhibit this distribution.~{ Albert-Laszio Barabasi and Reka Albert, "Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks," Science 286 (1999): 509. }~ In other words, the rich get richer. At the same time, two computer scientists, Lada Adamic and Bernardo Huberman, published a study in Nature that identified the presence of power law distributions in the number of Web pages in a given site. They hypothesized not that new nodes preferentially attach to old ones, but that each site has an intrinsically different growth rate, and that new sites are formed at an exponential rate.~{ Bernardo Huberman and Lada Adamic, "Growth Dynamics of the World Wide Web," Nature 401 (1999): 131. }~ The intrinsically different growth rates could be interpreted as quality, interest, or perhaps investment of money in site development and marketing. They showed that on these assumptions, a power law distribution would emerge. Since the publication of these articles we have seen an explosion of theoretical and empirical literature on graph theory, or the structure and growth of networks, and particularly on link structure in the World Wide Web. It has consistently shown that the number of links into and out of Web sites follows power laws and that the exponent (the exponential ,{[pg 245]}, factor that determines that the drop-off between the most linked-to site and the second most linked-to site, and the third, and so on, will be so dramatically rapid, and how rapid it is) for inlinks is roughly 2.1 and for outlinks 2.7. +={ Albert, Reka ; + Barabasi, Albert-László +1 ; + Huberman, Bernardo ; + Adamic, Lada ; + growth rates of Web sites +} + +If one assumes that most people read things by either following links, or by using a search engine, like Google, that heavily relies on counting inlinks to rank its results, then it is likely that the number of visitors to a Web page, and more recently, the number of readers of blogs, will follow a similarly highly skew distribution. The implication for democracy that comes most immediately to mind is dismal. While, as the Supreme Court noted with enthusiasm, on the Internet everyone can be a pamphleteer or have their own soapbox, the Internet does not, in fact, allow individuals to be heard in ways that are substantially more effective than standing on a soapbox in a city square. Many Web pages and blogs will simply go unread, and will not contribute to a more engaged polity. This argument was most clearly made in Barabasi's popularization of his field, Linked: "The most intriguing result of our Web-mapping project was the complete absence of democracy, fairness, and egalitarian values on the Web. We learned that the topology of the Web prevents us from seeing anything but a mere handful of the billion documents out there."~{ Albert-Laszio Barabasi, Linked, How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life (New York: Penguin, 2003), 56-57. One unpublished quantitative study showed specifically that the skewness holds for political Web sites related to various hot-button political issues in the United States--like abortion, gun control, or the death penalty. A small fraction of the Web sites discussing these issues account for the large majority of links into them. Matthew Hindman, Kostas Tsioutsiouliklis, and Judy Johnson, " `Googelarchy': How a Few Heavily Linked Sites Dominate Politics on the Web," July 28, 2003, http://www.scholar.google.com/url?sa U&q http://www.princeton.edu/~mhindman/googlearchy-hindman.pdf. }~ + +The stories offered in this chapter and throughout this book present a puzzle for this interpretation of the power law distribution of links in the network as re-creating a concentrated medium. The success of Nick Davis's site, BoycottSBG, would be a genuine fluke. The probability that such a site could be established on a Monday, and by Friday of the same week would have had three hundred thousand unique visitors and would have orchestrated a successful campaign, is so small as to be negligible. The probability that a completely different site, StopSinclair.org, of equally network-obscure origins, would be established on the very same day and also successfully catch the attention of enough readers to collect 150,000 signatures on a petition to protest Sinclair's broadcast, rather than wallowing undetected in the mass of self-published angry commentary, is practically insignificant. And yet, intuitively, it seems unsurprising that a large population of individuals who are politically mobilized on the same side of the political map and share a political goal in the public sphere--using a network that makes it trivially simple to set up new points of information and coordination, tell each other about them, and reach and use them from anywhere--would, in fact, inform each other and gather to participate in a political demonstration. We saw ,{[pg 246]}, that the boycott technique that Davis had designed his Web site to facilitate was discussed on TalkingPoints--a site near the top of the power law distribution of political blogs--but that it was a proposal by an anonymous individual who claimed to know what makes local affiliates tick, not of TalkingPoints author Josh Marshall. By midweek, after initially stoking the fires of support for Davis's boycott, Marshall had stepped back, and Davis's site became the clearing point for reports, tactical conversations, and mobilization. Davis not only was visible, but rather than being drowned out by the high-powered transmitter, TalkingPoints, his relationship with the high-visibility site was part of his success. This story alone cannot, of course, "refute" the power law distribution of network links, nor is it offered as a refutation. It does, however, provide a context for looking more closely at the emerging understanding of the topology of the Web, and how it relates to the fears of concentration of the Internet, and the problems of information overload, discourse fragmentation, and the degree to which money will come to dominate such an unstructured and wide-open environment. It suggests a more complex story than simply "the rich get richer" and "you might speak, but no one will hear you." In this case, the topology of the network allowed rapid emergence of a position, its filtering and synthesis, and its rise to salience. Network topology helped facilitate all these components of the public sphere, rather than undermined them. We can go back to the mathematical and computer science literature to begin to see why. +={ Davis, Nick ; + Marshall, Josh +} + +Within two months of the publication of Barabasi and Albert's article, Adamic and Huberman had published a letter arguing that, if Barabasi and Albert were right about preferential attachment, then older sites should systematically be among those that are at the high end of the distribution, while new ones will wallow in obscurity. The older sites are already attached, so newer sites would preferentially attach to the older sites. This, in turn, would make them even more attractive when a new crop of Web sites emerged and had to decide which sites to link to. In fact, however, Adamic and Huberman showed that there is no such empirical correlation among Web sites. They argued that their mechanism--that nodes have intrinsic growth rates that are different--better describes the data. In their response, Barabasi and Albert showed that on their data set, the older nodes are actually more connected in a way that follows a power law, but only on average--that is to say, the average number of connections of a class of older nodes related to the average number of links to a younger class of nodes follows a power law. This argued that their basic model was sound, but ,{[pg 247]}, required that they modify their equations to include something similar to what Huberman and Adamic had proposed--an intrinsic growth factor for each node, as well as the preferential connection of new nodes to established nodes.~{ Lada Adamic and Bernardo Huberman, "Power Law Distribution of the World Wide Web," Science 287 (2000): 2115. }~ This modification is important because it means that not every new node is doomed to be unread relative to the old ones, only that on average they are much less likely to be read. It makes room for rapidly growing new nodes, but does not theorize what might determine the rate of growth. It is possible, for example, that money could determine growth rates: In order to be seen, new sites or statements would have to spend money to gain visibility and salience. As the BoycottSBG and Diebold stories suggest, however, as does the Lott story described later in this chapter, there are other ways of achieving immediate salience. In the case of BoycottSBG, it was providing a solution that resonated with the political beliefs of many people and was useful to them for their expression and mobilization. Moreover, the continued presence of preferential attachment suggests that noncommercial Web sites that are already highly connected because of the time they were introduced (like the Electronic Frontier Foundation), because of their internal attractiveness to large communities (like Slashdot), or because of their salience to the immediate interests of users (like BoycottSBG), will have persistent visibility even in the face of large infusions of money by commercial sites. Developments in network topology theory and its relationship to the structure of the empirically mapped real Internet offer a map of the networked information environment that is indeed quite different from the naïve model of "everyone a pamphleteer." To the limited extent that these findings have been interpreted for political meaning, they have been seen as a disappointment--the real world, as it turns out, does not measure up to anything like that utopia. However, that is the wrong baseline. There never has been a complex, large modern democracy in which everyone could speak and be heard by everyone else. The correct baseline is the one-way structure of the commercial mass media. The normatively relevant descriptive questions are whether the networked public sphere provides broader intake, participatory filtering, and relatively incorruptible platforms for creating public salience. I suggest that it does. Four characteristics of network topology structure the Web and the blogosphere in an ordered, but nonetheless meaningfully participatory form. First, at a microlevel, sites cluster--in particular, topically and interest-related sites link much more heavily to each other than to other sites. Second, at a macrolevel, the Web and the blogosphere have ,{[pg 248]}, giant, strongly connected cores--"areas" where 20-30 percent of all sites are highly and redundantly interlinked; that is, tens or hundreds of millions of sites, rather than ten, fifty, or even five hundred television stations. That pattern repeats itself in smaller subclusters as well. Third, as the clusters get small enough, the obscurity of sites participating in the cluster diminishes, while the visibility of the superstars remains high, forming a filtering and transmission backbone for universal intake and local filtering. Fourth and finally, the Web exhibits "small-world" phenomena, making most Web sites reachable through shallow paths from most other Web sites. I will explain each of these below, as well as how they interact to form a reasonably attractive image of the networked public sphere. +={ Albert, Reka ; + Barabasi, Albert-László ; + Adamic, Lada +1 ; + Huberman, Bernardo ; + growth rates of Web sites ; + obscurity of some Web sites ; + older Web sites, obscurity of ; + clusters in network topology +7 ; + organizational clustering +7 ; + social clustering +7 ; + topical clustering +7 +} + +First, links are not smoothly distributed throughout the network. Sites cluster into densely linked "regions" or communities of interest. Computer scientists have looked at clustering from the perspective of what topical or other correlated characteristics describe these relatively high-density interconnected regions of nodes. What they found was perhaps entirely predictable from an intuitive perspective of the network users, but important as we try to understand the structure of information flow on the Web. Web sites cluster into topical and social/organizational clusters. Early work done in the IBM Almaden Research Center on how link structure could be used as a search technique showed that by mapping densely interlinked sites without looking at content, one could find communities of interest that identify very fine-grained topical connections, such as Australian fire brigades or Turkish students in the United States.~{ Ravi Kumar et al., "Trawling the Web for Emerging Cyber-Communities," WWW8/ Computer Networks 31, nos. 11-16 (1999): 1481-1493. }~ A later study out of the NEC Research Institute more formally defined the interlinking that would identify a "community" as one in which the nodes were more densely connected to each other than they were to nodes outside the cluster by some amount. The study also showed that topically connected sites meet this definition. For instance, sites related to molecular biology clustered with each other--in the sense of being more interlinked with each other than with off-topic sites--as did sites about physics and black holes.~{ Gary W. Flake et al., "Self-Organization and Identification of Web Communities," IEEE Computer 35, no. 3 (2002): 66-71. Another paper that showed significant internal citations within topics was Soumen Chakrabati et al., "The Structure of Broad Topics on the Web," WWW2002, Honolulu, HI, May 7-11, 2002. }~ Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance recently showed that liberal political blogs and conservative political blogs densely interlink with each other, mostly pointing within each political leaning but with about 15 percent of links posted by the most visible sites also linking across the political divide.~{ Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance, "The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 Election: Divided They Blog," March 1, 2005, http://www.blogpulse.com/papers/2005/AdamicGlanceBlogWWW.pdf. }~ Physicists analyze clustering as the property of transitivity in networks: the increased probability that if node A is connected to node B, and node B is connected to node C, that node A also will be connected to node C, forming a triangle. Newman has shown that ,{[pg 249]}, the clustering coefficient of a network that exhibits power law distribution of connections or degrees--that is, its tendency to cluster--is related to the exponent of the distribution. At low exponents, below 2.333, the clustering coefficient becomes high. This explains analytically the empirically observed high level of clustering on the Web, whose exponent for inlinks has been empirically shown to be 2.1.~{ M.E.J. Newman, "The Structure and Function of Complex Networks," Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Review 45, section 4.2.2 (2003): 167-256; S. N. Dorogovstev and J.F.F. Mendes, Evolution of Networks: From Biological Nets to the Internet and WWW (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). }~ +={ Glance, Natalie } + +Second, at a macrolevel and in smaller subclusters, the power law distribution does not resolve into everyone being connected in a mass-media model relationship to a small number of major "backbone" sites. As early as 1999, Broder and others showed that a very large number of sites occupy what has been called a giant, strongly connected core.~{ This structure was first described by Andrei Broder et al., "Graph Structure of the Web," paper presented at www9 conference (1999), http://www.almaden.ibm.com/webfountain/resources/GraphStructureintheWeb.pdf. It has since been further studied, refined, and substantiated in various studies. }~ That is, nodes within this core are heavily linked and interlinked, with multiple redundant paths among them. Empirically, as of 2001, this structure was comprised of about 28 percent of nodes. At the same time, about 22 percent of nodes had links into the core, but were not linked to from it--these may have been new sites, or relatively lower-interest sites. The same proportion of sites was linked-to from the core, but did not link back to it--these might have been ultimate depositories of documents, or internal organizational sites. Finally, roughly the same proportion of sites occupied "tendrils" or "tubes" that cannot reach, or be reached from, the core. Tendrils can be reached from the group of sites that link into the strongly connected core or can reach into the group that can be connected to from the core. Tubes connect the inlinking sites to the outlinked sites without going through the core. About 10 percent of sites are entirely isolated. This structure has been called a "bow tie"--with a large core and equally sized in- and outflows to and from that core (see figure 7.5). +={ Broder, Andrei ; + backbone Web sites +2 ; + bow tie structure of Web +2 ; + clusters in network topology : + bow tie structure of Web +2 ; + core Web sites +2 ; + Internet : + strongly connected Web sites +2 ; + network topology : + strongly connected Web sites +2 ; + power law distribution of Web connections : + strongly connected Web sites +2 ; + strongly connected Web sites +2 ; + structure of network : + strongly connected Web sites +2 ; + tendrils (Web topology) +2 ; + core Web sites +2 ; + topology, network : + strongly connected Web sites +2 ; + tubes (Web topology) +2 ; + Web : + backbone sites +2 ; + wireless communications : + backbone sites +2 +} + +{won_benkler_7_5.png "Figure 7.5: Bow Tie Structure of the Web" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu + +% image moved above paragraph from start of original book page 250 + +One way of interpreting this structure as counterdemocratic is to say: This means that half of all Web sites are not reachable from the other half--the "IN," "tendrils," and disconnected portions cannot be reached from any of the sites in SCC and OUT. This is indeed disappointing from the "everyone a pamphleteer" perspective. On the other hand, one could say that half of all Web pages, the SCC and OUT components, are reachable from IN and SCC. That is, hundreds of millions of pages are reachable from hundreds of millions of potential entry points. This represents a very different intake function and freedom to speak in a way that is potentially accessible to others than a five-hundred-channel, mass-media model. More significant yet, Dill and others showed that the bow tie structure appears not only at the level of the Web as a whole, but repeats itself within clusters. That is, the Web ,{[pg 250]}, appears to show characteristics of self-similarity, up to a point--links within clusters also follow a power law distribution and cluster, and have a bow tie structure of similar proportions to that of the overall Web. Tying the two points about clustering and the presence of a strongly connected core, Dill and his coauthors showed that what they called "thematically unified clusters," such as geographically or content-related groupings of Web sites, themselves exhibit these strongly connected cores that provided a thematically defined navigational backbone to the Web. It is not that one or two major sites were connected to by all thematically related sites; rather, as at the network level, on the order of 25-30 percent were highly interlinked, and another 25 percent were reachable from within the strongly connected core.~{ Dill et al., "Self-Similarity in the Web" (San Jose, CA: IBM Almaden Research Center, 2001); S. N. Dorogovstev and J.F.F. Mendes, Evolution of Networks. }~ Moreover, when the data was pared down to treat only the home page, rather than each Web page within a single site as a distinct "node" (that is, everything that came under www.foo.com was treated as one node, as opposed to the usual method where www.foo.com, www.foo.com/nonsuch, and www.foo.com/somethingelse are each treated as a separate node), fully 82 percent of the nodes were in the strongly connected core, and an additional 13 percent were reachable from the SCC as the OUT group. +={ Dill, Stephen } + +Third, another finding of Web topology and critical adjustment to the ,{[pg 251]}, basic Barabasi and Albert model is that when the topically or organizationally related clusters become small enough--on the order of hundreds or even low thousands of Web pages--they no longer follow a pure power law distribution. Instead, they follow a distribution that still has a very long tail-- these smaller clusters still have a few genuine "superstars"--but the body of the distribution is substantially more moderate: beyond the few superstars, the shape of the link distribution looks a little more like a normal distribution. Instead of continuing to drop off exponentially, many sites exhibit a moderate degree of connectivity. Figure 7.6 illustrates how a hypothetical distribution of this sort would differ both from the normal and power law distributions illustrated in figure 7.4. David Pennock and others, in their paper describing these empirical findings, hypothesized a uniform component added to the purely exponential original Barabasi and Albert model. This uniform component could be random (as they modeled it), but might also stand for quality of materials, or level of interest in the site by participants in the smaller cluster. At large numbers of nodes, the exponent dominates the uniform component, accounting for the pure power law distribution when looking at the Web as a whole, or even at broadly defined topics. In smaller clusters of sites, however, the uniform component begins to exert a stronger pull on the distribution. The exponent keeps the long tail intact, but the uniform component accounts for a much more moderate body. Many sites will have dozens, or even hundreds of links. The Pennock paper looked at sites whose number was reduced by looking only at sites of certain organizations--universities or public companies. Chakrabarti and others later confirmed this finding for topical clusters as well. That is, when they looked at small clusters of topically related sites, the distribution of links still has a long tail for a small number of highly connected sites in every topic, but the body of the distribution diverges from a power law distribution, and represents a substantial proportion of sites that are moderately linked.~{ Soumen Chakrabarti et al., "The Structure of Broad Topics on the Web," WWW2002, Honolulu, HI, May 7-11, 2002. }~ Even more specifically, Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell reported that the Pennock modification better describes distribution of links specifically to and among political blogs.~{ Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell, "The Power and Politics of Blogs" (July 2004), http://www.danieldrezner.com/research/blogpaperfinal.pdf. }~ +={ Albert, Reka ; + Chakrabarti, Soumen ; + Drezner, Daniel ; + Farrell, Henry ; + Pennock, David ; + Barabasi, Albert-László ; + power law distribution of Web connections : + uniform component of moderate connectivity ; + structure of network : + moderately linked sites ; + topology, network : + moderately linked sites ; + network topology : + moderately linked sites ; + obscurity of some Web sites +1 +} + +{won_benkler_7_6.png "Figure 7.6: Illustration of a Skew Distribution That Does Not Follow a Power Law" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu + +% image moved above paragraph from start of original book page 252 + +These findings are critical to the interpretation of the distribution of links as it relates to human attention and communication. There is a big difference between a situation where no one is looking at any of the sites on the low end of the distribution, because everyone is looking only at the superstars, and a situation where dozens or hundreds of sites at the low end are looking at each other, as well as at the superstars. The former leaves all but the very ,{[pg 252]}, few languishing in obscurity, with no one to look at them. The latter, as explained in more detail below, offers a mechanism for topically related and interest-based clusters to form a peer-reviewed system of filtering, accreditation, and salience generation. It gives the long tail on the low end of the distribution heft (and quite a bit of wag). + +The fourth and last piece of mapping the network as a platform for the public sphere is called the "small-worlds effect." Based on Stanley Milgram's sociological experiment and on mathematical models later proposed by Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz, both theoretical and empirical work has shown that the number of links that must be traversed from any point in the network to any other point is relatively small.~{ D. J. Watts and S. H. Strogatz, "Collective Dynamics of `Small World' Networks," Nature 393 (1998): 440-442; D. J. Watts, Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks Between Order and Randomness (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). }~ Fairly shallow "walks"-- that is, clicking through three or four layers of links--allow a user to cover a large portion of the Web. +={ Milgram, Stanley ; + Strogatz, Steven ; + Watts, Duncan ; + blogs : + small-worlds effects ; + small-worlds effect +3 +} + +What is true of the Web as a whole turns out to be true of the blogosphere as well, and even of the specifically political blogosphere. Early 2003 saw increasing conversations in the blogosphere about the emergence of an "Alist," a number of highly visible blogs that were beginning to seem more like mass media than like blogs. In two blog-based studies, Clay Shirky and then Jason Kottke published widely read explanations of how the blogosphere ,{[pg 253]}, was simply exhibiting the power law characteristics common on the Web.~{ Clay Shirky, "Power Law, Weblogs, and Inequality" (February 8, 2003), http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.htm; Jason Kottke, "Weblogs and Power Laws" (February 9, 2003), http://www.kottke.org/03/02/weblogs-and-power-laws. }~ The emergence in 2003 of discussions of this sort in the blogosphere is, it turns out, hardly surprising. In a time-sensitive study also published in 2003, Kumar and others provided an analysis of the network topology of the blogosphere. They found that it was very similar to that of the Web as a whole--both at the macro- and microlevels. Interestingly, they found that the strongly connected core only developed after a certain threshold, in terms of total number of nodes, had been reached, and that it began to develop extensively only in 2001, reached about 20 percent of all blogs in 2002, and continued to grow rapidly. They also showed that what they called the "community" structure--the degree of clustering or mutual pointing within groups--was high, an order of magnitude more than a random graph with a similar power law exponent would have generated. Moreover, the degree to which a cluster is active or inactive, highly connected or not, changes over time. In addition to time-insensitive superstars, there are also flare-ups of connectivity for sites depending on the activity and relevance of their community of interest. This latter observation is consistent with what we saw happen for BoycottSBG.com. Kumar and his collaborators explained these phenomena by the not-too-surprising claim that bloggers link to each other based on topicality--that is, their judgment of the quality and relevance of the materials--not only on the basis of how well connected they are already.~{ Ravi Kumar et al., "On the Bursty Evolution of Blogspace," Proceedings of WWW2003, May 20-24, 2003, http://www2003.org/cdrom/papers/refereed/p477/p477-kumar/p477-kumar.htm. }~ +={ Kottke, Jason ; + Kumar, Ravi ; + Shirky, Clay ; + clusters in network topology +5 ; + network topology : + emergent ordered structure +5 ; + structure of network : + emergent ordered structure +5 ; + topology, network : + emergent ordered structure +5 +} + +This body of literature on network topology suggests a model for how order has emerged on the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the blogosphere. The networked public sphere allows hundreds of millions of people to publish whatever and whenever they please without disintegrating into an unusable cacophony, as the first-generation critics argued, and it filters and focuses attention without re-creating the highly concentrated model of the mass media that concerned the second-generation critique. We now know that the network at all its various layers follows a degree of order, where some sites are vastly more visible than most. This order is loose enough, however, and exhibits a sufficient number of redundant paths from an enormous number of sites to another enormous number, that the effect is fundamentally different from the small number of commercial professional editors of the mass media. + +Individuals and individual organizations cluster around topical, organizational, or other common features. At a sufficiently fine-grained degree of clustering, a substantial proportion of the clustered sites are moderately connected, ,{[pg 254]}, and each can therefore be a point of intake that will effectively transmit observations or opinions within and among the users of that topical or interest-based cluster. Because even in small clusters the distribution of links still has a long tail, these smaller clusters still include high-visibility nodes. These relatively high-visibility nodes can serve as points of transfer to larger clusters, acting as an attention backbone that transmits information among clusters. Subclusters within a general category--such as liberal and conservative blogs clustering within the broader cluster of political blogs-- are also interlinked, though less densely than within-cluster connectivity. The higher level or larger clusters again exhibit a similar feature, where higher visibility nodes can serve as clearinghouses and connectivity points among clusters and across the Web. These are all highly connected with redundant links within a giant, strongly connected core--comprising more than a quarter of the nodes in any given level of cluster. The small-worlds phenomenon means that individual users who travel a small number of different links from similar starting points within a cluster cover large portions of the Web and can find diverse sites. By then linking to them on their own Web sites, or giving them to others by e-mail or blog post, sites provide multiple redundant paths open to many users to and from most statements on the Web. High-visibility nodes amplify and focus on given statements, and in this regard, have greater power in the information environment they occupy. However, there is sufficient redundancy of paths through high-visibility nodes that no single node or small collection of nodes can control the flow of information in the core and around the Web. This is true both at the level of the cluster and at the level of the Web as a whole. + +The result is an ordered system of intake, filtering, and synthesis that can in theory emerge in networks generally, and empirically has been shown to have emerged on the Web. It does not depend on single points of control. It avoids the generation of a din through which no voice can be heard, as the fears of fragmentation predicted. And, while money may be useful in achieving visibility, the structure of the Web means that money is neither necessary nor sufficient to grab attention--because the networked information economy, unlike its industrial predecessor, does not offer simple points of dissemination and control for purchasing assured attention. What the network topology literature allows us to do, then, is to offer a richer, more detailed, and empirically supported picture of how the network can be a platform for the public sphere that is structured in a fundamentally different way than the mass-media model. The problem is approached ,{[pg 255]}, through a self-organizing principle, beginning with communities of interest on smallish scales, practices of mutual pointing, and the fact that, with freedom to choose what to see and who to link to, with some codependence among the choices of individuals as to whom to link, highly connected points emerge even at small scales, and continue to be replicated with everlarger visibility as the clusters grow. Without forming or requiring a formal hierarchy, and without creating single points of control, each cluster generates a set of sites that offer points of initial filtering, in ways that are still congruent with the judgments of participants in the highly connected small cluster. The process is replicated at larger and more general clusters, to the point where positions that have been synthesized "locally" and "regionally" can reach Web-wide visibility and salience. It turns out that we are not intellectual lemmings. We do not use the freedom that the network has made possible to plunge into the abyss of incoherent babble. Instead, through iterative processes of cooperative filtering and "transmission" through the high visibility nodes, the low-end thin tail turns out to be a peer-produced filter and transmission medium for a vastly larger number of speakers than was imaginable in the mass-media model. + +The effects of the topology of the network are reinforced by the cultural forms of linking, e-mail lists, and the writable Web. The network topology literature treats every page or site as a node. The emergence of the writable Web, however, allows each node to itself become a cluster of users and posters who, collectively, gain salience as a node. Slashdot is "a node" in the network as a whole, one that is highly linked and visible. Slashdot itself, however, is a highly distributed system for peer production of observations and opinions about matters that people who care about information technology and communications ought to care about. Some of the most visible blogs, like the dailyKos, are cooperative blogs with a number of authors. More important, the major blogs receive input--through posts or e-mails-- from their users. Recall, for example, that the original discussion of a Sinclair boycott that would focus on local advertisers arrived on TalkingPoints through an e-mail comment from a reader. Talkingpoints regularly solicits and incorporates input from and research by its users. The cultural practice of writing to highly visible blogs with far greater ease than writing a letter to the editor and with looser constraints on what gets posted makes these nodes themselves platforms for the expression, filtering, and synthesis of observations and opinions. Moreover, as Drezner and Farrell have shown, blogs have developed cultural practices of mutual citation--when one blogger ,{[pg 256]}, finds a source by reading another, the practice is to link to the original blog, not only directly to the underlying source. Jack Balkin has argued that the culture of linking more generally and the "see for yourself" culture also significantly militate against fragmentation of discourse, because users link to materials they are commenting on, even in disagreement. +={ Drezner, Daniel ; + Farrell, Henry ; + Balkin, Jack ; + attention fragmentation +1 ; + communities : + fragmentation of +1 ; + diversity : + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + norms (social) : + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + regulation by social norms : + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + social relations and norms : + fragmentation of communication +1 +} + +Our understanding of the emerging structure of the networked information environment, then, provides the basis for a response to the family of criticisms of the first generation claims that the Internet democratizes. Recall that these criticisms, rooted in the problem of information overload, or the Babel objection, revolved around three claims. The first claim was that the Internet would result in a fragmentation of public discourse. The clustering of topically related sites, such as politically oriented sites, and of communities of interest, the emergence of high-visibility sites that the majority of sites link to, and the practices of mutual linking show quantitatively and qualitatively what Internet users likely experience intuitively. While there is enormous diversity on the Internet, there are also mechanisms and practices that generate a common set of themes, concerns, and public knowledge around which a public sphere can emerge. Any given site is likely to be within a very small number of clicks away from a site that is visible from a very large number of other sites, and these form a backbone of common materials, observations, and concerns. All the findings of power law distribution of linking, clustering, and the presence of a strongly connected core, as well as the linking culture and "see for yourself," oppose the fragmentation prediction. Users self-organize to filter the universe of information that is generated in the network. This self-organization includes a number of highly salient sites that provide a core of common social and cultural experiences and knowledge that can provide the basis for a common public sphere, rather than a fragmented one. + +The second claim was that fragmentation would cause polarization. Because like-minded people would talk only to each other, they would tend to amplify their differences and adopt more extreme versions of their positions. Given that the evidence demonstrates there is no fragmentation, in the sense of a lack of a common discourse, it would be surprising to find higher polarization because of the Internet. Moreover, as Balkin argued, the fact that the Internet allows widely dispersed people with extreme views to find each other and talk is not a failure for the liberal public sphere, though it may present new challenges for the liberal state in constraining extreme action. Only polarization of discourse in society as a whole can properly be ,{[pg 257]}, considered a challenge to the attractiveness of the networked public sphere. However, the practices of linking, "see for yourself," or quotation of the position one is criticizing, and the widespread practice of examining and criticizing the assumptions and assertions of one's interlocutors actually point the other way, militating against polarization. A potential counterargument, however, was created by the most extensive recent study of the political blogosphere. In that study, Adamic and Glance showed that only about 10 percent of the links on any randomly selected political blog linked to a site across the ideological divide. The number increased for the "A-list" political blogs, which linked across the political divide about 15 percent of the time. The picture that emerges is one of distinct "liberal" and "conservative" spheres of conversation, with very dense links within, and more sparse links between them. On one interpretation, then, although there are salient sites that provide a common subject matter for discourse, actual conversations occur in distinct and separate spheres--exactly the kind of setting that Sunstein argued would lead to polarization. Two of the study's findings, however, suggest a different interpretation. The first was that there was still a substantial amount of cross-divide linking. One out of every six or seven links in the top sites on each side of the divide linked to the other side in roughly equal proportions (although conservatives tended to link slightly more overall--both internally and across the divide). The second was, that in an effort to see whether the more closely interlinked conservative sites therefore showed greater convergence "on message," Adamic and Glance found that greater interlinking did not correlate with less diversity in external (outside of the blogosphere) reference points.~{ Both of these findings are consistent with even more recent work by Hargittai, E., J. Gallo and S. Zehnder, "Mapping the Political Blogosphere: An Analysis of LargeScale Online Political Discussions," 2005. Poster presented at the International Communication Association meetings, New York. }~ Together, these findings suggest a different interpretation. Each cluster of more or less like-minded blogs tended to read each other and quote each other much more than they did the other side. This operated not so much as an echo chamber as a forum for working out of observations and interpretations internally, among likeminded people. Many of these initial statements or inquiries die because the community finds them uninteresting or fruitless. Some reach greater salience, and are distributed through the high-visibility sites throughout the community of interest. Issues that in this form reached political salience became topics of conversation and commentary across the divide. This is certainly consistent with both the BoycottSBG and Diebold stories, where we saw a significant early working out of strategies and observations before the criticism reached genuine political salience. There would have been no point for opponents to link to and criticize early ideas kicked around within the community, ,{[pg 258]}, like opposing Sinclair station renewal applications. Only after a few days, when the boycott was crystallizing, would opponents have reason to point out the boycott effort and discuss it. This interpretation also well characterizes the way in which the Trent Lott story described later in this chapter began percolating on the liberal side of the blogosphere, but then migrated over to the center-right. +={ Adamic, Lada ; + Lott, Trent ; + Glance, Natalie ; + polarization +} + +The third claim was that money would reemerge as the primary source of power brokerage because of the difficulty of getting attention on the Net. Descriptively, it shares a prediction with the second-generation claims: Namely, that the Internet will centralize discourse. It differs in the mechanism of concentration: it will not be the result of an emergent property of large-scale networks, but rather of an old, tried-and-true way of capturing the political arena--money. But the peer-production model of filtering and discussion suggests that the networked public sphere will be substantially less corruptible by money. In the interpretation that I propose, filtering for the network as a whole is done as a form of nested peer-review decisions, beginning with the speaker's closest information affinity group. Consistent with what we have been seeing in more structured peer-production projects like /{Wikipedia}/, Slashdot, or free software, communities of interest use clustering and mutual pointing to peer produce the basic filtering mechanism necessary for the public sphere to be effective and avoid being drowned in the din of the crowd. The nested structure of the Web, whereby subclusters form relatively dense higher-level clusters, which then again combine into even higher-level clusters, and in each case, have a number of high-end salient sites, allows for the statements that pass these filters to become globally salient in the relevant public sphere. This structure, which describes the analytic and empirical work on the Web as a whole, fits remarkably well as a description of the dynamics we saw in looking more closely at the success of the boycott on Sinclair, as well as the successful campaign to investigate and challenge Diebold's voting machines. +={ centralization of communications +4 ; + money : + centralization of communications +4 ; + filtering +4 ; + relevance filtering +4 +} + +The peer-produced structure of the attention backbone suggests that money is neither necessary nor sufficient to attract attention in the networked public sphere (although nothing suggests that money has become irrelevant to political attention given the continued importance of mass media). It renders less surprising Howard Dean's strong campaign for the Democratic presidential primaries in 2003 and the much more stable success of MoveOn.org since the late 1990s. These suggest that attention on the network has more to do with mobilizing the judgments, links, and cooperation ,{[pg 259]}, of large bodies of small-scale contributors than with applying large sums of money. There is no obvious broadcast station that one can buy in order to assure salience. There are, of course, the highly visible sites, and they do offer a mechanism of getting your message to large numbers of people. However, the degree of engaged readership, interlinking, and clustering suggests that, in fact, being exposed to a certain message in one or a small number of highly visible places accounts for only a small part of the range of "reading" that gets done. More significantly, it suggests that reading, as opposed to having a conversation, is only part of what people do in the networked environment. In the networked public sphere, receiving information or getting out a finished message are only parts, and not necessarily the most important parts, of democratic discourse. The central desideratum of a political campaign that is rooted in the Internet is the capacity to engage users to the point that they become effective participants in a conversation and an effort; one that they have a genuine stake in and that is linked to a larger, society-wide debate. This engagement is not easily purchased, nor is it captured by the concept of a well-educated public that receives all the information it needs to be an informed citizenry. Instead, it is precisely the varied modes of participation in small-, medium-, and large-scale conversations, with varied but sustained degrees of efficacy, that make the public sphere of the networked environment different, and more attractive, than was the mass-media-based public sphere. +={ Dean, Howard ; + Web : + backbone sites +1 ; + wireless communications : + backbone sites +1 ; + access : + large-audience programming +1 ; + capacity : + diversity of content in large-audience media +1 ; + diversity : + large-audience programming +1 ; + first-best preferences, mass media and : + large-audience programming +1 ; + information flow : + large-audience programming +1 ; + information production inputs : + large-audience programming +1 ; + inputs to production : + large-audience programming +1 ; + large-audience programming : + susceptibility of networked public sphere +1 ; + lowest-common-denominator programming +1 ; + production inputs : + large-audience programming ; + television : + large-audience programming +1 +} + +The networked public sphere is not only more resistant to control by money, but it is also less susceptible to the lowest-common-denominator orientation that the pursuit of money often leads mass media to adopt. Because communication in peer-produced media starts from an intrinsic motivation--writing or commenting about what one cares about--it begins with the opposite of lowest common denominator. It begins with what irks you, the contributing peer, individually, the most. This is, in the political world, analogous to Eric Raymond's claim that every free or open-source software project begins with programmers with an itch to scratch--something directly relevant to their lives and needs that they want to fix. The networked information economy, which makes it possible for individuals alone and in cooperation with others to scour the universe of politically relevant events, to point to them, and to comment and argue about them, follows a similar logic. This is why one freelance writer with lefty leanings, Russ Kick, is able to maintain a Web site, The Memory Hole, with documents that he gets by filing Freedom of Information Act requests. In April ,{[pg 260]}, 2004, Kick was the first to obtain the U.S. military's photographs of the coffins of personnel killed in Iraq being flown home. No mainstream news organization had done so, but many published the photographs almost immediately after Kick had obtained them. Like free software, like Davis and the bloggers who participated in the debates over the Sinclair boycott, or the students who published the Diebold e-mails, the decision of what to publish does not start from a manager's or editor's judgment of what would be relevant and interesting to many people without being overly upsetting to too many others. It starts with the question: What do I care about most now? +={ Raymond, Eric ; + Davis, Nick ; + Kick, Russ ; + advertiser-supported media : + lowest-common-denominator programming ; + blocked access : + large-audience programming +} + +To conclude, we need to consider the attractiveness of the networked public sphere not from the perspective of the mid-1990s utopianism, but from the perspective of how it compares to the actual media that have dominated the public sphere in all modern democracies. The networked public sphere provides an effective nonmarket alternative for intake, filtering, and synthesis outside the market-based mass media. This nonmarket alternative can attenuate the influence over the public sphere that can be achieved through control over, or purchase of control over, the mass media. It offers a substantially broader capture basin for intake of observations and opinions generated by anyone with a stake in the polity, anywhere. It appears to have developed a structure that allows for this enormous capture basin to be filtered, synthesized, and made part of a polity-wide discourse. This nested structure of clusters of communities of interest, typified by steadily increasing visibility of superstar nodes, allows for both the filtering and salience to climb up the hierarchy of clusters, but offers sufficient redundant paths and interlinking to avoid the creation of a small set of points of control where power can be either directly exercised or bought. + +There is, in this story, an enormous degree of contingency and factual specificity. That is, my claims on behalf of the networked information economy as a platform for the public sphere are not based on general claims about human nature, the meaning of liberal discourse, context-independent efficiency, or the benevolent nature of the technology we happen to have stumbled across at the end of the twentieth century. They are instead based on, and depend on the continued accuracy of, a description of the economics of fabrication of computers and network connections, and a description of the dynamics of linking in a network of connected nodes. As such, my claim is not that the Internet inherently liberates. I do not claim that commonsbased production of information, knowledge, and culture will win out by ,{[pg 261]}, some irresistible progressive force. That is what makes the study of the political economy of information, knowledge, and culture in the networked environment directly relevant to policy. The literature on network topology suggests that, as long as there are widely distributed capabilities to publish, link, and advise others about what to read and link to, networks enable intrinsic processes that allow substantial ordering of the information. The pattern of information flow in such a network is more resistant to the application of control or influence than was the mass-media model. But things can change. Google could become so powerful on the desktop, in the e-mail utility, and on the Web, that it will effectively become a supernode that will indeed raise the prospect of a reemergence of a mass-media model. Then the politics of search engines, as Lucas Introna and Helen Nissenbaum called it, become central. The zeal to curb peer-to-peer file sharing of movies and music could lead to a substantial redesign of computing equipment and networks, to a degree that would make it harder for end users to exchange information of their own making. Understanding what we will lose if such changes indeed warp the topology of the network, and through it the basic structure of the networked public sphere, is precisely the object of this book as a whole. For now, though, let us say that the networked information economy as it has developed to this date has a capacity to take in, filter, and synthesize observations and opinions from a population that is orders of magnitude larger than the population that was capable of being captured by the mass media. It has done so without re-creating identifiable and reliable points of control and manipulation that would replicate the core limitation of the mass-media model of the public sphere--its susceptibility to the exertion of control by its regulators, owners, or those who pay them. +={ Introna, Lucas ; + Nissenbaum, Helen +} + +2~ WHO WILL PLAY THE WATCHDOG FUNCTION? +={ filtering : + watchdog functionality +5 ; + networked public sphere : + watchdog functionality +5 ; + peer production : + watchdog functionality +5 ; + political freedom, public sphere and : + watchdog functionality +5 ; + public sphere : + watchdog functionality +5 ; + relevance filtering : + watchdog functionality +5 ; + watchdog functionality +5 +} + +A distinct critique leveled at the networked public sphere as a platform for democratic politics is the concern for who will fill the role of watchdog. Neil Netanel made this argument most clearly. His concern was that, perhaps freedom of expression for all is a good thing, and perhaps we could even overcome information overflow problems, but we live in a complex world with powerful actors. Government and corporate power is large, and individuals, no matter how good their tools, cannot be a serious alternative to a well-funded, independent press that can pay investigative reporters, defend lawsuits, and generally act like the New York Times and the Washington Post ,{[pg 262]}, when they published the Pentagon Papers in the teeth of the Nixon administration's resistance, providing some of the most damning evidence against the planning and continued prosecution of the war in Vietnam. Netanel is cognizant of the tensions between the need to capture large audiences and sell advertising, on the one hand, and the role of watchdog, on the other. He nonetheless emphasizes that the networked public sphere cannot investigate as deeply or create the public salience that the mass media can. These limitations make commercial mass media, for all their limitations, necessary for a liberal public sphere. +={ Netanel, Neil } + +This diagnosis of the potential of the networked public sphere underrepresents its productive capacity. The Diebold story provides in narrative form a detailed response to each of the concerns. The problem of voting machines has all the characteristics of an important, hard subject. It stirs deep fears that democracy is being stolen, and is therefore highly unsettling. It involves a difficult set of technical judgments about the functioning of voting machines. It required exposure and analysis of corporate-owned materials in the teeth of litigation threats and efforts to suppress and discredit the criticism. At each juncture in the process, the participants in the critique turned iteratively to peer production and radically distributed methods of investigation, analysis, distribution, and resistance to suppression: the initial observations of the whistle-blower or the hacker; the materials made available on a "see for yourself" and "come analyze this and share your insights" model; the distribution by students; and the fallback option when their server was shut down of replication around the network. At each stage, a peer-production solution was interposed in place of where a well-funded, high-end mass-media outlet would have traditionally applied funding in expectation of sales of copy. And it was only after the networked public sphere developed the analysis and debate that the mass media caught on, and then only gingerly. +={ Diebold Election Systems ; + electronic voting machines (case study) ; + networked public sphere : + Diebold Election Systems case study ; + policy : + Diebold Election Systems case study ; + public sphere : + Diebold Election Systems case study ; + voting, electronic +} + +The Diebold case was not an aberration, but merely a particularly rich case study of a much broader phenomenon, most extensively described in Dan Gilmore's We the Media. The basic production modalities that typify the networked information economy are now being applied to the problem of producing politically relevant information. In 2005, the most visible example of application of the networked information economy--both in its peer-production dimension and more generally by combining a wide range of nonproprietary production models--to the watchdog function of the media is the political blogosphere. The founding myth of the blogosphere's ,{[pg 263]}, journalistic potency was built on the back of then Senate majority leader Trent Lott. In 2002, Lott had the indiscretion of saying, at the onehundredth-birthday party of Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, that if Thurmond had won his Dixiecrat presidential campaign, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years." Thurmond had run on a segregationist campaign, splitting from the Democratic Party in opposition to Harry Truman's early civil rights efforts, as the post?World War II winds began blowing toward the eventual demise of formal, legal racial segregation in the United States. Few positions are taken to be more self-evident in the national public morality of early twenty-first-century America than that formal, state-imposed, racial discrimination is an abomination. And yet, the first few days after the birthday party at which Lott made his statement saw almost no reporting on the statement. ABC News and the Washington Post made small mention of it, but most media outlets reported merely on a congenial salute and farewell celebration of the Senate's oldest and longestserving member. Things were different in the blogosphere. At first liberal blogs, and within three days conservative bloggers as well, began to excavate past racist statements by Lott, and to beat the drums calling for his censure or removal as Senate leader. Within about a week, the story surfaced in the mainstream media, became a major embarrassment, and led to Lott's resignation as Senate majority leader about a week later. A careful case study of this event leaves it unclear why the mainstream media initially ignored the story.~{ Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Case Program: " `Big Media' Meets `Bloggers': Coverage of Trent Lott's Remarks at Strom Thurmond's Birthday Party," http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/Research_Publications/Case_Studies/1731_0.pdf. }~ It may have been that the largely social event drew the wrong sort of reporters. It may have been that reporters and editors who depend on major Washington, D.C., players were reluctant to challenge Lott. Perhaps they thought it rude to emphasize this indiscretion, or too upsetting to us all to think of just how close to the surface thoughts that we deem abominable can lurk. There is little disagreement that the day after the party, the story was picked up and discussed by Marshall on TalkingPoints, as well as by another liberal blogger, Atrios, who apparently got it from a post on Slate's "Chatterbox," which picked it up from ABC News's own The Note, a news summary made available on the television network's Web site. While the mass media largely ignored the story, and the two or three mainstream reporters who tried to write about it were getting little traction, bloggers were collecting more stories about prior instances where Lott's actions tended to suggest support for racist causes. Marshall, for example, found that Lott had filed a 1981 amicus curiae brief in support of Bob Jones University's effort to retain its tax-exempt status. The U.S. government had rescinded ,{[pg 264]}, that status because the university practiced racial discrimination--such as prohibiting interracial dating. By Monday of the following week, four days after the remarks, conservative bloggers like Glenn Reynolds on Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, and others were calling for Lott's resignation. It is possible that, absent the blogosphere, the story would still have flared up. There were two or so mainstream reporters still looking into the story. Jesse Jackson had come out within four days of the comment and said Lott should resign as majority leader. Eventually, when the mass media did enter the fray, its coverage clearly dominated the public agenda and its reporters uncovered materials that helped speed Lott's exit. However, given the short news cycle, the lack of initial interest by the media, and the large time lag between the event itself and when the media actually took the subject up, it seems likely that without the intervention of the blogosphere, the story would have died. What happened instead is that the cluster of political blogs--starting on the Left but then moving across the Left-Right divide--took up the subject, investigated, wrote opinions, collected links and public interest, and eventually captured enough attention to make the comments a matter of public importance. Free from the need to appear neutral and not to offend readers, and free from the need to keep close working relationships with news subjects, bloggers were able to identify something that grated on their sensibilities, talk about it, dig deeper, and eventually generate a substantial intervention into the public sphere. That intervention still had to pass through the mass media, for we still live in a communications environment heavily based on those media. However, the new source of insight, debate, and eventual condensation of effective public opinion came from within the networked information environment. +={ Gilmore, Dan ; + Atrios (blogger Duncan Black) ; + Lott, Trent ; + Marshall, Josh ; + Thurmond, Strom ; + Jackson, Jesse ; + Reynolds, Glenn ; + blogs : + watchdog functionality +} + +The point is not to respond to the argument with a litany of anecdotes. The point is that the argument about the commercial media's role as watchdog turns out to be a familiar argument--it is the same argument that was made about software and supercomputers, encyclopedias and immersive entertainment scripts. The answer, too, is by now familiar. Just as the World Wide Web can offer a platform for the emergence of an enormous and effective almanac, just as free software can produce excellent software and peer production can produce a good encyclopedia, so too can peer production produce the public watchdog function. In doing so, clearly the unorganized collection of Internet users lacks some of the basic tools of the mass media: dedicated full-time reporters; contacts with politicians who need media to survive, and therefore cannot always afford to stonewall questions; or ,{[pg 265]}, public visibility and credibility to back their assertions. However, networkbased peer production also avoids the inherent conflicts between investigative reporting and the bottom line--its cost, its risk of litigation, its risk of withdrawal of advertising from alienated corporate subjects, and its risk of alienating readers. Building on the wide variation and diversity of knowledge, time, availability, insight, and experience, as well as the vast communications and information resources on hand for almost anyone in advanced economies, we are seeing that the watchdog function too is being peer produced in the networked information economy. + +Note that while my focus in this chapter has been mostly the organization of public discourse, both the Sinclair and the Diebold case studies also identify characteristics of distributed political action. We see collective action emerging from the convergence of independent individual actions, with no hierarchical control like that of a political party or an organized campaign. There may be some coordination and condensation points--like BoycottSBG.com or blackboxvoting.org. Like other integration platforms in peer-production systems, these condensation points provide a critical function. They do not, however, control the process. One manifestation of distributed coordination for political action is something Howard Rheingold has called "smart mobs"--large collections of individuals who are able to coordinate real-world action through widely distributed information and communications technology. He tells of the "People Power II" revolution in Manila in 2001, where demonstrations to oust then president Estrada were coordinated spontaneously through extensive text messaging.~{ Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs, The Next Social Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2002). }~ Few images in the early twentyfirst century can convey this phenomenon more vividly than the demonstrations around the world on February 15, 2003. Between six and ten million protesters were reported to have gone to the streets of major cities in about sixty countries in opposition to the American-led invasion of Iraq. There had been no major media campaign leading up to the demonstrations-- though there was much media attention to them later. There had been no organizing committee. Instead, there was a network of roughly concordant actions, none controlling the other, all loosely discussing what ought to be done and when. MoveOn.org in the United States provides an example of a coordination platform for a network of politically mobilized activities. It builds on e-mail and Web-based media to communicate opportunities for political action to those likely to be willing and able to take it. Radically distributed, network-based solutions to the problems of political mobilization rely on the same characteristics as networked information production ,{[pg 266]}, more generally: extensive communications leading to concordant and cooperative patterns of behavior without the introduction of hierarchy or the interposition of payment. +={ Rheingold, Howard } + +2~ USING NETWORKED COMMUNICATION TO WORK AROUND AUTHORITARIAN CONTROL +={ authoritarian control : + working around +7 ; + blocked access : + authoritarian control +7 ; + communication : + authoritarian control, working around +7 ; + government : + authoritarian control +7 | working around authorities +7 ; + Internet : + authoritarian control over +7 ; + monopoly : + authoritarian control +7 ; + networked public sphere : + authoritarian control, working around +7 ; + policy : + authoritarian control +7 ; + political freedom, public sphere and : + authoritarian control, working around +7 ; + public sphere : + authoritarian control, working around +7 +} + +The Internet and the networked public sphere offer a different set of potential benefits, and suffer a different set of threats, as a platform for liberation in authoritarian countries. State-controlled mass-media models are highly conducive to authoritarian control. Because they usually rely on a small number of technical and organizational points of control, mass media offer a relatively easy target for capture and control by governments. Successful control of such universally visible media then becomes an important tool of information manipulation, which, in turn, eases the problem of controlling the population. Not surprisingly, capture of the national television and radio stations is invariably an early target of coups and revolutions. The highly distributed networked architecture of the Internet makes it harder to control communications in this way. + +The case of Radio B92 in Yugoslavia offers an example. B92 was founded in 1989, as an independent radio station. Over the course of the 1990s, it developed a significant independent newsroom broadcast over the station itself, and syndicated through thirty affiliated independent stations. B92 was banned twice after the NATO bombing of Belgrade, in an effort by the Milosevic regime to control information about the war. In each case, however, the station continued to produce programming, and distributed it over the Internet from a server based in Amsterdam. The point is a simple one. Shutting down a broadcast station is simple. There is one transmitter with one antenna, and police can find and hold it. It is much harder to shut down all connections from all reporters to a server and from the server back into the country wherever a computer exists. +={ B92 radio ; + Radio B92 +} + +This is not to say that the Internet will of necessity in the long term lead all authoritarian regimes to collapse. One option open to such regimes is simply to resist Internet use. In 2003, Burma, or Myanmar, had 28,000 Internet users out of a population of more than 42 million, or one in fifteen hundred, as compared, for example, to 6 million out of 65 million in neighboring Thailand, or roughly one in eleven. Most countries are not, however, willing to forgo the benefits of connectivity to maintain their control. Iran's ,{[pg 267]}, population of 69 million includes 4.3 million Internet users, while China has about 80 million users, second only to the United States in absolute terms, out of a population of 1.3 billion. That is, both China and Iran have a density of Internet users of about one in sixteen.~{ Data taken from CIA World Fact Book (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2004). }~ Burma's negligible level of Internet availability is a compound effect of low gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and government policies. Some countries with similar GDP levels still have levels of Internet users in the population that are two orders of magnitude higher: Cameroon (1 Internet user for every 27 residents), Moldova (1 in 30), and Mongolia (1 in 55). Even very large poor countries have several times more users per population than Myanmar: like Pakistan (1 in 100), Mauritania (1 in 300), and Bangladesh (1 in 580). Lawrence Solum and Minn Chung outline how Myanmar achieves its high degree of control and low degree of use.~{ Lawrence Solum and Minn Chung, "The Layers Principle: Internet Architecture and the Law" (working paper no. 55, University of San Diego School of Law, Public Law and Legal Theory, June 2003). }~ Myanmar has only one Internet service provider (ISP), owned by the government. The government must authorize anyone who wants to use the Internet or create a Web page within the country. Some of the licensees, like foreign businesses, are apparently permitted and enabled only to send e-mail, while using the Web is limited to security officials who monitor it. With this level of draconian regulation, Myanmar can avoid the liberating effects of the Internet altogether, at the cost of losing all its economic benefits. Few regimes are willing to pay that price. +={ Solum, Lawrence +1 ; + Chung, Minn +1 +} + +Introducing Internet communications into a society does not, however, immediately and automatically mean that an open, liberal public sphere emerges. The Internet is technically harder to control than mass media. It increases the cost and decreases the efficacy of information control. However, a regime willing and able to spend enough money and engineering power, and to limit its population's access to the Internet sufficiently, can have substantial success in controlling the flow of information into and out of its country. Solum and Chung describe in detail one of the most extensive and successful of these efforts, the one that has been conducted by China-- home to the second-largest population of Internet users in the world, whose policies controlled use of the Internet by two out of every fifteen Internet users in the world in 2003. In China, the government holds a monopoly over all Internet connections going into and out of the country. It either provides or licenses the four national backbones that carry traffic throughout China and connect it to the global network. ISPs that hang off these backbones are licensed, and must provide information about the location and workings of their facilities, as well as comply with a code of conduct. Individual ,{[pg 268]}, users must register and provide information about their machines, and the many Internet cafes are required to install filtering software that will filter out subversive sites. There have been crackdowns on Internet cafes to enforce these requirements. This set of regulations has replicated one aspect of the mass-medium model for the Internet--it has created a potential point of concentration or centralization of information flow that would make it easier to control Internet use. The highly distributed production capabilities of the networked information economy, however, as opposed merely to the distributed carriage capability of the Internet, mean that more must be done at this bottleneck to squelch the flow of information and opinion than would have to be done with mass media. That "more" in China has consisted of an effort to employ automatic filters--some at the level of the cybercafe or the local ISP, some at the level of the national backbone networks. The variability of these loci and their effects is reflected in partial efficacy and variable performance for these mechanisms. The most extensive study of the efficacy of these strategies for controlling information flows over the Internet to China was conducted by Jonathan Zittrain and Ben Edelman. From servers within China, they sampled about two hundred thousand Web sites and found that about fifty thousand were unavailable at least once, and close to nineteen thousand were unavailable on two distinct occasions. The blocking patterns seemed to follow mass-media logic--BBC News was consistently unavailable, as CNN and other major news sites often were; the U.S. court system official site was unavailable. However, Web sites that provided similar information--like those that offered access to all court cases but were outside the official system--were available. The core Web sites of human rights organizations or of Taiwan and Tibet-related organizations were blocked, and about sixty of the top one hundred results for "Tibet" on Google were blocked. What is also apparent from their study, however, and confirmed by Amnesty International's reports on Internet censorship in China, is that while censorship is significant, it is only partially effective.~{ Amnesty International, People's Republic of China, State Control of the Internet in China (2002). }~ The Amnesty report noted that Chinese users were able to use a variety of techniques to avoid the filtering, such as the use of proxy servers, but even Zittrain and Edelman, apparently testing for filtering as experienced by unsophisticated or compliant Internet users in China, could access many sites that would, on their face, seem potentially destabilizing. +={ Edelman, Ben ; + Zittrain, Jonathan ; + censorship +2 ; + centralization of communication : + authoritarian filtering +1 +} + +This level of censorship may indeed be effective enough for a government negotiating economic and trade expansion with political stability and control. It suggests, however, limits of the ability of even a highly dedicated ,{[pg 269]}, government to control the capacity of Internet communications to route around censorship and to make it much easier for determined users to find information they care about, and to disseminate their own information to others. Iran's experience, with a similar level of Internet penetration, emphasizes the difficulty of maintaining control of Internet publication.~{ A synthesis of news-based accounts is Babak Rahimi, "Cyberdissent: The Internet in Revolutionary Iran," Middle East Review of International Affairs 7, no. 3 (2003). }~ Iran's network emerged from 1993 onward from the university system, quite rapidly complemented by commercial ISPs. Because deployment and use of the Internet preceded its regulation by the government, its architecture is less amenable to centralized filtering and control than China's. Internet access through university accounts and cybercafes appears to be substantial, and until the past three or four years, had operated free of the crackdowns and prison terms suffered by opposition print publications and reporters. The conservative branches of the regime seem to have taken a greater interest in suppressing Internet communications since the publication of imprisoned Ayatollah Montazeri's critique of the foundations of the Islamic state on the Web in December 2000. While the original Web site, montazeri.com, seems to have been eliminated, the site persists as montazeri.ws, using a Western Samoan domain name, as do a number of other Iranian publications. There are now dozens of chat rooms, blogs, and Web sites, and e-mail also seems to be playing an increasing role in the education and organization of an opposition. While the conservative branches of the Iranian state have been clamping down on these forms, and some bloggers and Web site operators have found themselves subject to the same mistreatment as journalists, the efficacy of these efforts to shut down opposition seems to be limited and uneven. +={ chat rooms +1 } + +Media other than static Web sites present substantially deeper problems for regimes like those of China and Iran. Scanning the text of e-mail messages of millions of users who can encrypt their communications with widely available tools creates a much more complex problem. Ephemeral media like chat rooms and writable Web tools allow the content of an Internet communication or Web site to be changed easily and dynamically, so that blocking sites becomes harder, while coordinating moves to new sites to route around blocking becomes easier. At one degree of complexity deeper, the widely distributed architecture of the Net also allows users to build censorship-resistant networks by pooling their own resources. The pioneering example of this approach is Freenet, initially developed in 1999-2000 by Ian Clarke, an Irish programmer fresh out of a degree in computer science and artificial intelligence at Edinburgh University. Now a broader free-software project, Freenet ,{[pg 270]}, is a peer-to-peer application specifically designed to be censorship resistant. Unlike the more famous peer-to-peer network developed at the time--Napster--Freenet was not intended to store music files on the hard drives of users. Instead, it stores bits and pieces of publications, and then uses sophisticated algorithms to deliver the documents to whoever seeks them, in encrypted form. This design trades off easy availability for a series of security measures that prevent even the owners of the hard drives on which the data resides--or government agents that search their computers--from knowing what is on their hard drive or from controlling it. As a practical matter, if someone in a country that prohibits certain content but enables Internet connections wants to publish content--say, a Web site or blog--safely, they can inject it into the Freenet system. The content will be encrypted and divided into little bits and pieces that are stored in many different hard drives of participants in the network. No single computer will have all the information, and shutting down any given computer will not make the information unavailable. It will continue to be accessible to anyone running the Freenet client. Freenet indeed appears to be used in China, although the precise scope is hard to determine, as the network is intended to mask the identity and location of both readers and publishers in this system. The point to focus on is not the specifics of Freenet, but the feasibility of constructing user-based censorship-resistant storage and retrieval systems that would be practically impossible for a national censorship system to identify and block subversive content. +={ Clarke, Ian ; + Freenet +} + +To conclude, in authoritarian countries, the introduction of Internet communications makes it harder and more costly for governments to control the public sphere. If these governments are willing to forgo the benefits of Internet connectivity, they can avoid this problem. If they are not, they find themselves with less control over the public sphere. There are, obviously, other means of more direct repression. However, control over the mass media was, throughout most of the twentieth century, a core tool of repressive governments. It allowed them to manipulate what the masses of their populations knew and believed, and thus limited the portion of the population that the government needed to physically repress to a small and often geographically localized group. The efficacy of these techniques of repression is blunted by adoption of the Internet and the emergence of a networked information economy. Low-cost communications, distributed technical and organizational structure, and ubiquitous presence of dynamic authorship ,{[pg 271]}, tools make control over the public sphere difficult, and practically never perfect. + +2~ TOWARD A NETWORKED PUBLIC SPHERE +={ future : + public sphere +3 ; + networked public sphere : + future of +3 ; + political freedom, public sphere and : + future of +3 ; + public sphere : + future of +3 +} + +The first generation of statements that the Internet democratizes was correct but imprecise. The Internet does restructure public discourse in ways that give individuals a greater say in their governance than the mass media made possible. The Internet does provide avenues of discourse around the bottlenecks of older media, whether these are held by authoritarian governments or by media owners. But the mechanisms for this change are more complex than those articulated in the past. And these more complex mechanisms respond to the basic critiques that have been raised against the notion that the Internet enhances democracy. + +Part of what has changed with the Internet is technical infrastructure. Network communications do not offer themselves up as easily for single points of control as did the mass media. While it is possible for authoritarian regimes to try to retain bottlenecks in the Internet, the cost is higher and the efficacy lower than in mass-media-dominated systems. While this does not mean that introduction of the Internet will automatically result in global democratization, it does make the work of authoritarian regimes harder. In liberal democracies, the primary effect of the Internet runs through the emergence of the networked information economy. We are seeing the emergence to much greater significance of nonmarket, individual, and cooperative peerproduction efforts to produce universal intake of observations and opinions about the state of the world and what might and ought to be done about it. We are seeing the emergence of filtering, accreditation, and synthesis mechanisms as part of network behavior. These rely on clustering of communities of interest and association and highlighting of certain sites, but offer tremendous redundancy of paths for expression and accreditation. These practices leave no single point of failure for discourse: no single point where observations can be squelched or attention commanded--by fiat or with the application of money. Because of these emerging systems, the networked information economy is solving the information overload and discourse fragmentation concerns without reintroducing the distortions of the mass-media model. Peer production, both long-term and organized, as in the case of Slashdot, and ad hoc and dynamically formed, as in the case of blogging or ,{[pg 272]}, the Sinclair or Diebold cases, is providing some of the most important functionalities of the media. These efforts provide a watchdog, a source of salient observations regarding matters of public concern, and a platform for discussing the alternatives open to a polity. + +In the networked information environment, everyone is free to observe, report, question, and debate, not only in principle, but in actual capability. They can do this, if not through their own widely read blog, then through a cycle of mailing lists, collective Web-based media like Slashdot, comments on blogs, or even merely through e-mails to friends who, in turn, have meaningful visibility in a smallish-scale cluster of sites or lists. We are witnessing a fundamental change in how individuals can interact with their democracy and experience their role as citizens. Ideal citizens need not be seen purely as trying to inform themselves about what others have found, so that they can vote intelligently. They need not be limited to reading the opinions of opinion makers and judging them in private conversations. They are no longer constrained to occupy the role of mere readers, viewers, and listeners. They can be, instead, participants in a conversation. Practices that begin to take advantage of these new capabilities shift the locus of content creation from the few professional journalists trolling society for issues and observations, to the people who make up that society. They begin to free the public agenda setting from dependence on the judgments of managers, whose job it is to assure that the maximum number of readers, viewers, and listeners are sold in the market for eyeballs. The agenda thus can be rooted in the life and experience of individual participants in society--in their observations, experiences, and obsessions. The network allows all citizens to change their relationship to the public sphere. They no longer need be consumers and passive spectators. They can become creators and primary subjects. It is in this sense that the Internet democratizes. ,{[pg 273]}, + +1~ Chapter 8 - Cultural Freedom: A Culture Both Plastic and Critical +={ culture +51 } + +poem{ + +Gone with the Wind + +There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. +Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the +last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and +of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream +remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind. + +--MGM (1939) film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's novel (1936) + +}poem + +poem{ + +Strange Fruit + +Southern trees bear strange fruit, +Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, +Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, +Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. + +Pastoral scene of the gallant south, +The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, +Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, +Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. + +Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck, +For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, +For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, +Here is a strange and bitter crop. + +--Billie Holiday (1939) + from lyrics by Abel Meeropol (1937) + +}poem +={ Holiday, Billie } + +% issue with poem, index tag is placed at end not beginning + +% ,{[pg 274]}, + +In 1939, Gone with the Wind reaped seven Oscars, while Billie Holiday's song reached number 16 on the charts, even though Columbia Records refused to release it: Holiday had to record it with a small company that was run out of a storefront in midtown Manhattan. On the eve of the second reconstruction era, which was to overhaul the legal framework of race relations over the two decades beginning with the desegregation of the armed forces in the late 1940s and culminating with the civil rights acts passed between 1964-1968, the two sides of the debate over desegregation and the legacy of slavery were minting new icons through which to express their most basic beliefs about the South and its peculiar institutions. As the following three decades unfolded and the South was gradually forced to change its ways, the cultural domain continued to work out the meaning of race relations in the United States and the history of slavery. The actual slogging of regulation of discrimination, implementation of desegregation and later affirmative action, and the more local politics of hiring and firing were punctuated throughout this period by salient iconic retellings of the stories of race relations in the United States, from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? to Roots. The point of this chapter, however, is not to discuss race relations, but to understand culture and cultural production in terms of political theory. Gone with the Wind and Strange Fruit or Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? offer us intuitively accessible instances of a much broader and more basic characteristic of human understanding and social relations. Culture, shared meaning, and symbols are how we construct our views of life across a wide range of domains--personal, political, and social. How culture is produced is therefore an essential ingredient in structuring how freedom and justice are perceived, conceived, and pursued. In the twentieth century, Hollywood and the recording industry came to play a very large role in this domain. The networked information economy now seems poised to attenuate that role in favor of a more participatory and transparent cultural production system. + +Cultural freedom occupies a position that relates to both political freedom and individual autonomy, but is synonymous with neither. The root of its importance is that none of us exist outside of culture. As individuals and as political actors, we understand the world we occupy, evaluate it, and act in it from within a set of understandings and frames of meaning and reference that we share with others. What institutions and decisions are considered "legitimate" and worthy of compliance or participation; what courses of ,{[pg 275]}, action are attractive; what forms of interaction with others are considered appropriate--these are all understandings negotiated from within a set of shared frames of meaning. How those frames of meaning are shaped and by whom become central components of the structure of freedom for those individuals and societies that inhabit it and are inhabited by it. They define the public sphere in a much broader sense than we considered in the prior chapters. + +The networked information economy makes it possible to reshape both the "who" and the "how" of cultural production relative to cultural production in the twentieth century. It adds to the centralized, market-oriented production system a new framework of radically decentralized individual and cooperative nonmarket production. It thereby affects the ability of individuals and groups to participate in the production of the cultural tools and frameworks of human understanding and discourse. It affects the way we, as individuals and members of social and political clusters, interact with culture, and through it with each other. It makes culture more transparent to its inhabitants. It makes the process of cultural production more participatory, in the sense that more of those who live within a culture can actively participate in its creation. We are seeing the possibility of an emergence of a new popular culture, produced on the folk-culture model and inhabited actively, rather than passively consumed by the masses. Through these twin characteristics--transparency and participation--the networked information economy also creates greater space for critical evaluation of cultural materials and tools. The practice of producing culture makes us all more sophisticated readers, viewers, and listeners, as well as more engaged makers. + +Throughout the twentieth century, the making of widely shared images and symbols was a concentrated practice that went through the filters of Hollywood and the recording industry. The radically declining costs of manipulating video and still images, audio, and text have, however, made culturally embedded criticism and broad participation in the making of meaning much more feasible than in the past. Anyone with a personal computer can cut and mix files, make their own files, and publish them to a global audience. This is not to say that cultural bricolage, playfulness, and criticism did not exist before. One can go to the avant-garde movement, but equally well to African-Brazilian culture or to Our Lady of Guadalupe to find them. Even with regard to television, that most passive of electronic media, John Fiske argued under the rubric of "semiotic democracy" that viewers engage ,{[pg 276]}, in creative play and meaning making around the TV shows they watch. However, the technical characteristics of digital information technology, the economics of networked information production, and the social practices of networked discourse qualitatively change the role individuals can play in cultural production. +={ Fiske, John } + +The practical capacity individuals and noncommercial actors have to use and manipulate cultural artifacts today, playfully or critically, far outstrips anything possible in television, film, or recorded music, as these were organized throughout the twentieth century. The diversity of cultural moves and statements that results from these new opportunities for creativity vastly increases the range of cultural elements accessible to any individual. Our ability, therefore, to navigate the cultural environment and make it our own, both through creation and through active selection and attention, has increased to the point of making a qualitative difference. In the academic law literature, Niva Elkin Koren wrote early about the potential democratization of "meaning making processes," William Fisher about "semiotic democracy," and Jack Balkin about a "democratic culture." Lessig has explored the generative capacity of the freedom to create culture, its contribution to creativity itself. These efforts revolve around the idea that there is something normatively attractive, from the perspective of "democracy" as a liberal value, about the fact that anyone, using widely available equipment, can take from the existing cultural universe more or less whatever they want, cut it, paste it, mix it, and make it their own--equally well expressing their adoration as their disgust, their embrace of certain images as their rejection of them. +={ Balkin, Jack ; + Fisher, William (Terry) ; + Lessig, Lawrence (Larry) +} + +Building on this work, this chapter seeks to do three things: First, I claim that the modalities of cultural production and exchange are a proper subject for normative evaluation within a broad range of liberal political theory. Culture is a social-psychological-cognitive fact of human existence. Ignoring it, as rights-based and utilitarian versions of liberalism tend to do, disables political theory from commenting on central characteristics of a society and its institutional frameworks. Analyzing the attractiveness of any given political institutional system without considering how it affects cultural production, and through it the production of the basic frames of meaning through which individual and collective self-determination functions, leaves a large hole in our analysis. Liberal political theory needs a theory of culture and agency that is viscous enough to matter normatively, but loose enough to give its core foci--the individual and the political system--room to be effective ,{[pg 277]}, independently, not as a mere expression or extension of culture. Second, I argue that cultural production in the form of the networked information economy offers individuals a greater participatory role in making the culture they occupy, and makes this culture more transparent to its inhabitants. This descriptive part occupies much of the chapter. Third, I suggest the relatively straightforward conclusion of the prior two observations. From the perspective of liberal political theory, the kind of open, participatory, transparent folk culture that is emerging in the networked environment is normatively more attractive than was the industrial cultural production system typified by Hollywood and the recording industry. + +A nine-year-old girl searching Google for Barbie will quite quickly find links to AdiosBarbie.com, to the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO), and to other, similarly critical sites interspersed among those dedicated to selling and playing with the doll. The contested nature of the doll becomes publicly and everywhere apparent, liberated from the confines of feminist-criticism symposia and undergraduate courses. This simple Web search represents both of the core contributions of the networked information economy. First, from the perspective of the searching girl, it represents a new transparency of cultural symbols. Second, from the perspective of the participants in AdiosBarbie or the BLO, the girl's use of their site completes their own quest to participate in making the cultural meaning of Barbie. The networked information environment provides an outlet for contrary expression and a medium for shaking what we accept as cultural baseline assumptions. Its radically decentralized production modes provide greater freedom to participate effectively in defining the cultural symbols of our day. These characteristics make the networked environment attractive from the perspectives of both personal freedom of expression and an engaged and self-aware political discourse. +={ Barbie (doll), culture of } + +We cannot, however, take for granted that the technological capacity to participate in the cultural conversation, to mix and make our own, will translate into the freedom to do so. The practices of cultural and countercultural creation are at the very core of the battle over the institutional ecology of the digital environment. The tension is perhaps not new or unique to the Internet, but its salience is now greater. The makers of the 1970s comic strip Air Pirates already found their comics confiscated when they portrayed Mickey and Minnie and Donald and Daisy in various compromising countercultural postures. Now, the ever-increasing scope and expanse ,{[pg 278]}, of copyright law and associated regulatory mechanisms, on the one hand, and of individual and collective nonmarket creativity, on the other hand, have heightened the conflict between cultural freedom and the regulatory framework on which the industrial cultural production system depends. As Lessig, Jessica Litman, and Siva Vaidhyanathan have each portrayed elegantly and in detail, the copyright industries have on many dimensions persuaded both Congress and courts that individual, nonmarket creativity using the cultural outputs of the industrial information economy is to be prohibited. As we stand today, freedom to play with the cultural environment is nonetheless preserved in the teeth of the legal constraints, because of the high costs of enforcement, on the one hand, and the ubiquity and low cost of the means to engage in creative cultural bricolage, on the other hand. These social, institutional, and technical facts still leave us with quite a bit of unauthorized creative expression. These facts, however, are contingent and fragile. Chapter 11 outlines in some detail the long trend toward the creation of ever-stronger legal regulation of cultural production, and in particular, the enclosure movement that began in the 1970s and gained steam in the mid-1990s. A series of seemingly discrete regulatory moves threatens the emerging networked folk culture. Ranging from judicial interpretations of copyright law to efforts to regulate the hardware and software of the networked environment, we are seeing a series of efforts to restrict nonmarket use of twentieth-century cultural materials in order to preserve the business models of Hollywood and the recording industry. These regulatory efforts threaten the freedom to participate in twenty-first-century cultural production, because current creation requires taking and mixing the twentieth-century cultural materials that make up who we are as culturally embedded beings. Here, however, I focus on explaining how cultural participation maps onto the project of liberal political theory, and why the emerging cultural practices should be seen as attractive within that normative framework. I leave development of the policy implications to part III. +={ Lessig, Lawrence (Larry) ; + Litman, Jessica ; + Vaidhyanathan, Silva ; + copyright issues ; + proprietary rights : + cultural environment and +} + +2~ CULTURAL FREEDOM IN LIBERAL POLITICAL THEORY +={ liberal political theory : + cultural freedom +12 +} + +Utilitarian and rights-based liberal political theories have an awkward relationship to culture. Both major strains of liberal theory make a certain set of assumptions about the autonomous individuals with which they are concerned. Individuals are assumed to be rational and knowledgeable, at least ,{[pg 279]}, about what is good for them. They are conceived of as possessing a capacity for reason and a set of preferences prior to engagement with others. Political theory then proceeds to concern itself with political structures that respect the autonomy of individuals with such characteristics. In the political domain, this conception of the individual is easiest to see in pluralist theories, which require institutions for collective decision making that clear what are treated as already-formed preferences of individuals or voluntary groupings. + +Culture represents a mysterious category for these types of liberal political theories. It is difficult to specify how it functions in terms readily amenable to a conception of individuals whose rationality and preferences for their own good are treated as though they preexist and are independent of society. A concept of culture requires some commonly held meaning among these individuals. Even the simplest intuitive conception of what culture might mean would treat this common frame of meaning as the result of social processes that preexist any individual, and partially structure what it is that individuals bring to the table as they negotiate their lives together, in society or in a polity. Inhabiting a culture is a precondition to any interpretation of what is at stake in any communicative exchange among individuals. A partly subconscious, lifelong dynamic social process of becoming and changing as a cultural being is difficult to fold into a collective decision-making model that focuses on designing a discursive platform for individuated discrete participants who are the bearers of political will. It is easier to model respect for an individual's will when one adopts a view of that will as independent, stable, and purely internally generated. It is harder to do so when one conceives of that individual will as already in some unspecified degree rooted in exchange with others about what an individual is to value and prefer. + +Culture has, of course, been incorporated into political theory as a central part of the critique of liberalism. The politics of culture have been a staple of critical theory since Marx first wrote that "Religion . . . is the opium of the people" and that "to call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions."~{ Karl Marx, "Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," Deutsch-Franzosicher Jahrbucher (1844). }~ The twentieth century saw a wide array of critique, from cultural Marxism to poststructuralism and postmodernism. However, much of mainstream liberal political theory has chosen to ignore, rather than respond and adapt to, these critiques. In Political Liberalism, for example, Rawls acknowledges "the fact" of reasonable pluralism--of groups that persistently and reasonably hold competing comprehensive doctrines--and aims for political pluralism as a mode of managing the irreconcilable differences. This leaves the formation ,{[pg 280]}, of the comprehensive doctrine and the systems of belief within which it is rendered "reasonable" a black box to liberal theory. This may be an adequate strategy for analyzing the structure of formal political institutions at the broadest level of abstraction. However, it disables liberal political theory from dealing with more fine-grained questions of policy that act within the black box. +={ Marx, Karl ; + Rawls, John ; + culture : + freedom of +9 ; + economics in liberal political theory : + cultural freedom +9 ; + freedom : + cultural +9 +} + +As a practical matter, treating culture as a black box disables a political theory as a mechanism for diagnosing the actual conditions of life in a society in terms of its own political values. It does so in precisely the same way that a formal conception of autonomy disables those who hold it from diagnosing the conditions of autonomy in practical life. Imagine for a moment that we had received a revelation that a crude version of Antonio Gramsci's hegemony theory was perfectly correct as a matter of descriptive sociology. Ruling classes do, in fact, consciously and successfully manipulate the culture in order to make the oppressed classes compliant. It would be difficult, then, to continue to justify holding a position about political institutions, or autonomy, that treated the question of how culture, generally, or even the narrow subset of reasonably held comprehensive doctrines like religion, are made, as a black box. It would be difficult to defend respect for autonomous choices as respect for an individual's will, if an objective observer could point to a social process, external to the individual and acting upon him or her, as the cause of the individual holding that will. It would be difficult to focus one's political design imperatives on public processes that allow people to express their beliefs and preferences, argue about them, and ultimately vote on them, if it is descriptively correct that those beliefs and preferences are themselves the product of manipulation of some groups by others. +={ Gramsci, Antonio +1 ; + autonomy : + culture and +2 ; + individual autonomy : + culture and +2 +} + +The point is not, of course, that Gramsci was descriptively right or that any of the broad range of critical theories of culture is correct as a descriptive matter. It is that liberal theories that ignore culture are rendered incapable of answering some questions that arise in the real world and have real implications for individuals and polities. There is a range of sociological, psychological, or linguistic descriptions that could characterize the culture of a society as more or less in accord with the concern of liberalism with individual and collective self-determination. Some such descriptive theory of culture can provide us with enough purchase on the role of culture to diagnose the attractiveness of a cultural production system from a politicaltheory perspective. It does not require that liberal theory abandon individuals ,{[pg 281]}, as the bearers of the claims of political morality. It does not require that liberal political theory refocus on culture as opposed to formal political institutions. It does require, however, that liberal theory at least be able to diagnose different conditions in the practical cultural life of a society as more or less attractive from the perspective of liberal political theory. + +The efforts of deliberative liberal theories to account for culture offer the most obvious source of such an insight. These political theories have worked to develop a conception of culture and its relationship to liberalism precisely because at a minimum, they require mutual intelligibility across individuals, which cannot adequately be explained without some conception of culture. In Jurgen Habermas's work, culture plays the role of a basis for mutual intelligibility. As the basis for "interpersonal intelligibility," we see culture playing such a role in the work of Bruce Ackerman, who speaks of acculturation as the necessary condition to liberal dialogue. "Cultural coherence" is something he sees children requiring as a precondition to becoming liberal citizens: it allows them to "Talk" and defend their claims in terms without which there can be no liberal conversation.~{ Bruce A. Ackerman, Social Justice and the Liberal State (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1980), 333-335, 141-146. }~ Michael Walzer argues that, "in matters of morality, argument is simply the appeal to common meanings."~{ Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 29. }~ Will Kymlicka claims that for individual autonomy, "freedom involves making choices amongst various options, and our societal culture not only provides these options, but makes them meaningful to us." A societal culture, in turn, is a "shared vocabulary of tradition and convention" that is "embodied in social life[,] institutionally embodied--in schools, media, economy, government, etc."~{ Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 76, 83. }~ Common meanings in all these frameworks must mean more than simple comprehension of the words of another. It provides a common baseline, which is not itself at that moment the subject of conversation or inquiry, but forms the background on which conversation and inquiry take place. Habermas's definition of lifeworld as "background knowledge," for example, is a crisp rendering of culture in this role: +={ Habermas, Jurgen +1 ; + Ackerman, Bruce ; + Kymlicka, Will ; + Walzer, Michael +} + +_1 the lifeworld embraces us as an unmediated certainty, out of whose immediate proximity we live and speak. This all-penetrating, yet latent and unnoticed presence of the background of communicative action can be described as a more intense, yet deficient, form of knowledge and ability. To begin with, we make use of this knowledge involuntarily, without reflectively knowing that we possess it at all. What enables background knowledge to acquire absolute certainty in this way, and even augments its epistemic quality from a subjective standpoint, is precisely the property that robs it of a constitutive feature of knowledge: we make use of ,{[pg 282]}, such knowledge without the awareness that it could be false. Insofar as all knowledge is fallible and is known to be such, background knowledge does not represent knowledge at all, in a strict sense. As background knowledge, it lacks the possibility of being challenged, that is, of being raised to the level of criticizable validity claims. One can do this only by converting it from a resource into a topic of discussion, at which point--just when it is thematized--it no longer functions as a lifeworld background but rather disintegrates in its background modality.~{ Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 22-23. }~ + +In other words, our understanding of meaning--how we are, how others are, what ought to be--are in some significant portion unexamined assumptions that we share with others, and to which we appeal as we engage in communication with them. This does not mean that culture is a version of false consciousness. It does not mean that background knowledge cannot be examined rationally or otherwise undermines the very possibility or coherence of a liberal individual or polity. It does mean, however, that at any given time, in any given context, there will be some set of historically contingent beliefs, attitudes, and social and psychological conditions that will in the normal course remain unexamined, and form the unexamined foundation of conversation. Culture is revisable through critical examination, at which point it ceases to be "common knowledge" and becomes a contested assumption. Nevertheless, some body of unexamined common knowledge is necessary for us to have an intelligible conversation that does not constantly go around in circles, challenging the assumptions on whichever conversational move is made. + +Culture, in this framework, is not destiny. It does not predetermine who we are, or what we can become or do, nor is it a fixed artifact. It is the product of a dynamic process of engagement among those who make up a culture. It is a frame of meaning from within which we must inevitably function and speak to each other, and whose terms, constraints, and affordances we always negotiate. There is no point outside of culture from which to do otherwise. An old Yiddish folktale tells of a naïve rabbi who, for safekeeping, put a ten-ruble note inside his copy of the Torah, at the page of the commandment, "thou shalt not steal." That same night, a thief stole into the rabbi's home, took the ten-ruble note, and left a five-ruble note in its place, at the page of the commandment, "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The rabbi and the thief share a common cultural framework (as do we, across the cultural divide), through which their various actions can be understood; indeed, without which their actions would be unintelligible. ,{[pg 283]}, The story offers a theory of culture, power, and freedom that is more congenial to liberal political theory than critical theories, and yet provides a conception of the role of culture in human relations that provides enough friction, or viscosity, to allow meaning making in culture to play a role in the core concerns of liberal political theory. Their actions are part strategic and part communicative--that is to say, to some extent they seek to force an outcome, and to some extent they seek to engage the other in a conversation in order to achieve a commonly accepted outcome. The rabbi places the ten-ruble note in the Bible in order to impress upon the putative thief that he should leave the money where it is. He cannot exert force on the thief by locking the money up in a safe because he does not own one. Instead, he calls upon a shared understanding and a claim of authority within the governed society to persuade the thief. The thief, to the contrary, could have physically taken the ten-ruble note without replacing it, but he does not. He engages the rabbi in the same conversation. In part, he justifies his claim to five rubles. In part, he resists the authority of the rabbi--not by rejecting the culture that renders the rabbi a privileged expert, but by playing the game of Talmudic disputation. There is a price, though, for participating in the conversation. The thief must leave the five-ruble note; he cannot take the whole amount. + +In this story, culture is open to interpretation and manipulation, but not infinitely so. Some moves may be valid within a cultural framework and alter it; others simply will not. The practical force of culture, on the other hand, is not brute force. It cannot force an outcome, but it can exert a real pull on the range of behaviors that people will seriously consider undertaking, both as individuals and as polities. The storyteller relies on the listener's cultural understanding about the limits of argument, or communicative action. The story exploits the open texture of culture, and the listener's shared cultural belief that stealing is an act of force, not a claim of justice; that those who engage in it do not conceive of themselves as engaged in legitimate defensible acts. The rabbi was naïve to begin with, but the thief 's disputation is inconsistent with our sense of the nature of the act of stealing in exactly the same way that the rabbi's was, but inversely. The thief, the rabbi, and the storyteller participate in making, and altering, the meaning of the commandments. + +Culture changes through the actions of individuals in the cultural context. Beliefs, claims, communicative moves that have one meaning before an intervention ,{[pg 284]}, may begin to shift in their meaning as a result of other moves, made by other participants in the same cultural milieu. One need not adopt any given fully fledged meme theory of culture--like Richard Dawkins's, or Balkin's political adaptation of it as a theory of ideology--to accept that culture is created through communication among human beings, that it exerts some force on what they can say to each other and how it will be received, and that the parameters of a culture as a platform for making meaning in interaction among human beings change over time with use. How cultural moves are made, by whom, and with what degree of perfect replication or subtle (and not so subtle) change, become important elements in determining the rate and direction of cultural change. These changes, over time, alter the platform individuals must use to make sense of the world they occupy, and for participants in conversation to be able to make intelligible communications to each other about the world they share and where it can and ought to go. Culture so understood is a social fact about particular sets of human beings in historical context. As a social fact, it constrains and facilitates the development, expression, and questioning of beliefs and positions. Whether and how Darwinism should be taught in public schools, for example, is a live political question in vast regions of the United States, and is played out as a debate over whether evolution is "merely a theory." Whether racial segregation should be practiced in these schools is no longer a viable or even conceivable political agenda. The difference between Darwinism and the undesirability of racial segregation is not that one is scientifically true and the other is not. The difference is that the former is not part of the "common knowledge" of a large section of society, whereas the latter is, in a way that no longer requires proof by detailed sociological and psychological studies of the type cited by the Supreme Court in support of its holding, in /{Brown v. Board of Education}/, that segregation in education was inherently unequal. +={ Balkin, Jack ; + Dawkins, Richard ; + capabilities of individuals : + cultural shift ; + individual capabilities and action : + cultural shift +} + +If culture is indeed part of how we form a shared sense of unexamined common knowledge, it plays a significant role in framing the meaning of the state of the world, the availability and desirability of choices, and the organization of discourse. The question of how culture is framed (and through it, meaning and the baseline conversational moves) then becomes germane to a liberal political theory. Between the Scylla of a fixed culture (with hierarchical, concentrated power to control its development and interpretation) and the Charybdis of a perfectly open culture (where nothing ,{[pg 285]}, is fixed and everything is up for grabs, offering no anchor for meaning and mutual intelligibility), there is a wide range of practical social and economic arrangements around the production and use of culture. In evaluating the attractiveness of various arrangements from the perspective of liberal theory, we come to an already familiar trade-off, and an already familiar answer. As in the case of autonomy and political discourse, a greater ability of individuals to participate in the creation of the cultural meaning of the world they occupy is attractive from the perspective of the liberal commitments to individual freedom and democratic participation. As in both areas that we have already considered, a Babel objection appears: Too much freedom to challenge and remake our own cultural environment will lead to a lack of shared meaning. As in those two cases, however, the fears of too active a community of meaning making are likely exaggerated. Loosening the dominant power of Hollywood and television over contemporary culture is likely to represent an incremental improvement, from the perspective of liberal political commitments. It will lead to a greater transparency of culture, and therefore a greater capacity for critical reflection, and it will provide more opportunities for participating in the creation of culture, for interpolating individual glosses on it, and for creating shared variations on common themes. + +2~ THE TRANSPARENCY OF INTERNET CULTURE +={ culture : + transparency of +12 ; + Internet : + transparency of culture +12 ; + networked public sphere : + transparency of Internet culture +12 ; + public sphere : + transparency of Internet culture +12 ; + transparency of Internet culture +12 +} + +If you run a search for "Barbie" on three separate search engines--Google, Overture, and Yahoo!--you will get quite different results. Table 8.1 lists these results in the order in which they appear on each search engine. Overture is a search engine that sells placement to the parties who are being searched. Hits on this search engine are therefore ranked based on whoever paid Overture the most in order to be placed highly in response to a query. On this list, none of the top ten results represent anything other than sales-related Barbie sites. Critical sites begin to appear only around the twentyfifth result, presumably after all paying clients have been served. Google, as we already know, uses a radically decentralized mechanism for assigning relevance. It counts how many sites on the Web have linked to a particular site that has the search term in it, and ranks the search results by placing a site with a high number of incoming links above a site with a low number of incoming links. In effect, each Web site publisher "votes" for a site's ,{[pg 286]}, ,{[pg 287]}, relevance by linking to it, and Google aggregates these votes and renders them on their results page as higher ranking. The little girl who searches for Barbie on Google will encounter a culturally contested figure. The same girl, searching on Overture, will encounter a commodity toy. In each case, the underlying efforts of Mattel, the producer of Barbie, have not changed. What is different is that in an environment where relevance is measured in nonmarket action--placing a link to a Web site because you deem it relevant to whatever you are doing with your Web site--as opposed to in dollars, Barbie has become a more transparent cultural object. It is easier for the little girl to see that the doll is not only a toy, not only a symbol of beauty and glamour, but also a symbol of how norms of female beauty in our society can be oppressive to women and girls. The transparency does not force the girl to choose one meaning of Barbie or another. It does, however, render transparent that Barbie can have multiple meanings and that choosing meanings is a matter of political concern for some set of people who coinhabit this culture. Yahoo! occupies something of a middle ground--its algorithm does link to two of the critical sites among the top ten, and within the top twenty, identifies most of the sites that appear on Google's top ten that are not related to sales or promotion. +={ Barbie (doll), culture of +4 } + +-\\- + +% table moved after paragraph + +!_ Table 8.1: Results for "Barbie" - Google versus Overture and Yahoo! + +table(h; c3: 33, 33, 33){ + +Google +Overture +Yahoo! + +Barbie.com (Mattel's site) +Barbie at Amazon.com +Barbie.com + +AdiosBarbie.com: A Body Image for Every Body (site created by women critical of Barbie's projected body image) +Barbie on Sale at KBToys +Barbie Collector + +Barbie Bazar magazine (Barbie collectible news and Information) +Target.com: Barbies +My Scene.com + +If You Were a Barbie, Which Messed Up Version Would You Be? +Barbie: Best prices and selection (bizrate.com) +EverythingGirl.com + +Visible Barbie Project (macabre images of Barbie sliced as though in a science project) +Barbies, New and Pre-owned at NetDoll +Barbie History (fan-type history, mostly when various dolls were released) + +Barbie: The Image of Us All (1995 undergraduate paper about Barbie's cultural history) +Barbies - compare prices (nextag.com) +Mattel, Inc. + +Audigraph.free.fr (Barbie and Ken sex animation) +Barbie Toys (complete line of Barbie electronics online) +Spatula Jackson's Barbies (picutes of Barbie as various counter-cultural images) + +Suicide bomber Barbie (Barbie with explosives strapped to waist) +Barbie Party supplies +Barbie! (fan site) + +Barbies (Barbie dressed and painted as counter-cultural images) +Barbie and her accessories online +The Distorted Barbie + +}table + +A similar phenomenon repeats itself in the context of explicit efforts to define Barbie--encyclopedias. There are, as of this writing, six generalinterest online encyclopedias that are reasonably accessible on the Internet-- that is to say, can be found with reasonable ease by looking at major search engines, sites that focus on education and parenting, and similar techniques. Five are commercial, and one is a quintessential commons-based peerproduction project-- /{Wikipedia}/. Of the five commercial encyclopedias, only one is available at no charge, the Columbia Encyclopedia, which is packaged in two primary forms--as encyclopedia.com and as part of Bartleby.com.~{ Encyclopedia.com is a part of Highbeam Research, Inc., which combines free and pay research services. Bartleby provides searching and access to many reference and highculture works at no charge, combining it with advertising, a book store, and many links to Amazon.com or to the publishers for purchasing the printed versions of the materials. }~ The other four--Britannica, Microsoft's Encarta, the World Book, and Grolier's Online Encyclopedia--charge various subscription rates that range around fifty to sixty dollars a year. The Columbia Encyclopedia includes no reference to Barbie, the doll. The World Book has no "Barbie" entry, but does include a reference to Barbie as part of a fairly substantial article on "Dolls." The only information that is given is that the doll was introduced in 1959, that she has a large wardrobe, and in a different place, that darkskinned Barbies were introduced in the 1980s. The article concludes with a guide of about three hundred words to good doll-collecting practices. Microsoft's ,{[pg 288]}, Encarta also includes Barbie in the article on "Doll," but provides a brief separate definition as well, which replicates the World Book information in slightly different form: 1959, large wardrobe, and introduction of dark-skinned Barbies. The online photograph available with the definition is of a brown-skinned, black-haired Barbie. Grolier's Online's major generalpurpose encyclopedia, Americana, also has no entry for Barbie, but makes reference to the doll as part of the article on dolls. Barbie is described as a revolutionary new doll, made to resemble a teenage fashion model as part of a trend to realism in dolls. Grolier's Online does, however, include a more specialized American Studies encyclopedia that has an article on Barbie. That article heavily emphasizes the number of dolls sold and their value, provides some description of the chronological history of the doll, and makes opaque references to Barbie's physique and her emphasis on consumption. While the encyclopedia includes bibliographic references to critical works about Barbie, the textual references to cultural critique or problems she raises are very slight and quite oblique. +={ Wikipedia project : + Barbie doll content +2 +} + +Only two encyclopedias focus explicitly on Barbie's cultural meaning: Britannica and /{Wikipedia}/. The Britannica entry was written by M. G. Lord, a professional journalist who authored a book entitled Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll. It is a tightly written piece that underscores the critique of Barbie, both on body dimensions and its relationship to the body image of girls, and excessive consumerism. It also, however, makes clear the fact that Barbie was the first doll to give girls a play image that was not focused on nurturing and family roles, but was an independent, professional adult: playing roles such as airline pilot, astronaut, or presidential candidate. The article also provides brief references to the role of Barbie in a global market economy--its manufacture outside the United States, despite its marketing as an American cultural icon, and its manufacturer's early adoption of direct-to-children marketing. /{Wikipedia}/ provides more or less all the information provided in the Britannica definition, including a reference to Lord's own book, and adds substantially more material from within Barbie lore itself and a detailed time line of the doll's history. It has a strong emphasis on the body image controversy, and emphasizes both the critique that Barbie encourages girls to focus on shallow consumption of fashion accessories, and that she represents an unattainable lifestyle for most girls who play with her. The very first version of the definition, posted January 3, 2003, included only a brief reference to a change in Barbie's waistline as a result of efforts by parents and anorexia groups ,{[pg 289]}, concerned with the doll's impact on girls' nutrition. This remained the only reference to the critique of Barbie until December 15, 2003, when a user who was not logged in introduced a fairly roughly written section that emphasized both the body image concerns and the consumerism concerns with Barbie. During the same day, a number of regular contributors (that is, users with log-in names and their own talk pages) edited the new section and improved its language and flow, but kept the basic concepts intact. Three weeks later, on January 5, 2004, another regular user rewrote the section, reorganized the paragraphs so that the critique of Barbie's emphasis on high consumption was separated from the emphasis on Barbie's body dimensions, and also separated and clarified the qualifying claims that Barbie's independence and professional outfits may have had positive effects on girls' perception of possible life plans. This contributor also introduced a reference to the fact that the term "Barbie" is often used to denote a shallow or silly girl or woman. After that, with a change three weeks later from describing Barbie as available for most of her life only as "white Anglo-Saxon (and probably protestant)" to "white woman of apparently European descent" this part of the definition stabilized. As this description aims to make clear, /{Wikipedia}/ makes the history of the evolution of the article entirely transparent. The software platform allows any reader to look at prior versions of the definition, to compare specific versions, and to read the "talk" pages-- the pages where the participants discuss their definition and their thoughts about it. + +The relative emphasis of Google and /{Wikipedia}/, on the one hand, and Overture, Yahoo!, and the commercial encyclopedias other than Britannica, on the other hand, is emblematic of a basic difference between markets and social conversations with regard to culture. If we focus on the role of culture as "common knowledge" or background knowledge, its relationship to the market--at least for theoretical economists--is exogenous. It can be taken as given and treated as "taste." In more practical business environments, culture is indeed a source of taste and demand, but it is not taken as exogenous. Culture, symbolism, and meaning, as they are tied with marketbased goods, become a major focus of advertising and of demand management. No one who has been exposed to the advertising campaigns of Coca-Cola, Nike, or Apple Computers, as well as practically to any one of a broad range of advertising campaigns over the past few decades, can fail to see that these are not primarily a communication about the material characteristics or qualities of the products or services sold by the advertisers. ,{[pg 290]}, + +They are about meaning. These campaigns try to invest the act of buying their products or services with a cultural meaning that they cultivate, manipulate, and try to generalize in the practices of the society in which they are advertising, precisely in order to shape taste. They offer an opportunity to generate rents, because the consumer has to have this company's shoe rather than that one, because that particular shoe makes the customer this kind of person rather than that kind--cool rather than stuffy, sophisticated rather than common. Neither the theoretical economists nor the marketing executives have any interest in rendering culture transparent or writable. Whether one treats culture as exogenous or as a domain for limiting the elasticity of demand for one's particular product, there is no impetus to make it easier for consumers to see through the cultural symbols, debate their significance, or make them their own. If there is business reason to do anything about culture, it is to try to shape the cultural meaning of an object or practice, in order to shape the demand for it, while keeping the role of culture hidden and assuring control over the careful cultural choreography of the symbols attached to the company. Indeed, in 1995, the U.S. Congress enacted a new kind of trademark law, the Federal Antidilution Act, which for the first time disconnects trademark protection from protecting consumers from confusion by knockoffs. The Antidilution Act of 1995 gives the owner of any famous mark--and only famous marks--protection from any use that dilutes the meaning that the brand owner has attached to its own mark. It can be entirely clear to consumers that a particular use does not come from the owner of the brand, and still, the owner has a right to prevent this use. While there is some constitutional free-speech protection for criticism, there is also a basic change in the understanding of trademark law-- from a consumer protection law intended to assure that consumers can rely on the consistency of goods marked in a certain way, to a property right in controlling the meaning of symbols a company has successfully cultivated so that they are, in fact, famous. This legal change marks a major shift in the understanding of the role of law in assigning control for cultural meaning generated by market actors. +={ Antidilutation Act of 1995 ; + branding : + trademark dilutation ; + dilutation of trademarks ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + trademark dilutation ; + proprietary rights : + trademark dilutation ; + trademark dilutation ; + information production, market-based : + cultural change, transparency of +4 ; + market-based information producers : + cultural change, transparency of +4 ; + nonmarket information producers : + cultural change, transparency of +4 +} + +Unlike market production of culture, meaning making as a social, nonmarket practice has no similar systematic reason to accept meaning as it comes. Certainly, some social relations do. When girls play with dolls, collect them, or exhibit them, they are rarely engaged in reflection on the meaning of the dolls, just as fans of Scarlett O'Hara, of which a brief Internet search suggests there are many, are not usually engaged in critique of Gone with the ,{[pg 291]}, Wind as much as in replication and adoption of its romantic themes. Plainly, however, some conversations we have with each other are about who we are, how we came to be who we are, and whether we view the answers we find to these questions as attractive or not. In other words, some social interactions do have room for examining culture as well as inhabiting it, for considering background knowledge for what it is, rather than taking it as a given input into the shape of demand or using it as a medium for managing meaning and demand. People often engage in conversations with each other precisely to understand themselves in the world, their relationship to others, and what makes them like and unlike those others. One major domain in which this formation of self- and group identity occurs is the adoption or rejection of, and inquiry into, cultural symbols and sources of meaning that will make a group cohere or splinter; that will make people like or unlike each other. + +The distinction I draw here between market-based and nonmarket-based activities is purposefully overstated to clarify the basic structural differences between these two modes of organizing communications and the degree of transparency of culture they foster. As even the very simple story of how Barbie is defined in Internet communications demonstrates, practices are not usually as cleanly divided. Like the role of the elite newspapers in providing political coverage, discussed in chapter 6, some market-based efforts do provide transparency; indeed, their very market rationale pushes them to engage in a systematic effort to provide transparency. Google's strategy from the start has been to assume that what individuals are interested in is a reflection of what other individuals--who are interested in roughly the same area, but spend more time on it, that is, Web page authors--think is worthwhile. The company built its business model around rendering transparent what people and organizations that make their information available freely consider relevant. Occasionally, Google has had to deal with "search engine optimizers," who have advised companies on how to game its search engine to achieve a high ranking. Google has fought these optimizers; sometimes by outright blocking access to traffic that originates with them. In these cases, we see a technical competition between firms--the optimizers--whose interest is in capturing attention based on the interests of those who pay them, and a firm, Google, whose strategic choice is to render the distributed judgments of relevance on the Web more or less faithfully. There, the market incentive actually drives Google's investment affirmatively toward transparency. However, the market decision must be strategic, not tactical, for this ,{[pg 292]}, to be the case. Fear of litigation has, for example, caused Google to bury links that threatened it with liability. The most prominent of these cases occurred when the Church of Scientology threatened to sue Google over presenting links to www.xenu.net, a site dedicated to criticizing scientology. Google initially removed the link. However, its strategic interest was brought to the fore by widespread criticism of its decision on the Internet, and the firm relented. A search for "Scientology" as of this writing reveals a wide range of sites, many critical of scientology, and xenu.net is the second link. A search for "scientology Google" will reveal many stories, not quite flattering either to Google or to the Church of Scientology, as the top links. We see similar diversity among the encyclopedias. Britannica offered as clear a presentation of the controversy over Barbie as /{Wikipedia}/. Britannica has built its reputation and business model on delivery of the knowledge and opinions of those in positions to claim authority in the name of high culture professional competence, and delivering that perspective to those who buy the encyclopedia precisely to gain access to that kind of knowledge base, judgment, and formal credibility. In both cases, the long-term business model of the companies calls for reflecting the views and insights of agents who are not themselves thoroughly within the market--whether they are academics who write articles for Britannica, or the many and diverse Web page owners on the Internet. In both cases, these business models lead to a much more transparent cultural representation than what Hollywood or Madison Avenue produce. Just as not all market-based organizations render culture opaque, not all nonmarket or social-relations-based conversations aim to explore and expose cultural assumptions. Social conversations can indeed be among the most highly deferential to cultural assumptions, and can repress critique more effectively and completely than market-based conversations. Whether in communities of unquestioning religious devotion or those that enforce strict egalitarian political correctness, we commonly see, in societies both traditional and contemporary, significant social pressures against challenging background cultural assumptions within social conversations. We have, for example, always had more cultural experimentation and fermentation in cities, where social ties are looser and communities can exercise less social control over questioning minds and conversation. Ubiquitous Internet communications expand something of the freedom of city parks and streets, but also the freedom of cafes and bars--commercial platforms for social inter? action--so that it is available everywhere. + +The claim I make here, as elsewhere throughout this book, is not that ,{[pg 293]}, nonmarket production will, in fact, generally displace market production, or that such displacement is necessary to achieve the improvement in the degree of participation in cultural production and legibility. My claim is that the emergence of a substantial nonmarket alternative path for cultural conversation increases the degrees of freedom available to individuals and groups to engage in cultural production and exchange, and that doing so increases the transparency of culture to its inhabitants. It is a claim tied to the particular technological moment and its particular locus of occurrence--our networked communications environment. It is based on the fact that it is displacing the particular industrial form of information and cultural production of the twentieth century, with its heavy emphasis on consumption in mass markets. In this context, the emergence of a substantial sector of nonmarket production, and of peer production, or the emergence of individuals acting cooperatively as a major new source of defining widely transmissible statements and conversations about the meaning of the culture we share, makes culture substantially more transparent and available for reflection, and therefore for revision. +={ communities : + critical culture and self-reflection +1 ; + critical culture and self-reflection +1 ; + culture : + criticality of (self-reflection) +1 ; + self-organization : + See clusters in network topology self-reflection +1 +} + +Two other dimensions are made very clear by the /{Wikipedia}/ example. The first is the degree of self-consciousness that is feasible with open, conversation-based definition of culture that is itself rendered more transparent. The second is the degree to which the culture is writable, the degree to which individuals can participate in mixing and matching and making their own emphases, for themselves and for others, on the existing set of symbols. Fisher, for example, has used the term "semiotic democracy" to describe the potential embodied in the emerging openness of Internet culture to participation by users. The term originates from Fiske's Television Culture as a counterpoint to the claim that television was actually a purely one-way medium that only enacted culture on viewers. Instead, Fiske claimed that viewers resist these meanings, put them in their own contexts, use them in various ways, and subvert them to make their own meaning. However, much of this resistance is unstated, some of it unself-conscious. There are the acts of reception and interpretation, or of using images and sentences in different contexts of life than those depicted in the television program; but these acts are local, enacted within small-scale local cultures, and are not the result of a self-conscious conversation among users of the culture about its limits, its meanings, and its subversions. One of the phenomena we are beginning to observe on the Internet is an emerging culture of conversation about culture, which is both self-conscious and informed by linking or quoting from specific ,{[pg 294]}, reference points. The /{Wikipedia}/ development of the definition of Barbie, its history, and the availability of a talk page alongside it for discussion about the definition, are an extreme version of self-conscious discussion about culture. The basic tools enabled by the Internet--cutting, pasting, rendering, annotating, and commenting--make active utilization and conscious discussion of cultural symbols and artifacts easier to create, sustain, and read more generally. +={ Fisher, William (Terry) ; + Fiske, John +} + +The flexibility with which cultural artifacts--meaning-carrying objects-- can be rendered, preserved, and surrounded by different context and discussion makes it easy for anyone, anywhere, to make a self-conscious statement about culture. They enable what Balkin has called "glomming on"-- taking that which is common cultural representation and reworking it into your own move in a cultural conversation.~{ Jack Balkin, "Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society," New York University Law Review 79 (2004): 1. }~ The low cost of storage, and the ubiquitous possibility of connecting from any connection location to any storage space make any such statement persistent and available to others. The ease of commenting, linking, and writing to other locations of statements, in turn, increases the possibility of response and counterresponse. These conversations can then be found by others, and at least read if not contributed to. In other words, as with other, purposeful peer-produced projects like /{Wikipedia}/, the basic characteristics of the Internet in general and the World Wide Web in particular have made it possible for anyone, anywhere, for any reason to begin to contribute to an accretion of conversation about well-defined cultural objects or about cultural trends and characteristics generally. These conversations can persist across time and exist across distance, and are available for both active participation and passive reading by many people in many places. The result is, as we are already seeing it, the emergence of widely accessible, self-conscious conversation about the meaning of contemporary culture by those who inhabit it. This "writability" is also the second characteristic that the /{Wikipedia}/ definition process makes very clear, and the second major change brought about by the networked information economy in the digital environment. +={ Balkin, Jack } + +2~ THE PLASTICITY OF INTERNET CULTURE: THE FUTURE OF HIGH-PRODUCTION-VALUE FOLK CULTURE +={ high-production value content +2 ; + Internet : + plasticity of culture +2 ; + plasticity of Internet culture +2 +} + +I have already described the phenomena of blogs, of individually created movies like /{The Jedi Saga}/, and of Second Life, the game platform where ,{[pg 295]}, users have made all the story lines and all the objects, while the commercial provider created the tools and hosts the platform for their collective storytelling. We are seeing the broad emergence of business models that are aimed precisely at providing users with the tools to write, compose, film, and mix existing materials, and to publish, play, render, and distribute what we have made to others, everywhere. Blogger, for example, provides simple tools for online publication of written materials. Apple Computer offers a product called GarageBand, that lets users compose and play their own music. It includes a large library of prerecorded building blocks--different instruments, riffs, loops--and an interface that allows the user to mix, match, record and add their own, and produce their own musical composition and play it. Video-editing utilities, coupled with the easy malleability of digital video, enable people to make films--whether about their own lives or, as in the case of /{The Jedi Saga}/, of fantasies. The emerging phenomenon of Machinima--short movies that are made using game platforms--underscores how digital platforms can also become tools for creation in unintended ways. Creators use the 3-D rendering capabilities of an existing game, but use the game to stage a movie scene or video presentation, which they record as it is played out. This recording is then distributed on the Internet as a standalone short film. While many of these are still crude, the basic possibilities they present as modes of making movies is significant. Needless to say, not everyone is Mozart. Not everyone is even a reasonably talented musician, author, or filmmaker. Much of what can be and is done is not wildly creative, and much of it takes the form of Balkin's "glomming on": That is, users take existing popular culture, or otherwise professionally created culture, and perform it, sometimes with an effort toward fidelity to the professionals, but often with their own twists, making it their own in an immediate and unmediated way. However, just as learning how to read music and play an instrument can make one a better-informed listener, so too a ubiquitous practice of making cultural artifacts of all forms enables individuals in society to be better readers, listeners, and viewers of professionally produced culture, as well as contributors of our own statements into this mix of collective culture. +={ Balkin, Jack ; + commercial culture, production of +1 ; + information production, market-based : + mass popular culture +1 ; + market-based information producers : + mass popular culture +1 ; + market-based information producers : + mass popular culture +1 ; + popular culture, commercial production of +1 +} + +People have always created their own culture. Popular music did not begin with Elvis. There has always been a folk culture--of music, storytelling, and theater. What happened over the course of the twentieth century in advanced economies, and to a lesser extent but still substantially around the globe, is the displacement of folk culture by commercially produced mass popular ,{[pg 296]}, culture. The role of the individuals and communities vis-a-vis cultural arti` facts changed, from coproducers and replicators to passive consumers. The time frame where elders might tell stories, children might put on a show for the adults, or those gathered might sing songs came to be occupied by background music, from the radio or phonograph, or by television. We came to assume a certain level of "production values"--quality of sound and image, quality of rendering and staging--that are unattainable with our crude means and our relatively untrained voices or use of instruments. Not only time for local popular creation was displaced, therefore, but also a sense of what counted as engaging, delightful articulation of culture. In a now-classic article from 1937, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin authored one of the only instances of critical theory that took an optimistic view of the emergence of popular culture in the twentieth century as a potentially liberating turn. Benjamin's core claim was that with mechanical replication of art, the "aura" that used to attach to single works of art is dissipated. Benjamin saw this aura of unique works of art as reinforcing a distance between the masses and the representations of culture, reinforcing the perception of their weakness and distance from truly great things. He saw in mechanical reproducibility the possibility of bringing copies down to earth, to the hands of the masses, and reversing the sense of distance and relative weakness of the mass culture. What Benjamin did not yet see were the ways in which mechanical reproduction would insert a different kind of barrier between many dispersed individuals and the capacity to make culture. The barrier of production costs, production values, and the star system that came along with them, replaced the iconic role of the unique work of art with new, but equally high barriers to participation in making culture. It is precisely those barriers that the capabilities provided by digital media begin to erode. It is becoming feasible for users to cut and paste, "glom on," to existing cultural materials; to implement their intuitions, tastes, and expressions through media that render them with newly acceptable degrees of technical quality, and to distribute them among others, both near and far. As Hollywood begins to use more computer-generated special effects, but more important, whole films--2004 alone saw major releases like Shrek 2, The Incredibles, and Polar Express--and as the quality of widely available image-generation software and hardware improves, the production value gap between individual users or collections of users and the commercial-professional studios will decrease. As this book is completed in early 2005, nothing makes clearer the value of retelling basic stories through ,{[pg 297]}, the prism of contemporary witty criticism of prevailing culture than do Shrek 2 and The Incredibles, and, equally, nothing exposes the limits of purely technical, movie-star-centered quality than the lifelessness of Polar Express. As online games like Second Life provide users with new tools and platforms to tell and retell their own stories, or their own versions of well-trodden paths, as digital multimedia tools do the same for individuals outside of the collaborative storytelling platforms, we can begin to see a reemergence of folk stories and songs as widespread cultural practices. And as network connections become ubiquitous, and search engines and filters improve, we can begin to see this folk culture emerging to play a substantially greater role in the production of our cultural environment. +={ Walter, Benjamin } + +2~ A PARTICIPATORY CULTURE: TOWARD POLICY +={ control of public sphere : + See mass media controlling culture +5 ; + culture : + participatory, policies for +5 | shaping perceptions of others +5 ; + future : + participatory culture +5 ; + information production inputs : + propaganda +5 ; + inputs to production : + propaganda +5 ; + manipulating perceptions of others : + with propaganda +5 ; + participatory culture +5 ; + perceptions of others, shaping : + with propaganda +5 ; + policy : + participatory culture +5 ; + production inputs : + propaganda +5 ; + propaganda : + manipulating culture +5 ; + shaping perceptions of others : + with propaganda +5 +} + +Culture is too broad a concept to suggest an all-encompassing theory centered around technology in general or the Internet in particular. My focus is therefore much narrower, along two dimensions. First, I am concerned with thinking about the role of culture to human interactions that can be understood in terms of basic liberal political commitments--that is to say, a concern for the degree of freedom individuals have to form and pursue a life plan, and the degree of participation they can exercise in debating and determining collective action. Second, my claim is focused on the relative attractiveness of the twentieth-century industrial model of cultural production and what appears to be emerging as the networked model in the early twenty-first century, rather than on the relationship of the latter to some theoretically defined ideal culture. +={ culture : + freedom of +1 ; + economics in liberal political theory : + cultural freedom +1 ; + freedom : + cultural +1 ; + liberal political theory : + cultural freedom +1 +} + +A liberal political theory cannot wish away the role of culture in structuring human events. We engage in wide ranges of social practices of making and exchanging symbols that are concerned with how our life is and how it might be, with which paths are valuable for us as individuals to pursue and which are not, and with what objectives we as collective communities-- from the local to the global--ought to pursue. This unstructured, ubiquitous conversation is centrally concerned with things that a liberal political system speaks to, but it is not amenable to anything like an institutionalized process that could render its results "legitimate." Culture operates as a set of background assumptions and common knowledge that structure our understanding of the state of the world and the range of possible actions and outcomes open to us individually and collectively. It constrains the range of conversational ,{[pg 298]}, moves open to us to consider what we are doing and how we might act differently. In these regards, it is a source of power in the critical-theory sense--a source that exerts real limits on what we can do and how we can be. As a source of power, it is not a natural force that stands apart from human endeavor and is therefore a fact that is not itself amenable to political evaluation. As we see well in the efforts of parents and teachers, advertising agencies and propaganda departments, culture is manipulable, manageable, and a direct locus of intentional action aimed precisely at harnessing its force as a way of controlling the lives of those who inhabit it. At the same time, however, culture is not the barrel of a gun or the chains of a dungeon. There are limits on the degree to which culture can actually control those who inhabit it. Those degrees depend to a great extent on the relative difficulty or ease of seeing through culture, of talking about it with others, and of seeing other alternatives or other ways of symbolizing the possible and the desirable. + +Understanding that culture is a matter of political concern even within a liberal framework does not, however, translate into an agenda of intervention in the cultural sphere as an extension of legitimate political decision making. Cultural discourse is systematically not amenable to formal regulation, management, or direction from the political system. First, participation in cultural discourse is intimately tied to individual self-expression, and its regulation would therefore require levels of intrusion in individual autonomy that would render any benefits in terms of a participatory political system Pyrrhic indeed. Second, culture is much more intricately woven into the fabric of everyday life than political processes and debates. It is language-- the basic framework within which we can comprehend anything, and through which we do so everywhere. To regulate culture is to regulate our very comprehension of the world we occupy. Third, therefore, culture infuses our thoughts at a wide range of levels of consciousness. Regulating culture, or intervening in its creation and direction, would entail self-conscious action to affect citizens at a subconscious or weakly conscious level. Fourth, and finally, there is no Archimedean point outside of culture on which to stand and decide--let us pour a little bit more of this kind of image or that, so that we achieve a better consciousness, one that better fits even our most just and legitimately arrived-at political determinations. + +A systematic commitment to avoid direct intervention in cultural exchange does not leave us with nothing to do or say about culture, and about law or policy as it relates to it. What we have is the capacity and need ,{[pg 299]}, to observe a cultural production and exchange system and to assure that it is as unconstraining and free from manipulation as possible. We must diagnose what makes a culture more or less opaque to its inhabitants; what makes it more or less liable to be strictly constraining of the conversations that rely on it; and what makes the possibility of many and diverse sources and forms of cultural intervention more or less likely. On the background of this project, I suggest that the emergence of Internet culture is an attractive development from the perspective of liberal political theory. This is so both because of the technical characteristics of digital objects and computer network communications, and because of the emerging industrial structure of the networked information economy--typified by the increased salience of nonmarket production in general and of individual production, alone or in concert with others, in particular. The openness of digital networks allows for a much wider range of perspectives on any particular symbol or range of symbols to be visible for anyone, everywhere. The cross section of views that makes it easy to see that Barbie is a contested symbol makes it possible more generally to observe very different cultural forms and perspectives for any individual. This transparency of background unstated assumptions and common knowledge is the beginning of self-reflection and the capacity to break out of given molds. Greater transparency is also a necessary element in, and a consequence of, collaborative action, as various participants either explicitly, or through negotiating the divergence of their nonexplicit different perspectives, come to a clearer statement of their assumptions, so that these move from the background to the fore, and become more amenable to examination and revision. The plasticity of digital objects, in turn, improves the degree to which individuals can begin to produce a new folk culture, one that already builds on the twentieth-century culture that was highly unavailable for folk retelling and re-creation. This plasticity, and the practices of writing your own culture, then feed back into the transparency, both because the practice of making one's own music, movie, or essay makes one a more self-conscious user of the cultural artifacts of others, and because in retelling anew known stories, we again come to see what the originals were about and how they do, or do not, fit our own sense of how things are and how they ought to be. There is emerging a broad practice of learning by doing that makes the entire society more effective readers and writers of their own culture. +={ Internet : + plasticity of culture ; + plasticity of Internet culture +} + +By comparison to the highly choreographed cultural production system of the industrial information economy, the emergence of a new folk culture ,{[pg 300]}, and of a wider practice of active personal engagement in the telling and retelling of basic cultural themes and emerging concerns and attachments offers new avenues for freedom. It makes culture more participatory, and renders it more legible to all its inhabitants. The basic structuring force of culture is not eliminated, of course. The notion of floating monads disconnected from a culture is illusory. Indeed, it is undesirable. However, the framework that culture offers us, the language that makes it possible for us to make statements and incorporate the statements of others in the daily social conversation that pervades life, is one that is more amenable to our own remaking. We become more sophisticated users of this framework, more self-conscious about it, and have a greater capacity to recognize, challenge, and change that which we find oppressive, and to articulate, exchange, and adopt that which we find enabling. As chapter 11 makes clear, however, the tension between the industrial model of cultural production and the networked information economy is nowhere more pronounced than in the question of the degree to which the new folk culture of the twenty-first century will be permitted to build upon the outputs of the twentieth-century industrial model. In this battle, the stakes are high. One cannot make new culture ex nihilo. We are as we are today, as cultural beings, occupying a set of common symbols and stories that are heavily based on the outputs of that industrial period. If we are to make this culture our own, render it legible, and make it into a new platform for our needs and conversations today, we must find a way to cut, paste, and remix present culture. And it is precisely this freedom that most directly challenges the laws written for the twentieth-century technology, economy, and cultural practice. ,{[pg 301]}, + +1~ Chapter 9 - Justice and Development +={ human development and justice +91 ; + justice and human development +91 +} + +How will the emergence of a substantial sector of nonmarket, commons-based production in the information economy affect questions of distribution and human well-being? The pessimistic answer is, very little. Hunger, disease, and deeply rooted racial, ethnic, or class stratification will not be solved by a more decentralized, nonproprietary information production system. Without clean water, basic literacy, moderately well-functioning governments, and universal practical adoption of the commitment to treat all human beings as fundamentally deserving of equal regard, the fancy Internet-based society will have little effect on the billions living in poverty or deprivation, either in the rich world, or, more urgently and deeply, in poor and middle-income economies. There is enough truth in this pessimistic answer to require us to tread lightly in embracing the belief that the shift to a networked information economy can indeed have meaningful effects in the domain of justice and human development. + +Despite the caution required in overstating the role that the networked information economy can play in solving issues of justice, ,{[pg 302]}, it is important to recognize that information, knowledge, and culture are core inputs into human welfare. Agricultural knowledge and biological innovation are central to food security. Medical innovation and access to its fruits are central to living a long and healthy life. Literacy and education are central to individual growth, to democratic self-governance, and to economic capabilities. Economic growth itself is critically dependent on innovation and information. For all these reasons, information policy has become a critical element of development policy and the question of how societies attain and distribute human welfare and well-being. Access to knowledge has become central to human development. The emergence of the networked information economy offers definable opportunities for improvement in the normative domain of justice, as it does for freedom, by comparison to what was achievable in the industrial information economy. +={ commercial model of communication : + barriers to justice +1 ; + industrial model of communication : + barriers to justice +1 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + barriers to justice +1 ; + traditional model of communication : + barriers to justice +1 ; + policy : + proprietary rights vs. justice +2 ; + proprietary rights : + justice vs. +2 +} + +We can analyze the implications of the emergence of the networked information economy for justice or equality within two quite different frames. The first is liberal, and concerned primarily with some form of equality of opportunity. The second is social-democratic, or development oriented, and focused on universal provision of a substantial set of elements of human well-being. The availability of information from nonmarket sources and the range of opportunities to act within a nonproprietary production environment improve distribution in both these frameworks, but in different ways. Despite the differences, within both frameworks the effect crystallizes into one of access--access to opportunities for one's own action, and access to the outputs and inputs of the information economy. The industrial economy creates cost barriers and transactional-institutional barriers to both these domains. The networked information economy reduces both types of barriers, or creates alternative paths around them. It thereby equalizes, to some extent, both the opportunities to participate as an economic actor and the practical capacity to partake of the fruits of the increasingly information-based global economy. + +The opportunities that the network information economy offers, however, often run counter to the central policy drive of both the United States and the European Union in the international trade and intellectual property systems. These two major powers have systematically pushed for ever-stronger proprietary protection and increasing reliance on strong patents, copyrights, and similar exclusive rights as the core information policy for growth and development. Chapter 2 explains why such a policy is suspect from a purely economic perspective concerned with optimizing innovation. ,{[pg 303]}, A system that relies too heavily on proprietary approaches to information production is not, however, merely inefficient. It is unjust. Proprietary rights are designed to elicit signals of people's willingness and ability to pay. In the presence of extreme distribution differences like those that characterize the global economy, the market is a poor measure of comparative welfare. A system that signals what innovations are most desirable and rations access to these innovations based on ability, as well as willingness, to pay, overrepresents welfare gains of the wealthy and underrepresents welfare gains of the poor. Twenty thousand American teenagers can simply afford, and will be willing to pay, much more for acne medication than the more than a million Africans who die of malaria every year can afford to pay for a vaccine. A system that relies too heavily on proprietary models for managing information production and exchange is unjust because it is geared toward serving small welfare increases for people who can pay a lot for incremental improvements in welfare, and against providing large welfare increases for people who cannot pay for what they need. + +2~ LIBERAL THEORIES OF JUSTICE AND THE NETWORKED INFORMATION ECONOMY +={ human development and justice : + liberal theories of +7 ; + human welfare : + liberal theories of justice +7 ; + information economy : + justice, liberal theories of +7 ; + justice and human development : + liberal theories of +7 ; + liberal societies : + theories of justice +7 ; + welfare : + liberal theories of justice +7 | see also justice and human development +} + +Liberal theories of justice can be categorized according to how they characterize the sources of inequality in terms of luck, responsibility, and structure. By luck, I mean reasons for the poverty of an individual that are beyond his or her control, and that are part of that individual's lot in life unaffected by his or her choices or actions. By responsibility, I mean causes for the poverty of an individual that can be traced back to his or her actions or choices. By structure, I mean causes for the inequality of an individual that are beyond his or her control, but are traceable to institutions, economic organizations, or social relations that form a society's transactional framework and constrain the behavior of the individual or undermine the efficacy of his or her efforts at self-help. +={ background knowledge : + see culture bad luck, justice and +2 ; + DSL : + see broadband networks dumb luck, justice and +2 ; + luck, justice and +2 ; + misfortune, justice and +2 ; + organization structure : + justice and +2 ; + structure of organizations : + justice and +2 +} + +We can think of John Rawls's /{Theory of Justice}/ as based on a notion that the poorest people are the poorest because of dumb luck. His proposal for a systematic way of defending and limiting redistribution is the "difference principle." A society should organize its redistribution efforts in order to make those who are least well-off as well-off as they can be. The theory of desert is that, because any of us could in principle be the victim of this dumb luck, we would all have agreed, if none of us had known where we ,{[pg 304]}, would be on the distribution of bad luck, to minimize our exposure to really horrendous conditions. The practical implication is that while we might be bound to sacrifice some productivity to achieve redistribution, we cannot sacrifice too much. If we did that, we would most likely be hurting, rather than helping, the weakest and poorest. Libertarian theories of justice, most prominently represented by Robert Nozick's entitlement theory, on the other hand, tend to ignore bad luck or impoverishing structure. They focus solely on whether the particular holdings of a particular person at any given moment are unjustly obtained. If they are not, they may not justly be taken from the person who holds them. Explicitly, these theories ignore the poor. As a practical matter and by implication, they treat responsibility as the source of the success of the wealthy, and by negation, the plight of the poorest--leading them to be highly resistant to claims of redistribution. +={ Rawls, John +1 ; + Nozick, Robert ; + redistribution theory +1 +} + +The basic observation that an individual's economic condition is a function of his or her own actions does not necessarily resolve into a blanket rejection of redistribution, as we see in the work of other liberals. Ronald Dworkin's work on inequality offers a critique of Rawls's, in that it tries to include a component of responsibility alongside recognition of the role of luck. In his framework, if (1) resources were justly distributed and (2) bad luck in initial endowment were compensated through some insurance scheme, then poverty that resulted from bad choices, not bad luck, would not deserve help through redistribution. While Rawls's theory ignores personal responsibility, and in this regard, is less attractive from the perspective of a liberal theory that respects individual autonomy, it has the advantage of offering a much clearer metric for a just system. One can measure the welfare of the poorest under different redistribution rules in market economies. One can then see how much redistribution is too much, in the sense that welfare is reduced to the point that the poorest are actually worse off than they would be under a less-egalitarian system. You could compare the Soviet Union, West Germany, and the United States of the late 1960s?early 1970s, and draw conclusions. Dworkin's insurance scheme would require too fine an ability to measure the expected incapacitating effect of various low endowments--from wealth to intelligence to health--in a market economy, and to calibrate wealth endowments to equalize them, to offer a measuring rod for policy. It does, however, have the merit of distinguishing--for purposes of judging desert to benefit from society's redistribution efforts--between a child of privilege who fell into poverty through bad investments coupled with sloth and a person born into a poor family with severe mental ,{[pg 305]}, defects. Bruce Ackerman's Social Justice and the Liberal State also provides a mechanism of differentiating the deserving from the undeserving, but adds policy tractability by including the dimension of structure to luck and responsibility. In addition to the dumb luck of how wealthy your parents are when you are born and what genetic endowment you are born with, there are also questions of the education system you grow up with and the transactional framework through which you live your life--which opportunities it affords, and which it cuts off or burdens. His proposals therefore seek to provide basic remedies for those failures, to the extent that they can, in fact, be remedied. One such proposal is Anne Alstott and Ackerman's idea of a government-funded personal endowment at birth, coupled with the freedom to squander it and suffer the consequential reduction in welfare.~{ Anne Alstott and Bruce Ackerman, The Stakeholder Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). }~ He also emphasizes a more open and egalitarian transactional framework that would allow anyone access to opportunities to transact with others, rather than depending on, for example, unequal access to social links as a precondition to productive behavior. +={ Dworkin, Ronald ; + Ackerman, Bruce +3 ; + Alstott, Anne ; + capabilities of individuals : + economic condition and ; + entertainment industry : + see also music industry entitlement theory ; + individual capabilities and action : + economic condition and ; + policy : + liberal theories of justice and +3 +} + +The networked information economy improves justice from the perspective of every single one of these theories of justice. Imagine a good that improves the welfare of its users--it could be software, or an encyclopedia, or a product review. Now imagine a policy choice that could make production of that good on a nonmarket, peer-production basis too expensive to perform, or make it easy for an owner of an input to exclude competitors-- both market-based and social-production based. For example, a government might decide to: recognize patents on software interfaces, so that it would be very expensive to buy the right to make your software work with someone else's; impose threshold formal education requirements on the authors of any encyclopedia available for school-age children to read, or impose very strict copyright requirements on using information contained in other sources (as opposed to only prohibiting copying their language) and impose high penalties for small omissions; or give the putative subjects of reviews very strong rights to charge for the privilege of reviewing a product--such as by expanding trademark rights to refer to the product, or prohibiting a reviewer to take apart a product without permission. The details do not matter. I offer them only to provide a sense of the commonplace kinds of choices that governments could make that would, as a practical matter, differentially burden nonmarket producers, whether nonprofit organizations or informal peer-production collaborations. Let us call a rule set that is looser from the perspective of access to existing information resources Rule Set A, and a rule ,{[pg 306]}, set that imposes higher costs on access to information inputs Rule Set B. As explained in chapter 2, it is quite likely that adopting B would depress information production and innovation, even if it were intended to increase the production of information by, for example, strengthening copyright or patent. This is because the added incentives for some producers who produce with the aim of capturing the rents created by copyright or patents must be weighed against their costs. These include (a) the higher costs even for those producers and (b) the higher costs for all producers who do not rely on exclusive rights at all, but instead use either a nonproprietary market model--like service--or a nonmarket model, like nonprofits and individual authors, and that do not benefit in any way from the increased appropriation. However, let us make here a much weaker assumption--that an increase in the rules of exclusion will not affect overall production. Let us assume that there will be exactly enough increased production by producers who rely on a proprietary model to offset the losses of production in the nonproprietary sectors. + +It is easy to see why a policy shift from A to B would be regressive from the perspective of theories like Rawls's or Ackerman's. Under Rule A, let us say that in this state of affairs, State A, there are five online encyclopedias. One of them is peer produced and freely available for anyone to use. Rule B is passed. In the new State B, there are still five encyclopedias. It has become too expensive to maintain the free encyclopedia, however, and more profitable to run commercial online encyclopedias. A new commercial encyclopedia has entered the market in competition with the four commercial encyclopedias that existed in State A, and the free encyclopedia folded. From the perspective of the difference principle, we can assume that the change has resulted in a stable overall welfare in the Kaldor-Hicks sense. (That is, overall welfare has increased enough so that, even though some people may be worse off, those who have been made better off are sufficiently better off that they could, in principle, compensate everyone who is worse off enough to make everyone either better off or no worse off than they were before.) There are still five encyclopedias. However, now they all charge a subscription fee. The poorest members of society are worse off, even if we posit that total social welfare has remained unchanged. In State A, they had access for free to an encyclopedia. They could use the information (or the software utility, if the example were software) without having to give up any other sources of welfare. In State B, they must choose between the same amount ,{[pg 307]}, of encyclopedia usage as they had before, and less of some other source of welfare, or the same welfare from other sources, and no encyclopedia. If we assume, contrary to theory and empirical evidence from the innovation economics literature, that the move to State B systematically and predictably improves the incentives and investments of the commercial producers, that would still by itself not justify the policy shift from the perspective of the difference principle. One would have to sustain a much stricter claim: that the marginal improvement in the quality of the encyclopedias, and a decline in price from the added market competition that was not felt by the commercial producers when they were competing with the free, peer-produced version, would still make the poorest better off, even though they now must pay for any level of encyclopedia access, than they were when they had four commercial competitors with their prior levels of investment operating in a competitive landscape of four commercial and one free encyclopedia. +={ Rawls, John } + +From the perspective of Ackerman's theory of justice, the advantages of the networked information economy are clearer yet. Ackerman characterizes some of the basic prerequisites for participating in a market economy as access to a transactional framework, to basic information, and to an adequate educational endowment. To the extent that any of the basic utilities required to participate in an information economy at all are available without sensitivity to price--that is, free to anyone--they are made available in a form that is substantially insulated from the happenstance of initial wealth endowments. In this sense at least, the development of a networked information economy overcomes some of the structural components of continued poverty--lack of access to information about market opportunities for production and cheaper consumption, about the quality of goods, or lack of communications capacity to people or places where one can act productively. While Dworkin's theory does not provide a similarly clear locus for mapping the effect of the networked information economy on justice, there is some advantage, and no loss, from this perspective, in having more of the information economy function on a nonmarket basis. As long as one recognizes bad luck as a partial reason for poverty, then having information resources available for free use is one mechanism of moderating the effects of bad luck in endowment, and lowers the need to compensate for those effects insofar as they translate to lack of access to information resources. This added access results from voluntary communication by the producers and a respect for their willingness to communicate what they produced freely. ,{[pg 308]}, While the benefits flow to individuals irrespective of whether their present state is due to luck or irresponsibility, it does not involve a forced redistribution from responsible individuals to irresponsible individuals. +={ Dworkin, Ronald } + +From the perspective of liberal theories of justice, then, the emergence of the networked information economy is an unqualified improvement. Except under restrictive assumptions inconsistent with what we know as a matter of both theory and empirics about the economics of innovation and information production, the emergence of a substantial sector of information production and exchange that is based on social transactional frameworks, rather than on a proprietary exclusion business model, improves distribution in society. Its outputs are available freely to anyone, as basic inputs into their own actions--whether market-based or nonmarket-based. The facilities it produces improve the prospects of all who are connected to the Internet-- whether they are seeking to use it as consumers or as producers. It softens some of the effects of resource inequality. It offers platforms for greater equality of opportunity to participate in market- and nonmarket-based enterprises. This characteristic is explored in much greater detail in the next segment of this chapter, but it is important to emphasize here that equality of opportunity to act in the face of unequal endowment is central to all liberal theories of justice. As a practical matter, these characteristics of the networked information economy make the widespread availability of Internet access a more salient objective of redistribution policy. They make policy debates, which are mostly discussed in today's political sphere in terms of innovation and growth, and sometimes in terms of freedom, also a matter of liberal justice. + +2~ COMMONS-BASED STRATEGIES FOR HUMAN WELFARE AND DEVELOPMENT +={ commons : + human welfare and development +4 ; + democratic societies : + social-democratic theories of justice +4 ; + global development +4 ; + human development and justice +4 ; + human welfare : + commons-based strategies +4 ; + justice and human development : + commons-based strategies +4 ; + social-democratic theories of justice +4 ; + welfare : + commons-based strategies +4 +} + +There is a long social-democratic tradition of focusing not on theoretical conditions of equality in a liberal society, but on the actual well-being of human beings in a society. This conception of justice shares with liberal theories the acceptance of market economy as a fundamental component of free societies. However, its emphasis is not equality of opportunity or even some level of social insurance that still allows the slothful to fall, but on assuring a basic degree of well-being to everyone in society. Particularly in the European social democracies, the ambition has been to make that basic level quite high, but the basic framework of even American Social Security-- ,{[pg 309]}, unless it is fundamentally changed in the coming years--has this characteristic. The literature on global poverty and its alleviation was initially independent of this concern, but as global communications and awareness increased, and as the conditions of life in most advanced market economies for most people improved, the lines between the concerns with domestic conditions and global poverty blurred. We have seen an increasing merging of the concerns into a concern for basic human well-being everywhere. It is represented in no individual's work more clearly than in that of Amartya Sen, who has focused on the centrality of development everywhere to the definition not only of justice, but of freedom as well. + +The emerging salience of global development as the core concern of distributive justice is largely based on the sheer magnitude of the problems faced by much of the world's population.~{ Numbers are all taken from the 2004 Human Development Report (New York: UN Development Programme, 2004). }~ In the world's largest democracy, 80 percent of the population--slightly more people than the entire population of the United States and the expanded European Union combined-- lives on less than two dollars a day, 39 percent of adults are illiterate, and 47 percent of children under the age of five are underweight for their age. In Africa's wealthiest democracy, a child at birth has a 45 percent probability of dying before he or she reaches the age of forty. India and South Africa are far from being the worst-off countries. The scope of destitution around the globe exerts a moral pull on any acceptable discussion of justice. Intuitively, these problems seem too fundamental to be seriously affected by the networked information economy--what has /{Wikipedia}/ got to do with the 49 percent of the population of Congo that lacks sustainable access to improved water sources? It is, indeed, important not to be overexuberant about the importance of information and communications policy in the context of global human development. But it is also important not to ignore the centrality of information to most of our more-advanced strategies for producing core components of welfare and development. To see this, we can begin by looking at the components of the Human Development Index (HDI). +={ HDI (Human Development Index) +2 ; + Human Development Index (HDI) +2 ; + Human Development Report +} + +The Human Development Report was initiated in 1990 as an effort to measure a broad set of components of what makes a life livable, and, ultimately, attractive. It was developed in contradistinction to indicators centered on economic output, like gross domestic product (GDP) or economic growth alone, in order to provide a more refined sense of what aspects of a nation's economy and society make it more or less livable. It allows a more nuanced approach toward improving the conditions of life everywhere. As ,{[pg 310]}, Sen pointed out, the people of China, Kerala in India, and Sri Lanka lead much longer and healthier lives than other countries, like Brazil or South Africa, which have a higher per capita income.~{ Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999), 46-47. }~ The Human Development Report measures a wide range of outcomes and characteristics of life. The major composite index it tracks is the Human Development Index. The HDI tries to capture the capacity of people to live long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, and to have material resources sufficient to provide a decent standard of living. It does so by combining three major components: life expectancy at birth, adult literacy and school enrollment, and GDP per capita. As Figure 9.1 illustrates, in the global information economy, each and every one of these measures is significantly, though not solely, a function of access to information, knowledge, and information-embedded goods and services. Life expectancy is affected by adequate nutrition and access to lifesaving medicines. Biotechnological innovation for agriculture, along with agronomic innovation in cultivation techniques and other, lower-tech modes of innovation, account for a high portion of improvements in the capacity of societies to feed themselves and in the availability of nutritious foods. Medicines depend on pharmaceutical research and access to its products, and health care depends on research and publication for the development and dissemination of information about best-care practices. Education is also heavily dependent, not surprisingly, on access to materials and facilities for teaching. This includes access to basic textbooks, libraries, computation and communications systems, and the presence of local academic centers. Finally, economic growth has been understood for more than half a century to be centrally driven by innovation. This is particularly true of latecomers, who can improve their own condition most rapidly by adopting best practices and advanced technology developed elsewhere, and then adapting to local conditions and adding their own from the new technological platform achieved in this way. All three of these components are, then, substantially affected by access to, and use of, information and knowledge. The basic premise of the claim that the emergence of the networked information economy can provide significant benefits to human development is that the manner in which we produce new information--and equally important, the institutional framework we use to manage the stock of existing information and knowledge around the world--can have significant impact on human development. ,{[pg 311]}, + +{won_benkler_9_1.png "Figure 9.1: HDI and Information" }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu + +2~ INFORMATION-EMBEDDED GOODS AND TOOLS, INFORMATION, AND KNOWLEDGE +={ human welfare : + information-based advantages +7 ; + welfare : + information-based advantages +7 +} + +One can usefully idealize three types of information-based advantages that developed economies have, and that would need to be available to developing and less-developed economies if one's goal were the improvement in conditions in those economies and the opportunities for innovation in them. These include information-embedded material resources--consumption goods and production tools--information, and knowledge. +={ goods, information-embedded +2 ; + information-embedded goods +2 ; + proprietary rights : + information-embedded goods and tools +2 +} + +/{Information-Embedded Goods}/. These are goods that are not themselves information, but that are better, more plentiful, or cheaper because of some technological advance embedded in them or associated with their production. Pharmaceuticals and agricultural goods are the most obvious examples in the areas of health and food security, respectively. While there are other constraints on access to innovative products in these areas--regulatory and political in nature--a perennial barrier is cost. And a perennial barrier to competition that could reduce the cost is the presence of exclusive rights, ,{[pg 312]}, mostly in the form of patents, but also in the form of internationally recognized breeders' rights and regulatory data exclusivity. In the areas of computation and communication, hardware and software are the primary domains of concern. With hardware, there have been some efforts toward developing cheaper equipment--like the simputer and the Jhai computer efforts to develop inexpensive computers. Because of the relatively commoditized state of most components of these systems, however, marginal cost, rather than exclusive rights, has been the primary barrier to access. The solution, if one has emerged, has been aggregation of demand--a networked computer for a village, rather than an individual. For software, the initial solution was piracy. More recently, we have seen an increased use of free software instead. The former cannot genuinely be described as a "solution," and is being eliminated gradually by trade policy efforts. The latter--adoption of free software to obtain state-of-the-art software--forms the primary template for the class of commons-based solutions to development that I explore in this chapter. + +/{Information-Embedded Tools}/. One level deeper than the actual useful material things one would need to enhance welfare are tools necessary for innovation itself. In the areas of agricultural biotechnology and medicines, these include enabling technologies for advanced research, as well as access to materials and existing compounds for experimentation. Access to these is perhaps the most widely understood to present problems in the patent system of the developed world, as much as it is for the developing world--an awareness that has mostly crystallized under Michael Heller's felicitous phrase "anti-commons," or Carl Shapiro's "patent thicket." The intuition, whose analytic basis is explained in chapter 2, is that innovation is encumbered more than it is encouraged when basic tools for innovation are proprietary, where the property system gives owners of these tools proprietary rights to control innovation that relies on their tools, and where any given new innovation requires the consent of, and payment to, many such owners. This problem is not unique to the developing world. Nonetheless, because of the relatively small dollar value of the market for medicines that treat diseases that affect only poorer countries or of crop varieties optimized for those countries, the cost hurdle weighs more heavily on the public or nonprofit efforts to achieve food security and health in poor and middle-income countries. These nonmarket-based research efforts into diseases and crops of concern purely to these areas are not constructed to appropriate gains from ,{[pg 313]}, exclusive rights to research tools, but only bear their costs on downstream innovation. +={ Heller, Michael ; + Shapiro, Carl ; + information-embedded tools ; + tools, information-embedded +} + +/{Information}/. The distinction between information and knowledge is a tricky one. I use "information" here colloquially, to refer to raw data, scientific reports of the output of scientific discovery, news, and factual reports. I use "knowledge" to refer to the set of cultural practices and capacities necessary for processing the information into either new statements in the information exchange, or more important in our context, for practical use of the information in appropriate ways to produce more desirable actions or outcomes from action. Three types of information that are clearly important for purposes of development are scientific publications, scientific and economic data, and news and factual reports. Scientific publication has seen a tremendous cost escalation, widely perceived to have reached crisis proportions even by the terms of the best-endowed university libraries in the wealthiest countries. Over the course of the 1990s, some estimates saw a 260 percent increase in the prices of scientific publications, and libraries were reported choosing between journal subscription and monograph purchases.~{ Carol Tenopir and Donald W. King, Towards Electronic Journals: Realities for Scientists, Librarians, and Publishers (Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association, 2000), 273. }~ In response to this crisis, and in reliance on what were perceived to be the publication costreduction opportunities for Internet publication, some scientists--led by Nobel laureate and then head of the National Institutes of Health Harold Varmus--began to agitate for a scientist-based publication system.~{ Harold Varmus, E-Biomed: A Proposal for Electronic Publications in the Biomedical Sciences (Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, 1999). }~ The debates were, and continue to be, heated in this area. However, currently we are beginning to see the emergence of scientist-run and -driven publication systems that distribute their papers for free online, either within a traditional peer-review system like the Public Library of Science (PLoS), or within tightly knit disciplines like theoretical physics, with only post-publication peer review and revision, as in the case of the Los Alamos Archive, or ArXiv.org. Together with free software and peer production on the Internet, the PLoS and ArXiv.org models offer insights into the basic shape of the class of commons-based, nonproprietary production solutions to problems of information production and exchange unhampered by intellectual property. +={ Varmus, Harold ; + access : + to raw data +1 ; + economic data, access to +1 ; + information, defined +1 ; + public-domain data +1 ; + raw data +1 ; + scientific data, access to +1 ; + scientific publication ; + public sphere relationships : + see social relations and norms publication, scientific +} + +Scientific and economic data present a parallel conceptual problem, but in a different legal setting. In the case of both types of data, much of it is produced by government agencies. In the United States, however, raw data is in the public domain, and while initial access may require payment of the cost of distribution, reworking of the data as a tool in information production ,{[pg 314]}, and innovation--and its redistribution by those who acquired access initially--is considered to be in the public domain. In Europe, this has not been the case since the 1996 Database Directive, which created a propertylike right in raw data in an effort to improve the standing of European database producers. Efforts to pass similar legislation in the United States have been mounted and stalled in practically every Congress since the mid1990s. These laws continue to be introduced, driven by the lobby of the largest owners of nongovernment databases, and irrespective of the fact that for almost a decade, Europe's database industry has grown only slowly in the presence of a right, while the U.S. database industry has flourished without an exclusive rights regime. + +News, market reports, and other factual reporting seem to have escaped the problems of barriers to access. Here it is most likely that the value-appropriation model simply does not depend on exclusive rights. Market data is generated as a by-product of the market function itself. Tiny time delays are sufficient to generate a paying subscriber base, while leaving the price trends necessary for, say, farmers to decide at what prices to sell their grain in the local market, freely available.~{ C. K. Prahald, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School of Publishing, 2005), 319-357, Section 4, "The ITC e-Choupal Story." }~ As I suggested in chapter 2, the advertising-supported press has never been copyright dependent, but has instead depended on timely updating of news to capture attention, and then attach that attention to advertising. This has not changed, but the speed of the update cycle has increased and, more important, distribution has become global, so that obtaining most information is now trivial to anyone with access to an Internet connection. While this continues to raise issues with deployment of communications hardware and the knowledge of how to use it, these issues can be, and are being, approached through aggregation of demand in either public or private forms. These types of information do not themselves appear to exhibit significant barriers to access once network connectivity is provided. +={ factual reporting, access to ; + market reports, access to ; + news (as data) +} + +/{Knowledge}/. In this context, I refer mostly to two types of concern. The first is the possibility of the transfer of implicit knowledge, which resists codification into what would here be treated as "information"--for example, training manuals. The primary mechanism for transfer of knowledge of this type is learning by doing, and knowledge transfer of this form cannot happen except through opportunities for local practice of the knowledge. The second type of knowledge transfer of concern here is formal instruction in an education context (as compared with dissemination of codified outputs for self- ,{[pg 315]}, teaching). Here, there is a genuine limit on the capacity of the networked information economy to improve access to knowledge. Individual, face-to-face instruction does not scale across participants, time, and distance. However, some components of education, at all levels, are nonetheless susceptible to improvement with the increase in nonmarket and radically decentralized production processes. The MIT Open Courseware initiative is instructive as to how the universities of advanced economies can attempt to make at least their teaching materials and manuals freely available to teachers throughout the world, thereby leaving the pedagogy in local hands but providing more of the basic inputs into the teaching process on a global scale. More important perhaps is the possibility that teachers and educators can collaborate, both locally and globally, on an open platform model like /{Wikipedia}/, to coauthor learning objects, teaching modules, and, more ambitiously, textbooks that could then be widely accessed by local teachers +={ Open Courseware Initiative (MIT) ; + educational instruction ; + formal instruction ; + implicit knowledge, transfer of ; + knowledge, defined ; + transfer of knowledge +} + +2~ INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION OF HDI-RELATED INFORMATION INDUSTRIES +={ industrial model of communication : + information industries +2 ; + information industries +2 +} + +The production of information and knowledge is very different from the production of steel or automobiles. Chapter 2 explains in some detail that information production has always included substantial reliance on nonmarket actors and on nonmarket, nonproprietary settings as core modalities of production. In software, for example, we saw that Mickey and romantic maximizer-type producers, who rely on exclusive rights directly, have accounted for a stable 36-37 percent of market-based revenues for software developers, while the remainder was focused on both supply-side and demand-side improvements in the capacity to offer software services. This number actually overstates the importance of software publishing, because it does not at all count free software development except when it is monetized by an IBM or a Red Hat, leaving tremendous value unaccounted for. A very large portion of the investments and research in any of the information production fields important to human development occur within the category that I have broadly described as "Joe Einstein." These include both those places formally designated for the pursuit of information and knowledge in themselves, like universities, and those that operate in the social sphere, but produce information and knowledge as a more or less central part of their existence--like churches or political parties. Moreover, individuals acting as social beings have played a central role in our information ,{[pg 316]}, production and exchange system. In order to provide a more sector-specific analysis of how commons-based, as opposed to proprietary, strategies can contribute to development, I offer here a more detailed breakdown specifically of software, scientific publication, agriculture, and biomedical innovation than is provided in chapter 2. +={ Joe Einstein model ; + commons +1 +} + +Table 9.1 presents a higher-resolution statement of the major actors in these fields, within both the market and the nonmarket sectors, from which we can then begin to analyze the path toward, and the sustainability of, more significant commons-based production of the necessities of human development. Table 9.1 identifies the relative role of each of the types of main actors in information and knowledge production across the major sectors relevant to contemporary policy debates. It is most important to extract from this table the diversity of business models and roles not only in each industry, but also among industries. This diversity means that different types of actors can have different relative roles: nonprofits as opposed to individuals, universities as opposed to government, or nonproprietary market actors--that is, market actors whose business model is service based or otherwise does not depend on exclusive appropriation of information--as compared to nonmarket actors. The following segments look at each of these sectors more specifically, and describe the ways in which commons-based strategies are already, or could be, used to improve the access to information, knowledge, and the information-embedded goods and tools for human development. However, even a cursory look at the table shows that the current production landscape of software is particularly well suited to having a greater role for commonsbased production. For example, exclusive proprietary producers account for only one-third of software-related revenues, even within the market. The remainder is covered by various services and relationships that are compatible with nonproprietary treatment of the software itself. Individuals and nonprofit associations also have played a very large role, and continue to do so, not only in free software development, but in the development of standards as well. As we look at each sector, we see that they differ in their incumbent industrial landscape, and these differences mean that each sector may be more or less amenable to commons-based strategies, and, even if in principle amenable, may present harder or easier transition problems. ,{[pg 317]}, + +!_ Table 9.1: Map of Players and Roles in Major Relevant Sectors + +table(h; c7: 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14){ + +Actor Sector +Government +Universities, Libraries, etc. +IP-Based Industry +Non-IP-Based Industry +NGOs/ Nonprofits +Individuals + +Software +Research funding, defense, procurement +Basic research and design; components "incubate" much else +Software publishing (1/3 annual revenue) +Software services, customization (2/3 annual revenue) +FSF; Apache; W3C; IETF +Free/ opensource software + +Scientific publication +Research funding +University presses; salaries; promotions and tenure +Elsevier Science; professional associations +Biomed Central +PLoS; ArXiv +Working papers; Web-based self-publishing + +Agricultural Biotech +Grants and government labs +Basic research; tech transfer (50%) +Big Pharma; Biotech (50%) +Generics +One-World Health +None + +}table + +2~ TOWARD ADOPTING COMMONS-BASED STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT +={ commons, production through +15 : + see peer production commons-based research +15 ; + development, commons-based +15 ; + human development and justice : + commons-based research +15 ; + human welfare : + commons-based research +15 ; + justice and human development : + commons-based research ; + policy : + commons-based research ; + proprietary rights : + commons-based research +15 | global welfare and research +4 ; + research, commons-based +15 ; + welfare : + commons-based research +15 ; + trade policy +4 +} + +The mainstream understanding of intellectual property by its dominant policy-making institutions--the Patent Office and U.S. trade representative in the United States, the Commission in the European Union, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) systems internationally--is that strong protection is good, and stronger protection is better. In development and trade policy, this translates into a belief that the primary mechanism for knowledge transfer and development in a global information economy is for ,{[pg 318]}, all nations, developing as well as developed, to ratchet up their intellectual property law standards to fit the most protective regimes adopted in the United States and Europe. As a practical political matter, the congruence between the United States and the European Union in this area means that this basic understanding is expressed in the international trade system, in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its TRIPS agreement, and in international intellectual property treaties, through the WIPO. The next few segments present an alternative view. Intellectual property as an institution is substantially more ambiguous in its effects on information production than the steady drive toward expansive rights would suggest. The full argument is in chapter 2. + +Intellectual property is particularly harmful to net information importers. In our present world trade system, these are the poor and middle-income nations. Like all users of information protected by exclusive rights, these nations are required by strong intellectual property rights to pay more than the marginal cost of the information at the time that they buy it. In the standard argument, this is intended to give producers incentives to create information that users want. Given the relative poverty of these countries, however, practically none of the intellectual-property-dependent producers develop products specifically with returns from poor or even middle-income markets in mind. The pharmaceutical industry receives about 5 percent of its global revenues from low- and middle-income countries. That is why we have so little investment in drugs for diseases that affect only those parts of the world. It is why most agricultural research that has focused on agriculture in poorer areas of the world has been public sector and nonprofit. Under these conditions, the above-marginal-cost prices paid in these poorer countries are purely regressive redistribution. The information, knowledge, and information-embedded goods paid for would have been developed in expectation of rich world rents alone. The prospects of rents from poorer countries do not affect their development. They do not affect either the rate or the direction of research and development. They simply place some of the rents that pay for technology development in the rich countries on consumers in poor and middle-income countries. The morality of this redistribution from the world's poor to the world's rich has never been confronted or defended in the European or American public spheres. It simply goes unnoticed. When crises in access to information-embedded goods do appear--such as in the AIDS/HIV access to medicines crisis--these are seldom tied to our ,{[pg 319]}, basic institutional choice. In our trade policies, Americans and Europeans push for ever-stronger protection. We thereby systematically benefit those who own much of the stock of usable human knowledge. We do so at the direct expense of those who need access to knowledge in order to feed themselves and heal their sick. +={ HIV/AIDS +1 ; + property ownership : + trade policy +1 +} + +The practical politics of the international intellectual property and trade regime make it very difficult to reverse the trend toward ever-increasing exclusive property protections. The economic returns to exclusive proprietary rights in information are highly concentrated in the hands of those who own such rights. The costs are widely diffuse in the populations of both the developing and developed world. The basic inefficiency of excessive property protection is difficult to understand bycomparison to the intuitive, but mistaken, Economics 101 belief that property is good, more property is better, and intellectual property must be the same. The result is that pressures on the governmentsthat represent exporters of intellectual property rights permissions--in particular, the United States and the European Union--come in this area mostly from the owners, and they continuously push for everstronger rights. Monopoly is a good thing to have if you can get it. Its value for rent extraction isno less valuable for a database or patent-based company than it is for the dictator's nephew in a banana republic. However, its value to these supplicants does not make it any more efficient or desirable. The political landscape is, however, gradually beginning to change. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, and particularly in the wake of the urgency with which the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa has infused the debate over access to medicines, there has been a growing public interest advocacy movementfocused on the intellectual property trade regime. This movement is, however, confronted with a highly playable system. A victory for developing world access in one round in the TRIPS context always leaves other places to construct mechanisms for exclusivity. Bilateral trade negotiations are one domain that is beginning to play an important role. In these, the United States or the European Union can force a rice- or cotton-exporting country to concede a commitment to strong intellectual property protection in exchange for favorable treatment for their core export. The intellectual property exporting nations can then go to WIPO, and push for new treaties based on the emerging international practice of bilateral agreements. This, in turn, would cycle back and be generalized and enforced through the trade regimes. Another approach is for the exporting nations to change their own ,{[pg 320]}, laws, and then drive higher standards elsewhere in the name of "harmonization." Because the international trade and intellectual property system is highly "playable" and manipulable in these ways, systematic resistance to the expansion of intellectual property laws is difficult. +={ efficiency of information regulation : + property protections ; + inefficiency of information regulation : + property protections ; + proprietary rights, inefficiency of : + property protections ; + reallocation : + property protections +} + +The promise of the commons-based strategies explored in the remainder of this chapter is that they can be implemented without changes in law-- either national or international. They are paths that the emerging networked information economy has opened to individuals, nonprofits, and publicsector organizations that want to help in improving human development in the poorer regions of the world to take action on their own. As with decentralized speech for democratic discourse, and collaborative production by individuals of the information environment they occupy as autonomous agents, here too we begin to see that self-help and cooperative action outside the proprietary system offer an opportunity for those who wish to pursue it. In this case, it is an opportunity to achieve a more just distribution of the world's resources and a set of meaningful improvements in human development. Some of these solutions are "commons-based," in the sense that they rely on free access to existing information that is in the commons, and they facilitate further use and development of that information and those information-embedded goods and tools by releasing their information outputs openly, and managing them as a commons, rather than as property. Some of the solutions are specifically peer-production solutions. We see this most clearly in software, and to some extent in the more radical proposals for scientific publication. I will also explore here the viability of peerproduction efforts in agricultural and biomedical innovation, although in those fields, commons-based approaches grafted onto traditional publicsector and nonprofit organizations at present hold the more clearly articulated alternatives. + +3~ Software +={ free software : + commons-based welfare development +3 ; + open-source software : + commons-based welfare development +3 ; + software : + commons-based welfare development +3 ; + software, open-source : + commons-based welfare development +3 +} + +The software industry offers a baseline case because of the proven large scope for peer production in free software. As in other information-intensive industries, government funding and research have played an enormously important role, and university research provides much of the basic science. However, the relative role of individuals, nonprofits, and nonproprietary market producers is larger in software than in the other sectors. First, twothirds of revenues derived from software in the United States are from services ,{[pg 321]}, and do not depend on proprietary exclusion. Like IBM's "Linux-related services" category, for which the company claimed more than two billion dollars of revenue for 2003, these services do not depend on exclusion from the software, but on charging for service relationships.~{ For the sources of numbers for the software industry, see chapter 2 in this volume. IBM numbers, in particular, are identified in figure 2.1. }~ Second, some of the most basic elements of the software environment--like standards and protocols--are developed in nonprofit associations, like the Internet Engineering Taskforce or the World Wide Web Consortium. Third, the role of individuals engaged in peer production--the free and open-source software development communities--is very large. Together, these make for an organizational ecology highly conducive to nonproprietary production, whose outputs can be freely usable around the globe. The other sectors have some degree of similar components, and commons-based strategies for development can focus on filling in the missing components and on leveraging nonproprietary components already in place. + +In the context of development, free software has the potential to play two distinct and significant roles. The first is offering low-cost access to highperforming software for developing nations. The second is creating the potential for participation in software markets based on human ability, even without access to a stock of exclusive rights in existing software. At present, there is a movement in both developing and the most advanced economies to increase reliance on free software. In the United States, the Presidential Technology Advisory Commission advised the president in 2000 to increase use of free software in mission-critical applications, arguing the high quality and dependability of such systems. To the extent that quality, reliability, and ease of self-customization are consistently better with certain free software products, they are attractive to developing-country governments for the same reasons that they are to the governments of developed countries. In the context of developing nations, the primary additional arguments that have been made include cost, transparency, freedom from reliance on a single foreign source (read, Microsoft), and the potential of local software programmers to learn the program, acquire skills, and therefore easily enter the global market with services and applications for free software.~{ These arguments were set out most clearly and early in a public exchange of letters between Representative Villanueva Nunez in Peru and Microsoft's representatives in that country. The exchange can be found on the Web site of the Open Source Initiative, http://www.opensource.org/docs/peru_and_ms.php. }~ The question of cost, despite the confusion that often arises from the word "free," is not obvious. It depends to some extent on the last hope--that local software developers will become skilled in the free software platforms. The cost of software to any enterprise includes the extent, cost, and efficacy with which the software can be maintained, upgraded, and fixed when errors occur. Free ,{[pg 322]}, software may or may not involve an up-front charge. Even if it does not, that does not make it cost-free. However, free software enables an open market in free software servicing, which in turn improves and lowers the cost of servicing the software over time. More important, because the software is open for all to see and because developer communities are often multinational, local developers can come, learn the software, and become relatively low-cost software service providers for their own government. This, in turn, helps realize the low-cost promise over and above the licensing fees avoided. Other arguments in favor of government procurement of free software focus on the value of transparency of software used for public purposes. The basic thrust of these arguments is that free software makes it possible for constituents to monitor the behavior of machines used in governments, to make sure that they are designed to do what they are publicly reported to do. The most significant manifestation of this sentiment in the United States is the hitherto-unsuccessful, but fairly persistent effort to require states to utilize voting machines that use free software, or at a minimum, to use software whose source code is open for public inspection. This is a consideration that, if valid, is equally suitable for developing nations. The concern with independence from a single foreign provider, in the case of operating systems, is again not purely a developing-nation concern. Just as the United States required American Marconi to transfer its assets to an American company, RCA, so that it would not be dependent for a critical infrastructure on a foreign provider, other countries may have similar concerns about Microsoft. Again, to the extent that this is a valid concern, it is so for rich nations as much as it is for poor, with the exceptions of the European Union and Japan, which likely do have bargaining power with Microsoft to a degree that smaller markets do not. +={ services, software +1 ; + transparency of free software +} + +The last and quite distinct potential gain is the possibility of creating a context and an anchor for a free software development sector based on service. This was cited as the primary reason behind Brazil's significant push to use free software in government departments and in telecenters that the federal government is setting up to provide Internet service access to some of its poorer and more remote areas. Software services represent a very large industry. In the United States, software services are an industry roughly twice the size of the movie and video industry. Software developers from low- and middle-income countries can participate in the growing free software segment of this market by using their skills alone. Unlike with service for the proprietary domain, they need not buy licenses to learn and practice the ,{[pg 323]}, services. Moreover, if Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and other major developing countries were to rely heavily on free software, then the "internal market," within the developing world, for free software?related services would become very substantial. Building public-sector demand for these services would be one place to start. Moreover, because free software development is a global phenomenon, free software developers who learn their skills within the developing world would be able to export those skills elsewhere. Just as India's call centers leverage the country's colonial past with its resulting broad availability of English speakers, so too countries like Brazil can leverage their active free software development community to provide software services for free software platforms anywhere in the developed and developing worlds. With free software, the developing-world providers can compete as equals. They do not need access to permissions to operate. Their relationships need not replicate the "outsourcing" model so common in proprietary industries, where permission to work on a project is the point of control over the ability to do so. There will still be branding issues that undoubtedly will affect access to developed markets. However, there will be no baseline constraints of minimal capital necessary to enter the market and try to develop a reputation for reliability. As a development strategy, then, utilization of free software achieves transfer of information-embedded goods for free or at low cost. It also transfers information about the nature of the product and its operation--the source code. Finally, it enables transfer, at least potentially, of opportunities for learning by doing and of opportunities for participating in the global market. These would depend on knowledge of a free software platform that anyone is free to learn, rather than on access to financial capital or intellectual property inventories as preconditions to effective participation. + +3~ Scientific Publication +={ public sphere relationships +6 : + see social relations and norms publication, scientific +6 ; + scientific publication : + commons-based welfare development +6 +} + +Scientific publication is a second sector where a nonproprietary strategy can be implemented readily and is already developing to supplant the proprietary model. Here, the existing market structure is quite odd in a way that likely makes it unstable. Authoring and peer review, the two core value-creating activities, are done by scientists who perform neither task in expectation of royalties or payment. The model of most publications, however, is highly proprietary. A small number of business organizations, like Elsevier Science, control most of the publications. Alongside them, professional associations of scientists also publish their major journals using a proprietary model. ,{[pg 324]}, Universities, whose scientists need access to the papers, incur substantial cost burdens to pay for the publications as a basic input into their own new work. While the effects of this odd system are heavily felt in universities in rich countries, the burden of subscription rates that go into the thousands of dollars per title make access to up-to-date scientific research prohibitive for universities and scientists working in poorer economies. Nonproprietary solutions are already beginning to emerge in this space. They fall into two large clusters. +={ authoring of scientific publications +2 ; + peer review of scientific publications +2 ; + proprietary rights : + scientific publication +2 +} + +The first cluster is closer to the traditional peer-review publication model. It uses Internet communications to streamline the editorial and peer-review system, but still depends on a small, salaried editorial staff. Instead of relying on subscription payments, it relies on other forms of payments that do not require charging a price for the outputs. In the case of the purely nonprofit Public Library of Science (PLoS), the sources of revenue combine author's payments for publication, philanthropic support, and university memberships. In the case of the for-profit BioMed Central, based in the United Kingdom, it is a combination of author payments, university memberships, and a variety of customized derivative products like subscription-based literature reviews and customized electronic update services. Author payments--fees authors must pay to have their work published--are built into the cost of scientific research and included in grant applications. In other words, they are intended to be publicly funded. Indeed, in 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the major funding agency for biomedical science in the United States, announced a requirement that all NIH-funded research be made freely available on the Web within twelve months of publication. Both PLoS and BioMed Central have waiver processes for scientists who cannot pay the publication fees. The articles on both systems are available immediately for free on the Internet. The model exists. It works internally and is sustainable as such. What is left in determining the overall weight that these open-access journals will have in the landscape of scientific publication is the relatively conservative nature of universities themselves. The established journals, like Science or Nature, still carry substantially more prestige than the new journals. As long as this is the case, and as long as hiring and promotion decisions continue to be based on the prestige of the journal in which a scientist's work is published, the ability of the new journals to replace the traditional ones will be curtailed. Some of the established journals, however, are operated by professional associations of scientists. There is an internal tension between the interests of the associations in securing ,{[pg 325]}, their revenue and the growing interest of scientists in open-access publication. Combined with the apparent economic sustainability of the open-access journals, it seems that some of these established journals will likely shift over to the open-access model. At a minimum, policy interventions like those proposed by the NIH will force traditional publications to adapt their business model by making access free after a few months. The point here, however, is not to predict the overall likely success of open-access journals. It is to combine them with what we have seen happening in software as another example of a reorganization of the components of the industrial structure of an information production system. Individual scientists, government funding agencies, nonprofits and foundations, and nonproprietary commercial business models can create the same good--scientific publication--but without the cost barrier that the old model imposed on access to its fruits. Such a reorientation would significantly improve the access of universities and physicians in developing nations to the most advanced scientific publication. +={ BioMed Central ; + NIH (National Institutes of Health) ; + PLoS (Public Library of Science) ; + Public Library of Science (PLoS) +} + +The second approach to scientific publication parallels more closely free software development and peer production. This is typified by ArXiv and the emerging practices of self-archiving or self-publishing. ArXiv.org is an online repository of working papers in physics, mathematics, and computer science. It started out focusing on physics, and that is where it has become the sine qua non of publication in some subdisciplines. The archive does not perform review except for technical format compliance. Quality control is maintained by postpublication review and commentary, as well as by hosting updated versions of the papers with explanations (provided by authors) of the changes. It is likely that the reason ArXiv.org has become so successful in physics is the very small and highly specialized nature of the discipline. The universe of potential readers is small, and their capacity to distinguish good arguments from bad is high. Reputation effects of poor publications are likely immediate. +={ ArXiv.org +1 ; + archiving of scientific publications +1 ; + self-archiving of scientific publications +1 +} + +While ArXiv offers a single repository, a much broader approach has been the developing practice of self-archiving. Academics post their completed work on their own Web sites and make it available freely. The primary limitation of this mechanism is the absence of an easy, single location where one can search for papers on a topic of concern. And yet we are already seeing the emergence of tagging standards and protocols that allow anyone to search the universe of self-archived materials. Once completed, such a development process would in principle render archiving by single points of reference unnecessary. The University of Michigan Digital Library Production ,{[pg 326]}, Service, for example, has developed a protocol called OAIster (pronounced like oyster, with the tagline "find the pearls"), which combines the acronym of Open Archives Initiative with the "ster" ending made popular in reference to peer-to-peer distribution technologies since Napster (AIMster, Grokster, Friendster, and the like). The basic impulse of the Open Archives Initiative is to develop a sufficiently refined set of meta-data tags that would allow anyone who archives their materials with OAI-compliant tagging to be searched easily, quickly, and accurately on the Web. In that case, a general Web search becomes a targeted academic search in a "database" of scientific publications. However, the database is actually a network of self-created, small personal databases that comply with a common tagging and search standard. Again, my point here is not to explore the details of one or another of these approaches. If scientists and other academics adopt this approach of self-archiving coupled with standardized interfaces for global, welldelimited searches, the problem of lack of access to academic publication because of their high-cost publication will be eliminated. +={ OAIster protocol ; + Open Archives Initiative +} + +Other types of documents, for example, primary- and secondary-education textbooks, are in a much more rudimentary stage of the development of peer-production models. First, it should be recognized that responses to illiteracy and low educational completion in the poorer areas of the world are largely a result of lack of schoolteachers, physical infrastructure for classrooms, demand for children's schooling among parents who are themselves illiterate, and lack of effectively enforced compulsory education policy. The cost of textbooks contributes only a portion of the problem of cost. The opportunity cost of children's labor is probably the largest factor. Nonetheless, outdated materials and poor quality of teaching materials are often cited as one limit on the educational achievement of those who do attend school. The costs of books, school fees, uniforms, and stationery can amount to 20? 30 percent of a family's income.~{ A good regional study of the extent and details of educational deprivation is Mahbub ul Haq and Khadija ul Haq, Human Development in South Asia 1998: The Education Challenge (Islamabad, Pakistan: Human Development Center). }~ The component of the problem contributed by the teaching materials may be alleviated by innovative approaches to textbook and education materials authoring. Chapter 4 already discussed some textbook initiatives. The most successful commons-based textbook authoring project, which is also the most relevant from the perspective of development, is the South African project, Free High School Science Texts (FHSST). The FHSST initiative is more narrowly focused than the broader efforts of Wikibooks or the California initiative, more managed, and more successful. Nonetheless, in three years of substantial effort by a group of dedicated volunteers who administer the project, its product is one physics ,{[pg 327]}, high school text, and advanced drafts of two other science texts. The main constraint on the efficacy of collaborative textbook authoring is that compliance requirements imposed by education ministries tend to require a great degree of coherence, which constrains the degree of modularity that these text-authoring projects adopt. The relatively large-grained contributions required limit the number of contributors, slowing the process. The future of these efforts is therefore likely to be determined by the extent to which their designers are able to find ways to make finer-grained modules without losing the coherence required for primary- and secondary-education texts. Texts at the post-secondary level likely present less of a problem, because of the greater freedom instructors have to select texts. This allows an initiative like MIT's Open Courseware Initiative to succeed. That initiative provides syllabi, lecture notes, problem sets, etc. from over 1,100 courses. The basic creators of the materials are paid academics who produce these materials for one of their core professional roles: teaching college- and graduate-level courses. The content is, by and large, a "side-effect" of teaching. What is left to be done is to integrate, create easy interfaces and search capabilities, and so forth. The university funds these functions through its own resources and dedicated grant funding. In the context of MIT, then, these functions are performed on a traditional model--a large, well-funded nonprofit provides an important public good through the application of full-time staff aimed at non-wealth-maximizing goals. The critical point here was the radical departure of MIT from the emerging culture of the 1980s and 1990s in American academia. When other universities were thinking of "distance education" in terms of selling access to taped lectures and materials so as to raise new revenue, MIT thought of what its basic mandate to advance knowledge and educate students in a networked environment entailed. The answer was to give anyone, anywhere, access to the teaching materials of some of the best minds in the world. As an intervention in the ecology of free knowledge and information and an act of leadership among universities, the MIT initiative was therefore a major event. As a model for organizational innovation in the domain of information production generally and the creation of educational resources in particular, it was less significant. +={ FHSST (Free High School Science Texts) ; + Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) ; + teaching materials ; + textbooks ; + educational instruction ; + MIT's Open Courseware Initiative ; + Open Courseware Initiative (MIT) +} + +Software and academic publication, then, offer the two most advanced examples of commons-based strategies employed in a sector whose outputs are important to development, in ways that improve access to basic information, knowledge, and information-embedded tools. Building on these basic cases, we can begin to see how similar strategies can be employed to ,{[pg 328]}, create a substantial set of commons-based solutions that could improve the distribution of information germane to human development. + +2~ COMMONS-BASED RESEARCH FOR FOOD AND MEDICINES +={ commons, production through +24 : + see peer production commons-based research | food and agricultural innovation +24 ; + development, commons-based : + food and agricultural innovation +24 ; + global development : + food and agricultural innovation +24 ; + research, commons-based : + food and agricultural innovation +24 +} + +While computation and access to existing scientific research are important in the development of any nation, they still operate at a remove from the most basic needs of the world poor. On its face, it is far from obvious how the emergence of the networked information economy can grow rice to feed millions of malnourished children or deliver drugs to millions of HIV/AIDS patients. On closer observation, however, a tremendous proportion of the way modern societies grow food and develop medicines is based on scientific research and technical innovation. We have seen how the functions of mass media can be fulfilled by nonproprietary models of news and commentary. We have seen the potential of free and open source software and open-access publications to replace and redress some of the failures of proprietary software and scientific publication, respectively. These cases suggest that the basic choice between a system that depends on exclusive rights and business models that use exclusion to appropriate research outputs and a system that weaves together various actors--public and private, organized and individual--in a nonproprietary social network of innovation, has important implications for the direction of innovation and for access to its products. Public attention has focused mostly on the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa and the lack of access to existing drugs because of their high costs. However, that crisis is merely the tip of the iceberg. It is the most visible to many because of the presence of the disease in rich countries and its cultural and political salience in the United States and Europe. The exclusive rights system is a poor institutional mechanism for serving the needs of those who are worst off around the globe. Its weaknesses pervade the problems of food security and agricultural research aimed at increasing the supply of nourishing food throughout the developing world, and of access to medicines in general, and to medicines for developing-world diseases in particular. Each of these areas has seen a similar shift in national and international policy toward greater reliance on exclusive rights, most important of which are patents. Each area has also begun to see the emergence of commons-based models to alleviate the problems of patents. However, they differ from each other still. Agriculture offers more immediate opportunities for improvement ,{[pg 329]}, because of the relatively larger role of public research--national, international, and academic--and of the long practices of farmer innovation in seed associations and local and regional frameworks. I explore it first in some detail, as it offers a template for what could be a path for development in medical research as well. +={ HIV/AIDS ; + folk culture : + see culture food, commons-research based on +} + +2~ Food Security: Commons-Based Agricultural Innovation +={ agricultural innovation, commons-based +22 ; + food security, commons-based research on +22 ; + innovation : + agricultural, commons-based +22 +} + +Agricultural innovation over the past century has led to a vast increase in crop yields. Since the 1960s, innovation aimed at increasing yields and improving quality has been the centerpiece of efforts to secure the supply of food to the world's poor, to avoid famine and eliminate chronic malnutrition. These efforts have produced substantial increases in the production of food and decreases in its cost, but their benefits have varied widely in different regions of the world. Now, increases in productivity are not alone a sufficient condition to prevent famine. Sen's observations that democracies have no famines--that is, that good government and accountability will force public efforts to prevent famine--are widely accepted today. The contributions of the networked information economy to democratic participation and transparency are discussed in chapters 6-8, and to the extent that those chapters correctly characterize the changes in political discourse, should help alleviate human poverty through their effects on democracy. However, the cost and quality of food available to accountable governments of poor countries, or to international aid organizations or nongovernment organizations (NGOs) that step in to try to alleviate the misery caused by ineffective or malicious governments, affect how much can be done to avoid not only catastrophic famine, but also chronic malnutrition. Improvements in agriculture make it possible for anyone addressing food security to perform better than they could have if food production had lower yields, of less nutritious food, at higher prices. Despite its potential benefits, however, agricultural innovation has been subject to an unusual degree of sustained skepticism aimed at the very project of organized scientific and scientifically based innovation. Criticism combines biological-ecological concerns with social and economic concerns. Nowhere is this criticism more strident, or more successful at moving policy, than in current European resistance to genetically modified (GM) foods. The emergence of commons-based production strategies can go some way toward allaying the biological-ecological fears by locating much of the innovation at the local level. Its primary benefit, however, ,{[pg 330]}, is likely to be in offering a path for agricultural and biological innovation that is sustainable and low cost, and that need not result in appropriation of the food production chain by a small number of multinational businesses, as many critics fear. + +Scientific plant improvement in the United States dates back to the establishment of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the land-grant universities, and later the state agricultural experiment stations during the Civil War and in the decades that followed. Public-sector investment dominated agricultural research at the time, and with the rediscovery of Mendel's work in 1900, took a turn toward systematic selective breeding. Through crop improvement associations, seed certification programs, and open-release policies allowing anyone to breed and sell the certified new seeds, farmers were provided access to the fruits of public research in a reasonably efficient and open market. The development of hybrid corn through this system was the first major modern success that vastly increased agricultural yields. It reshaped our understanding not only of agriculture, but also more generally of the value of innovation, by comparison to efficiency, to growth. Yields in the United States doubled between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s, and by the mid-1980s, cornfields had a yield six times greater than they had fifty years before. Beginning in the early 1960s, with funding from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, and continuing over the following forty years, agricultural research designed to increase the supply of agricultural production and lower its cost became a central component of international and national policies aimed at securing the supply of food to the world's poor populations, avoiding famines and, ultimately, eliminating chronic malnutrition. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines was the first such institute, founded in the 1960s, followed by the International Center for Wheat and Maize Improvement (CIM-MYT) in Mexico (1966), and the two institutes for tropical agriculture in Colombia and Nigeria (1967). Together, these became the foundation for the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which now includes sixteen centers. Over the same period, National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) also were created around the world, focusing on research specific to local agroecological conditions. Research in these centers preceded the biotechnology revolution, and used various experimental breeding techniques to obtain high-yielding plants: for example, plants with shorter growing seasons, or more adapted to intensive fertilizer use. These efforts later introduced varieties ,{[pg 331]}, that were resistant to local pests, diseases, and to various harsh environmental conditions. + +The "Green Revolution," as the introduction of these new, scientificresearch-based varieties has been called, indeed resulted in substantial increases in yields, initially in rice and wheat, in Asia and Latin America. The term "Green Revolution" is often limited to describing these changes in those regions in the 1960s and 1970s. A recent study shows, however, that the growth in yields has continued throughout the last forty years, and has, with varying degrees, occurred around the world.~{ Robert Evenson and D. Gollin, eds., Crop Variety Improvement and Its Effect on Productivity: The Impact of International Agricultural Research (New York: CABI Pub., 2002); results summarized in Robert Evenson and D. Gollin, "Assessing the Impact of the Green Revolution, 1960-2000," Science 300 (May 2003): 758-762. }~ More than eight thousand modern varieties of rice, wheat, maize, other major cereals, and root and protein crops have been released over the course of this period by more than four hundred public breeding programs. One of the most interesting finds of this study was that fewer than 1 percent of these modern varieties had any crosses with public or private breeding programs in the developed world, and that private-sector contributions in general were limited to hybrid maize, sorghum, and millet. The effort, in other words, was almost entirely public sector, and almost entirely based in the developing world, with complementary efforts of the international and national programs. Yields in Asia increased sevenfold from 1961 to 2000, and fivefold in Latin America, the Middle East/North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. More than 60 percent of the growth in Asia and Latin America occurred in the 1960s?1980s, while the primary growth in Sub-Saharan Africa began in the 1980s. In Latin America, most of the early-stage increases in yields came from increasing cultivated areas ( 40 percent), and from other changes in cultivation-- increased use of fertilizer, mechanization, and irrigation. About 15 percent of the growth in the early period was attributable to the use of modern varieties. In the latter twenty years, however, more than 40 percent of the total increase in yields was attributable to the use of new varieties. In Asia in the early period, about 19 percent of the increase came from modern varieties, but almost the entire rest of the increase came from increased use of fertilizer, mechanization, and irrigation, not from increased cultivated areas. It is trivial to see why changes of this sort would elicit both environmental and a socialeconomic critique of the industrialization of farm work. Again, though, in the latter twenty years, 46 percent of the increase in yields is attributable to the use of modern varieties. Modern varieties played a significantly less prominent role in the Green Revolution of the Middle East and Africa, contributing 5-6 percent of the growth in yields. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, ,{[pg 332]}, early efforts to introduce varieties from Asia and Latin America failed, and local developments only began to be adopted in the 1980s. In the latter twenty-year period, however, the Middle East and North Africa did see a substantial role for modern varieties--accounting for close to 40 percent of a more than doubling of yields. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the overwhelming majority of the tripling of yields came from increasing area of cultivation, and about 16 percent came from modern varieties. Over the past forty years, then, research-based improvements in plants have come to play a larger role in increasing agricultural yields in the developing world. Their success was, however, more limited in the complex and very difficult environments of SubSaharan Africa. Much of the benefit has to do with local independence, as opposed to heavier dependence on food imports. Evenson and Gollin, for example, conservatively estimate that higher prices and a greater reliance on imports in the developing world in the absence of the Green Revolution would have resulted in 13-14 percent lower caloric intake in the developing world, and in a 6-8 percent higher proportion of malnourished children. While these numbers may not seem eye-popping, for populations already living on marginal nutrition, they represent significant differences in quality of life and in physical and mental development for millions of children and adults. +={ Green Revolution +5 } + +The agricultural research that went into much of the Green Revolution did not involve biotechnology--that is, manipulation of plant varieties at the genetic level through recombinant DNA techniques. Rather, it occurred at the level of experimental breeding. In the developed world, however, much of the research over the past twenty-five years has been focused on the use of biotechnology to achieve more targeted results than breeding can, has been more heavily based on private-sector investment, and has resulted in more private-sector ownership over the innovations. The promise of biotechnology, and particularly of genetically engineered or modified foods, has been that they could provide significant improvements in yields as well as in health effects, quality of the foods grown, and environmental effects. Plants engineered to be pest resistant could decrease the need to use pesticides, resulting in environmental benefits and health benefits to farmers. Plants engineered for ever-higher yields without increasing tilled acreage could limit the pressure for deforestation. Plants could be engineered to carry specific nutritional supplements, like golden rice with beta-carotene, so as to introduce necessarily nutritional requirements into subsistence diets. Beyond the hypothetically optimistic possibilities, there is little question that genetic engineering has already produced crops that lower the cost of production ,{[pg 333]}, for farmers by increasing herbicide and pest tolerance. As of 2002, more than 50 percent of the world's soybean acreage was covered with genetically modified (GM) soybeans, and 20 percent with cotton. Twenty-seven percent of acreage covered with GM crops is in the developing world. This number will grow significantly now that Brazil has decided to permit the introduction of GM crops, given its growing agricultural role, and now that India, as the world's largest cotton producer, has approved the use of Bt cotton--a GM form of cotton that improves its resistance to a common pest. There are, then, substantial advantages to farmers, at least, and widespread adoption of GM crops both in the developed world outside of Europe and in the developing world. +={ biotechnology +7 ; + genetically modified (GM) foods +7 ; + GM (genetically modified) foods +7 +} + +This largely benign story of increasing yields, resistance, and quality has not been without critics, to put it mildly. The criticism predates biotechnology and the development of transgenic varieties. Its roots are in criticism of experimental breeding programs of the American agricultural sectors and the Green Revolution. However, the greatest public visibility and political success of these criticisms has been in the context of GM foods. The critique brings together odd intellectual and political bedfellows, because it includes five distinct components: social and economic critique of the industrialization of agriculture, environmental and health effects, consumer preference for "natural" or artisan production of foodstuffs, and, perhaps to a more limited extent, protectionism of domestic farm sectors. + +Perhaps the oldest component of the critique is the social-economic critique. One arm of the critique focuses on how mechanization, increased use of chemicals, and ultimately the use of nonreproducing proprietary seed led to incorporation of the agricultural sector into the capitalist form of production. In the United States, even with its large "family farm" sector, purchased inputs now greatly exceed nonpurchased inputs, production is highly capital intensive, and large-scale production accounts for the majority of land tilled and the majority of revenue captured from farming.~{ Jack R. Kloppenburg, Jr., First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology 1492-2000 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), table 2.2. }~ In 2003, 56 percent of farms had sales of less than $10,000 a year. Roughly 85 percent of farms had less than $100,000 in sales.~{ USDA National Agriculture Statistics Survey (2004), http://www.usda.gov/nass/aggraphs/fncht3.htm. }~ These farms account for only 42 percent of the farmland. By comparison, 3.4 percent of farms have sales of more than $500,000 a year, and account for more than 21 percent of land. In the aggregate, the 7.5 percent of farms with sales over $250,000 account for 37 percent of land cultivated. Of all principal owners of farms in the United States in 2002, 42.5 percent reported something other than farming as their principal occupation, and many reported spending two hundred or ,{[pg 334]}, more days off-farm, or even no work days at all on the farm. The growth of large-scale "agribusiness," that is, mechanized, rationalized industrial-scale production of agricultural products, and more important, of agricultural inputs, is seen as replacing the family farm and the small-scale, self-sufficient farm, and bringing farm labor into the capitalist mode of production. As scientific development of seeds and chemical applications increases, the seed as input becomes separated from the grain as output, making farmers dependent on the purchase of industrially produced seed. This further removes farmwork from traditional modes of self-sufficiency and craftlike production to an industrial mode. This basic dynamic is repeated in the critique of the Green Revolution, with the added overlay that the industrial producers of seed are seen to be multinational corporations, and the industrialization of agriculture is seen as creating dependencies in the periphery on the industrial-scientific core of the global economy. + +The social-economic critique has been enmeshed, as a political matter, with environmental, health, and consumer-oriented critiques as well. The environmental critiques focus on describing the products of science as monocultures, which, lacking the genetic diversity of locally used varieties, are more susceptible to catastrophic failure. Critics also fear contamination of existing varieties, unpredictable interactions with pests, and negative effects on indigenous species. The health effects concern focused initially on how breeding for yield may have decreased nutritional content, and in the more recent GM food debates, the concern that genetically altered foods will have some unanticipated negative health reactions that would only become apparent many years from now. The consumer concerns have to do with quality and an aesthetic attraction to artisan-mode agricultural products and aversion to eating industrial outputs. These social-economic and environmental-health-consumer concerns tend also to be aligned with protectionist lobbies, not only for economic purposes, but also reflecting a strong cultural attachment to the farming landscape and human ecology, particularly in Europe. +={ environmental criticism of GM foods +1 ; + health effects of GM foods +1 +} + +This combination of social-economic and postcolonial critique, environmentalism, public-health concerns, consumer advocacy, and farm-sector protectionism against the relatively industrialized American agricultural sector reached a height of success in the 1999 five-year ban imposed by the European Union on all GM food sales. A recent study of a governmental Science Review Board in the United Kingdom, however, found that there was no ,{[pg 335]}, evidence for any of the environmental or health critiques of GM foods.~{ First Report of the GM Science Review Panel, An Open Review of the Science Relevant to GM Crops and Food Based on the Interests and Concerns of the Public, United Kingdom, July 2003. }~ Indeed, as Peter Pringle masterfully chronicled in Food, Inc., both sides of the political debate could be described as having buffed their cases significantly. The successes and potential benefits have undoubtedly been overstated by enamored scientists and avaricious vendors. There is little doubt, too, that the near-hysterical pitch at which the failures and risks of GM foods have been trumpeted has little science to back it, and the debate has degenerated to a state that makes reasoned, evidence-based consideration difficult. In Europe in general, however, there is wide acceptance of what is called a "precautionary principle." One way of putting it is that absence of evidence of harm is not evidence of absence of harm, and caution counsels against adoption of the new and at least theoretically dangerous. It was this precautionary principle rather than evidence of harm that was at the base of the European ban. This ban has recently been lifted, in the wake of a WTO trade dispute with the United States and other major producers who challenged the ban as a trade barrier. However, the European Union retained strict labeling requirements. This battle among wealthy countries, between the conservative "Fortress Europe" mentality and the growing reliance of American agriculture on biotechnological innovation, would have little moral valence if it did not affect funding for, and availability of, biotechnological research for the populations of the developing world. Partly as a consequence of the strong European resistance to GM foods, the international agricultural research centers that led the way in the development of the Green Revolution varieties, and that released their developments freely for anyone to sell and use without proprietary constraint, were slow to develop capacity in genetic engineering and biotechnological research more generally. Rather than the public national and international efforts leading the way, a study of GM use in developing nations concluded that practically all GM acreage is sown with seed obtained in the finished form from a developed-world supplier, for a price premium or technology licensing fee.~{ Robert E. Evenson, "GMOs: Prospects for Productivity Increases in Developing Countries," Journal of Agricultural and Food Industrial Organization 2 (2004): article 2. }~ The seed, and its improvements, is proprietary to the vendor in this model. It is not supplied in a form or with the rights to further improve locally and independently. Because of the critique of innovation in agriculture as part of the process of globalization and industrialization, of environmental degradation, and of consumer exploitation, the political forces that would have been most likely to support public-sector investment in agricultural innovation are in opposition to such investments. The result has not been retardation of biotechnological innovation ,{[pg 336]}, in agriculture, but its increasing privatization: primarily in the United States and now increasingly in Latin America, whose role in global agricultural production is growing. +={ Pringle, Peter ; + privatization : + agricultural biotechnologies +2 ; + proprietary rights : + agricultural biotechnologies +2 ; + technology : + agricultural +16 +} + +Private-sector investment, in turn, operates within a system of patents and other breeders' exclusive rights, whose general theoretical limitations are discussed in chapter 2. In agriculture, this has two distinct but mutually reinforcing implications. The first is that, while private-sector innovation has indeed accounted for most genetically engineered crops in the developing world, research aimed at improving agricultural production in the neediest places has not been significantly pursued by the major private-sector firms. A sector based on expectation of sales of products embedding its patents will not focus its research where human welfare will be most enhanced. It will focus where human welfare can best be expressed in monetary terms. The poor are systematically underserved by such a system. It is intended to elicit investments in research in directions that investors believe will result in outputs that serve the needs of those with the highest willingness and ability to pay for their outputs. The second is that even where the products of innovation can, as a matter of biological characteristics, be taken as inputs into local research and development--by farmers or by national agricultural research systems--the international system of patents and plant breeders' rights enforcement makes it illegal to do so without a license. This again retards the ability of poor countries and their farmers and research institutes to conduct research into local adaptations of improved crops. + +The central question raised by the increasing privatization of agricultural biotechnology over the past twenty years is: What can be done to employ commons-based strategies to provide a foundation for research that will be focused on the food security of developing world populations? Is there a way of managing innovation in this sector so that it will not be heavily weighted in favor of populations with a higher ability to pay, and so that its outputs allow farmers and national research efforts to improve and adapt to highly variable local agroecological environments? The continued presence of the public-sector research infrastructure--including the international and national research centers, universities, and NGOs dedicated to the problem of food security--and the potential of harnessing individual farmers and scientists to cooperative development of open biological innovation for agriculture suggest that commons-based paths for development in the area of food security and agricultural innovation are indeed feasible. + +First, some of the largest and most rapidly developing nations that still ,{[pg 337]}, have large poor populations--most prominently, China, India, and Brazil-- can achieve significant advances through their own national agricultural research systems. Their research can, in turn, provide a platform for further innovation and adaptation by projects in poorer national systems, as well as in nongovernmental public and peer-production efforts. In this regard, China seems to be leading the way. The first rice genome to be sequenced was japonica, apparently sequenced in 2000 by scientists at Monsanto, but not published. The second, an independent and published sequence of japonica, was sequenced by scientists at Syngenta, and published as the first published rice genome sequence in Science in April 2002. To protect its proprietary interests, Syngenta entered a special agreement with Science, which permitted the authors not to deposit the genomic information into the public Genbank maintained by the National Institutes of Health in the United States.~{ Elliot Marshall, "A Deal for the Rice Genome," Science 296 (April 2002): 34. }~ Depositing the information in GenBank makes it immediately available for other scientists to work with freely. All the major scientific publications require that such information be deposited and made publicly available as a standard condition of publication, but Science waved this requirement for the Syngenta japonica sequence. The same issue of Science, however, carried a similar publication, the sequence of Oryza sativa L.ssp. indica, the most widely cultivated subspecies in China. This was sequenced by a public Chinese effort, and its outputs were immediately deposited in GenBank. The simultaneous publication of the rice genome by a major private firm and a Chinese public effort was the first public exposure to the enormous advances that China's public sector has made in agricultural biotechnology, and its focus first and foremost on improving Chinese agriculture. While its investments are still an order of magnitude smaller than those of public and private sectors in the developed countries, China has been reported as the source of more than half of all expenditures in the developing world.~{ Jikun Huang et al., "Plant Biotechnology in China," Science 295 (2002): 674. }~ China's longest experience with GM agriculture is with Bt cotton, which was introduced in 1997. By 2000, 20 percent of China's cotton acreage was sown to Bt cotton. One study showed that the average acreage of a farm was less than 0.5 hectare of cotton, and the trait that was most valuable to them was Bt cotton's reduced pesticide needs. Those who adopted Bt cotton used less pesticide, reducing labor for pest control and the pesticide cost per kilogram of cotton produced. This allowed an average cost savings of 28 percent. Another effect suggested by survey data--which, if confirmed over time, would be very important as a matter of public health, but also to the political economy of the agricultural biotechnology debate--is that farmers ,{[pg 338]}, who do not use Bt cotton are four times as likely to report symptoms of a degree of toxic exposure following application of pesticides than farmers who did adopt Bt cotton.~{ Huang et al., "Plant Biotechnology." }~ The point is not, of course, to sing the praises of GM cotton or the Chinese research system. China's efforts offer an example of how the larger national research systems can provide an anchor for agricultural research, providing solutions both for their own populations, and, by making the products of their research publicly and freely available, offer a foundation for the work of others. +={ Bt cotton ; + Chinese agricultural research ; + Syngenta +} + +Alongside the national efforts in developing nations, there are two major paths for commons-based research and development in agriculture that could serve the developing world more generally. The first is based on existing research institutes and programs cooperating to build a commons-based system, cleared of the barriers of patents and breeders' rights, outside and alongside the proprietary system. The second is based on the kind of loose affiliation of university scientists, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals that we saw play such a significant role in the development of free and open-source software. The most promising current efforts in the former vein are the PIPRA (Public Intellectual Property for Agriculture) coalition of public-sector universities in the United States, and, if it delivers on its theoretical promises, the Generation Challenge Program led by CGIAR (the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research). The most promising model of the latter, and probably the most ambitious commons-based project for biological innovation currently contemplated, is BIOS (Biological Innovation for an Open Society). +={ PIPRA (Public Intellectual Property for Agriculture) +6 ; + collaborative authorship : + among universities +6 ; + communication : + university alliances +6 ; + proprietary rights : + university alliances +6 ; + university alliances +6 ; + licensing : + agricultural biotechnologies +10 ; + proprietary rights : + agricultural biotechnologies +10 +} + +PIPRA is a collaboration effort among public-sector universities and agricultural research institutes in the United States, aimed at managing their rights portfolio in a way that will give their own and other researchers freedom to operate in an institutional ecology increasingly populated by patents and other rights that make work difficult. The basic thesis and underlying problem that led to PIPRA's founding were expressed in an article in Science coauthored by fourteen university presidents.~{ Richard Atkinson et al., "Public Sector Collaboration for Agricultural IP Management," Science 301 (2003): 174. }~ They underscored the centrality of public-sector, land-grant university-based research to American agriculture, and the shift over the last twenty-five years toward increased use of intellectual property rules to cover basic discoveries and tools necessary for agricultural innovation. These strategies have been adopted by both commercial firms and, increasingly, by public-sector universities as the primary mechanism for technology transfer from the scientific institute to the commercializing firms. The problem they saw was that in agricultural research, ,{[pg 339]}, innovation was incremental. It relies on access to existing germplasm and crop varieties that, with each generation of innovation, brought with them an ever-increasing set of intellectual property claims that had to be licensed in order to obtain permission to innovate further. The universities decided to use the power that ownership over roughly 24 percent of the patents in agricultural biotechnology innovations provides them as a lever with which to unravel the patent thickets and to reduce the barriers to research that they increasingly found themselves dealing with. The main story, one might say the "founding myth" of PIPRA, was the story of golden rice. Golden rice is a variety of rice that was engineered to provide dietary vitamin A. It was developed with the hope that it could introduce vitamin A supplement to populations in which vitamin A deficiency causes roughly 500,000 cases of blindness a year and contributes to more than 2 million deaths a year. However, when it came to translating the research into deliverable plants, the developers encountered more than seventy patents in a number of countries and six materials transfer agreements that restricted the work and delayed it substantially. PIPRA was launched as an effort of public-sector universities to cooperate in achieving two core goals that would respond to this type of barrier--preserving the right to pursue applications to subsistence crops and other developing-world-related crops, and preserving their own freedom to operate vis-a-vis each other's patent portfolios. +={ golden rice } + +The basic insight of PIPRA, which can serve as a model for university alliances in the context of the development of medicines as well as agriculture, is that universities are not profit-seeking enterprises, and university scientists are not primarily driven by a profit motive. In a system that offers opportunities for academic and business tracks for people with similar basic skills, academia tends to attract those who are more driven by nonmonetary motivations. While universities have invested a good deal of time and money since the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 permitted and indeed encouraged them to patent innovations developed with public funding, patent and other exclusive-rights-based revenues have not generally emerged as an important part of the revenue scheme of universities. As table 9.2 shows, except for one or two outliers, patent revenues have been all but negligible in university budgets.~{ This table is a slightly expanded version of one originally published in Yochai Benkler, "Commons Based Strategies and the Problems of Patents," Science 305 (2004): 1110. }~ This fact makes it fiscally feasible for universities to use their patent portfolios to maximize the global social benefit of their research, rather than trying to maximize patent revenue. In particular, universities can aim to include provisions in their technology licensing agreements that are aimed at the dual goals of (a) delivering products embedding their innovations ,{[pg 340]}, to developing nations at reasonable prices and (b) providing researchers and plant breeders the freedom to operate that would allow them to research, develop, and ultimately produce crops that would improve food security in the developing world. + +% end of paragraph which occurs on page 341 apended above table + +!_ Table 9.2: Selected University Gross Revenues and Patent Licensing Revenues + +table(h; c6: 28, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14){ + +. +Total Revenues (millions) +Licensing & Royalties (mil.) +Licensing & Royalties (% of total) +Gov. Grants & Contracts (mil.) +Gov. Grants & Contracts (% of total) + +All universities +$227,000 +$1270 +0.56% +$31,430 +13.85% + +University of Columbia +$2,074 +$178.4 $100-120a +8.6% 4.9-5.9% +$532 +25.65% + +University of California +$14,166 +$81.3 $55(net)b +0.57% 0.39% +$2372 +16.74% + +Stanford University +$3,475 +$43.3 $36.8c +1.25% 1.06% +$860 +24.75% + +Florida State +$2,646 +$35.6 +1.35% +$238 +8.99% + +University of Wisconsin Madison +$1,696 +$32 +1.89% +$417.4 +24.61% + +University of Minnesota +$1,237 +$38.7 +3.12% +$323.5 +26.15% + +Harvard +$2,473 +$47.9 +1.94% +$416 $548.7d +16.82% 22.19% + +Cal Tech +$531 +$26.7e $15.7f +5.02% 2.95% +$268 +50.47% + +}table + +Sources: Aggregate revenues: U.S. Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Enrollment in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2001, and Financial Statistics, Fiscal Year 2001 (2003), Table F; Association of University Technology Management, Annual Survey Summary FY 2002 (AUTM 2003), Table S-12. Individual institutions: publicly available annual reports of each university and/or its technology transfer office for FY 2003. + +block{ + +Notes: + +a. Large ambiguity results because technology transfer office reports increased +revenues for yearend 2003 as $178M without reporting expenses; University +Annual Report reports licensing revenue with all "revenue from other +educational and research activities," and reports a 10 percent decline in this +category, "reflecting an anticipated decline in royalty and license income" +from the $133M for the previous year-end, 2002. The table reflects an assumed +net contribution to university revenues between $100-120M (the entire decline +in the category due to royalty/royalties decreased proportionately with the +category). + +b. University of California Annual Report of the Office of Technology Transfer +is more transparent than most in providing expenses--both net legal expenses +and tech transfer direct operating expenses, which allows a clear separation of +net revenues from technology transfer activities. + +c. Minus direct expenses, not including expenses for unlicensed inventions. + +d. Federal- and nonfederal-sponsored research. + +e. Almost half of this amount is in income from a single Initial Public +Offering, and therefore does not represent a recurring source of licensing +revenue. + +f. Technology transfer gross revenue minus the one-time event of an initial +public offering of LiquidMetal Technologies. + +}block + +% ,{[pg 341]}, + +While PIPRA shows an avenue for collaboration among universities in the public interest, it is an avenue that does not specifically rely on, or benefit in great measure from, the information networks or the networked information economy. It continues to rely on the traditional model of publicly funded research. More explicit in its effort to leverage the cost savings made possible by networked information systems is the Generation Challenge Program (GCP). The GCP is an effort to bring the CGIAR into the biotechnology sphere, carefully, given the political resistance to genetically modified foods, and quickly, given the already relatively late start that the international research centers have had in this area. Its stated emphasis is on building an architecture of innovation, or network of research relationships, that will provide low-cost techniques for the basic contemporary technologies of agricultural research. The program has five primary foci, but the basic thrust is to generate improvements both in basic genomics science and in breeding and farmer education, in both cases for developing world agriculture. One early focus would be on building a communications system that allows participating institutions and scientists to move information efficiently and utilize computational resources to pursue research. There are hundreds of thousands of samples of germplasm, from "landrace" (that is, locally agriculturally developed) and wild varieties to modern varieties, located in databases around the world in international, national, and academic institutions. There are tremendous high-capacity computation resources in some of the most advanced research institutes, but not in many of the national and international programs. One of the major goals articulated for the GCP is to develop Web-based interfaces to share these data and computational resources. Another is to provide a platform for sharing new questions and directions of research among participants. The work in this network will, in turn, rely on materials that have proprietary interests attached to them, and will produce outputs that could have proprietary interests attached to them as well. Just like the universities, the GCP institutes (national, international, and nonprofit) are looking for an approach aimed to secure open access to research materials and tools and to provide humanitarian access to its products, particularly for subsistence crop development and use. As of this writing, however, the GCP is still in a formative stage, more an aspiration than ,{[pg 342]}, a working model. Whether it will succeed in overcoming the political constraints placed on the CGIAR as well as the relative latecomer status of the international public efforts to this area of work remains to be seen. But the elements of the GCP certainly exhibit an understanding of the possibilities presented by commons-based networked collaboration, and an ambition to both build upon them and contribute to their development. +={ CGIAR's GCP program ; + GCP (Generation Challenge Program) ; + Generation Challenge Program (GCP) +} + +The most ambitious effort to create a commons-based framework for biological innovation in this field is BIOS. BIOS is an initiative of CAMBIA (Center for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture), a nonprofit agricultural research institute based in Australia, which was founded and is directed by Richard Jefferson, a pioneer in plant biotechnology. BIOS is based on the observation that much of contemporary agricultural research depends on access to tools and enabling technologies-- such as mechanisms to identify genes or for transferring them into target plants. When these tools are appropriated by a small number of firms and available only as part of capital-intensive production techniques, they cannot serve as the basis for innovation at the local level or for research organized on nonproprietary models. One of the core insights driving the BIOS initiative is the recognition that when a subset of necessary tools is available in the public domain, but other critical tools are not, the owners of those tools appropriate the full benefits of public domain innovation without at the same time changing the basic structural barriers to use of the proprietary technology. To overcome these problems, the BIOS initiative includes both a strong informatics component and a fairly ambitious "copyleft"-like model (similar to the GPL described in chapter 3) of licensing CAMBIA's basic tools and those of other members of the BIOS initiative. The informatics component builds on a patent database that has been developed by CAMBIA for a number of years, and whose ambition is to provide as complete as possible a dataset of who owns what tools, what the contours of ownership are, and by implication, who needs to be negotiated with and where research paths might emerge that are not yet appropriated and therefore may be open to unrestricted innovation. +={ Jefferson, Richard ; + BIOS initiative +2 ; + CAMBIA research institute +2 ; + copyleft +1 +} + +The licensing or pooling component is more proactive, and is likely the most significant of the project. BIOS is setting up a licensing and pooling arrangement, "primed" by CAMBIA's own significant innovations in tools, which are licensed to all of the initiative's participants on a free model, with grant-back provisions that perform an openness-binding function similar to copyleft.~{ Wim Broothaertz et al., "Gene Transfer to Plants by Diverse Species of Bacteria," Nature 433 (2005): 629. }~ In coarse terms, this means that anyone who builds upon the ,{[pg 343]}, contributions of others must contribute improvements back to the other participants. One aspect of this model is that it does not assume that all research comes from academic institutions or from traditional governmentfunded, nongovernmental, or intergovernmental research institutes. It tries to create a framework that, like the open-source development community, engages commercial and noncommercial, public and private, organized and individual participants into a cooperative research network. The platform for this collaboration is "BioForge," styled after Sourceforge, one of the major free and open-source software development platforms. The commitment to engage many different innovators is most clearly seen in the efforts of BIOS to include major international commercial providers and local potential commercial breeders alongside the more likely targets of a commons-based initiative. Central to this move is the belief that in agricultural science, the basic tools can, although this may be hard, be separated from specific applications or products. All actors, including the commercial ones, therefore have an interest in the open and efficient development of tools, leaving competition and profit making for the market in applications. At the other end of the spectrum, BIOS's focus on making tools freely available is built on the proposition that innovation for food security involves more than biotechnology alone. It involves environmental management, locale-specific adaptations, and social and economic adoption in forms that are locally and internally sustainable, as opposed to dependent on a constant inflow of commoditized seed and other inputs. The range of participants is, then, much wider than envisioned by PIPRA or the GCP. It ranges from multinational corporations through academic scientists, to farmers and local associations, pooling their efforts in a communications platform and institutional model that is very similar to the way in which the GNU/Linux operating system has been developed. As of this writing, the BIOS project is still in its early infancy, and cannot be evaluated by its outputs. However, its structure offers the crispest example of the extent to which the peer-production model in particular, and commons-based production more generally, can be transposed into other areas of innovation at the very heart of what makes for human development--the ability to feed oneself adequately. +={ BioForge } + +PIPRA and the BIOS initiative are the most salient examples of, and the most significant first steps in the development of commons-based strategies to achieve food security. Their vitality and necessity challenge the conventional wisdom that ever-increasing intellectual property rights are necessary to secure greater investment in research, or that the adoption of proprietary ,{[pg 344]}, rights is benign. Increasing appropriation of basic tools and enabling technologies creates barriers to entry for innovators--public-sector, nonprofit organizations, and the local farmers themselves--concerned with feeding those who cannot signal with their dollars that they are in need. The emergence of commons-based techniques--particularly, of an open innovation platform that can incorporate farmers and local agronomists from around the world into the development and feedback process through networked collaboration platforms--promises the most likely avenue to achieve research oriented toward increased food security in the developing world. It promises a mechanism of development that will not increase the relative weight and control of a small number of commercial firms that specialize in agricultural production. It will instead release the products of innovation into a selfbinding commons--one that is institutionally designed to defend itself against appropriation. It promises an iterative collaboration platform that would be able to collect environmental and local feedback in the way that a free software development project collects bug reports--through a continuous process of networked conversation among the user-innovators themselves. In combination with public investments from national governments in the developing world, from the developed world, and from more traditional international research centers, agricultural research for food security may be on a path of development toward constructing a sustainable commons-based innovation ecology alongside the proprietary system. Whether it follows this path will be partly a function of the engagement of the actors themselves, but partly a function of the extent to which the international intellectual property/trade system will refrain from raising obstacles to the emergence of these commons-based efforts. + +3~ Access to Medicines: Commons-Based Strategies for Biomedical Research +={ access : + to medicine +14 ; + biomedical research, commons-based +14 ; + commons, production through : + see peer production commons-based research | medical and pharmaceutical innovation +14 ; + development, commons-based : + medical and pharmaceutical innovation +14 ; + drugs, commons-based research on +14 ; + global development : + medical and pharmaceutical innovation +14 ; + medicines, commons-based research on +14 ; + pharmaceuticals, commons-based research on +14 ; + research, commons-based : + medical and pharmaceutical innovation +14 +} + +Nothing has played a more important role in exposing the systematic problems that the international trade and patent system presents for human development than access to medicines for HIV/AIDS. This is so for a number of reasons. First, HIV/AIDS has reached pandemic proportions. One quarter of all deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases in 2002 were caused by AIDS, accounting for almost 5 percent of all deaths in the world that year.~{ These numbers and others in this paragraph are taken from the 2004 WHO World Health Report, Annex Table 2. }~ Second, it is a new condition, unknown to medicine a mere twenty-five years ago, is communicable, and in principle is of a type--infectious diseases--that we have come to see modern medicine as capable of solving. ,{[pg 345]}, This makes it different from much bigger killers--like the many cancers and forms of heart disease--which account for about nine times as many deaths globally. Third, it has a significant presence in the advanced economies. Because it was perceived there as a disease primarily affecting the gay community, it had a strong and well-defined political lobby and high cultural salience. Fourth, and finally, there have indeed been enormous advances in the development of medicines for HIV/AIDS. Mortality for patients who are treated is therefore much lower than for those who are not. These treatments are new, under patent, and enormously expensive. As a result, death-- as opposed to chronic illness--has become overwhelmingly a consequence of poverty. More than 75 percent of deaths caused by AIDS in 2002 were in Africa. HIV/AIDS drugs offer a vivid example of an instance where drugs exist for a disease but cannot be afforded in the poorest countries. They represent, however, only a part, and perhaps the smaller part, of the limitations that a patent-based drug development system presents for providing medicines to the poor. No less important is the absence of a market pull for drugs aimed at diseases that are solely or primarily developing-world diseases--like drugs for tropical diseases, or the still-elusive malaria vaccine. +={ HIV/AIDS } + +To the extent that the United States and Europe are creating a global innovation system that relies on patents and market incentives as its primary driver of research and innovation, these wealthy democracies are, of necessity, choosing to neglect diseases that disproportionately affect the poor. There is nothing evil about a pharmaceutical company that is responsible to its shareholders deciding to invest where it expects to reap profit. It is not immoral for a firm to invest its research funds in finding a drug to treat acne, which might affect 20 million teenagers in the United States, rather than a drug that will cure African sleeping sickness, which affects 66 million Africans and kills about fifty thousand every year. If there is immorality to be found, it is in the legal and policy system that relies heavily on the patent system to induce drug discovery and development, and does not adequately fund and organize biomedical research to solve the problems that cannot be solved by relying solely on market pull. However, the politics of public response to patents for drugs are similar in structure to those that have to do with agricultural biotechnology exclusive rights. There is a very strong patentbased industry--much stronger than in any other patent-sensitive area. The rents from strong patents are enormous, and a rational monopolist will pay up to the value of its rents to maintain and improve its monopoly. The primary potential political push-back in the pharmaceutical area, which does ,{[pg 346]}, not exist in the agricultural innovation area, is that the exorbitant costs of drugs developed under this system is hurting even the well-endowed purses of developed-world populations. The policy battles in the United States and throughout the developed world around drug cost containment may yet result in a sufficient loosening of the patent constraints to deliver positive side effects for the developing world. However, they may also work in the opposite direction. The unwillingness of the wealthy populations in the developed world to pay high rents for drugs retards the most immediate path to lower-cost drugs in the developing world--simple subsidy of below-cost sales in poor countries cross-subsidized by above-cost rents in wealthy countries. +={ commercial model of communication : + medical innovation and ; + industrial model of communication : + medical innovation and ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + medical innovation and ; + monopoly : + medical research and innovation ; + policy : + pharmaceutical innovation ; + proprietary rights : + medical and pharmaceutical innovation ; + traditional model of communication : + medical innovation and +} + +The industrial structure of biomedical research and pharmaceutical development is different from that of agricultural science in ways that still leave a substantial potential role for commons-based strategies. However, these would be differently organized and aligned than in agriculture. First, while governments play an enormous role in funding basic biomedical science, there are no real equivalents of the national and international agricultural research institutes. In other words, there are few public-sector laboratories that actually produce finished drugs for delivery in the developing world, on the model of the International Rice Research Institute or one of the national agricultural research systems. On the other hand, there is a thriving generics industry, based in both advanced and developing economies, that stands ready to produce drugs once these are researched. The primary constraint on harnessing its capacity for low-cost drug production and delivery for poorer nations is the international intellectual property system. The other major difference is that, unlike with software, scientific publication, or farmers in agriculture, there is no existing framework for individuals to participate in research and development on drugs and treatments. The primary potential source of nongovernmental investment of effort and thought into biomedical research and development are universities as institutions and scientists, if they choose to organize themselves into effective peer-production communities. + +Universities and scientists have two complementary paths open to them to pursue commons-based strategies to provide improved research on the relatively neglected diseases of the poor and improved access to existing drugs that are available in the developed world but unaffordable in the developing. The first involves leveraging existing university patent portfolios--much as the universities allied in PIPRA are exploring and as CAMBIA is doing more ,{[pg 347]}, aggressively. The second involves work in an entirely new model--constructing collaboration platforms to allow scientists to engage in peer production, cross-cutting the traditional grant-funded lab, and aiming toward research into diseases that do not exercise a market pull on the biomedical research system in the advanced economies. +={ collaborative authorship : + among universities +5 ; + communication : + university alliances +5 ; + information production, market-based : + universities as +3 ; + market-based information producers : + universities as +3 ; + nonmarket information producers : + universities as +3 ; + sharing : + university patents +5 ; + university alliances +5 +} + +/{Leveraging University Patents}/. In February 2001, the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) asked Yale University, which held the key South African patent on stavudine--one of the drugs then most commonly used in combination therapies--for permission to use generic versions in a pilot AIDS treatment program. At the time, the licensed version of the drug, sold by Bristol-MyersSquibb (BMS), cost $1,600 per patient per year. A generic version, manufactured in India, was available for $47 per patient per year. At that point in history, thirty-nine drug manufacturers were suing the South African government to strike down a law permitting importation of generics in a health crisis, and no drug company had yet made concessions on pricing in developing nations. Within weeks of receiving MSF's request, Yale negotiated with BMS to secure the sale of stavudine for fifty-five dollars a year in South Africa. Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, and other universities have, in the years since, entered into similar ad hoc agreements with regard to developing-world applications or distribution of drugs that depend on their patented technologies. These successes provide a template for a much broader realignment of how universities use their patent portfolios to alleviate the problems of access to medicines in developing nations. +={ Doctors Without Borders ; + Medecins Sans Frontieres ; + MSF (Medecins San Frontieres) +} + +We have already seen in table 9.2 that while universities own a substantial and increasing number of patents, they do not fiscally depend in any significant way on patent revenue. These play a very small part in the overall scheme of revenues. This makes it practical for universities to reconsider how they use their patents and to reorient toward using them to maximize their beneficial effects on equitable access to pharmaceuticals developed in the advanced economies. Two distinct moves are necessary to harness publicly funded university research toward building an information commons that is easily accessible for global redistribution. The first is internal to the university process itself. The second has to do with the interface between the university and patent-dependent and similar exclusive-rights-dependent market actors. + +Universities are internally conflicted about their public and market goals. ,{[pg 348]}, Dating back to the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, universities have increased their patenting practices for the products of publicly funded research. Technology transfer offices that have been set up to facilitate this practice are, in many cases, measured by the number of patent applications, grants, and dollars they bring in to the university. These metrics for measuring the success of these offices tend to make them function, and understand their role, in a way that is parallel to exclusive-rights-dependent market actors, instead of as public-sector, publicly funded, and publicly minded institutions. A technology transfer officer who has successfully provided a royalty-free license to a nonprofit concerned with developing nations has no obvious metric in which to record and report the magnitude of her success (saving X millions of lives or displacing Y misery), unlike her colleague who can readily report X millions of dollars from a market-oriented license, or even merely Y dozens of patents filed. Universities must consider more explicitly their special role in the global information and knowledge production system. If they recommit to a role focused on serving the improvement of the lot of humanity, rather than maximization of their revenue stream, they should adapt their patenting and licensing practices appropriately. In particular, it will be important following such a rededication to redefine the role of technology transfer offices in terms of lives saved, quality-of-life measures improved, or similar substantive measures that reflect the mission of university research, rather than the present metrics borrowed from the very different world of patent-dependent market production. While the internal process is culturally and politically difficult, it is not, in fact, analytically or technically complex. Universities have, for a very long time, seen themselves primarily as dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and human welfare through basic research, reasoned inquiry, and education. The long-standing social traditions of science have always stood apart from market incentives and orientations. The problem is therefore one of reawakening slightly dormant cultural norms and understandings, rather than creating new ones in the teeth of long-standing contrary traditions. The problem should be substantially simpler than, say, persuading companies that traditionally thought of their innovation in terms of patents granted or royalties claimed, as some technology industry participants have, to adopt free software strategies. +={ distribution of information : + university-based innovation +2 +} + +If universities do make the change, then the more complex problem will remain: designing an institutional interface between universities and the pharmaceutical industry that will provide sustainable significant benefits for developing-world distribution of drugs and for research opportunities into ,{[pg 349]}, developing-world diseases. As we already saw in the context of agriculture, patents create two discrete kinds of barriers: The first is on distribution, because of the monopoly pricing power they purposefully confer on their owners. The second is on research that requires access to tools, enabling technologies, data, and materials generated by the developed-world research process, and that could be useful to research on developing-world diseases. Universities working alone will not provide access to drugs. While universities perform more than half of the basic scientific research in the United States, this effort means that more than 93 percent of university research expenditures go to basic and applied science, leaving less than 7 percent for development--the final research necessary to convert a scientific project into a usable product.~{ National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resource Statistics, Special Report: National Patterns of Research and Development Resources: 2003 NSF 05-308 (Arlington, VA: NSF, 2005), table 1. }~ Universities therefore cannot simply release their own patents and expect treatments based on their technologies to become accessible. Instead, a change is necessary in licensing practices that takes an approach similar to a synthesis of the general public license (GPL), of BIOS's licensing approach, and PIPRA. + +Universities working together can cooperate to include in their licenses provisions that would secure freedom to operate for anyone conducting research into developing-world diseases or production for distribution in poorer nations. The institutional details of such a licensing regime are relatively complex and arcane, but efforts are, in fact, under way to develop such licenses and to have them adopted by universities.~{ The detailed analysis can be found in Amy Kapzcynzki et al., "Addressing Global Health Inequities: An Open Licensing Paradigm for Public Sector Inventions," Berkeley Journal of Law and Technology (Spring 2005). 24. See Jean Lanjouw, "A New Global Patent Regime for Diseases: U.S. and International Legal Issues," Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 16 (2002). 25. S. Maurer, A. Sali, and A. Rai, "Finding Cures for Tropical Disease: Is Open Source the Answer?" Public Library of Science: Medicine 1, no. 3 (December 2004): e56. }~ What is important here, for understanding the potential, is the basic idea and framework. In exchange for access to the university's patents, the pharmaceutical licensees will agree not to assert any of their own rights in drugs that require a university license against generics manufacturers who make generic versions of those drugs purely for distribution in low- and middle-income countries. An Indian or American generics manufacturer could produce patented drugs that relied on university patents and were licensed under this kind of an equitable-access license, as long as it distributed its products solely in poor countries. A government or nonprofit research institute operating in South Africa could work with patented research tools without concern that doing so would violate the patents. However, neither could then import the products of their production or research into the developed world without violating the patents of both the university and the drug company. The licenses would create a mechanism for redistribution of drug products and research tools from the developed economies to the developing. It would do so without requiring the kind of regulatory changes advocated by others, such as ,{[pg 350]}, Jean Lanjouw, who have advocated policy changes aimed similarly to achieve differential pricing in the developing and developed worlds.24 Because this redistribution could be achieved by universities acting through licensing, instead of through changes in law, it offers a more feasible political path for achieving the desired result. Such action by universities would, of course, not solve all the problems of access to medicines. First, not all health-related products are based on university research. Second, patents do not account for all, or perhaps even most, of the reason that patients in poor nations are not treated. A lack of delivery infrastructure, public-health monitoring and care, and stable conditions to implement disease-control policy likely weigh more heavily. Nonetheless, there are successful and stable government and nonprofit programs that could treat hundreds of thousands or millions of patients more than they do now, if the cost of drugs were lower. Achieving improved access for those patients seems a goal worthy of pursuit, even if it is no magic bullet to solve all the illnesses of poverty. + +/{Nonprofit Research}/. Even a successful campaign to change the licensing practices of universities in order to achieve inexpensive access to the products of pharmaceutical research would leave the problem of research into diseases that affect primarily the poor. This is because, unless universities themselves undertake the development process, the patent-based pharmaceuticals have no reason to. The "simple" answer to this problem is more funding from the public sector or foundations for both basic research and development. This avenue has made some progress, and some foundations--particularly, in recent years, the Gates Foundation--have invested enormous amounts of money in searching for cures and improving basic public-health conditions of disease in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. It has received a particularly interesting boost since 2000, with the founding of the Institute for One World Health, a nonprofit pharmaceutical dedicated to research and development specifically into developing-world diseases. The basic model of One World Health begins by taking contributions of drug leads that are deemed unprofitable by the pharmaceutical industry--from both universities and pharmaceutical companies. The firms have no reason not to contribute their patents on leads purely for purposes they do not intend to pursue. The group then relies on foundation and public-sector funding to perform synthesis, preclinical and clinical trials, in collaboration with research centers in the United States, India, Bangladesh, and Thailand, and when the time comes around for manufacturing, the institute collaborates with manufacturers ,{[pg 351]}, in developing nations to produce low-cost instances of the drugs, and with government and NGO public-health providers to organize distribution. This model is new, and has not yet had enough time to mature and provide measurable success. However, it is promising. +={ Institute for One World Health ; + One World Health ; + nonprofit medical research +} + +/{Peer Production of Drug Research and Development}/. Scientists, scientists-intraining, and to some extent, nonscientists can complement university licensing practices and formally organized nonprofit efforts as a third component of the ecology of commons-based producers. The initial response to the notion that peer production can be used for drug development is that the process is too complex, expensive, and time consuming to succumb to commons-based strategies. This may, at the end of the day, prove true. However, this was also thought of complex software projects or of supercomputing, until free software and distributed computing projects like SETI@Home and Folding@Home came along and proved them wrong. The basic point is to see how distributed nonmarket efforts are organized, and to see how the scientific production process can be broken up to fit a peer-production model. +={ allocating excess capacity +2 ; + capacity : + sharing +2 ; + excess capacity, sharing +2 ; + sharing : + excess capacity +2 ; + peer production : + drug research and development ; + reallocating excess capacity +2 +} + +First, anything that can be done through computer modeling or data analysis can, in principle, be done on a peer-production basis. Increasing portions of biomedical research are done today through modeling, computer simulation, and data analysis of the large and growing databases, including a wide range of genetic, chemical, and biological information. As more of the process of drug discovery of potential leads can be done by modeling and computational analysis, more can be organized for peer production. The relevant model here is open bioinformatics. Bioinformatics generally is the practice of pursuing solutions to biological questions using mathematics and information technology. Open bioinformatics is a movement within bioinformatics aimed at developing the tools in an open-source model, and in providing access to the tools and the outputs on a free and open basis. Projects like these include the Ensmbl Genome Browser, operated by the European Bioinformatics Institute and the Sanger Centre, or the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), both of which use computer databases to provide access to data and to run various searches on combinations, patterns, and so forth, in the data. In both cases, access to the data and the value-adding functionalities are free. The software too is developed on a free software model. These, in turn, are complemented by database policies like those of the International HapMap Project, an effort to map ,{[pg 352]}, common variations in the human genome, whose participants have committed to releasing all the data they collect freely into the public domain. The economics of this portion of research into drugs are very similar to the economics of software and computation. The models are just software. Some models will be able to run on the ever-more-powerful basic machines that the scientists themselves use. However, anything that requires serious computation could be modeled for distributed computing. This would allow projects to harness volunteer computation resources, like Folding@Home, Genome@Home, or FightAIDS@Home--sites that already harness the computing power of hundreds of thousands of users to attack biomedical science questions. This stage of the process is the one that most directly can be translated into a peer-production model, and, in fact, there have been proposals, such as the Tropical Disease Initiative proposed by Maurer, Sali, and Rai.~{ 25 }~ +={ bioinfomatics ; + HapMap Project ; + International HapMap Project +} + +Second, and more complex, is the problem of building wet-lab science on a peer-production basis. Some efforts would have to focus on the basic science. Some might be at the phase of optimization and chemical synthesis. Some, even more ambitiously, would be at the stage of preclinical animal trials and even clinical trials. The wet lab seems to present an insurmountable obstacle for a serious role for peer production in biomedical science. Nevertheless, it is not clear that it is actually any more so than it might have seemed for the development of an operating system, or a supercomputer, before these were achieved. Laboratories have two immensely valuable resources that may be capable of being harnessed to peer production. Most important by far are postdoctoral fellows. These are the same characters who populate so many free software projects, only geeks of a different feather. They are at a similar life stage. They have the same hectic, overworked lives, and yet the same capacity to work one more hour on something else, something interesting, exciting, or career enhancing, like a special grant announced by the government. The other resources that have overcapacity might be thought of as petri dishes, or if that sounds too quaint and oldfashioned, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines or electrophoresis equipment. The point is simple. Laboratory funding currently is silo-based. Each lab is usually funded to have all the equipment it needs for run-ofthe-mill work, except for very large machines operated on time-share principles. Those machines that are redundantly provisioned in laboratories have downtime. That downtime coupled with a postdoctoral fellow in the lab is an experiment waiting to happen. If a group that is seeking to start a project ,{[pg 353]}, defines discrete modules of a common experiment, and provides a communications platform to allow people to download project modules, perform them, and upload results, it would be possible to harness the overcapacity that exists in laboratories. In principle, although this is a harder empirical question, the same could be done for other widely available laboratory materials and even animals for preclinical trials on the model of, "brother, can you spare a mouse?" One fascinating proposal and early experiment at the University of Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis was suggested by William Scott, a chemistry professor. Scott proposed developing simple, lowcost kits for training undergraduate students in chemical synthesis, but which would use targets and molecules identified by computational biology as potential treatments for developing-world diseases as their output. With enough redundancy across different classrooms and institutions around the world, the results could be verified while screening and synthesizing a significant number of potential drugs. The undergraduate educational experience could actually contribute to new experiments, as opposed simply to synthesizing outputs that are not really needed by anyone. Clinical trials provide yet another level of complexity, because the problem of delivering consistent drug formulations for testing to physicians and patients stretches the imagination. One option would be that research centers in countries affected by the diseases in question could pick up the work at this point, and create and conduct clinical trials. These too could be coordinated across regions and countries among the clinicians administering the tests, so that accruing patients and obtaining sufficient information could be achieved more rapidly and at lower cost. As in the case of One World Health, production and regulatory approval, from this stage on, could be taken up by the generics manufacturers. In order to prevent the outputs from being appropriated at this stage, every stage in the process would require a public-domain-binding license that would prevent a manufacturer from taking the outputs and, by making small changes, patenting the ultimate drug. +={ Scott, William ; + laboratories, peer-produced +1 ; + wet-lab science, peer production of +1 ; + clinical trials, peer-produced +} + +This proposal about medicine is, at this stage, the most imaginary among the commons-based strategies for development suggested here. However, it is analytically consistent with them, and, in principle, should be attainable. In combination with the more traditional commons-based approaches, university research, and the nonprofit world, peer production could contribute to an innovation ecology that could overcome the systematic inability of a purely patent-based system to register and respond to the health needs of the world's poor. ,{[pg 354]}, + +3~ COMMONS-BASED STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT: CONCLUSION +={ commons, production through : + see peer production commons-based research +4 ; + development, commons-based +4 ; + proprietary rights : + global welfare and research +4 ; + research, commons-based +4 ; + trade policy +4 +} + +Welfare, development, and growth outside of the core economies heavily depend on the transfer of information-embedded goods and tools, information, and knowledge from the technologically advanced economies to the developing and less-developed economies and societies around the globe. These are important partly as finished usable components of welfare. Perhaps more important, however, they are necessary as tools and platforms on which innovation, research, and development can be pursued by local actors in the developing world itself--from the free software developers of Brazil to the agricultural scientists and farmers of Southeast Asia. The primary obstacles to diffusion of these desiderata in the required direction are the institutional framework of intellectual property and trade and the political power of the patent-dependent business models in the information-exporting economies. This is not because the proprietors of information goods and tools are evil. It is because their fiduciary duty is to maximize shareholder value, and the less-developed and developing economies have little money. As rational maximizers with a legal monopoly, the patent holders restrict output and sell at higher rates. This is not a bug in the institutional system we call "intellectual property." It is a known feature that has known undesirable side effects of inefficiently restricting access to the products of innovation. In the context of vast disparities in wealth across the globe, however, this known feature does not merely lead to less than theoretically optimal use of the information. It leads to predictable increase of morbidity and mortality and to higher barriers to development. + +The rise of the networked information economy provides a new framework for thinking about how to work around the barriers that the international intellectual property regime places on development. Public-sector and other nonprofit institutions that have traditionally played an important role in development can do so with a greater degree of efficacy. Moreover, the emergence of peer production provides a model for new solutions to some of the problems of access to information and knowledge. In software and communications, these are directly available. In scientific information and some educational materials, we are beginning to see adaptations of these models to support core elements of development and learning. In food security and health, the translation process may be more difficult. In agriculture, we are seeing more immediate progress in the development of a woven ,{[pg 355]}, fabric of public-sector, academic, nonprofit, and individual innovation and learning to pursue biological innovation outside of the markets based on patents and breeders' rights. In medicine, we are still at a very early stage of organizational experiments and institutional proposals. The barriers to implementation are significant. However, there is growing awareness of the human cost of relying solely on the patent-based production system, and of the potential of commons-based strategies to alleviate these failures. + +Ideally, perhaps, the most direct way to arrive at a better system for harnessing innovation to development would pass through a new international politics of development, which would result in a better-designed international system of trade and innovation policy. There is in fact a global movement of NGOs and developing nations pursuing this goal. It is possible, however, that the politics of international trade are sufficiently bent to the purposes of incumbent industrial information economy proprietors and the governments that support them as a matter of industrial policy that the political path of formal institutional reform will fail. Certainly, the history of the TRIPS agreement and, more recently, efforts to pass new expansive treaties through the WIPO suggest this. However, one of the lessons we learn as we look at the networked information economy is that the work of governments through international treaties is not the final word on innovation and its diffusion across boundaries of wealth. The emergence of social sharing as a substantial mode of production in the networked environment offers an alternative route for individuals and nonprofit entities to take a much more substantial role in delivering actual desired outcomes independent of the formal system. Commons-based and peer production efforts may not be a cure-all. However, as we have seen in the software world, these strategies can make a big contribution to quite fundamental aspects of human welfare and development. And this is where freedom and justice coincide. +={ global development +1 } + +The practical freedom of individuals to act and associate freely--free from the constraints of proprietary endowment, free from the constraints of formal relations of contract or stable organizations--allows individual action in ad hoc, informal association to emerge as a new global mover. It frees the ability of people to act in response to all their motivations. In doing so, it offers a new path, alongside those of the market and formal governmental investment in public welfare, for achieving definable and significant improvements in human development throughout the world. ,{[pg 356]}, + +1~ Chapter 10 - Social Ties: Networking Together +={ norms (social) +38 ; + regulation by social norms +38 ; + social relations and norms +38 +} + +Increased practical individual autonomy has been central to my claims throughout this book. It underlies the efficiency and sustainability of nonproprietary production in the networked information economy. It underlies the improvements I describe in both freedom and justice. Many have raised concerns that this new freedom will fray social ties and fragment social relations. On this view, the new freedom is one of detached monads, a freedom to live arid, lonely lives free of the many constraining attachments that make us grounded, well-adjusted human beings. Bolstered by early sociological studies, this perspective was one of two diametrically opposed views that typified the way the Internet's effect on community, or close social relations, was portrayed in the 1990s. The other view, popular among the digerati, was that "virtual communities" would come to represent a new form of human communal existence, providing new scope for building a shared experience of human interaction. Within a few short years, however, empirical research suggests that while neither view had it completely right, it was the ,{[pg 357]}, dystopian view that got it especially wrong. The effects of the Internet on social relations are obviously complex. It is likely too soon to tell which social practices this new mode of communication will ultimately settle on. The most recent research, however, suggests that the Internet has some fairly well-defined effects on human community and intimate social relations. These effects mark neither breakdown nor transcendence, but they do represent an improvement over the world of television and telephone along most dimensions of normative concern with social relations. +={ communities : + virtual +9 ; + virtual communities +9 : + see also social relations and norms +} + +We are seeing two effects: first, and most robustly, we see a thickening of preexisting relations with friends, family, and neighbors, particularly with those who were not easily reachable in the pre-Internet-mediated environment. Parents, for example, use instant messages to communicate with their children who are in college. Friends who have moved away from each other are keeping in touch more than they did before they had e-mail, because email does not require them to coordinate a time to talk or to pay longdistance rates. However, this thickening of contacts seems to occur alongside a loosening of the hierarchical aspects of these relationships, as individuals weave their own web of supporting peer relations into the fabric of what might otherwise be stifling familial relationships. Second, we are beginning to see the emergence of greater scope for limited-purpose, loose relationships. These may not fit the ideal model of "virtual communities." They certainly do not fit a deep conception of "community" as a person's primary source of emotional context and support. They are nonetheless effective and meaningful to their participants. It appears that, as the digitally networked environment begins to displace mass media and telephones, its salient communications characteristics provide new dimensions to thicken existing social relations, while also providing new capabilities for looser and more fluid, but still meaningful social networks. A central aspect of this positive improvement in loose ties has been the technical-organizational shift from an information environment dominated by commercial mass media on a oneto-many model, which does not foster group interaction among viewers, to an information environment that both technically and as a matter of social practice enables user-centric, group-based active cooperation platforms of the kind that typify the networked information economy. This is not to say that the Internet necessarily effects all people, all social groups, and networks identically. The effects on different people in different settings and networks will likely vary, certainly in their magnitude. My purpose here, however, is ,{[pg 358]}, to respond to the concern that enhanced individual capabilities entail social fragmentation and alienation. The available data do not support that claim as a description of a broad social effect. +={ communication : + thickening of preexisting relations ; + displacement of real-world interaction ; + family relations, strengthening of ; + loose affiliations ; + neighborhood relations, strengthening of ; + networked public sphere : + loose affiliations ; + norms (social) : + loose affiliations | thickening of preexisting relations ; + peer production : + loose affiliations ; + preexisting relations, thickening of ; + public sphere : + loose affiliations ; + regulation by social norms : + loose affiliations | thickening of preexisting relations ; + scope of loose relationships ; + social relations and norms : + loose affiliations | thickening of preexisting relations ; + supplantation of real-world interaction ; + thickening of preexisting relations +} + +2~ FROM "VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES" TO FEAR OF DISINTEGRATION + +Angst about the fragmentation of organic deep social ties, the gemeinschaft community, the family, is hardly a creature of the Internet. In some form or another, the fear that cities, industrialization, rapid transportation, mass communications, and other accoutrements of modern industrial society are leading to alienation, breakdown of the family, and the disruption of community has been a fixed element of sociology since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Its mirror image--the search for real or imagined, more or less idealized community, "grounded" in preindustrial pastoral memory or postindustrial utopia--was often not far behind. Unsurprisingly, this patterned opposition of fear and yearning was replayed in the context of the Internet, as the transformative effect of this new medium made it a new focal point for both strands of thought. + +In the case of the Internet, the optimists preceded the pessimists. In his now-classic The Virtual Community, Howard Rheingold put it most succinctly in 1993: +={ Rheingold, Howard +2 } + +_1 My direct observations of online behavior around the world over the past ten years have led me to conclude that whenever CMC [computer mediated communications] technology becomes available to people anywhere, they inevitably build virtual communities with it, just as microorganisms inevitably create colonies. I suspect that one of the explanations for this phenomenon is the hunger for community that grows in the breasts of people around the world as more and more informal public spaces disappear from our real lives. I also suspect that these new media attract colonies of enthusiasts because CMC enables people to do things with each other in new ways, and to do altogether new kinds of things-- just as telegraphs, telephones, and televisions did. + +/{The Virtual Community}/ was grounded on Rheingold's own experience in the WELL (Whole Earth `Lectronic Link). The WELL was one the earliest well-developed instances of large-scale social interaction among people who started out as strangers but came to see themselves as a community. Its members eventually began to organize meetings in real space to strengthen ,{[pg 359]}, the bonds, while mostly continuing their interaction through computermediated communications. Note the structure of Rheingold's claim in this early passage. There is a hunger for community, no longer satisfied by the declining availability of physical spaces for human connection. There is a newly available medium that allows people to connect despite their physical distance. This new opportunity inevitably and automatically brings people to use its affordances--the behaviors it makes possible--to fulfill their need for human connection. Over and above this, the new medium offers new ways of communicating and new ways of doing things together, thereby enhancing what was previously possible. Others followed Rheingold over the course of the 1990s in many and various ways. The basic structure of the claim about the potential of cyberspace to forge a new domain for human connection, one that overcomes the limitations that industrial mass-mediated society places on community, was oft repeated. The basic observation that the Internet permits the emergence of new relationships that play a significant role in their participants' lives and are anchored in online communications continues to be made. As discussed below, however, much of the research suggests that the new online relationships develop in addition to, rather than instead of, physical face-to-face human interaction in community and family--which turns out to be alive and well. +={ WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) } + +It was not long before a very different set of claims emerged about the Internet. Rather than a solution to the problems that industrial society creates for family and society, the Internet was seen as increasing alienation by absorbing its users. It made them unavailable to spend time with their families. It immersed them in diversions from the real world with its real relationships. In a social-relations version of the Babel objection, it was seen as narrowing the set of shared cultural experiences to such an extent that people, for lack of a common sitcom or news show to talk about, become increasingly alienated from each other. One strand of this type of criticism questioned the value of online relationships themselves as plausible replacements for real-world human connection. Sherry Turkle, the most important early explorer of virtual identity, characterized this concern as: "is it really sensible to suggest that the way to revitalize community is to sit alone in our rooms, typing at our networked computers and filling our lives with virtual friends?"~{ Sherry Turkle, "Virtuality and Its Discontents, Searching for Community in Cyberspace," The American Prospect 7, no. 24 (1996); Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). }~ Instead of investing themselves with real relationships, risking real exposure and connection, people engage in limited-purpose, lowintensity relationships. If it doesn't work out, they can always sign off, and no harm done. ,{[pg 360]}, +={ alienation +2 ; + depression +2 ; + friendships, virtual +2 ; + isolation +2 ; + loneliness +2 +} + +Another strand of criticism focused less on the thinness, not to say vacuity, of online relations, and more on sheer time. According to this argument, the time and effort spent on the Net came at the expense of time spent with family and friends. Prominent and oft cited in this vein were two early studies. The first, entitled Internet Paradox, was led by Robert Kraut.~{ Robert Kraut et al., "Internet Paradox, A Social Technology that Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well Being," American Psychologist 53 (1998): 1017? 1031. }~ It was the first longitudinal study of a substantial number of users--169 users in the first year or two of their Internet use. Kraut and his collaborators found a slight, but statistically significant, correlation between increases in Internet use and (a) decreases in family communication, (b) decreases in the size of social circle, both near and far, and (c) an increase in depression and loneliness. The researchers hypothesized that use of the Internet replaces strong ties with weak ties. They ideal-typed these communications as exchanging knitting tips with participants in a knitting Listserv, or jokes with someone you would meet on a tourist information site. These trivialities, they thought, came to fill time that, in the absence of the Internet, would be spent with people with whom one has stronger ties. From a communications theory perspective, this causal explanation was more sophisticated than the more widely claimed assimilation of the Internet and television--that a computer monitor is simply one more screen to take away from the time one has to talk to real human beings.~{ A fairly typical statement of this view, quoted in a study commissioned by the Kellogg Foundation, was: "TV or other media, such as computers, are no longer a kind of `electronic hearth,' where a family will gather around and make decisions or have discussions. My position, based on our most recent studies, is that most media in the home are working against bringing families together." Christopher Lee et al., "Evaluating Information and Communications Technology: Perspective for a Balanced Approach," Report to the Kellogg Foundation (December 17, 2001), http://www.si.umich.edu/pne/kellogg/013.html. }~ It recognized that using the Internet is fundamentally different from watching TV. It allows users to communicate with each other, rather than, like television, encouraging passive reception in a kind of "parallel play." Using a distinction between strong ties and weak ties, introduced by Mark Granovetter in what later became the social capital literature, these researchers suggested that the kind of human contact that was built around online interactions was thinner and less meaningful, so that the time spent on these relationships, on balance, weakened one's stock of social relations. +={ Granovetter, Mark ; + Kraut, Robert ; + contact, online vs. physical +1 ; + human contact, online vs. physical +1 ; + physical contact, diminishment of +1 ; + value of online contact ; + vacuity of online relations ; + thinness of online relations ; + weak ties of online relations ; + television : + Internet use vs. +1 ; + social capital +1 +} + +A second, more sensationalist release of a study followed two years later. In 2000, the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society's "preliminary report" on Internet and society, more of a press release than a report, emphasized the finding that "the more hours people use the Internet, the less time they spend with real human beings."~{ Norman H. Nie and Lutz Ebring, "Internet and Society, A Preliminary Report," Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, February 17, 2000, 15 (Press Release), http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/bctf/Stanford_Report.pdf. }~ The actual results were somewhat less stark than the widely reported press release. As among all Internet users, only slightly more than 8 percent reported spending less time with family; 6 percent reported spending more time with family, and 86 percent spent about the same amount of time. Similarly, 9 percent reported spending less time with friends, 4 percent spent more time, and 87 percent spent the ,{[pg 361]}, same amount of time.~{ Ibid., 42-43, tables CH-WFAM, CH-WFRN. }~ The press release probably should not have read, "social isolation increases," but instead, "Internet seems to have indeterminate, but in any event small, effects on our interaction with family and friends"--hardly the stuff of front-page news coverage.~{ See John Markoff and A. Newer, "Lonelier Crowd Emerges in Internet Study," New York Times, February 16, 2000, section A, page 1, column 1. }~ The strongest result supporting the "isolation" thesis in that study was that 27 percent of respondents who were heavy Internet users reported spending less time on the phone with friends and family. The study did not ask whether they used email instead of the phone to keep in touch with these family and friends, and whether they thought they had more or less of a connection with these friends and family as a result. Instead, as the author reported in his press release, "E-mail is a way to stay in touch, but you can't share coffee or beer with somebody on e-mail, or give them a hug" (as opposed, one supposes, to the common practice of phone hugs).~{ Nie and Ebring, "Internet and Society," 19. }~ As Amitai Etzioni noted in his biting critique of that study, the truly significant findings were that Internet users spent less time watching television and shopping. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed said that they watched less television than they used to, and that number reached 65 percent for heavy users and 27 percent for light users. Only 3 percent of those surveyed said they watched more TV. Nineteen percent of all respondents and 25 percent of those who used the Internet more than five hours a week said they shopped less in stores, while only 3 percent said they shopped more in stores. The study did not explore how people were using the time they freed by watching less television and shopping less in physical stores. It did not ask whether they used any of this newfound time to increase and strengthen their social and kin ties.~{ Amitai Etzioni, "Debating the Societal Effects of the Internet: Connecting with the World," Public Perspective 11 (May/June 2000): 42, also available at http://www.gwu.edu/ccps/etzioni/A273.html. }~ + +2~ A MORE POSITIVE PICTURE EMERGES OVER TIME +={ social capital +13 } + +The concerns represented by these early studies of the effects of Internet use on community and family seem to fall into two basic bins. The first is that sustained, more or less intimate human relations are critical to well-functioning human beings as a matter of psychological need. The claims that Internet use is associated with greater loneliness and depression map well onto the fears that human connection ground into a thin gruel of electronic bits simply will not give people the kind of human connectedness they need as social beings. The second bin of concerns falls largely within the "social capital" literature, and, like that literature itself, can be divided largely into two main subcategories. The first, following James Coleman and Mark Granovetter, focuses on the ,{[pg 362]}, economic function of social ties and the ways in which people who have social capital can be materially better off than people who lack it. The second, exemplified by Robert Putnam's work, focuses on the political aspects of engaged societies, and on the ways in which communities with high social capital--defined as social relations with people in local, stable, face-to-face interactions--will lead to better results in terms of political participation and the provisioning of local public goods, like education and community policing. For this literature, the shape of social ties, their relative strength, and who is connected to whom become more prominent features. +={ Coleman, James ; + Granovetter, Mark ; + Putnum, Robert +} + +There are, roughly speaking, two types of responses to these concerns. The first is empirical. In order for these concerns to be valid as applied to increasing use of Internet communications, it must be the case that Internet communications, with all of their inadequacies, come to supplant real-world human interactions, rather than simply to supplement them. Unless Internet connections actually displace direct, unmediated, human contact, there is no basis to think that using the Internet will lead to a decline in those nourishing connections we need psychologically, or in the useful connections we make socially, that are based on direct human contact with friends, family, and neighbors. The second response is theoretical. It challenges the notion that the socially embedded individual is a fixed entity with unchanging needs that are, or are not, fulfilled by changing social conditions and relations. Instead, it suggests that the "nature" of individuals changes over time, based on actual social practices and expectations. In this case, we are seeing a shift from individuals who depend on social relations that are dominated by locally embedded, thick, unmediated, given, and stable relations, into networked individuals--who are more dependent on their own combination of strong and weak ties, who switch networks, cross boundaries, and weave their own web of more or less instrumental, relatively fluid relationships. Manuel Castells calls this the "networked society,"~{ Manuel Castells, The Rise of Networked Society 2d ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 2000). }~ Barry Wellman, "networked individualism."~{ Barry Wellman et al., "The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism," Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 8, no. 3 (April 2003). }~ To simplify vastly, it is not that people cease to depend on others and their context for both psychological and social wellbeing and efficacy. It is that the kinds of connections that we come to rely on for these basic human needs change over time. Comparisons of current practices to the old ways of achieving the desiderata of community, and fears regarding the loss of community, are more a form of nostalgia than a diagnosis of present social malaise. ,{[pg 363]}, +={ Castells, Manuel ; + Wellman, Barry ; + displacement of real-world interaction +5 ; + family relations, strengthening of +5 ; + loose affiliations ; + neighborhood relations, strengthening of +5 ; + networked public sphere : + loose affiliations ; + norms (social) : + loose affiliations ; + peer production : + loose affiliations ; + public sphere : + loose affiliations ; + regulation by social norms : + loose affiliations ; + social relations and norms : + loose affiliations ; + supplantation of real-world interaction +5 ; + thickening of preexisting relations +5 +} + +3~ Users Increase Their Connections with Preexisting Relations +={ e-mail : + thickening of preexisting relations +4 ; + social capital : + thickening of preexisting relations +4 +} + +The most basic response to the concerns over the decline of community and its implications for both the psychological and the social capital strands is the empirical one. Relations with one's local geographic community and with one's intimate friends and family do not seem to be substantially affected by Internet use. To the extent that these relationships are affected, the effect is positive. Kraut and his collaborators continued their study, for example, and followed up with their study subjects for an additional three years. They found that the negative effects they had reported in the first year or two dissipated over the total period of observation.~{ Robert Kraut et al., "Internet Paradox Revisited," Journal of Social Issues 58, no. 1 (2002): 49. }~ Their basic hypothesis that the Internet probably strengthened weak ties, however, is consistent with other research and theoretical work. One of the earliest systematic studies of high-speed Internet access and its effects on communities in this vein was by Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman.~{ Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman, "Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb," City & Community 2, no. 4 (December 2003): 277. }~ They studied the aptly named Toronto suburb Netville, where homes had high-speed wiring years before broadband access began to be adopted widely in North America. One of their most powerful findings was that people who were connected recognized three times as many of their neighbors by name and regularly talked with twice as many as those who were not wired. On the other hand, however, stronger ties--indicated by actually visiting neighbors, as opposed to just knowing their name or stopping to say good morning--were associated with how long a person had lived in the neighborhood, not with whether or not they were wired. In other words, weak ties of the sort of knowing another's name or stopping to chat with them were significantly strengthened by Internet connection, even within a geographic neighborhood. Stronger ties were not. Using applications like a local e-mail list and personal e-mails, wired residents communicated with others in their neighborhood much more often than did nonwired residents. Moreover, wired residents recognized the names of people in a wider radius from their homes, while nonwired residents tended to know only people within their block, or even a few homes on each side. However, again, stronger social ties, like visiting and talking face-to-face, tended to be concentrated among physically proximate neighbors. Other studies also observed this increase of weak ties in a neighborhood with individuals who are more geographically distant than one's own immediate street or block.~{ Gustavo S. Mesch and Yael Levanon, "Community Networking and Locally-Based Social Ties in Two Suburban Localities," City & Community 2, no. 4 (December 2003): 335. }~ Perhaps the most visible aspect of the social capital implications of a well-wired geographic community was the finding that ,{[pg 364]}, +={ Hampton, Keith ; + Kraut, Robert ; + Wellman, Barry ; + weak ties of online relations +} + +wired neighbors began to sit on their front porches, instead of in their backyard, thereby providing live social reinforcement of community through daily brief greetings, as well as creating a socially enforced community policing mechanism. + +We now have quite a bit of social science research on the side of a number of factual propositions.~{ Useful surveys include: Paul DiMaggio et al., "Social Implications of the Internet," Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 307-336; Robyn B. Driskell and Larry Lyon, "Are Virtual Communities True Communities? Examining the Environments and Elements of Community," City & Community 1, no. 4 (December 2002): 349; James E. Katz and Ronald E. Rice, Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, Involvement, Interaction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). }~ Human beings, whether connected to the Internet or not, continue to communicate preferentially with people who are geographically proximate than with those who are distant.~{ Barry Wellman, "Computer Networks as Social Networks," Science 293, issue 5537 (September 2001): 2031. }~ Nevertheless, people who are connected to the Internet communicate more with people who are geographically distant without decreasing the number of local connections. While the total number of connections continues to be greatest with proximate family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors, the Internet's greatest effect is in improving the ability of individuals to add to these proximate relationships new and better-connected relationships with people who are geographically distant. This includes keeping more in touch with friends and relatives who live far away, and creating new weak-tie relationships around communities of interest and practice. To the extent that survey data are reliable, the most comprehensive and updated surveys support these observations. It now seems clear that Internet users "buy" their time to use the Internet by watching less television, and that the more Internet experience they have, the less they watch TV. People who use the Internet claim to have increased the number of people they stay in touch with, while mostly reporting no effect on time they spend with their family.~{ Jeffery I. Cole et al., "The UCLA Internet Report: Surveying the Digital Future, Year Three" (UCLA Center for Communication Policy, January 2003), 33, 55, 62, http://www.ccp.ucla.edu/pdf/UCLA-Internet-Report-Year-Three.pdf. }~ +={ television : + Internet use vs. +} + +Connections with family and friends seemed to be thickened by the new channels of communication, rather than supplanted by them. Emblematic of this were recent results of a survey conducted by the Pew project on "Internet and American Life" on Holidays Online. Almost half of respondents surveyed reported using e-mail to organize holiday activities with family (48 percent) and friends (46 percent), 27 percent reported sending or receiving holiday greetings, and while a third described themselves as shopping online in order to save money, 51 percent said they went online to find an unusual or hard-to-find gift. In other words, half of those who used the Internet for holiday shopping did so in order to personalize their gift further, rather than simply to take advantage of the most obvious use of e-commerce--price comparison and time savings. Further support for this position is offered in another Pew study, entitled "Internet and Daily Life." In that survey, the two most common uses--both of which respondents claimed they did more of because of the Net than they otherwise would have--were connecting ,{[pg 365]}, with family and friends and looking up information.~{ Pew Internet and Daily Life Project (August 11, 2004), report available at http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/131/report_display.asp. }~ Further evidence that the Internet is used to strengthen and service preexisting relations, rather than create new ones, is the fact that 79 percent of those who use the Internet at all do so to communicate with friends and family, while only 26 percent use the Internet to meet new people or to arrange dates. Another point of evidence is the use of instant messaging (IM). IM is a synchronous communications medium that requires its users to set time aside to respond and provides information to those who wish to communicate with an individual about whether that person is or is not available at any given moment. Because it is so demanding, IM is preferentially useful for communicating with individuals with whom one already has a preexisting relationship. This preferential use for strengthening preexisting relations is also indicated by the fact that two-thirds of IM users report using IM with no more than five others, while only one in ten users reports instant messaging with more than ten people. A recent Pew study of instant messaging shows that 53 million adults--42 percent of Internet users in the United States--trade IM messages. Forty percent use IM to contact coworkers, one-third family, and 21 percent use it to communicate equally with both. Men and women IM in equal proportions, but women IM more than men do, averaging 433 minutes per month as compared to 366 minutes, respectively, and households with children IM more than households without children. +={ Pew studies ; + instant messaging ; + text messaging +} + +These studies are surveys and local case studies. They cannot offer a knockdown argument about how "we"--everyone, everywhere--are using the Internet. The same technology likely has different effects when it is introduced into cultures that differ from each other in their pre-Internet baseline.~{ See Barry Wellman, "The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism," Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 8, no. 3 (April 2003); Gustavo S. Mesch and Yael Levanon, "Community Networking and Locally-Based Social Ties in Two Suburban Localities, City & Community 2, no. 4 (December 2003): 335. }~ Despite these cautions, these studies do offer the best evidence we have about Internet use patterns. As best we can tell from contemporary social science, Internet use increases the contact that people have with others who traditionally have been seen as forming a person's "community": family, friends, and neighbors. Moreover, the Internet is also used as a platform for forging new relationships, in addition to those that are preexisting. These relationships are more limited in nature than ties to friends and family. They are detached from spatial constraints, and even time synchronicity; they are usually interest or practice based, and therefore play a more limited role in people's lives than the more demanding and encompassing relationships with family or intimate friends. Each discrete connection or cluster of connections that forms a social network, or a network of social relations, plays some role, but not a definitive one, in each participant's life. There is little disagreement ,{[pg 366]}, among researchers that these kinds of weak ties or limited-liability social relationships are easier to create on the Internet, and that we see some increase in their prevalence among Internet users. The primary disagreement is interpretive--in other words, is it, on balance, a good thing that we have multiple, overlapping, limited emotional liability relationships, or does it, in fact, undermine our socially embedded being? + +2~ Networked Individuals +={ loose affiliations +4 ; + networked public sphere : + loose affiliations +4 ; + norms (social) : + loose affiliations +4 | working with social expectations +4 ; + peer production : + loose affiliations +4 ; + public sphere : + loose affiliations +4 ; + regulation by social norms : + loose affiliations +4 | working with social expectations +4 ; + social capital : + networked society +4 ; + social relations and norms : + loose affiliations +4 | working with social expectations +4 +} + +The interpretive argument about the normative value of the increase in weak ties is colored by the empirical finding that the time spent on the Internet in these limited relationships does not come at the expense of the number of communications with preexisting, real-world relationships. Given our current state of sociological knowledge, the normative question cannot be whether online relations are a reasonable replacement for real-world friendship. Instead, it must be how we understand the effect of the interaction between an increasingly thickened network of communications with preexisting relations and the casting of a broader net that captures many more, and more varied, relations. What is emerging in the work of sociologists is a framework that sees the networked society or the networked individual as entailing an abundance of social connections and more effectively deployed attention. The concern with the decline of community conceives of a scarcity of forms of stable, nurturing, embedding relations, which are mostly fixed over the life of an individual and depend on long-standing and interdependent relations in stable groups, often with hierarchical relations. What we now see emerging is a diversity of forms of attachment and an abundance of connections that enable individuals to attain discrete components of the package of desiderata that "community" has come to stand for in sociology. As Wellman puts it: "Communities and societies have been changing towards networked societies where boundaries are more permeable, interactions are with diverse others, linkages switch between multiple networks, and hierarchies are flatter and more recursive. . . . Their work and community networks are diffuse, sparsely knit, with vague, overlapping, social and spatial boundaries."~{ Barry Wellman, "The Social Affordances of the Internet." }~ In this context, the range and diversity of network connections beyond the traditional family, friends, stable coworkers, or village becomes a source of dynamic stability, rather than tension and disconnect. +={ Wellman, Barry } + +The emergence of networked individuals is not, however, a mere overlay, "floating" on top of thickened preexisting social relations without touching them except to add more relations. The interpolation of new networked ,{[pg 367]}, connections, and the individual's role in weaving those for him- or herself, allows individuals to reorganize their social relations in ways that fit them better. They can use their network connections to loosen social bonds that are too hierarchical and stifling, while filling in the gaps where their realworld relations seem lacking. Nowhere is this interpolation clearer than in Mizuko Ito's work on the use of mobile phones, primarily for text messaging and e-mail, among Japanese teenagers.~{ A review of Ito's own work and that of other scholars of Japanese techno-youth culture is Mizuko Ito, "Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth, and the Re-Placement of Social Contact," forthcoming in Mobile Communications: Re-negotiation of the Social Sphere, ed., Rich Ling and P. Pedersen (New York: Springer, 2005). }~ Japanese urban teenagers generally live in tighter physical quarters than their American or European counterparts, and within quite strict social structures of hierarchy and respect. Ito and others have documented how these teenagers use mobile phones--primarily as platforms for text messages--that is, as a mobile cross between email and instant messaging and more recently images, to loosen the constraints under which they live. They text at home and in the classroom, making connections to meet in the city and be together, and otherwise succeed in constructing a network of time- and space-bending emotional connections with their friends, without--and this is the critical observation--breaking the social molds they otherwise occupy. They continue to spend time in their home, with their family. They continue to show respect and play the role of child at home and at school. However, they interpolate that role and those relations with a sub-rosa network of connections that fulfill otherwise suppressed emotional needs and ties. +={ text messaging ; + mobile phones +} + +The phenomenon is not limited to youths, but is applicable more generally to the capacity of users to rely on their networked connections to escape or moderate some of the more constraining effects of their stable social connections. In the United States, a now iconic case--mostly described in terms of privacy--was that of U.S. Navy sailor Timothy McVeigh (not the Oklahoma bomber). McVeigh was discharged from the navy when his superiors found out that he was gay by accessing his AOL (America Online) account. The case was primarily considered in terms of McVeigh's e-mail account privacy. It settled for an undisclosed sum, and McVeigh retired from the navy with benefits. However, what is important for us here is not the "individual rights" category under which the case was fought, but the practice that it revealed. Here was an eighteen-year veteran of the navy who used the space-time breaking possibilities of networked communications to loosen one of the most constraining attributes imaginable of the hierarchical framework that he nonetheless chose to be part of--the U.S. Navy. It would be odd to think that the navy did not provide McVeigh with a sense of identity and camaraderie that closely knit communities provide their ,{[pg 368]}, members. Yet at the same time, it also stifled his ability to live one of the most basic of all human ties--his sexual identity. He used the network and its potential for anonymous and pseudonymous existence to coexist between these two social structures. +={ McVeigh, Timothy (sailor) } + +% book index reference to Shirky, Clay on page 368, not found + +At the other end of the spectrum of social ties, we see new platforms emerging to generate the kinds of bridging relations that were so central to the identification of "weak ties" in social capital literature. Weak ties are described in the social capital literature as allowing people to transmit information across social networks about available opportunities and resources, as well as provide at least a limited form of vouching for others--as one introduces a friend to a friend of a friend. What we are seeing on the Net is an increase in the platforms developed to allow people to create these kinds of weak ties based on an interest or practice. Perhaps clearest of these is Meetup.com. Meetup is a Web site that allows users to search for others who share an interest and who are locally available to meet face-to-face. The search results show users what meetings are occurring within their requested area and interest. The groups then meet periodically, and those who sign up for them also are able to provide a profile and photo of themselves, to facilitate and sustain the real-world group meetings. The power of this platform is that it is not intended as a replacement for real-space meetings. It is intended as a replacement for the happenstance of social networks as they transmit information about opportunities for interest- and practice-based social relations. The vouching function, on the other hand, seems to have more mixed efficacy, as Dana Boyd's ethnography of Friendster suggests.~{ Dana M. Boyd, "Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networking," Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI 2004) (Vienna: ACM, April 24-29, 2004). }~ Friendster was started as a dating Web site. It was built on the assumption that dating a friend of a friend of a friend is safer and more likely to be successful than dating someone based on a similar profile, located on a general dating site like match.com--in other words, that vouching as friends provides valuable information. As Boyd shows, however, the attempt of Friendster to articulate and render transparent the social networks of its users met with less than perfect success. The platform only permits users to designate friend/not friend, without the finer granularity enabled by a face-toface conversation about someone, where one can answer or anticipate the question, "just how well do you know this person?" with a variety of means, from tone to express reservations. On Friendster, it seems that people cast broader networks, and for fear of offending or alienating others, include many more "friendsters" than they actually have "friends." The result is a weak platform for mapping general connections, rather than a genuine articulation ,{[pg 369]}, of vouching through social networks. Nonetheless, it does provide a visible rendering of at least the thinnest of weak ties, and strengthens their effect in this regard. It enables very weak ties to perform some of the roles of real-world weak social ties. +={ Boyd, Dana ; + bridging social relationships ; + Friendster ; + Meetup.com site ; + vouching for others, network of +} + +2~ THE INTERNET AS A PLATFORM FOR HUMAN CONNECTION +={ Internet : + as platform for human connection +4 ; + norms (social) : + Internet as platform for +4 ; + regulation by social norms : + Internet as platform for +4 ; + social relations and norms : + Internet as platform for +4 +} + +Communication is constitutive of social relations. We cannot have relationships except by communicating with others. Different communications media differ from each other--in who gets to speak to whom and in what can be said. These differences structure the social relations that rely on these various modes of communication so that they differ from each other in significant ways. Technological determinism is not required to accept this. Some aspects of the difference are purely technical. Script allows text and more or less crude images to be transmitted at a distance, but not voice, touch, smell, or taste. To the extent that there are human emotions, modes of submission and exertion of authority, irony, love or affection, or information that is easily encoded and conveyed in face-to-face communications but not in script, script-based communications are a poor substitute for presence. A long and romantic tradition of love letters and poems notwithstanding, there is a certain thinness to that mode in the hands of all but the most gifted writers relative to the fleshiness of unmediated love. Some aspects of the difference among media of communication are not necessarily technical, but are rather culturally or organizationally embedded. Television can transmit text. However, text distribution is not television's relative advantage in a sociocultural environment that already has mass-circulation print media, and in a technical context where the resolution of television images is relatively low. As a matter of cultural and business practice, therefore, from its inception, television emphasized moving images and sound, not text transmission. Radio could have been deployed as short-range, point-to-point personal communications systems, giving us a nation of walkie-talkies. However, as chapter 6 described, doing so would have required a very different set of regulatory and business decisions between 1919 and 1927. Communications media take on certain social roles, structures of control, and emphases of style that combine their technical capacities and limits with the sociocultural business context into which they were introduced, and through which they developed. The result is a cluster of use characteristics that define how a ,{[pg 370]}, given medium is used within a given society, in a given historical context. They make media differ from each other, providing platforms with very different capacities and emphases for their users. +={ radio : + as platform for human connection +1 ; + text distribution as platform for human connection +1 ; + written communications as platform for human connection +1 +} + +As a technical and organizational matter, the Internet allows for a radically more diverse suite of communications models than any of the twentiethcentury systems permitted. It allows for textual, aural, and visual communications. It permits spatial and temporal asynchronicity, as in the case of email or Web pages, but also enables temporal synchronicity--as in the case of IM, online game environments, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). It can even be used for subchannel communications within a spatially synchronous context, such as in a meeting where people pass electronic notes to each other by e-mail or IM. Because it is still highly textual, it requires more direct attention than radio, but like print, it is highly multiplexable-- both between uses of the Internet and other media, and among Internet uses themselves. Similar to print media, you can pick your head up from the paper, make a comment, and get back to reading. Much more richly, one can be on a voice over IP conversation and e-mail at the same time, or read news interlaced with receiving and responding to e-mail. It offers oneto-one, one-to-few, few-to-few, one-to-many, and many-to-many communications capabilities, more diverse in this regard than any medium for social communication that preceded it, including--on the dimensions of distance, asynchronicity, and many-to-many capabilities--even that richest of media: face-to-face communications. + +Because of its technical flexibility and the "business model" of Internet service providers as primarily carriers, the Internet lends itself to being used for a wide range of social relations. Nothing in "the nature of the technology" requires that it be the basis of rich social relations, rather than becoming, as some predicted in the early 1990s, a "celestial jukebox" for the mass distribution of prepackaged content to passive end points. In contradistinction to the dominant remote communications technologies of the twentieth century, however, the Internet offers some new easy ways to communicate that foster both of the types of social communication that the social science literature seems to be observing. Namely, it makes it easy to increase the number of communications with preexisting friends and family, and increases communication with geographically distant or more loosely affiliated others. Print, radio, television, film, and sound recording all operated largely on a one-to-many model. They did not, given the economics of production and transmission, provide a usable means of remote communication for individuals ,{[pg 371]}, at the edges of these communication media. Television, film, sound recording, and print industries were simply too expensive, and their business organization was too focused on selling broadcast-model communications, to support significant individual communication. When cassette tapes were introduced, we might have seen people recording a tape instead of writing a letter to friends or family. However, this was relatively cumbersome, low quality, and time consuming. Telephones were the primary means of communications used by individuals, and they indeed became the primary form of mediated personal social communications. However, telephone conversations require synchronicity, which means that they can only be used for socializing purposes when both parties have time. They were also only usable throughout this period for serial, one-to-one conversations. Moreover, for most of the twentieth century, a long-distance call was a very expensive proposition for most nonbusiness users, and outside of the United States, local calls too carried nontrivial time-sensitive prices in most places. Telephones were therefore a reasonable medium for social relations with preexisting friends and family. However, their utility dropped off radically with the cost of communication, which was at a minimum associated with geographic distance. In all these dimensions, the Internet makes it easier and cheaper to communicate with family and friends, at close proximity or over great distances, through the barriers of busy schedules and differing time zones. Moreover, because of the relatively low-impact nature of these communications, the Internet allows people to experiment with looser relations more readily. In other words, the Internet does not make us more social beings. It simply offers more degrees of freedom for each of us to design our own communications space than were available in the past. It could have been that we would have used that design flexibility to re-create the massmedia model. But to predict that it would be used in this fashion requires a cramped view of human desire and connectedness. It was much more likely that, given the freedom to design our own communications environment flexibly and to tailor it to our own individual needs dynamically over time, we would create a system that lets us strengthen the ties that are most important to us. It was perhaps less predictable, but unsurprising after the fact, that this freedom would also be used to explore a wider range of relations than simply consuming finished media goods. +={ telephone, as platform for human connection } + +There is an appropriate wariness in contemporary academic commentary about falling into the trap of "the mythos of the electrical sublime" by adopting a form of Internet utopianism.~{ James W. Carrey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). }~ It is important, however, not to ,{[pg 372]}, let this caution blind us to the facts about Internet use, and the technical, business, and cultural capabilities that the Internet makes feasible. The cluster of technologies of computation and communications that characterize the Internet today are, in fact, used in functionally different ways, and make for several different media of communication than we had in the twentieth century. The single technical platform might best be understood to enable several different "media"--in the sense of clusters of technical-socialeconomic practices of communication--and the number of these enabled media is growing. Instant messaging came many years after e-mail, and a few years after Web pages. Blogging one's daily journal on LiveJournal so that a group of intimates can check in on one's life as it unfolds was not a medium that was available to users until even more recently. The Internet is still providing its users with new ways to communicate with each other, and these represent a genuinely wide range of new capabilities. It is therefore unsurprising that connected social beings, such as we are, will take advantage of these new capabilities to form connections that were practically infeasible in the past. This is not media determinism. This is not millenarian utopianism. It is a simple observation. People do what they can, not what they cannot. In the daily humdrum of their lives, individuals do more of what is easier to do than what requires great exertion. When a new medium makes it easy for people to do new things, they may well, in fact, do them. And when these new things are systematically more user-centric, dialogic, flexible in terms of the temporal and spatial synchronicity they require or enable, and multiplexable, people will communicate with each other in ways and amounts that they could not before. + +2~ THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL SOFTWARE +={ behavior : + enforced with social software +4 ; + blogs : + as social software +4 ; + collaborative authorship : + social software +4 ; + norms (social) : + enforced norms with software +4 | software for, emergence of +4 ; + regulation by social norms : + enforced norms with software +4 | software for, emergence of +4 ; + social relations and norms : + enforced norms with software +4 | software for, emergence of +4 ; + social software +4 ; + software : + social +4 ; + technology : + social software +4 ; + Wikis as social software +4 +} + +The design of the Internet itself is agnostic as among the social structures and relations it enables. At its technical core is a commitment to push all the detailed instantiations of human communications to the edges of the network--to the applications that run on the computers of users. This technical agnosticism leads to a social agnosticism. The possibility of large-scale sharing and cooperation practices, of medium-scale platforms for collaboration and discussion, and of small-scale, one-to-one communications has led to the development of a wide range of software designs and applications to facilitate different types of communications. The World Wide Web was used initially as a global broadcast medium available to anyone and everyone, ,{[pg 373]}, everywhere. In e-mail, we see a medium available for one-to-one, few-tofew, one-to-many and, to a lesser extent, many-to-many use. One of the more interesting phenomena of the past few years is the emergence of what is beginning to be called "social software." As a new design space, it is concerned with groups that are, as defined by Clay Shirky, who first articulated the concept, "Larger than a dozen, smaller than a few hundred, where people can actually have these conversational forms that can't be supported when you're talking about tens of thousands or millions of users, at least in a single group." The definition of the term is somewhat amorphous, but the basic concept is software whose design characteristic is that it treats genuine social phenomena as different from one-to-one or one-to-many communications. It seeks to build one's expectations about the social interactions that the software will facilitate into the design of the platform. The design imperative was most clearly articulated by Shirky when he wrote that from the perspective of the software designer, the user of social software is the group, not the individual.~{ Clay Shirky, "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy," published first in Networks, Economics and Culture mailing list July 1, 2003. }~ +={ Shirky, Clay } + +A simple example will help to illustrate. Take any given site that uses a collaborative authorship tool, like the Wiki that is the basis of /{Wikipedia}/ and many other cooperative authorship exercises. From the perspective of an individual user, the ease of posting a comment on the Wiki, and the ease of erasing one's own comments from it, would be important characteristics: The fewer registration and sign-in procedures, the better. Not so from the perspective of the group. The group requires some "stickiness" to make the group as a group, and the project as a project, avoid the rending forces of individualism and self-reference. So, for example, design components that require registration for posting, or give users different rights to post and erase comments over time, depending on whether they are logged in or not, or depending on a record of their past cooperative or uncooperative behavior, are a burden for the individual user. However, that is precisely their point. They are intended to give those users with a greater stake in the common enterprise a slight, or sometimes large, edge in maintaining the group's cohesion. Similarly, erasing past comments may be useful for the individual, for example, if they were silly or untempered. Keeping the comments there is, however, useful to the group--as a source of experience about the individual or part of the group's collective memory about mistakes made in the past that should not be repeated by someone else. Again, the needs of the group as a group often differ from those of the individual participant. Thinking of the platform as social software entails designing it with characteristics ,{[pg 374]}, that have a certain social-science or psychological model of the interactions of a group, and building the platform's affordances in order to enhance the survivability and efficacy of the group, even if it sometimes comes at the expense of the individual user's ease of use or comfort. + +This emergence of social software--like blogs with opportunities to comment, Wikis, as well as social-norm-mediated Listservs or uses of the "cc" line in e-mail--underscores the nondeterministic nature of the claim about the relationship between the Internet and social relations. The Internet makes possible all sorts of human communications that were not technically feasible before its widespread adoption. Within this wide range of newly feasible communications patterns, we are beginning to see the emergence of different types of relationships--some positive, some, like spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail), decidedly negative. In seeking to predict and diagnose the relationship between the increasing use of Internet communications and the shape of social relations, we see that the newly emerging constructive social possibilities are leading to new design challenges. These, in turn, are finding engineers and enthusiasts willing and able to design for them. The genuinely new capability--connecting among few and many at a distance in a dialogic, recursive form--is leading to the emergence of new design problems. These problems come from the fact that the new social settings come with their own social dynamics, but without long-standing structures of mediation and constructive ordering. Hence the early infamy of the tendency of Usenet and Listservs discussions to deteriorate into destructive flame wars. As social habits of using these kinds of media mature, so that users already know that letting loose on a list will likely result in a flame war and will kill the conversation, and as designers understand that social dynamics--including both those that allow people to form and sustain groups and those that rend them apart with equal if not greater force--we are seeing the coevolution of social norms and platform designs that are intended to give play to the former, and mediate or moderate the latter. These platforms are less likely to matter for sustaining the group in preexisting relations--as among friends or family. The structuring of those relationships is dominated by social norms. However, they do offer a new form and a stabilizing context for the newly emerging diverse set of social relations--at a distance, across interests and contexts--that typify both peer production and many forms of social interaction aimed purely at social reproduction. +={ peer production : + as platform for human connection +1 +} + +The peer-production processes that are described in primarily economic ,{[pg 375]}, terms in chapter 3--like free software development, /{Wikipedia}/, or the Open Directory Project--represent one cluster of important instances of this new form of social relations. They offer a type of relationship that is nonhierarchical and organized in a radically decentralized pattern. Their social valence is given by some combination of the shared experience of joint creativity they enable, as well as their efficacy--their ability to give their users a sense of common purpose and mutual support in achieving it. Individuals adopt projects and purposes they consider worth pursuing. Through these projects they find others, with whom they initially share only a general sense of human connectedness and common practical interest, but with whom they then interact in ways that allow the relationship to thicken over time. Nowhere is this process clearer than on the community pages of /{Wikipedia}/. Because of the limited degree to which that platform uses technical means to constrain destructive behavior, the common enterprise has developed practices of user-to-user communication, multiuser mediation, and userappointed mediation to resolve disputes and disagreements. Through their involvement in these, users increase their participation, their familiarity with other participants--at least in this limited role as coauthors--and their practices of mutual engagement with these others. In this way, peer production offers a new platform for human connection, bringing together otherwise unconnected individuals and replacing common background or geographic proximity with a sense of well-defined purpose and the successful common pursuit of this purpose as the condensation point for human connection. Individuals who are connected to each other in a peer-production community may or may not be bowling alone when they are off-line, but they are certainly playing together online. + +2~ THE INTERNET AND HUMAN COMMUNITY +={ communities : + human and Internet, together +2 ; + human community, coexisting with Internet +2 ; + Internet : + coexisting with human community +2 ; + norms (social) : + Internet and human coexistence +2 ; + regulation by social norms : + Internet and human coexistence +2 ; + social relations and norms : + Internet and human coexistence +2 +} + +This chapter began with a basic question. While the networked information economy may enhance the autonomy of individuals, does it not also facilitate the breakdown of community? The answer offered here has been partly empirical and partly conceptual. + +Empirically, it seems that the Internet is allowing us to eat our cake and have it too, apparently keeping our (social) figure by cutting down on the social equivalent of deep-fried dough--television. That is, we communicate more, rather than less, with the core constituents of our organic communities--our family and our friends--and we seem, in some places, also to ,{[pg 376]}, be communicating more with our neighbors. We also communicate more with loosely affiliated others, who are geographically remote, and who may share only relatively small slivers of overlapping interests, or for only short periods of life. The proliferation of potential connections creates the social parallel to the Babel objection in the context of autonomy--with all these possible links, will any of them be meaningful? The answer is largely that we do, in fact, employ very strong filtering on our Internet-based social connections in one obvious dimension: We continue to use the newly feasible lines of communication primarily to thicken and strengthen connections with preexisting relationships--family and friends. The clearest indication of this is the parsimony with which most people use instant messaging. The other mechanism we seem to be using to avoid drowning in the noise of potential chitchat with ever-changing strangers is that we tend to find networks of connections that have some stickiness from our perspective. This stickiness could be the efficacy of a cluster of connections in pursuit of a goal one cares about, as in the case of the newly emerging peer-production enterprises. It could be the ways in which the internal social interaction has combined social norms with platform design to offer relatively stable relations with others who share common interests. Users do not amble around in a social equivalent of Brownian motion. They tend to cluster in new social relations, albeit looser and for more limited purposes than the traditional pillars of community. +={ networked public sphere : + see also social relations and norms networked society +1 +} + +The conceptual answer has been that the image of "community" that seeks a facsimile of a distant pastoral village is simply the wrong image of how we interact as social beings. We are a networked society now--networked individuals connected with each other in a mesh of loosely knit, overlapping, flat connections. This does not leave us in a state of anomie. We are welladjusted, networked individuals; well-adjusted socially in ways that those who seek community would value, but in new and different ways. In a substantial departure from the range of feasible communications channels available in the twentieth century, the Internet has begun to offer us new ways of connecting to each other in groups small and large. As we have come to take advantage of these new capabilities, we see social norms and software coevolving to offer new, more stable, and richer contexts for forging new relationships beyond those that in the past have been the focus of our social lives. These do not displace the older relations. They do not mark a fundamental shift in human nature into selfless, community-conscious characters. We continue to be complex beings, radically individual and self-interested ,{[pg 377]}, at the same time that we are entwined with others who form the context out of which we take meaning, and in which we live our lives. However, we now have new scope for interaction with others. We have new opportunities for building sustained limited-purpose relations, weak and intermediate-strength ties that have significant roles in providing us with context, with a source of defining part of our identity, with potential sources for support, and with human companionship. That does not mean that these new relationships will come to displace the centrality of our more immediate relationships. They will, however, offer increasingly attractive supplements as we seek new and diverse ways to embed ourselves in relation to others, to gain efficacy in weaker ties, and to interpolate different social networks in combinations that provide us both stability of context and a greater degree of freedom from the hierarchical and constraining aspects of some of our social relations. ,{[pg 378]}, ,{[pg 379]}, + +:B~ Part Three - Policies of Freedom at a Moment of Transformation + +1~p3 Introduction + +Part I of this book offers a descriptive, progressive account of emerging patterns of nonmarket individual and cooperative social behavior, and an analysis of why these patterns are internally sustainable and increase information economy productivity. Part II combines descriptive and normative analysis to claim that these emerging practices offer defined improvements in autonomy, democratic discourse, cultural creation, and justice. I have noted periodically, however, that the descriptions of emerging social practices and the analysis of their potential by no means imply that these changes will necessarily become stable or provide the benefits I ascribe them. They are not a deterministic consequence of the adoption of networked computers as core tools of information production and exchange. There is no inevitable historical force that drives the technological-economic moment toward an open, diverse, liberal equilibrium. If the transformation I describe actually generalizes and stabilizes, it could lead to substantial redistribution of power and money. The twentieth-century industrial producers of information, culture, and communications--like Hollywood, the recording industry, ,{[pg 380]}, and some of the telecommunications giants--stand to lose much. The winners would be a combination of the widely diffuse population of individuals around the globe and the firms or other toolmakers and platform providers who supply these newly capable individuals with the context for participating in the networked information economy. None of the industrial giants of yore are taking this threat lying down. Technology will not overcome their resistance through an insurmountable progressive impulse of history. The reorganization of production and the advances it can bring in freedom and justice will emerge only as a result of social practices and political actions that successfully resist efforts to regulate the emergence of the networked information economy in order to minimize its impact on the incumbents. + +Since the middle of the 1990s, we have seen intensifying battles over the institutional ecology within which the industrial mode of information production and the newly emerging networked modes compete. Partly, this has been a battle over telecommunications infrastructure regulation. Most important, however, this has meant a battle over "intellectual property" protection, very broadly defined. Building upon and extending a twenty-five-year trend of expansion of copyrights, patents, and similar exclusive rights, the last half-decade of the twentieth century saw expansion of institutional mechanisms for exerting exclusive control in multiple dimensions. The term of copyright was lengthened. Patent rights were extended to cover software and business methods. Trademarks were extended by the Antidilution Act of 1995 to cover entirely new values, which became the basis for liability in the early domain-name trademark disputes. Most important, we saw a move to create new legal tools with which information vendors could hermetically seal access to their materials to an extent never before possible. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibited the creation and use of technologies that would allow users to get at materials whose owners control through encryption. It prohibited even technologies that users can employ to use the materials in ways that the owners have no right to prevent. Today we are seeing efforts to further extend similar technological regulations-- down to the level of regulating hardware to make sure that it complies with design specifications created by the copyright industries. At other layers of the communications environment, we see efforts to expand software patents, to control the architecture of personal computing devices, and to create ever-stronger property rights in physical infrastructure--be it the telephone lines, cable plant, or wireless frequencies. Together, these legislative and judicial ,{[pg 381]}, acts have formed what many have been calling a second enclosure movement: A concerted effort to shape the institutional ecology in order to help proprietary models of information production at the expense of burdening nonmarket, nonproprietary production.~{ For a review of the literature and a substantial contribution to it, see James Boyle, "The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain," Law and Contemporary Problems 66 (Winter-Spring 2003): 33-74. }~ The new enclosure movement is not driven purely by avarice and rent seeking--though it has much of that too. Some of its components are based in well-meaning judicial and regulatory choices that represent a particular conception of innovation and its relationship to exclusive rights. That conception, focused on mass-mediatype content, movies, and music, and on pharmaceutical-style innovation systems, is highly solicitous of the exclusive rights that are the bread and butter of those culturally salient formats. It is also suspicious of, and detrimental to, the forms of nonmarket, commons-based production emerging in the networked information economy. +={ Antidilutation Act of 1995 ; + Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) ; + DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) ; + proprietary rights : + Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) | enclosure movement +1 ; + commercial model of communication : + enclosure movement +1 ; + enclosure movement +1 ; + industrial model of communication : + enclosure movement +1 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + enclosure movement +1 ; + policy : + enclosure movement +1 ; + traditional model of communication : + enclosure movement +1 +} + +% extra ref to antidilutation act added + +This new enclosure movement has been the subject of sustained and diverse academic critique since the mid-1980s.~{ Early versions in the legal literature of the skepticism regarding the growth of exclusive rights were Ralph Brown's work on trademarks, Benjamin Kaplan's caution over the gathering storm that would become the Copyright Act of 1976, and Stephen Breyer's work questioning the economic necessity of copyright in many industries. Until, and including the 1980s, these remained, for the most part, rare voices--joined in the 1980s by David Lange's poetic exhortation for the public domain; Pamela Samuelson's systematic critique of the application of copyright to computer programs, long before anyone was paying attention; Jessica Litman's early work on the political economy of copyright legislation and the systematic refusal to recognize the public domain as such; and William Fisher's theoretical exploration of fair use. The 1990s saw a significant growth of academic questioning of enclosure: Samuelson continued to press the question of copyright in software and digital materials; Litman added a steady stream of prescient observations as to where the digital copyright was going and how it was going wrong; Peter Jaszi attacked the notion of the romantic author; Ray Patterson developed a user-centric view of copyright; Diane Zimmerman revitalized the debate over the conflict between copyright and the first amendment; James Boyle introduced erudite criticism of the theoretical coherence of the relentless drive to propertization; Niva Elkin Koren explored copyright and democracy; Keith Aoki questioned trademark, patents, and global trade systems; Julie Cohen early explored technical protection systems and privacy; and Eben Moglen began mercilessly to apply the insights of free software to hack at the foundations of intellectual property apologia. Rebecca Eisenberg, and more recently, Arti Rai, questioned the wisdom of patents on research tools to biomedical innovation. In this decade, William Fisher, Larry Lessig, Litman, and Siva Vaidhyanathan have each described the various forms that the enclosure movement has taken and exposed its many limitations. Lessig and Vaidhyanathan, in particular, have begun to explore the relations between the institutional battles and the freedom in the networked environment. }~ The core of this rich critique has been that the cases and statutes of the past decade or so have upset the traditional balance, in copyrights in particular, between seeking to create incentives through the grant of exclusive rights and assuring access to information through the judicious limitation of these rights and the privileging of various uses. I do not seek to replicate that work here, or to offer a comprehensive listing of all the regulatory moves that have increased the scope of proprietary rights in digital communications networks. Instead, I offer a way of framing these various changes as moves in a large-scale battle over the institutional ecology of the digital environment. By "institutional ecology," I mean to say that institutions matter to behavior, but in ways that are more complex than usually considered in economic models. They interact with the technological state, the cultural conceptions of behaviors, and with incumbent and emerging social practices that may be motivated not only by self-maximizing behavior, but also by a range of other social and psychological motivations. In this complex ecology, institutions--most prominently, law--affect these other parameters, and are, in turn, affected by them. Institutions coevolve with technology and with social and market behavior. This coevolution leads to periods of relative stability, punctuated by periods of disequilibrium, which may be caused by external shocks or internally generated phase shifts. During these moments, the various parameters will be out of step, and will pull and tug at the pattern of behavior, at the technology, and at the institutional forms of the behavior. After the tugging and pulling has shaped the various parameters in ways that are more consistent ,{[pg 382]}, with each other, we should expect to see periods of relative stability and coherence. + +Chapter 11 is devoted to an overview of the range of discrete policy areas that are shaping the institutional ecology of digital networks, in which proprietary, market-based models of information production compete with those that are individual, social, and peer produced. In almost all contexts, when presented with a policy choice, advanced economies have chosen to regulate information production and exchange in ways that make it easier to pursue a proprietary, exclusion-based model of production of entertainment goods at the expense of commons- and service-based models of information production and exchange. This has been true irrespective of the political party in power in the United States, or the cultural differences in the salience of market orientation between Europe and the United States. However, the technological trajectory, the social practices, and the cultural understanding are often working at cross-purposes with the regulatory impulse. The equilibrium on which these conflicting forces settle will shape, to a large extent, the way in which information, knowledge, and culture are produced and used over the coming few decades. Chapter 12 concludes the book with an overview of what we have seen about the political economy of information and what we might therefore understand to be at stake in the policy choices that liberal democracies and advanced economies will be making in the coming years. ,{[pg 383]}, + +1~ Chapter 11 - The Battle Over the Institutional Ecology of the Digital Environment +={ commercial model of communication +133 ; + industrial model of communication +133 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment +133 ; + policy +133 ; + traditional model of communication +133 +} + +The decade straddling the turn of the twenty-first century has seen high levels of legislative and policy activity in the domains of information and communications. Between 1995 and 1998, the United States completely overhauled its telecommunications law for the first time in sixty years, departed drastically from decades of practice on wireless regulation, revolutionized the scope and focus of trademark law, lengthened the term of copyright, criminalized individual user infringement, and created new para-copyright powers for rights holders that were so complex that the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that enacted them was longer than the entire Copyright Act. Europe covered similar ground on telecommunications, and added a new exclusive right in raw facts in databases. Both the United States and the European Union drove for internationalization of the norms they adopted, through the new World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties and, more important, though the inclusion of intellectual property concerns in the international trade regime. In the seven years since then, legal battles have raged over the meaning of these changes, as well ,{[pg 384]}, as over efforts to extend them in other directions. From telecommunications law to copyrights, from domain name assignment to trespass to server, we have seen a broad range of distinct regulatory moves surrounding the question of control over the basic resources needed to create, encode, transmit, and receive information, knowledge, and culture in the digital environment. As we telescope up from the details of sundry regulatory skirmishes, we begin to see a broad pattern of conflict over the way that access to these core resources will be controlled. + +Much of the formal regulatory drive has been to increase the degree to which private, commercial parties can gain and assert exclusivity in core resources necessary for information production and exchange. At the physical layer, the shift to broadband Internet has been accompanied by less competitive pressure and greater legal freedom for providers to exclude competitors from, and shape the use of, their networks. That freedom from both legal and market constraints on exercising control has been complemented by increasing pressures from copyright industries to require that providers exercise greater control over the information flows in their networks in order to enforce copyrights. At the logical layer, anticircumvention provisions and the efforts to squelch peer-to-peer sharing have created institutional pressures on software and protocols to offer a more controlled and controllable environment. At the content layer, we have seen a steady series of institutional changes aimed at tightening exclusivity. +={ content layer of institutional ecology +1 ; + layers of institutional ecology +1 : + content layer +1 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology ; + physical capital for production +1 ; + policy layers +1 +} + +At each of these layers, however, we have also seen countervailing forces. At the physical layer, the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) move to permit the development of wireless devices capable of self-configuring as user-owned networks offers an important avenue for a commons-based last mile. The open standards used for personal computer design have provided an open platform. The concerted resistance against efforts to require computers to be designed so they can more reliably enforce copyrights against their users has, to this point, prevented extension of the DMCA approach to hardware design. At the logical layer, the continued centrality of open standard-setting processes and the emergence of free software as a primary modality of producing mission-critical software provide significant resistance to efforts to enclose the logical layer. At the content layer, where law has been perhaps most systematically one-sided in its efforts to enclose, the cultural movements and the technical affordances that form the foundation of the transformation described throughout this book stand as the most significant barrier to enclosure. ,{[pg 385]}, + +It is difficult to tell how much is really at stake, from the long-term perspective, in all these legal battles. From one point of view, law would have to achieve a great deal in order to replicate the twentieth-century model of industrial information economy in the new technical-social context. It would have to curtail some of the most fundamental technical characteristics of computer networks and extinguish some of our most fundamental human motivations and practices of sharing and cooperation. It would have to shift the market away from developing ever-cheaper general-purpose computers whose value to users is precisely their on-the-fly configurability over time, toward more controllable and predictable devices. It would have to squelch the emerging technologies in wireless, storage, and computation that are permitting users to share their excess resources ever more efficiently. It would have to dampen the influence of free software, and prevent people, young and old, from doing the age-old human thing: saying to each other, "here, why don't you take this, you'll like it," with things they can trivially part with and share socially. It is far from obvious that law can, in fact, achieve such basic changes. From another viewpoint, there may be no need to completely squelch all these things. Lessig called this the principle of bovinity: a small number of rules, consistently applied, suffice to control a herd of large animals. There is no need to assure that all people in all contexts continue to behave as couch potatoes for the true scope of the networked information economy to be constrained. It is enough that the core enabling technologies and the core cultural practices are confined to small groups-- some teenagers, some countercultural activists. There have been places like the East Village or the Left Bank throughout the period of the industrial information economy. For the gains in autonomy, democracy, justice, and a critical culture that are described in part II to materialize, the practices of nonmarket information production, individually free creation, and cooperative peer production must become more than fringe practices. They must become a part of life for substantial portions of the networked population. The battle over the institutional ecology of the digitally networked environment is waged precisely over how many individual users will continue to participate in making the networked information environment, and how much of the population of consumers will continue to sit on the couch and passively receive the finished goods of industrial information producers. ,{[pg 386]}, +={ Lessig, Lawrence (Larry) } + +2~ INSTITUTIONAL ECOLOGY AND PATH DEPENDENCE +={ commercial model of communication : + path dependency +5 ; + industrial model of communication : + path dependency +5 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + path dependency +5 ; + policy : + path dependency +5 ; + traditional model of communication : + path dependency +5 +} + +The century-old pragmatist turn in American legal thought has led to the development of a large and rich literature about the relationship of law to society and economy. It has both Right and Left versions, and has disciplinary roots in history, economics, sociology, psychology, and critical theory. Explanations are many: some simple, some complex; some analytically tractable, many not. I do not make a substantive contribution to that debate here, but rather build on some of its strains to suggest that the process is complex, and particularly, that the relationship of law to social relations is one of punctuated equilibrium--there are periods of stability followed by periods of upheaval, and then adaptation and stabilization anew, until the next cycle. Hopefully, the preceding ten chapters have provided sufficient reason to think that we are going through a moment of social-economic transformation today, rooted in a technological shock to our basic modes of information, knowledge, and cultural production. Most of this chapter offers a sufficient description of the legislative and judicial battles of the past few years to make the case that we are in the midst of a significant perturbation of some sort. I suggest that the heightened activity is, in fact, a battle, in the domain of law and policy, over the shape of the social settlement that will emerge around the digital computation and communications revolution. + +The basic claim is made up of fairly simple components. First, law affects human behavior on a micromotivational level and on a macro-social-organizational level. This is in contradistinction to, on the one hand, the classical Marxist claim that law is epiphenomenal, and, on the other hand, the increasingly rare simple economic models that ignore transaction costs and institutional barriers and simply assume that people will act in order to maximize their welfare, irrespective of institutional arrangements. Second, the causal relationship between law and human behavior is complex. Simple deterministic models of the form "if law X, then behavior Y" have been used as assumptions, but these are widely understood as, and criticized for being, oversimplifications for methodological purposes. Laws do affect human behavior by changing the payoffs to regulated actions directly. However, they also shape social norms with regard to behaviors, psychological attitudes toward various behaviors, the cultural understanding of actions, and the politics of claims about behaviors and practices. These effects are not all linearly additive. Some push back and nullify the law, some amplify its ,{[pg 387]}, effects; it is not always predictable which of these any legal change will be. Decreasing the length of a "Walk" signal to assure that pedestrians are not hit by cars may trigger wider adoption of jaywalking as a norm, affecting ultimate behavior in exactly the opposite direction of what was intended. This change may, in turn, affect enforcement regarding jaywalking, or the length of the signals set for cars, because the risks involved in different signal lengths change as actual expected behavior changes, which again may feed back on driving and walking practices. Third, and as part of the complexity of the causal relation, the effects of law differ in different material, social, and cultural contexts. The same law introduced in different societies or at different times will have different effects. It may enable and disable a different set of practices, and trigger a different cascade of feedback and countereffects. This is because human beings are diverse in their motivational structure and their cultural frames of meaning for behavior, for law, or for outcomes. Fourth, the process of lawmaking is not exogenous to the effects of law on social relations and human behavior. One can look at positive political theory or at the history of social movements to see that the shape of law itself is contested in society because it makes (through its complex causal mechanisms) some behaviors less attractive, valuable, or permissible, and others more so. The "winners" and the "losers" battle each other to tweak the institutional playing field to fit their needs. As a consequence of these, there is relatively widespread acceptance that there is path dependence in institutions and social organization. That is, the actual organization of human affairs and legal systems is not converging through a process of either Marxist determinism or its neoclassical economics mirror image, "the most efficient institutions win out in the end." Different societies will differ in initial conditions and their historically contingent first moves in response to similar perturbations, and variances will emerge in their actual practices and institutional arrangements that persist over time--irrespective of their relative inefficiency or injustice. + +The term "institutional ecology" refers to this context-dependent, causally complex, feedback-ridden, path-dependent process. An example of this interaction in the area of communications practices is the description in chapter 6 of how the introduction of radio was received and embedded in different legal and economic systems early in the twentieth century. A series of organizational and institutional choices converged in all nations on a broadcast model, but the American broadcast model, the BBC model, and the state-run monopoly radio models created very different journalistic styles, ,{[pg 388]}, consumption expectations and styles, and funding mechanisms in these various systems. These differences, rooted in a series of choices made during a short period in the 1920s, persisted for decades in each of the respective systems. Paul Starr has argued in The Creation of the Media that basic institutional choices--from postage pricing to freedom of the press--interacted with cultural practices and political culture to underwrite substantial differences in the print media of the United States, Britain, and much of the European continent in the late eighteenth and throughout much of the nineteenth centuries.~{ Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic Books, 2004). }~ Again, the basic institutional and cultural practices were put in place around the time of the American Revolution, and were later overlaid with the introduction of mass-circulation presses and the telegraph in the mid-1800s. Ithiel de Sola Pool's Technologies of Freedom describes the battle between newspapers and telegraph operators in the United States and Britain over control of telegraphed news flows. In Britain, this resulted in the nationalization of telegraph and the continued dominance of London and The Times. In the United States, it resolved into the pooling model of the Associated Press, based on private lines for news delivery and sharing-- the prototype for newspaper chains and later network-television models of mass media.~{ Ithiel de Sola-Pool, Technologies of Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1983), 91-100. }~ The possibility of multiple stable equilibria alongside each other evoked by the stories of radio and print media is a common characteristic to both ecological models and analytically tractable models of path dependency. Both methodological approaches depend on feedback effects and therefore suggest that for any given path divergence, there is a point in time where early actions that trigger feedbacks can cause large and sustained differences over time. +={ Pool, Ithiel de Sola ; + Starr, Paul ; + radio ; + patents : + see proprietary rights path dependency +} + +Systems that exhibit path dependencies are characterized by periods of relative pliability followed by periods of relative stability. Institutions and social practices coevolve through a series of adaptations--feedback effects from the institutional system to social, cultural, and psychological frameworks; responses into the institutional system; and success and failure of various behavioral patterns and belief systems--until a society reaches a stage of relative stability. It can then be shaken out of that stability by external shocks--like Admiral Perry's arrival in Japan--or internal buildup of pressure to a point of phase transition, as in the case of slavery in the United States. Of course, not all shocks can so neatly be categorized as external or internal--as in the case of the Depression and the New Deal. To say that there are periods of stability is not to say that in such periods, everything is just dandy for everyone. It is only to say that the political, social, economic ,{[pg 389]}, settlement is too widely comfortable for, accepted or acquiesced in, by too many agents who in that society have the power to change practices for institutional change to have substantial effects on the range of lived human practices. + +The first two parts of this book explained why the introduction of digital computer-communications networks presents a perturbation of transformative potential for the basic model of information production and exchange in modern complex societies. They focused on the technological, economic, and social patterns that are emerging, and how they differ from the industrial information economy that preceded them. This chapter offers a fairly detailed map of how law and policy are being tugged and pulled in response to these changes. Digital computers and networked communications as a broad category will not be rolled back by these laws. Instead, we are seeing a battle--often but not always self-conscious--over the precise shape of these technologies. More important, we are observing a series of efforts to shape the social and economic practices as they develop to take advantage of these new technologies. + +2~ A FRAMEWORK FOR MAPPING THE INSTITUTIONAL ECOLOGY +={ commercial model of communication : + mapping, framework for +13 ; + industrial model of communication : + mapping, framework for +13 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + mapping, framework for +13 ; + layers of institutional ecology +13 ; + policy : + mapping institutional ecology +13 ; + policy layers +13 ; + traditional model of communication : + mapping, framework for +13 +} + +Two specific examples will illustrate the various levels at which law can operate to shape the use of information and its production and exchange. The first example builds on the story from chapter 7 of how embarrassing internal e-mails from Diebold, the electronic voting machine maker, were exposed by investigative journalism conducted on a nonmarket and peerproduction model. After students at Swarthmore College posted the files, Diebold made a demand under the DMCA that the college remove the materials or face suit for contributory copyright infringement. The students were therefore forced to remove the materials. However, in order keep the materials available, the students asked students at other institutions to mirror the files, and injected them into the eDonkey, BitTorrent, and FreeNet filesharing and publication networks. Ultimately, a court held that the unauthorized publication of files that were not intended for sale and carried such high public value was a fair use. This meant that the underlying publication of the files was not itself a violation, and therefore the Internet service provider was not liable for providing a conduit. However, the case was decided on September 30, 2004--long after the information would have been relevant ,{[pg 390]}, to the voting equipment certification process in California. What kept the information available for public review was not the ultimate vindication of the students' publication. It was the fact that the materials were kept in the public sphere even under threat of litigation. Recall also that at least some of the earlier set of Diebold files that were uncovered by the activist who had started the whole process in early 2003 were zipped, or perhaps encrypted in some form. Scoop, the Web site that published the revelation of the initial files, published--along with its challenge to the Internet community to scour the files and find holes in the system--links to locations in which utilities necessary for reading the files could be found. +={ Diebold Election Systems +3 ; + electronic voting machines (case study) +3 ; + networked public sphere : + Diebold Election Systems case study +3 ; + policy : + Diebold Election Systems case study +3 ; + public sphere : + Diebold Election Systems case study +3 ; + voting, electronic +3 +} + +There are four primary potential points of failure in this story that could have conspired to prevent the revelation of the Diebold files, or at least to suppress the peer-produced journalistic mode that made them available. First, if the service provider--the college, in this case--had been a sole provider with no alternative physical transmission systems, its decision to block the materials under threat of suit would have prevented publication of the materials throughout the relevant period. Second, the existence of peer-to-peer networks that overlay the physical networks and were used to distribute the materials made expunging them from the Internet practically impossible. There was no single point of storage that could be locked down. This made the prospect of threatening other universities futile. Third, those of the original files that were not in plain text were readable with software utilities that were freely available on the Internet, and to which Scoop pointed its readers. This made the files readable to many more critical eyes than they otherwise would have been. Fourth, and finally, the fact that access to the raw materials--the e-mails--was ultimately found to be privileged under the fair-use doctrine in copyright law allowed all the acts that had been performed in the preceding period under a shadow of legal liability to proceed in the light of legality. + +The second example does not involve litigation, but highlights more of the levers open to legal manipulation. In the weeks preceding the American-led invasion of Iraq, a Swedish video artist produced an audio version of Diana Ross and Lionel Richie's love ballad, "Endless Love," lip-synched to news footage of U.S. president George Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair. By carefully synchronizing the lip movements from the various news clips, the video produced the effect of Bush "singing" Richie's part, and Blair "singing" Ross's, serenading each other with an eternal love ballad. No legal action with regard to the release of this short video has been reported. However, ,{[pg 391]}, the story adds two components not available in the context of the Diebold files context. First, it highlights that quotation from video and music requires actual copying of the digital file. Unlike text, you cannot simply transcribe the images or the sound. This means that access to the unencrypted bits is more important than in the case of text. Second, it is not at all clear that using the entire song, unmodified, is a "fair use." While it is true that the Swedish video is unlikely to cut into the market for the original song, there is nothing in the video that is a parody either of the song itself or of the news footage. The video uses "found materials," that is, materials produced by others, to mix them in a way that is surprising, creative, and creates a genuinely new statement. However, its use of the song is much more complete than the minimalist uses of digital sampling in recorded music, where using a mere two-second, three-note riff from another's song has been found to be a violation unless done with a negotiated license.~{ /{Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films}/, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 26877. }~ + +Combined, the two stories suggest that we can map the resources necessary for a creative communication, whether produced on a market model or a nonmarket model, as including a number of discrete elements. First, there is the universe of "content" itself: existing information, cultural artifacts and communications, and knowledge structures. These include the song and video footage, or the e-mail files, in the two stories. Second, there is the cluster of machinery that goes into capturing, manipulating, fixing and communicating the new cultural utterances or communications made of these inputs, mixed with the creativity, knowledge, information, or communications capacities of the creator of the new statement or communication. These include the physical devices--the computers used by the students and the video artist, as well as by their readers or viewers--and the physical transmission mechanisms used to send the information or communications from one place to another. In the Diebold case, the firm tried to use the Internet service provider liability regime of the DMCA to cut off the machine storage and mechanical communications capacity provided to the students by the university. However, the "machinery" also includes the logical components-- the software necessary to capture, read or listen to, cut, paste, and remake the texts or music; the software and protocols necessary to store, retrieve, search, and communicate the information across the Internet. + +As these stories suggest, freedom to create and communicate requires use of diverse things and relationships--mechanical devices and protocols, information, cultural materials, and so forth. Because of this diversity of components ,{[pg 392]}, and relationships, the institutional ecology of information production and exchange is a complex one. It includes regulatory and policy elements that affect different industries, draw on various legal doctrines and traditions, and rely on diverse economic and political theories and practices. It includes social norms of sharing and consumption of things conceived of as quite different--bandwidth, computers, and entertainment materials. To make these cohere into a single problem, for several years I have been using a very simple, three-layered representation of the basic functions involved in mediated human communications. These are intended to map how different institutional components interact to affect the answer to the basic questions that define the normative characteristics of a communications system--who gets to say what, to whom, and who decides?~{ Other layer-based abstractions have been proposed, most effectively by Lawrence Solum and Minn Chung, The Layers Principle: Internet Architecture and the Law, University of San Diego Public Law Research Paper No. 55. Their model more closely hews to the OSI layers, and is tailored to being more specifically usable for a particular legal principle--never regulate at a level lower than you need to. I seek a higherlevel abstraction whose role is not to serve as a tool to constrain specific rules, but as a map for understanding the relationships between diverse institutional elements as they relate to the basic problem of how information is produced and exchanged in society. }~ + +These are the physical, logical, and content layers. The physical layer refers to the material things used to connect human beings to each other. These include the computers, phones, handhelds, wires, wireless links, and the like. The content layer is the set of humanly meaningful statements that human beings utter to and with one another. It includes both the actual utterances and the mechanisms, to the extent that they are based on human communication rather than mechanical processing, for filtering, accreditation, and interpretation. The logical layer represents the algorithms, standards, ways of translating human meaning into something that machines can transmit, store, or compute, and something that machines process into communications meaningful to human beings. These include standards, protocols, and software--both general enabling platforms like operating systems, and more specific applications. A mediated human communication must use all three layers, and each layer therefore represents a resource or a pathway that the communication must use or traverse in order to reach its intended destination. In each and every one of these layers, we have seen the emergence of technical and practical capabilities for using that layer on a nonproprietary model that would make access cheaper, less susceptible to control by any single party or class of parties, or both. In each and every layer, we have seen significant policy battles over whether these nonproprietary or open-platform practices will be facilitated or even permitted. Looking at the aggregate effect, we see that at all these layers, a series of battles is being fought over the degree to which some minimal set of basic resources and capabilities necessary to use and participate in constructing the information environment will be available for use on a nonproprietary, nonmarket basis. ,{[pg 393]}, +={ content layer of institutional ecology ; + layers of institutional ecology : + content layer | physical layer | see also logical layer of institutional ecology ; + logical layer of institutional ecology ; + physical layer of institutional ecology ; + policy layers : + content layer | physical layer +} + +In each layer, the policy debate is almost always carried out in local, specific terms. We ask questions like, Will this policy optimize "spectrum management" in these frequencies, or, Will this decrease the number of CDs sold? However, the basic, overarching question that we must learn to ask in all these debates is: Are we leaving enough institutional space for the socialeconomic practices of networked information production to emerge? The networked information economy requires access to a core set of capabilities--existing information and culture, mechanical means to process, store, and communicate new contributions and mixes, and the logical systems necessary to connect them to each other. What nonmarket forms of production need is a core common infrastructure that anyone can use, irrespective of whether their production model is market-based or not, proprietary or not. In almost all these dimensions, the current trajectory of technologicaleconomic-social trends is indeed leading to the emergence of such a core common infrastructure, and the practices that make up the networked information economy are taking advantage of open resources. Wireless equipment manufacturers are producing devices that let users build their own networks, even if these are now at a primitive stage. The open-innovation ethos of the programmer and Internet engineering community produce both free software and proprietary software that rely on open standards for providing an open logical layer. The emerging practices of free sharing of information, knowledge, and culture that occupy most of the discussion in this book are producing an ever-growing stream of freely and openly accessible content resources. The core common infrastructure appears to be emerging without need for help from a guiding regulatory hand. This may or may not be a stable pattern. It is possible that by some happenstance one or two firms, using one or two critical technologies, will be able to capture and control a bottleneck. At that point, perhaps regulatory intervention will be required. However, from the beginning of legal responses to the Internet and up to this writing in the middle of 2005, the primary role of law has been reactive and reactionary. It has functioned as a point of resistance to the emergence of the networked information economy. It has been used by incumbents from the industrial information economies to contain the risks posed by the emerging capabilities of the networked information environment. What the emerging networked information economy therefore needs, in almost all cases, is not regulatory protection, but regulatory abstinence. + +The remainder of this chapter provides a more or less detailed presentation of the decisions being made at each layer, and how they relate to the freedom ,{[pg 394]}, to create, individually and with others, without having to go through proprietary, market-based transactional frameworks. Because so many components are involved, and so much has happened since the mid-1990s, the discussion is of necessity both long in the aggregate and truncated in each particular category. To overcome this expositional problem, I have collected the various institutional changes in table 11.1. For readers interested only in the overarching claim of this chapter--that is, that there is, in fact, a battle over the institutional environment, and that many present choices interact to increase or decrease the availability of basic resources for information production and exchange--table 11.1 may provide sufficient detail. For those interested in a case study of the complex relationship between law, technology, social behavior, and market structure, the discussion of peer-to-peer networks may be particularly interesting to pursue. + +A quick look at table 11.1 reveals that there is a diverse set of sources of openness. A few of these are legal. Mostly, they are based on technological and social practices, including resistance to legal and regulatory drives toward enclosure. Examples of policy interventions that support an open core common infrastructure are the FCC's increased permission to deploy open wireless networks and the various municipal broadband initiatives. The former is a regulatory intervention, but its form is largely removal of past prohibitions on an entire engineering approach to building wireless systems. Municipal efforts to produce open broadband networks are being resisted at the state legislation level, with statutes that remove the power to provision broadband from the home rule powers of municipalities. For the most part, the drive for openness is based on individual and voluntary cooperative action, not law. The social practices of openness take on a quasi-normative face when practiced in standard-setting bodies like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). However, none of these have the force of law. Legal devices also support openness when used in voluntaristic models like free software licensing and Creative Commons?type licensing. However, most often when law has intervened in its regulatory force, as opposed to its contractual-enablement force, it has done so almost entirely on the side of proprietary enclosure. + +Another characteristic of the social-economic-institutional struggle is an alliance between a large number of commercial actors and the social sharing culture. We see this in the way that wireless equipment manufacturers are selling into a market of users of WiFi and similar unlicensed wireless devices. We see this in the way that personal computer manufacturers are competing ,{[pg 395]}, over decreasing margins by producing the most general-purpose machines that would be most flexible for their users, rather than machines that would most effectively implement the interests of Hollywood and the recording industry. We see this in the way that service and equipment-based firms, like IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP), support open-source and free software. The alliance between the diffuse users and the companies that are adapting their business models to serve them as users, instead of as passive consumers, affects the political economy of this institutional battle in favor of openness. On the other hand, security consciousness in the United States has led to some efforts to tip the balance in favor of closed proprietary systems, apparently because these are currently perceived as more secure, or at least more amenable to government control. While orthogonal in its political origins to the battle between proprietary and commons-based strategies for information production, this drive does tilt the field in favor of enclosure, at least at the time of this writing in 2005. +={ commercial model of communication : + security-related policy ; + industrial model of communication : + security-related policy ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + security-related policy ; + policy : + security-related ; + security-related policy ; + traditional model of communication : + security-related policy +} + +% paragraph end moved above table + +!_ Table 11.1: Overview of the Institutional Ecology +={ content layer of institutional ecology : + recent changes ; + layers of institutional ecology : + content layer ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + recent changes ; + physical layer of institutional ecology : + recent changes ; + policy layers : + content layer +} + +table(h; c3: 33, 33, 33){ + +. +Enclosure +Openness + +Physical Transport +Broadband trated by FCC as information service +Open wireless networks + +. +DMCA ISP liability +Municipal broadband initiatives + +. +Municipal broadband barred by states +. + +Physical Devices +CBDPTA: regulatory requirements to implement "trusted systems"; private efforts towards the same goal +Standardization + +. +Operator-controlled mobile phones +Fiercely competitive market in commodity components + +Logical Transmission protocols +Privatized DNS/ICANN +TCP/IP + +. +. +IETF + +. +. +p2p networks + +Logical Software +DMCA anticircumvention; Proprietary OS; Web browser; Software Patents +Free Software + +. +. +W3C + +. +. +P2p software widely used + +. +. +social acceptability of widespread hacking of copy protection + +Content +Copyright expansion: "Right to read"; No de minimis digital sampling; "Fair use" narrowed: effect on potential market "commercial" defined broadly; Criminalization; Term extension +Increasing sharing practices and adoption of sharing licensing practices + +. +Contractual enclosure: UCITA +Musicians distribute music freely + +. +Trademark dilution +Creative Commons; other open publication models + +. +Database protection +Widespread social disdain for copyright + +. +Linking and trespass to chattels +International jurisdictional arbitrage + +. +International "harmonization" and trade enforcement of maximal exclusive rights regimes +Early signs of a global access to knowledge movement combining developing nations with free information ecology advocates, both markets and non-market, raising a challenge to the enclosure movement + +}table + +% ,{[pg 396]}, + +Over the past few years, we have also seen that the global character of the Internet is a major limit on effective enclosure, when openness is a function of technical and social practices, and enclosure is a function of law.~{ The first major treatment of this phenomenon was Michael Froomkin, "The Internet as a Source of Regulatory Arbitrage" (1996), http://www.law.miami.edu/froomkin/articles/arbitr.htm. }~ When Napster was shut down in the United States, for example, KaZaa emerged in the Netherlands, from where it later moved to Australia. This force is meeting the countervailing force of international harmonization--a series of bilateral and multilateral efforts to "harmonize" exclusive rights regimes internationally and efforts to coordinate international enforcement. It is difficult at this stage to predict which of these forces will ultimately have the upper hand. It is not too early to map in which direction each is pushing. And it is therefore not too early to characterize the normative implications of the success or failure of these institutional efforts. +={ Internet : + globality of, effects on policy ; + policy : + global Internet and +} + +2~ THE PHYSICAL LAYER +={ physical capital for production +26 : + see also commons and social capital +} + +The physical layer encompasses both transmission channels and devices for producing and communicating information. In the broadcast and telephone era, devices were starkly differentiated. Consumers owned dumb terminals. Providers owned sophisticated networks and equipment: transmitters and switches. Consumers could therefore consume whatever providers could produce most efficiently that the providers believed consumers would pay for. Central to the emergence of the freedom of users in the networked environment is an erosion of the differentiation between consumer and provider ,{[pg 397]}, equipment. Consumers came to use general-purpose computers that could do whatever their owners wanted, instead of special-purpose terminals that could only do what their vendors designed them to do. These devices were initially connected over a transmission network--the public phone system-- that was regulated as a common carrier. Common carriage required the network owners to carry all communications without differentiating by type or content. The network was neutral as among communications. The transition to broadband networks, and to a lesser extent the emergence of Internet services on mobile phones, are threatening to undermine that neutrality and nudge the network away from its end-to-end, user-centric model to one designed more like a five-thousand-channel broadcast model. At the same time, Hollywood and the recording industry are pressuring the U.S. Congress to impose regulatory requirements on the design of personal computers so that they can be relied on not to copy music and movies without permission. In the process, the law seeks to nudge personal computers away from being purely general-purpose computation devices toward being devices with factory-defined behaviors vis-a-vis predicted-use patterns, like glorified ` televisions and CD players. The emergence of the networked information economy as described in this book depends on the continued existence of an open transport network connecting general-purpose computers. It therefore also depends on the failure of the efforts to restructure the network on the model of proprietary networks connecting terminals with sufficiently controlled capabilities to be predictable and well behaved from the perspective of incumbent production models. + +3~ Transport: Wires and Wireless +={ transport channel policy +16 } + +Recall the Cisco white paper quoted in chapter 5. In it, Cisco touted the value of its then new router, which would allow a broadband provider to differentiate streams of information going to and from the home at the packet level. If the packet came from a competitor, or someone the user wanted to see or hear but the owner preferred that the user did not, the packet could be slowed down or dropped. If it came from the owner or an affiliate, it could be speeded up. The purpose of the router was not to enable evil control over users. It was to provide better-functioning networks. America Online (AOL), for example, has been reported as blocking its users from reaching Web sites that have been advertised in spam e-mails. The theory is that if spammers know their Web site will be inaccessible to AOL customers, they will stop.~{ Jonathan Krim, "AOL Blocks Spammers' Web Sites," Washington Post, March 20, 2004, p. A01; also available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?page%20name%20article&contentId%20A9449-2004Mar19¬Found%20true. }~ The ability of service providers to block sites or packets from ,{[pg 398]}, certain senders and promote packets from others may indeed be used to improve the network. However, whether this ability will in fact be used to improve service depends on the extent to which the interests of all users, and particularly those concerned with productive uses of the network, are aligned with the interests of the service providers. Clearly, when in 2005 Telus, Canada's second largest telecommunications company, blocked access to the Web site of the Telecommunications Workers Union for all of its own clients and those of internet service providers that relied on its backbone network, it was not seeking to improve service for those customers' benefit, but to control a conversation in which it had an intense interest. When there is a misalignment, the question is what, if anything, disciplines the service providers' use of the technological capabilities they possess? One source of discipline would be a genuinely competitive market. The transition to broadband has, however, severely constrained the degree of competition in Internet access services. Another would be regulation: requiring owners to treat all packets equally. This solution, while simple to describe, remains highly controversial in the policy world. It has strong supporters and strong opposition from the incumbent broadband providers, and has, as a practical matter, been rejected for the time being by the FCC. The third type of solution would be both more radical and less "interventionist" from the perspective of regulation. It would involve eliminating contemporary regulatory barriers to the emergence of a user-owned wireless infrastructure. It would allow users to deploy their own equipment, share their wireless capacity, and create a "last mile" owned by all users in common, and controlled by none. This would, in effect, put equipment manufacturers in competition to construct the "last mile" of broadband networks, and thereby open up the market in "middle-mile" Internet connection services. +={ access : + systematically blocked by policy routers ; + blocked access : + policy routers ; + capacity : + policy routers ; + Cisco policy routers ; + information flow : + controlling with policy routers ; + information production inputs : + systematically blocked by policy routers ; + inputs to production : + systematically blocked by policy routers ; + policy routers ; + production inputs : + systematically blocked by policy routers ; + routers, controlling information flow with +} + +Since the early 1990s, when the Clinton administration announced its "Agenda for Action" for what was then called "the information superhighway," it was the policy of the United States to "let the private sector lead" in deployment of the Internet. To a greater or lesser degree, this commitment to private provisioning was adopted in most other advanced economies in the world. In the first few years, this meant that investment in the backbone of the Internet was private, and heavily funded by the stock bubble of the late 1990s. It also meant that the last distribution bottleneck--the "last mile"--was privately owned. Until the end of the 1990s, the last mile was made mostly of dial-up connections over the copper wires of the incumbent local exchange carriers. This meant that the physical layer was not only ,{[pg 399]}, proprietary, but that it was, for all practical purposes, monopolistically owned. Why, then, did the early Internet nonetheless develop into a robust, end-to-end neutral network? As Lessig showed, this was because the telephone carriers were regulated as common carriers. They were required to carry all traffic without discrimination. Whether a bit stream came from Cable News Network (CNN) or from an individual blog, all streams-- upstream from the user and downstream to the user--were treated neutrally. + +4~ Broadband Regulation +={ access : + cable providers, regulation of +4 ; + broadband networks : + cable as commons +4 | regulation of +4 ; + cable broadband transport, as commons +4 ; + commons : + cable providers as +4 ; + transport channel policy : + broadband regulation +4 ; + wired communications : + policy on +4 +} + +The end of the 1990s saw the emergence of broadband networks. In the United States, cable systems, using hybrid fiber-coaxial systems, moved first, and became the primary providers. The incumbent local telephone carriers have been playing catch-up ever since, using digital subscriber line (DSL) techniques to squeeze sufficient speed out of their copper infrastructure to remain competitive, while slowly rolling out fiber infrastructure closer to the home. As of 2003, the incumbent cable carriers and the incumbent local telephone companies accounted for roughly 96 percent of all broadband access to homes and small offices.~{ FCC Report on High Speed Services, December 2003 (Appendix to Fourth 706 Report NOI). }~ In 1999-2000, as cable was beginning to move into a more prominent position, academic critique began to emerge, stating that the cable broadband architecture could be manipulated to deviate from the neutral, end-to-end architecture of the Internet. One such paper was written by Jerome Saltzer, one of the authors of the paper that originally defined the "end-to-end" design principle of the Internet in 1980, and Lessig and Mark Lemley wrote another. These papers began to emphasize that cable broadband providers technically could, and had commercial incentive to, stop treating all communications neutrally. They could begin to move from a network where almost all functions are performed by user-owned computers at the ends of the network to one where more is done by provider equipment at the core. The introduction of the Cisco policy router was seen as a stark marker of how things could change. +={ Lemley, Mark ; + Lessig, Lawrence (Larry) ; + Saltzer, Jerome ; + access : + cable providers, regulation of +3 +} + +The following two years saw significant regulatory battles over whether the cable providers would be required to behave as commons carriers. In particular, the question was whether they would be required to offer competitors nondiscriminatory access to their networks, so that these competitors could compete in Internet services. The theory was that competition would discipline the incumbents from skewing their networks too far away from what users valued as an open Internet. The first round of battles occurred at the municipal level. Local franchising authorities tried to use their power ,{[pg 400]}, over cable licenses to require cable operators to offer open access to their competitors if they chose to offer cable broadband. The cable providers challenged these regulations in courts. The most prominent decision came out of Portland, Oregon, where the Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that broadband was part information service and part telecommunications service, but not a cable service. The FCC, not the cable franchising authority, had power to regulate it.~{ 216 F.3d 871 (9th Cir. 2000). }~ At the same time, as part of the approval of the AOL-Time Warner merger, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) required the new company to give at least three competitors open access to its broadband facilities, should AOL be offered cable broadband facilities over Time Warner. + +The AOL-Time Warner merger requirements, along with the Ninth Circuit's finding that cable broadband included a telecommunications component, seemed to indicate that cable broadband transport would come to be treated as a common carrier. This was not to be. In late 2001 and the middle of 2002, the FCC issued a series of reports that would reach the exact opposite result. Cable broadband, the commission held, was an information service, not a telecommunications service. This created an imbalance with the telecommunications status of broadband over telephone infrastructure, which at the time was treated as a telecommunications service. The commission dealt with this imbalance by holding that broadband over telephone infrastructure, like broadband over cable, was now to be treated as an information service. Adopting this definition was perhaps admissible as a matter of legal reasoning, but it certainly was not required by either sound legal reasoning or policy. The FCC's reasoning effectively took the business model that cable operators had successfully used to capture two-thirds of the market in broadband--bundling two discrete functionalities, transport (carrying bits) and higher-level services (like e-mail and Web hosting)--and treated it as though it described the intrinsic nature of "broadband cable" as a service. Because that service included more than just carriage of bits, it could be called an information service. Of course, it would have been as legally admissible, and more technically accurate, to do as the Ninth Circuit had done. That is, to say that cable broadband bundles two distinct services: carriage and information-use tools. The former is a telecommunications service. In June of 2005, the Supreme Court in the Brand X case upheld the FCC's authority to make this legally admissible policy error, upholding as a matter of deference to the expert agency the Commission's position that cable broadband services should be treated as information services.~{ /{National Cable and Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services}/ (decided June 27, 2005). }~ As a matter ,{[pg 401]}, of policy, the designation of broadband services as "information services" more or less locked the FCC into a "no regulation" approach. As information services, broadband providers obtained the legal power to "edit" their programming, just like any operator of an information service, like a Web site. Indeed, this new designation has placed a serious question mark over whether future efforts to regulate carriage decisions would be considered constitutional, or would instead be treated as violations of the carriers' "free speech" rights as a provider of information. Over the course of the 1990s, there were a number of instances where carriers--particularly cable, but also telephone companies--were required by law to carry some signals from competitors. In particular, cable providers were required to carry over-the-air broadcast television, telephone carriers, in FCC rules called "video dialtone," were required to offer video on a common carriage basis, and cable providers that chose to offer broadband were required to make their infrastructure available to competitors on a common carrier model. In each of these cases, the carriage requirements were subjected to First Amendment scrutiny by courts. In the case of cable carriage of broadcast television, the carriage requirements were only upheld after six years of litigation.~{ /{Turner Broad. Sys. v. FCC}/, 512 U.S. 622 (1994) and /{Turner Broad. Sys. v. FCC}/, 520 U.S. 180 (1997). }~ In cases involving video common carriage requirements applied to telephone companies and cable broadband, lower courts struck down the carriage requirements as violating the telephone and cable companies' free-speech rights.~{ /{Chesapeake & Potomac Tel. Co. v. United States}/, 42 F.3d 181 (4th Cir. 1994); /{Comcast Cablevision of Broward County, Inc. v. Broward County}/, 124 F. Supp. 2d 685, 698 (D. Fla., 2000). }~ To a large extent, then, the FCC's regulatory definition left the incumbent cable and telephone providers--who control 96 percent of broadband connections to home and small offices--unregulated, and potentially constitutionally immune to access regulation and carriage requirements. +={ carriage requirements of cable providers +1 } + +Since 2003 the cable access debate--over whether competitors should get access to the transport networks of incumbent broadband carriers--has been replaced with an effort to seek behavioral regulation in the form of "network neutrality." This regulatory concept would require broadband providers to treat all packets equally, without forcing them to open their network up to competitors or impose any other of the commitments associated with common carriage. The concept has the backing of some very powerful actors, including Microsoft, and more recently MCI, which still owns much of the Internet backbone, though not the last mile. For this reason, if for no other, it remains as of this writing a viable path for institutional reform that would balance the basic structural shift of Internet infrastructure from a commoncarriage to a privately controlled model. Even if successful, the drive to network neutrality would keep the physical infrastructure a technical bottleneck, ,{[pg 402]}, owned by a small number of firms facing very limited competition, with wide legal latitude for using that control to affect the flow of information over their networks. + +4~ Open Wireless networks +={ broadband networks : + open wireless networks +5 ; + communities : + open wireless networks +5 ; + last mile (wireless) +5 ; + mobile phones : + open wireless networks +5 ; + open wireless networks +5 ; + sharing : + open wireless networks +5 ; + transport channel policy : + open wireless networks +5 ; + wireless communications : + open networks +5 +} + +A more basic and structural opportunity to create an open broadband infrastructure is, however, emerging in the wireless domain. To see how, we must first recognize that opportunities to control the broadband infrastructure in general are not evenly distributed throughout the networked infrastructure. The long-haul portions of the network have multiple redundant paths with no clear choke points. The primary choke point over the physical transport of bits across the Internet is in the last mile of all but the most highly connected districts. That is, the primary bottleneck is the wire or cable connecting the home and small office to the network. It is here that cable and local telephone incumbents control the market. It is here that the high costs of digging trenches, pulling fiber, and getting wires through and into walls pose a prohibitive barrier to competition. And it is here, in the last mile, that unlicensed wireless approaches now offer the greatest promise to deliver a common physical infrastructure of first and last resort, owned by its users, shared as a commons, and offering no entity a bottleneck from which to control who gets to say what to whom. + +As discussed in chapter 6, from the end of World War I and through the mid-twenties, improvements in the capacity of expensive transmitters and a series of strategic moves by the owners of the core patents in radio transmission led to the emergence of the industrial model of radio communications that typified the twentieth century. Radio came to be dominated by a small number of professional, commercial networks, based on high-capital-cost transmitters. These were supported by a regulatory framework tailored to making the primary model of radio utilization for most Americans passive reception, with simple receivers, of commercial programming delivered with high-powered transmitters. This industrial model, which assumed large-scale capital investment in the core of the network and small-scale investments at the edges, optimized for receiving what is generated at the core, imprinted on wireless communications systems both at the level of design and at the level of regulation. When mobile telephony came along, it replicated the same model, using relatively cheap handsets oriented toward an infrastructure-centric deployment of towers. The regulatory model followed Hoover's initial pattern and perfected it. A government agency strictly controlled who may ,{[pg 403]}, place a transmitter, where, with what antenna height, and using what power. The justification was avoidance of interference. The presence of strict licensing was used as the basic assumption in the engineering of wireless systems throughout this period. Since 1959, economic analysis of wireless regulation has criticized this approach, but only on the basis that it inefficiently regulated the legal right to construct a wireless system by using strictly regulated spectrum licenses, instead of creating a market in "spectrum use" rights.~{ The locus classicus of the economists' critique was Ronald Coase, "The Federal Communications Commission," Journal of Law and Economics 2 (1959): 1. The best worked-out version of how these property rights would look remains Arthur S. De Vany et al., "A Property System for Market Allocation of the Electromagnetic Spectrum: A Legal-Economic-Engineering Study," Stanford Law Review 21 (1969): 1499. }~ This critique kept the basic engineering assumptions stable--for radio to be useful, a high-powered transmitter must be received by simple receivers. Given this engineering assumption, someone had to control the right to emit energy in any range of radio frequencies. The economists wanted the controller to be a property owner with a flexible, transferable right. The regulators wanted it to be a licensee subject to regulatory oversight and approval by the FCC. +={ capacity : + radio sharing +1 ; + radio +1 ; + sharing : + radio capacity +1 | capacity +1 +} + +As chapter 3 explained, by the time that legislatures in the United States and around the world had begun to accede to the wisdom of the economists' critique, it had been rendered obsolete by technology. In particular, it had been rendered obsolete by the fact that the declining cost of computation and the increasing sophistication of communications protocols among enduser devices in a network made possible new, sharing-based solutions to the problem of how to allow users to communicate without wires. Instead of having a regulation-determined exclusive right to transmit, which may or may not be subject to market reallocation, it is possible to have a market in smart radio equipment owned by individuals. These devices have the technical ability to share capacity and cooperate in the creation of wireless carriage capacity. These radios can, for example, cooperate by relaying each other's messages or temporarily "lending" their antennae to neighbors to help them decipher messages of senders, without anyone having exclusive use of the spectrum. Just as PCs can cooperate to create a supercomputer in SETI@Home by sharing their computation, and a global-scale, peer-to-peer data-storage and retrieval system by sharing their hard drives, computationally intensive radios can share their capacity to produce a local wireless broadband infrastructure. Open wireless networks allow users to install their own wireless device--much like the WiFi devices that have become popular. These devices then search automatically for neighbors with similar capabilities, and self-configure into a high-speed wireless data network. Reaching this goal does not, at this point, require significant technological innovation. The technology is there, though it does require substantial engineering ,{[pg 404]}, effort to implement. The economic incentives to develop such devices are fairly straightforward. Users already require wireless local networks. They will gain added utility from extending their range for themselves, which would be coupled with the possibility of sharing with others to provide significant wide-area network capacity for whose availability they need not rely on any particular provider. Ultimately, it would be a way for users to circumvent the monopoly last mile and recapture some of the rents they currently pay. Equipment manufacturers obviously have an incentive to try to cut into the rents captured by the broadband monopoly/oligopoly by offering an equipment-embedded alternative. + +My point here is not to consider the comparative efficiency of a market in wireless licenses and a market in end-user equipment designed for sharing channels that no one owns. It is to highlight the implications of the emergence of a last mile that is owned by no one in particular, and is the product of cooperation among neighbors in the form of, "I'll carry your bits if you carry mine." At the simplest level, neighbors could access locally relevant information directly, over a wide-area network. More significant, the fact that users in a locality coproduced their own last-mile infrastructure would allow commercial Internet providers to set up Internet points of presence anywhere within the "cloud" of the locale. The last mile would be provided not by these competing Internet service providers, but by the cooperative efforts of the residents of local neighborhoods. Competitors in providing the "middle mile"--the connection from the last mile to the Internet cloud-- could emerge, in a way that they cannot if they must first lay their own last mile all the way to each home. The users, rather than the middle-mile providers, shall have paid the capital cost of producing the local transmission system--their own cooperative radios. The presence of a commons-based, coproduced last mile alongside the proprietary broadband network eliminates the last mile as a bottleneck for control over who speaks, with what degree of ease, and with what types of production values and interactivity. + +The development of open wireless networks, owned by their users and focused on sophisticated general-purpose devices at their edges also offers a counterpoint to the emerging trend among mobile telephony providers to offer a relatively limited and controlled version of the Internet over the phones they sell. Some wireless providers are simply offering mobile Internet connections throughout their networks, for laptops. Others, however, are using their networks to allow customers to use their ever-more-sophisticated phones to surf portions of the Web. These latter services diverge in their ,{[pg 405]}, styles. Some tend to be limited, offering only a set of affiliated Web sites rather than genuine connectivity to the Internet itself with a general-purpose device. Sprint's "News" offerings, for example, connects users to CNNtoGo, ABCNews.com, and the like, but will not enable a user to reach the blogosphere to upload a photo of protesters being manhandled, for example. So while mobility in principle increases the power of the Web, and text messaging puts e-mail-like capabilities everywhere, the effect of the implementations of the Web on phones is more ambiguous. It could be more like a Web-enabled reception device than a genuinely active node in a multidirectional network. Widespread adoption of open wireless networks would give mobile phone manufacturers a new option. They could build into the mobile telephones the ability to tap into open wireless networks, and use them as general-purpose access points to the Internet. The extent to which this will be a viable option for the mobile telephone manufacturers depends on how much the incumbent mobile telephone service providers, those who purchased their licenses at high-priced auctions, will resist this move. Most users buy their phones from their providers, not from general electronic equipment stores. Phones are often tied to specific providers in ways that users are not able to change for themselves. In these conditions, it is likely that mobile providers will resist the competition from free open wireless systems for "data minutes" by refusing to sell dual-purpose equipment. Worse, they may boycott manufacturers who make mobile phones that are also general-purpose Web-surfing devices over open wireless networks. How that conflict will go, and whether users would be willing to carry a separate small device to enable them to have open Internet access alongside their mobile phone, will determine the extent to which the benefits of open wireless networks will be transposed into the mobile domain. Normatively, that outcome has significant implications. From the perspective of the citizen watchdog function, ubiquitous availability of capture, rendering, and communication capabilities are important. From the perspective of personal autonomy as informed action in context, extending openness to mobile units would provide significant advantages to allow individuals to construct their own information environment on the go, as they are confronting decisions and points of action in their daily lives. + +4~ Municipal Broadband Initiatives +={ broadband networks : + municipal initiatives +2 ; + commons : + municipal broadband initiatives +2 ; + communities : + municipal broadband initiatives +2 ; + municipal broadband initiatives +2 ; + open wireless networks : + municipal broadband initiatives +2 ; + transport channel policy : + municipal broadband initiatives +2 ; + wireless communications : + municipal broadband initiatives +2 +} + +One alternative path for the emergence of basic physical information transport infrastructure on a nonmarket model is the drive to establish municipal ,{[pg 406]}, systems. These proposed systems would not be commons-based in the sense that they would not be created by the cooperative actions of individuals without formal structure. They would be public, like highways, sidewalks, parks, and sewage systems. Whether they are, or are not, ultimately to perform as commons would depend on how they would be regulated. In the United States, given the First Amendment constraints on government preferring some speech to other speech in public fora, it is likely that municipal systems would be managed as commons. In this regard, they would have parallel beneficial characteristics to those of open wireless systems. The basic thesis underlying municipal broadband initiatives is similar to that which has led some municipalities to create municipal utilities or transportation hubs. Connectivity has strong positive externalities. It makes a city's residents more available for the information economy and the city itself a more attractive locale for businesses. Most of the efforts have indeed been phrased in these instrumental terms. The initial drive has been the creation of municipal fiber-to-the-home networks. The town of Bristol, Virginia, is an example. It has a population of slightly more than seventeen thousand. Median household income is 68 percent of the national median. These statistics made it an unattractive locus for early broadband rollout by incumbent providers. However, in 2003, Bristol residents had one of the most advanced residential fiber-to-the-home networks in the country, available for less than forty dollars a month. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the city had broadband penetration rivaling many of the top U.S. markets with denser and wealthier populations. The "miracle" of Bristol is that the residents of the town, fed up with waiting for the local telephone and cable companies, built their own, municipally owned network. Theirs has become among the most ambitious and successful of more than five hundred publicly owned utilities in the United States that offer high-speed Internet, cable, and telephone services to their residents. Some of the larger cities--Chicago and Philadelphia, most prominently--are moving as of this writing in a similar direction. The idea in Chicago is that basic "dark fiber"--that is, the physical fiber going to the home, but without the electronics that would determine what kinds of uses the connectivity could be put to--would be built by the city. Access to use this entirely neutral, high-capacity platform would then be open to anyone-- commercial and noncommercial alike. The drive in Philadelphia emphasizes the other, more recently available avenue--wireless. The quality of WiFi and the widespread adoption of wireless techniques have moved other municipalities to adopt wireless or mixed-fiber wireless strategies. Municipalities are ,{[pg 407]}, proposing to use publicly owned facilities to place wireless points of access around the town, covering the area in a cloud of connectivity and providing open Internet access from anywhere in the city. Philadelphia's initiative has received the widest public attention, although other, smaller cities are closer to having a wireless cloud over the city already. +={ Bristol, Virginia +1 ; + Philadelphia, wireless initiatives in +1 +} + +The incumbent broadband providers have not taken kindly to the municipal assault on their monopoly (or oligopoly) profits. When the city of Abilene, Texas, tried to offer municipal broadband service in the late-1990s, Southwestern Bell (SBC) persuaded the Texas legislature to pass a law that prohibited local governments from providing high-speed Internet access. The town appealed to the FCC and the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. Both bodies held that when Congress passed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and said that, "no state . . . regulation . . . may prohibit . . . the ability of any entity to provide . . . telecommunications service," municipalities were not included in the term "any entity." As the D.C. Circuit put it, "any" might have some significance "depending on the speaker's tone of voice," but here it did not really mean "any entity," only some. And states could certainly regulate the actions of municipalities, which are treated in U.S. law as merely their subdivisions or organs.~{ /{City of Abilene, Texas v. Federal Communications Commission}/, 164 F3d 49 (1999). }~ Bristol, Virginia, had to fight off similar efforts to prohibit its plans through state law before it was able to roll out its network. In early 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court was presented with the practice of state preemption of municipal broadband efforts and chose to leave the municipalities to fend for themselves. A coalition of Missouri municipalities challenged a Missouri law that, like the Texas law, prohibited them from stepping in to offer their citizens broadband service. The Court of the Appeals for the Eighth Circuit agreed with the municipalities. The 1996 Act, after all, was intended precisely to allow anyone to compete with the incumbents. The section that prohibited states from regulating the ability of "any entity" to enter the telecommunications service market precisely anticipated that the local incumbents would use their clout in state legislatures to thwart the federal policy of introducing competition into the local loop. Here, the incumbents were doing just that, but the Supreme Court reversed the Eighth Circuit decision. Without dwelling too much on the wisdom of allowing citizens of municipalities to decide for themselves whether they want a municipal system, the court issued an opinion that was technically defensible in terms of statutory interpretation, but effectively invited the incumbent broadband providers to put their lobbying efforts into persuading state legislators to prohibit municipal efforts.~{ /{Nixon v. Missouri Municipal League}/, 541 U.S. 125 (2004). }~ After ,{[pg 408]}, Philadelphia rolled out its wireless plan, it was not long before the Pennsylvania legislature passed a similar law prohibiting municipalities from offering broadband. While Philadelphia's plan itself was grandfathered, future expansion from a series of wireless "hot spots" in open area to a genuine municipal network will likely be challenged under the new state law. Other municipalities in Pennsylvania are entirely foreclosed from pursuing this option. In this domain, at least as of 2005, the incumbents seem to have had some substantial success in containing the emergence of municipal broadband networks as a significant approach to eliminating the bottleneck in local network infrastructure. +={ Abilene, Texas } + +3~ Devices +={ computers : + policy on physical devices +7 ; + devices (physical), policy regarding +7 : + see also computers ; + hardware : + policy on physical devices +7 ; + hardware regulations +7 ; + personal computers : + policy on physical devises +7 ; + physical machinery and computers : + policy on physical devices +7 +} + +The second major component of the physical layer of the networked environment is comprised of the devices people use to compute and communicate. Personal computers, handhelds, game consoles, and to a lesser extent, but lurking in the background, televisions, are the primary relevant devices. In the United States, personal computers are the overwhelmingly dominant mode of connectivity. In Europe and Japan, mobile handheld devices occupy a much larger space. Game consoles are beginning to provide an alternative computationally intensive device, and Web-TV has been a background idea for a while. The increasing digitization of both over-the-air and cable broadcast makes digital TV a background presence, if not an immediate alternative avenue, to Internet communications. None of these devices are constructed by a commons--in the way that open wireless networks, free software, or peer-produced content can be. Personal computers, however, are built on open architecture, using highly standardized commodity components and open interfaces in an enormously competitive market. As a practical matter, therefore, PCs provide an open-platform device. Handhelds, game consoles, and digital televisions, on the other hand, use more or less proprietary architectures and interfaces and are produced in a less-competitive market-- not because there is no competition among the manufacturers, but because the distribution chain, through the service providers, is relatively controlled. The result is that configurations and features can more readily be customized for personal computers. New uses can be developed and implemented in the hardware without permission from any owner of a manufacturing or distribution outlet. As handhelds grow in their capabilities, and personal computers collapse in size, the two modes of communicating are bumping into each other's turf. At the moment, there is no obvious regulatory push to ,{[pg 409]}, nudge one or the other out. Observing the evolution of these markets therefore has less to do with policy. As we look at these markets, however, it is important to recognize that the outcome of this competition is not normatively neutral. The capabilities made possible by personal computers underlie much of the social and economic activity described throughout this book. Proprietary handhelds, and even more so, game consoles and televisions, are, presently at least, platforms that choreograph their use. They structure their users' capabilities according to design requirements set by their producers and distributors. A physical layer usable with general-purpose computers is one that is pliable and open for any number of uses by individuals, in a way that a physical layer used through more narrowly scripted devices is not. +={ proprietary rights : + openness of personal computers +1 +} + +The major regulatory threat to the openness of personal computers comes from efforts to regulate the use of copyrighted materials. This question is explored in greater depth in the context of discussing the logical layer. Here, I only note that peer-to-peer networks, and what Fisher has called "promiscuous copying" on the Internet, have created a perceived threat to the very existence of the major players in the industrial cultural production system-- Hollywood and the recording industry. These industries are enormously adept at driving the regulation of their business environment--the laws of copyright, in particular. As the threat of copying and sharing of their content by users increased, these industries have maintained a steady pressure on Congress, the courts, and the executive to ratchet up the degree to which their rights are enforced. As we will see in looking at the logical and content layers, these efforts have been successful in changing the law and pushing for more aggressive enforcement. They have not, however, succeeded in suppressing widespread copying. Copying continues, if not entirely unabated, certainly at a rate that was impossible a mere six years ago. +={ Fisher, William (Terry) ; + entertainment industry : + hardware regulation and +5 +} + +One major dimension of the effort to stop copying has been a drive to regulate the design of personal computers. Pioneered by Senator Fritz Hollings in mid-2001, a number of bills were drafted and lobbied for: the first was the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act; the second, Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), was actually introduced in the Senate in 2002.~{ Bill Number S. 2048, 107th Congress, 2nd Session. }~ The basic structure of these proposed statutes was that they required manufacturers to design their computers to be "trusted systems." The term "trusted," however, had a very odd meaning. The point is that the system, or computer, can be trusted to perform in certain predictable ways, irrespective of what its owner wishes. ,{[pg 410]}, +={ Hollings, Fritz +3 ; + CBDPTA (Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act) ; + Security Systems Standards and Certification Act ; + trusted systems, computers as +1 +} + +The impulse is trivial to explain. If you believe that most users are using their personal computers to copy films and music illegally, then you can think of these users as untrustworthy. In order to be able to distribute films and music in the digital environment that is trustworthy, one must disable the users from behaving as they would choose to. The result is a range of efforts at producing what has derisively been called "the Fritz chip": legal mandates that systems be designed so that personal computers cannot run programs that are not certified properly to the chip. The most successful of these campaigns was Hollywood's achievement in persuading the FCC to require manufacturers of all devices capable of receiving digital television signals from the television set to comply with a particular "trusted system" standard. This "broadcast flag" regulation was odd in two distinct ways. First, the rule-making documents show quite clearly that this was a rule driven by Hollywood, not by the broadcasters. This is unusual because the industries that usually play a central role in these rule makings are those regulated by the FCC, such as broadcasters and cable systems. Second, the FCC was not, in fact, regulating the industries that it normally has jurisdiction to regulate. Instead, the rule applied to any device that could use digital television signals after they had already been received in the home. In other words, they were regulating practically every computer and digital-video-capable consumer electronics device imaginable. The Court of Appeals ultimately indeed struck down the regulation as wildly beyond the agency's jurisdiction, but the broadcast flag nonetheless is the closest that the industrial information economy incumbents have come to achieving regulatory control over the design of computers. +={ broadcast flag regulation } + +The efforts to regulate hardware to fit the distribution model of Hollywood and the recording industry pose a significant danger to the networked information environment. The core design principle of general-purpose computers is that they are open for varied uses over time, as their owners change their priorities and preferences. It is this general-purpose character that has allowed personal computers to take on such varied roles since their adoption in the 1980s. The purpose of the Fritz chip?style laws is to make computing devices less flexible. It is to define a range of socially, culturally, and economically acceptable uses of the machines that are predicted by the legislature and the industry actors, and to implement factory-defined capabilities that are not flexible, and do not give end users the freedom to change the intended use over time and to adapt to changing social and economic conditions and opportunities. ,{[pg 411]}, + +The political economy of this regulatory effort, and similar drives that have been more successful in the logical and content layers, is uncharacteristic of American politics. Personal computers, software, and telecommunications services are significantly larger industries than Hollywood and the recording industry. Verizon alone has roughly similar annual revenues to the entire U.S. movie industry. Each one of the industries that the content industries have tried to regulate has revenues several times greater than do the movie and music industries combined. The relative successes of Hollywood and the recording industry in regulating the logical and content layers, and the viability of their efforts to pass a Fritz chip law, attest to the remarkable cultural power of these industries and to their lobbying prowess. The reason is likely historical. The software and hardware industries in particular have developed mostly outside of the regulatory arena; only around 2002 did they begin to understand that what goes on in Washington could really hurt them. The telecommunications carriers, which are some of the oldest hands at the regulatory game, have had some success in preventing regulations that would force them to police their users and limit Internet use. However, the bulk of their lobbying efforts have been aimed elsewhere. The institutions of higher education, which have found themselves under attack for not policing their students' use of peer-to-peer networks, have been entirely ineffective at presenting their cultural and economic value and the importance of open Internet access to higher education, as compared to the hypothetical losses of Hollywood and the recording industry. Despite the past successes of these entertainment-industry incumbents, two elements suggest that physical device regulation of the CBDPTA form will not follow the same successful path of similar legislation at the logical layer, the DMCA of 1998. The first element is the fact that, unlike in 1998, the technology industries have now realized that Hollywood is seeking to severely constrain their design space. Industries with half a trillion dollars a year in revenues tend to have significant pull in American and international lawmaking bodies, even against industries, like movies and sound recording, that have high cultural visibility but no more than seventy-five billion dollars a year in revenues. The second is that in 1998, there were very few public advocacy organizations operating in the space of intellectual property and trying to play watchdog and to speak for the interests of users. By 2004, a number of organizations dedicated to users' rights in the digital environment emerged to make that conflict clear. The combination of well-defined business interests with increasing representation of user interests creates a political landscape ,{[pg 412]}, in which it will be difficult to pass sweeping laws to limit the flexibility of personal computers. The most recent iteration of the Fritz chip agenda, the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 was indeed defeated, for the time being, by a coalition of high-technology firms and people who would have formerly been seen as left-of-center media activists. + +Regulation of device design remains at the frontier of the battles over the institutional ecology of the digital environment. It is precisely ubiquitous access to basic, general-purpose computers, as opposed to glorified televisions or telephone handsets, that lies at the very heart of the networked information economy. And it is therefore precisely ubiquitous access to such basic machines that is a precondition to the improvements in freedom and justice that we can see emerging in the digital environment. + +2~ THE LOGICAL LAYER +={ logical layer of institutional ecology +40 } + +At the logical layer, most of the efforts aimed to secure a proprietary model and a more tightly controlled institutional ecology follow a similar pattern to the efforts to regulate device design. They come from the needs of the content-layer businesses--Hollywood and the recording industry, in particular. Unlike the physical transmission layer, which is historically rooted in a proprietary but regulated organizational form, most of the logical layer of the Internet has its roots in open, nonproprietary protocols and standards. The broad term "logical layer" combines a wide range of quite different functionalities. The most basic logical components--the basic protocols and standards for Internet connectivity--have from the beginning of the Internet been open, unowned, and used in common by all Internet users and applications. They were developed by computer scientists funded primarily with public money. The basic Internet Protocol (IP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) are open for all to use. Most of the basic standards for communicating were developed in the IETF, a loosely defined standardssetting body that works almost entirely on a meritocratic basis--a body that Michael Froomkin once suggested is the closest earthly approximation of Habermas's ideal speech situation. Individual computer engineers contributed irrespective of formal status or organizational affiliation, and the organization ran on the principle that Dave Clark termed "rough consensus and running code." The World Wide Web protocols and authoring conventions HTTP and HTML were created, and over the course of their lives, shepherded by Tim Berners Lee, who has chosen to dedicate his efforts to making ,{[pg 413]}, the Web a public good rather than cashing in on his innovation. The sheer technical necessity of these basic protocols and the cultural stature of their achievement within the engineering community have given these open processes and their commonslike institutional structure a strong gravitational pull on the design of other components of the logical layer, at least insofar as it relates to the communication side of the Internet. +={ Clark, Dave ; + Froomkin, Michael ; + Habermas, Jurgen +} + +This basic open model has been in constant tension with the proprietary models that have come to use and focus on the Internet in the past decade. By the mid-1990s, the development of graphical-user interfaces to the Web drove Internet use out of universities and into homes. Commercial actors began to look for ways to capture the commercial value of the human potential of the World Wide Web and the Internet, while Hollywood and the recording industry saw the threat of one giant worldwide copying machine looming large. At the same time, the Clinton administration's search of "third-way" liberal agenda manifested in these areas as a commitment to "let the private sector lead" in deployment of the Internet, and an "intellectual property" policy based on extreme protectionism for the exclusive-rightsdependent industries aimed, in the metaphors of that time, to get cars on the information superhighway or help the Internet become a celestial jukebox. The result was a series of moves designed to make the institutional ecology of the Internet more conducive to the proprietary model. + +3~ The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 +={ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) +7 ; + DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) +7 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) +7 ; + proprietary rights : + Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) +7 +} + +No piece of legislation more clearly represents the battle over the institutional ecology of the digital environment than the pompously named Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). The DMCA was the culmination of more than three years of lobbying and varied efforts, both domestically in the United States and internationally, over the passage of two WIPO treaties in 1996. The basic worldview behind it, expressed in a 1995 white paper issued by the Clinton administration, was that in order for the National Information Infrastructure (NII) to take off, it had to have "content," and that its great promise was that it could deliver the equivalent of thousands of channels of entertainment. This would only happen, however, if the NII was made safe for delivery of digital content without making it easily copied and distributed without authorization and without payment. The two core recommendations of that early road map were focused on regulating technology and organizational responsibility. First, law was to regulate ,{[pg 414]}, the development of technologies that might defeat any encryption or other mechanisms that the owners of copyrighted materials would use to prevent use of their works. Second, Internet service providers were to be held accountable for infringements made by their users, so that they would have an incentive to police their systems. Early efforts to pass this agenda in legislation were resisted, primarily by the large telecommunications service providers. The Baby Bells--U.S. regional telephone companies that were created from the breakup of AT&T (Ma Bell) in 1984, when the telecommunications company was split up in order to introduce a more competitive structure to the telecom industry--also played a role in partly defeating implementation of this agenda in the negotiations toward new WIPO treaties in 1996, treaties that ultimately included a much-muted version of the white paper agenda. Nonetheless, the following year saw significant lobbying for "implementing legislation" to bring U.S. law in line with the requirements of the new WIPO treaties. This new posture placed the emphasis of congressional debates on national industrial policy and the importance of strong protection to the export activities of the U.S. content industries. It was enough to tip the balance in favor of passage of the DMCA. The Internet service provider liability portions bore the marks of a hard-fought battle. The core concerns of the telecommunications companies were addressed by creating an explicit exemption for pure carriage of traffic. Furthermore, providers of more sophisticated services, like Web hosting, were provided immunity from liability for simple failure to police their system actively. In exchange, however, service providers were required to respond to requests by copyright owners by immediately removing materials that the copyright owners deemed infringing. This was the provision under which Diebold forced Swarthmore to remove the embarrassing e-mail records from the students' Web sites. The other, more basic, element of the DMCA was the anticircumvention regime it put in place. Pamela Samuelson has described the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA as the result of a battle between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. At the time, unlike the telecommunications giants who were born of and made within the regulatory environment, Silicon Valley did not quite understand that what happened in Washington, D.C., could affect its business. The Act was therefore an almost unqualified victory for Hollywood, moderated only by a long list of weak exemptions for various parties that bothered to show up and lobby against it. +={ Samuelson, Pamela ; + anticircumvention provisions, DMCA +4 ; + encryption circumvention +3 +} + +The central feature of the DMCA, a long and convoluted piece of legislation, ,{[pg 415]}, is its anticircumvention and antidevice provisions. These provisions made it illegal to use, develop, or sell technologies that had certain properties. Copyright owners believed that it would be possible to build strong encryption into media products distributed on the Internet. If they did so successfully, the copyright owners could charge for digital distribution and users would not be able to make unauthorized copies of the works. If this outcome was achieved, the content industries could simply keep their traditional business model--selling movies or music as discrete packages--at lower cost, and with a more refined ability to extract the value users got from using their materials. The DMCA was intended to make this possible by outlawing technologies that would allow users to get around, or circumvent, the protection measures that the owners of copyrighted materials put in place. At first blush, this proposition sounds entirely reasonable. If you think of the content of a music file as a home, and of the copy protection mechanism as its lock, then all the DMCA does is prohibit the making and distributing of burglary tools. This is indeed how the legislation was presented by its supporters. From this perspective, even the relatively draconian consequences spelled out in the DMCA's criminal penalties seem defensible. +={ antidevice provisions, DMCA } + +There are two distinct problems with this way of presenting what the DMCA does. First, copyrights are far from coextensive with real property. There are many uses of existing works that are permissible to all. They are treated in copyright law like walking on the sidewalk or in a public park is treated in property law, not like walking across the land of a neighbor. This is true, most obviously, for older works whose copyright has expired. This is true for certain kinds of uses of a work, like quoting it for purposes of criticism or parody. Encryption and other copy-protection techniques are not limited by the definition of legal rights. They can be used to protect all kinds of digital files--whether their contents are still covered by copyright or not, and whether the uses that users wish to make of them are privileged or not. Circumvention techniques, similarly, can be used to circumvent copyprotection mechanisms for purposes both legitimate and illegitimate. A barbed wire cutter, to borrow Boyle's metaphor, could be a burglary tool if the barbed wire is placed at the property line. However, it could equally be a tool for exercising your privilege if the private barbed wire has been drawn around public lands or across a sidewalk or highway. The DMCA prohibited all wire cutters, even though there were many uses of these technologies that could be used for legal purposes. Imagine a ten-year-old girl doing her homework on the history of the Holocaust. She includes in her multimedia paper ,{[pg 416]}, a clip from Steven Spielberg's film, Schindler's List, in which a little girl in red, the only color image on an otherwise black-and-white screen, walks through the pandemonium of a deportation. In her project, the child painstakingly superimposes her own face over that of the girl in the film for the entire sequence, frame by frame. She calls the paper, "My Grandmother." There is little question that most copyright lawyers (not retained by the owner of the movie) would say that this use would count as a "fair use," and would be privileged under the Copyright Act. There is also little question that if Schindler's List was only available in encrypted digital form, a company would have violated the DMCA if it distributed a product that enabled the girl to get around the encryption in order to use the snippet she needed, and which by traditional copyright law she was permitted to use. It is in the face of this concern about overreaching by those who employ technological protection measures that Julie Cohen argued for the "right to hack"--to circumvent code that impedes one's exercise of one's privileged uses. +={ Boyle, James ; + Cohen, Julie ; + Speilberg, Steven +} + +The second problem with the DMCA is that its definitions are broad and malleable. Simple acts like writing an academic paper on how the encryption works, or publishing a report on the Web that tells users where they can find information about how to circumvent a copy-protection mechanism could be included in the definition of providing a circumvention device. Edward Felten is a computer scientist at Princeton. As he was preparing to publish an academic paper on encryption, he received a threatening letter from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), telling him that publication of the paper constituted a violation of the DMCA. The music industry had spent substantial sums on developing encryption for digital music distribution. In order to test the system before it actually entrusted music with this wrapper, the industry issued a public challenge, inviting cryptographers to try to break the code. Felten succeeded in doing so, but did not continue to test his solutions because the industry required that, in order to continue testing, he sign a nondisclosure agreement. Felten is an academic, not a businessperson. He works to make knowledge public, not to keep it secret. He refused to sign the nondisclosure agreement, and prepared to publish his initial findings, which he had made without entering any nondisclosure agreement. As he did so, he received the RIAA's threatening letter. In response, he asked a federal district court to declare that publication of his findings was not a violation of the DMCA. The RIAA, realizing that trying to silence academic publication of a criticism of the ,{[pg 417]}, weakness of its approach to encryption was not the best litigation stance, moved to dismiss the case by promising it would never bring suit.~{ /{Felten v. Recording Indust. Assoc. of America Inc.}/, No. CV- 01-2669 (D.N.J. June 26, 2001). }~ +={ Felten, Edward ; + music industry : + DMCA violations ; + RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) +} + +Another case did not end so well for the defendant. It involved a suit by the eight Hollywood studios against a hacker magazine, 2600. The studios sought an injunction prohibiting 2600 from making available a program called DeCSS, which circumvents the copy-protection scheme used to control access to DVDs, named CSS. CSS prevents copying or any use of DVDs unauthorized by the vendor. DeCSS was written by a fifteen-year-old Norwegian named Jon Johanson, who claimed (though the district court discounted his claim) to have written it as part of an effort to create a DVD player for GNU/Linux-based machines. A copy of DeCSS, together with a story about it was posted on the 2600 site. The industry obtained an injunction against 2600, prohibiting not only the posting of DeCSS, but also its linking to other sites that post the program--that is, telling users where they can get the program, rather than actually distributing a circumvention program. That decision may or may not have been correct on the merits. There are strong arguments in favor of the proposition that making DVDs compatible with GNU/Linux systems is a fair use. There are strong arguments that the DMCA goes much farther than it needs to in restricting speech of software programmers and Web authors, and so is invalid under the First Amendment. The court rejected these arguments. +={ Johanson, Jon ; + DeCSS program +} + +The point here is not, however, to revisit the legal correctness of that decision, but to illustrate the effects of the DMCA as an element in the institutional ecology of the logical layer. The DMCA is intended as a strong legal barrier to certain technological paths of innovation at the logical layer of the digital environment. It is intended specifically to preserve the "thing-" or "goods"-like nature of entertainment products--music and movies, in particular. As such, it is intended to, and does to some extent, shape the technological development toward treating information and culture as finished goods, rather than as the outputs of social and communications processes that blur the production-consumption distinction. It makes it more difficult for individuals and nonmarket actors to gain access to digital materials that the technology, the market, and the social practices, left unregulated, would have made readily available. It makes practices of cutting and pasting, changing and annotating existing cultural materials harder to do than the technology would have made possible. I have argued elsewhere that when Congress self-consciously makes it harder for individuals to use whatever technology is available to them, to speak as they please and to whomever ,{[pg 418]}, they please, in the interest of some public goal (in this case, preservation of Hollywood and the recording industry for the public good), it must justify its acts under the First Amendment. However, the important question is not one of U.S. constitutional law. + +The more general claim, true for any country that decides to enforce a DMCA-like law, is that prohibiting technologies that allow individuals to make flexible and creative uses of digital cultural materials burdens the development of the networked information economy and society. It burdens individual autonomy, the emergence of the networked public sphere and critical culture, and some of the paths available for global human development that the networked information economy makes possible. All these losses will be incurred in expectation of improvements in creativity, even though it is not at all clear that doing so would actually improve, even on a simple utilitarian calculus, the creative production of any given country or region. Passing a DMCA-type law will not by itself squelch the development of nonmarket and peer production. Indeed, many of these technological and social-economic developments emerged and have flourished after the DMCA was already in place. It does, however, represent a choice to tilt the institutional ecology in favor of industrial production and distribution of cultural packaged goods, at the expense of commons-based relations of sharing information, knowledge, and culture. Twentieth-century cultural materials provide the most immediate and important source of references and images for contemporary cultural creation. Given the relatively recent provenance of movies, recorded music, and photography, much of contemporary culture was created in these media. These basic materials for the creation of contemporary multimedia culture are, in turn, encoded in formats that cannot simply be copied by hand, as texts might be even in the teeth of technical protection measures. The capacity to copy mechanically is a necessary precondition for the capacity to quote and combine existing materials of these kinds into new cultural statements and conversational moves. Preserving the capacity of industrial cultural producers to maintain a hermetic seal on the use of materials to which they own copyright can be bought only at the cost of disabling the newly emerging modes of cultural production from quoting and directly building upon much of the culture of the last century. + +3~ The Battle over Peer-to-Peer Networks +={ file-sharing networks +15 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology +15 ; + network topology : + peer-to-peer networks +15 ; + p2p networks +15 ; + peer-to-peer networks +15 ; + structure of network : + peer-to-peer networks +15 ; + topology, network : + peer-to-peer networks +15 +} + +The second major institutional battle over the technical and social trajectory of Internet development has revolved around peer-to-peer (p2p) networks. I ,{[pg 419]}, offer a detailed description of it here, but not because I think it will be the make-it-or-break-it of the networked information economy. If any laws have that determinative a power, they are the Fritz chip and DMCA. However, the peer-to-peer legal battle offers an excellent case study of just how difficult it is to evaluate the effects of institutional ecology on technology, economic organization, and social practice. + +Peer-to-peer technologies as a global phenomenon emerged from Napster and its use by tens of millions of users around the globe for unauthorized sharing of music files. In the six years since their introduction, p2p networks have developed robust and impressive technical capabilities. They have been adopted by more than one hundred million users, and are increasingly applied to uses well beyond music sharing. These developments have occurred despite a systematic and aggressive campaign of litigation and criminal enforcement in a number of national systems against both developers and users. Technically, p2p networks are algorithms that run on top of the Internet and allow users to connect directly from one end user's machine to another. In theory, that is how the whole Internet works--or at least how it worked when there were a small number of computers attached to it. In practice, most users connect through an Internet service provider, and most content available for access on the Internet was available on a server owned and operated by someone distinct from its users. In the late 1990s, there were rudimentary utilities that allowed one user to access information stored on the computer of another, but no widely used utility allowed large numbers of individuals to search each other's hard drives and share data directly from one user to another. Around 1998-1999, early Internet music distribution models, like MP3.com, therefore provided a centralized distribution point for music. This made them highly vulnerable to legal attack. Shawn Fanning, then eighteen years old, was apparently looking for ways to do what teenagers always do--share their music with friends--in a way that would not involve a central point of storing and copying. He developed Napster--the first major, widely adopted p2p technology. Unlike MP3.com, users of Napster could connect their computers directly--one person could download a song stored on the computer of another without mediation. All that the Napster site itself did, in addition to providing the end-user software, was to provide a centralized directory of which songs resided on which machine. There is little disagreement in the literature that it is an infringement under U.S. copyright law for any given user to allow others to duplicate copyrighted music from his or her computer to theirs. The centralizing role of Napster ,{[pg 420]}, in facilitating these exchanges, alongside a number of ill-considered statements by some of its principals, were enough to render the company liable for contributory copyright infringement. +={ Fanning, Shawn ; + MP3.com ; + Napster +1 : + see also peer-to-peer networks +} + +The genie of p2p technology and the social practice of sharing music, however, were already out of the bottle. The story of the following few years, to the extent that one can tell a history of the present and the recent past, offers two core insights. First, it shows how institutional design can be a battleground over the conditions of cultural production in the digital environment. Second, it exposes the limits of the extent to which the institutional ecology can determine the ultimate structure of behavior at a moment of significant and rapid technological and social perturbation. Napster's judicial closure provided no real respite for the recording industry. As Napster was winding down, Gnutella, a free software alternative, had already begun to replace it. Gnutella did not depend on any centralized component, not even to facilitate search. This meant that there was no central provider. There was no firm against which to bring action. Even if there were, it would be impossible to "shut down" use of the program. Gnutella was a freestanding program that individual users could install. Once installed, its users could connect to anyone else who had installed the program, without passing through any choke point. There was no central server to shut down. Gnutella had some technical imperfections, but these were soon overcome by other implementations of p2p. The most successful improvement over Gnutella was the FastTrack architecture, now used by Kazaa, Grokster, and other applications, including some free software applications. It improves on the search capabilities of Gnutella by designating some users as "supernodes," which store information about what songs are available in their "neighborhood." This avoids Gnutella's primary weakness, the relatively high degree of network overhead traffic. The supernodes operate on an ad hoc basis. They change based on whose computer is available with enough storage and bandwidth. They too, therefore, provide no litigation target. Other technologies have developed to speed up or make more robust the distribution of files, including BitTorrent, eDonkey and its free-software relative eMule, and many others. Within less than two years of Napster's closure, more people were using these various platforms to share files than Napster had users at its height. Some of these new firms found themselves again under legal assault--both in the United States and abroad. +={ FastTrak architecture ; + Gnutella +} + +As the technologies grew and developed, and as the legal attacks increased, the basic problem presented by the litigation against technology manufacturers ,{[pg 421]}, became evident. Peer-to-peer techniques can be used for a wide range of uses, only some of which are illegal. At the simplest level, they can be used to distribute music that is released by an increasing number of bands freely. These bands hope to get exposure that they can parley into concert performances. As recorded music from the 1950s begins to fall into the public domain in Europe and Australia, golden oldies become another legitimate reason to use p2p technologies. More important, p2p systems are being adapted to different kinds of uses. Chapter 7 discusses how FreeNet is being used to disseminate subversive documents, using the persistence and robustness of p2p networks to evade detection and suppression by authoritarian regimes. BitTorrent was initially developed to deal with the large file transfers required for free software distributions. BitTorrent and eDonkey were both used by the Swarthmore students when their college shut down their Internet connection in response to Diebold's letter threatening action under the service provider liability provisions of the DMCA. The founders of KaZaa have begun to offer an Internet telephony utility, Skype, which allows users to make phone calls from one computer to another for free, and from their computer to the telephone network for a small fee. Skype is a p2p technology. +={ KaZaa +1 ; + Skype utility +} + +In other words, p2p is developing as a general approach toward producing distributed data storage and retrieval systems, just as open wireless networks and distributed computing are emerging to take advantage of personal devices to produce distributed communications and computation systems, respectively. As the social and technological uses of p2p technologies grow and diversify, the legal assault on all p2p developers becomes less sustainable-- both as a legal matter and as a social-technical matter. KaZaa was sued in the Netherlands, and moved to Australia. It was later subject to actions in Australia, but by that time, the Dutch courts found the company not to be liable to the music labels. Grokster, a firm based in the United States, was initially found to have offered a sufficiently diverse set of capabilities, beyond merely facilitating copyright infringements, that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused to find it liable simply for making and distributing its software. The Supreme Court reversed that holding, however, returning the case to the lower courts to find, factually, whether Grokster had actual intent to facilitate illegal copying.~{ /{Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster, Ltd.}/ (decided June 27, 2005). }~ Even if Grokster ultimately loses, the FastTrack network architecture will not disappear; clients (that is, end user software) will continue to exist, including free software clients. Perhaps it will be harder to raise money for businesses located within the United States ,{[pg 422]}, to operate in this technological space, because the new rule announced by the Supreme Court in Grokster raises the risk of litigation for innovators in the p2p space. However, as with encryption regulation in the mid-1990s, it is not clear that the United States can unilaterally prevent the development of technology for which there is worldwide demand and with regard to whose development there is globally accessible talent. +={ Grokster } + +How important more generally are these legal battles to the organization of cultural production in the networked environment? There are two components to the answer: The first component considers the likely effect of the legal battles on the development and adoption of the technology and the social practice of promiscuous copying. In this domain, law seems unlikely to prevent the continued development of p2p technologies. It has, however, had two opposite results. First, it has affected the path of the technological evolution in a way that is contrary to the industry interests but consistent with increasing distribution of the core functions of the logical layer. Second, it seems to have dampened somewhat the social practice of file sharing. The second component assumes that a range of p2p technologies will continue to be widely adopted, and that some significant amount of sharing will continue to be practiced. The question then becomes what effect this will have on the primary cultural industries that have fought this technology-- movies and recorded music. Within this new context, music will likely change more radically than movies, and the primary effect will be on the accreditation function--how music is recognized and adopted by fans. Film, if it is substantially affected, will likely be affected largely by a shift in tastes. + +MP3.com was the first major music distribution site shut down by litigation. From the industry's perspective, it should have represented an entirely unthreatening business model. Users paid a subscription fee, in exchange for which they were allowed to download music. There were various quirks and kinks in this model that made it unattractive to the music industry at the time: the industry did not control this major site, and therefore had to share the rents from the music, and more important, there was no effective control over the music files once downloaded. However, from the perspective of 2005, MP3.com was a vastly more manageable technology for the sound recording business model than a free software file-sharing client. MP3.com was a single site, with a corporate owner that could be (and was) held responsible. It controlled which user had access to what files--by requiring each user to insert a CD into the computer to prove that he or she had bought the CD--so that usage could in principle be monitored and, if ,{[pg 423]}, desired, compensation could be tied to usage. It did not fundamentally change the social practice of choosing music. It provided something that was more like a music-on-demand jukebox than a point of music sharing. As a legal matter, MP3.com's infringement was centered on the fact that it stored and delivered the music from this central server instead of from the licensed individual copies. In response to the shutdown of MP3.com, Napster redesigned the role of the centralized mode, and left storage in the hands of users, keeping only the directory and search functions centralized. When Napster was shut down, Gnutella and later FastTrack further decentralized the system, offering a fully decentralized, ad hoc reconfigurable cataloging and search function. Because these algorithms represent architecture and a protocol-based network, not a particular program, they are usable in many different implementations. This includes free software programs like MLDonkey--which is a nascent file-sharing system that is aimed to run simultaneously across most of the popular file-sharing networks, including FastTrack, BitTorrent, and Overnet, the eDonkey network. These programs are now written by, and available from, many different jurisdictions. There is no central point of control over their distribution. There is no central point through which to measure and charge for their use. They are, from a technical perspective, much more resilient to litigation attack, and much less friendly to various possible models of charging for downloads or usage. From a technological perspective, then, the litigation backfired. It created a network that is less susceptible to integration into an industrial model of music distribution based on royalty payments per user or use. +={ MP3.com } + +It is harder to gauge, however, whether the litigation was a success or a failure from a social-practice point of view. There have been conflicting reports on the effects of file sharing and the litigation on CD sales. The recording industry claimed that CD sales were down because of file sharing, but more independent academic studies suggested that CD sales were not independently affected by file sharing, as opposed to the general economic downturn.~{ See Felix Oberholzer and Koleman Strumpf, "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales" (working paper), http://www.unc.edu/cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf. }~ The Pew project on Internet and American Life user survey data suggests that the litigation strategy against individual users has dampened the use of file sharing, though file sharing is still substantially more common among users than paying for files from the newly emerging payper-download authorized services. In mid-2003, the Pew study found that 29 percent of Internet users surveyed said they had downloaded music files, identical to the percentage of users who had downloaded music in the first quarter of 2001, the heyday of Napster. Twenty-one percent responded that ,{[pg 424]}, they allow others to download from their computer.~{ Mary Madden and Amanda Lenhart, "Music Downloading, File-Sharing, and Copyright" (Pew, July 2003), http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Copyright_Memo.pdf/. }~ This meant that somewhere between twenty-six and thirty-five million adults in the United States alone were sharing music files in mid-2003, when the recording industry began to sue individual users. Of these, fully two-thirds expressly stated that they did not care whether the files they downloaded were or were not copyrighted. By the end of 2003, five months after the industry began to sue individuals, the number of respondents who admitted to downloading music dropped by half. During the next few months, these numbers increased slightly to twenty-three million adults, remaining below the mid-2003 numbers in absolute terms and more so in terms of percentage of Internet users. Of those who had at one point downloaded, but had stopped, roughly a third said that the threat of suit was the reason they had stopped file sharing.~{ Lee Rainie and Mary Madden, "The State of Music Downloading and File-Sharing Online" (Pew, April 2004), http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Filesharing_April_04.pdf. }~ During this same period, use of pay online music download services, like iTunes, rose to about 7 percent of Internet users. Sharing of all kinds of media files--music, movies, and games--was at 23 percent of adult Internet users. These numbers do indeed suggest that, in the aggregate, music downloading is reported somewhat less often than it was in the past. It is hard to tell how much of this reduction is due to actual behavioral change as compared to an unwillingness to self-report on behavior that could subject one to litigation. It is impossible to tell how much of an effect the litigation has had specifically on sharing by younger people--teenagers and college students--who make up a large portion of both CD buyers and file sharers. Nonetheless, the reduction in the total number of self-reported users and the relatively steady percentage of total Internet users who share files of various kinds suggest that the litigation does seem to have had a moderating effect on file sharing as a social practice. It has not, however, prevented file sharing from continuing to be a major behavioral pattern among one-fifth to one-quarter of Internet users, and likely a much higher proportion in the most relevant populations from the perspective of the music and movie industries--teenagers and young adults. +={ Pew studies } + +From the perspective of understanding the effects of institutional ecology, then, the still-raging battle over peer-to-peer networks presents an ambiguous picture. One can speculate with some degree of confidence that, had Napster not been stopped by litigation, file sharing would have been a much wider social practice than it is today. The application was extremely easy to use; it offered a single network for all file-sharing users, thereby offering an extremely diverse and universal content distribution network; and for a brief period, it was a cultural icon and a seemingly acceptable social practice. The ,{[pg 425]}, period of regrouping that followed its closure; the imperfect interfaces of early Gnutella clients; the relative fragmentation of file sharing into a number of networks, each with a smaller coverage of content than was present; and the fear of personal litigation risk are likely to have limited adoption. On the other hand, in the longer run, the technological developments have created platforms that are less compatible with the industrial model, and which would be harder to integrate into a stable settlement for music distribution in the digital environment. +={ entertainment industry : + peer-to-peer networks and +6 +} + +Prediction aside, it is not immediately obvious why peer-to-peer networks contribute to the kinds of nonmarket production and creativity that I have focused on as the core of the networked information economy. At first blush, they seem simply to be mechanisms for fans to get industrially produced recorded music without paying musicians. This has little to do with democratization of creativity. To see why p2p networks nonetheless are a part of the development of a more attractive cultural production system, and how they can therefore affect the industrial organization of cultural production, we can look first at music, and then, independently, at movies. The industrial structure of each is different, and the likely effects of p2p networks are different in each case. +={ music industry +3 } + +Recorded music began with the phonograph--a packaged good intended primarily for home consumption. The industry that grew around the ability to stamp and distribute records divided the revenue structure such that artists have been paid primarily from live public performances and merchandizing. Very few musicians, including successful recording artists, make money from recording royalties. The recording industry takes almost all of the revenues from record and CD sales, and provides primarily promotion and distribution. It does not bear the capital cost of the initial musical creation; artists do. With the declining cost of computation, that cost has become relatively low, often simply a computer owned by artists themselves, much as they own their instruments. Because of this industrial structure, peer-to-peer networks are a genuine threat to displacing the entire recording industry, while leaving musicians, if not entirely unaffected, relatively insulated from the change and perhaps mildly better off. Just as the recording industry stamps CDs, promotes them on radio stations, and places them on distribution chain shelves, p2p networks produce the physical and informational aspects of a music distribution system. However, p2p networks do so collaboratively, by sharing the capacity of their computers, hard drives, and network connections. Filtering and accreditation, or "promotion," are produced on the ,{[pg 426]}, model that Eben Moglen called "anarchist distribution." Jane's friends and friends of her friends are more likely to know exactly what music would make her happy than are recording executives trying to predict which song to place, on which station and which shelf, to expose her to exactly the music she is most likely to buy in a context where she would buy it. Filesharing systems produce distribution and "promotion" of music in a socialsharing modality. Alongside peer-produced music reviews, they could entirely supplant the role of the recording industry. +={ Moglen, Eben } + +Musicians and songwriters seem to be relatively insulated from the effects of p2p networks, and on balance, are probably affected positively. The most comprehensive survey data available, from mid-2004, shows that 35 percent of musicians and songwriters said that free downloads have helped their careers. Only 5 percent said it has hurt them. Thirty percent said it increased attendance at concerts, 21 percent that it helped them sell CDs and other merchandise, and 19 percent that it helped them gain radio playing time. These results are consistent with what one would expect given the revenue structure of the industry, although the study did not separate answers out based on whether the respondent was able to live entirely or primarily on their music, which represented only 16 percent of the respondents to the survey. In all, it appears that much of the actual flow of revenue to artists-- from performances and other sources--is stable. This is likely to remain true even if the CD market were entirely displaced by peer-to-peer distribution. Musicians will still be able to play for their dinner, at least not significantly less so than they can today. Perhaps there will be fewer millionaires. Perhaps fewer mediocre musicians with attractive physiques will be sold as "geniuses," and more talented musicians will be heard than otherwise would have, and will as a result be able to get paying gigs instead of waiting tables or "getting a job." But it would be silly to think that music, a cultural form without which no human society has existed, will cease to be in our world if we abandon the industrial form it took for the blink of a historical eye that was the twentieth century. Music was not born with the phonograph, nor will it die with the peer-to-peer network. The terms of the debate, then, are about cultural policy; perhaps about industrial policy. Will we get the kind of music we want in this system, whoever "we" are? Will American recording companies continue to get the export revenue streams they do? Will artists be able to live from making music? Some of these arguments are serious. Some are but a tempest in a monopoly-rent teapot. It is clear that a technological change has rendered obsolete a particular mode of distributing ,{[pg 427]}, information and culture. Distribution, once the sole domain of market-based firms, now can be produced by decentralized networks of users, sharing instantiations of music they deem attractive with others, using equipment they own and generic network connections. This distribution network, in turn, allows a much more diverse range of musicians to reach much more finely grained audiences than were optimal for industrial production and distribution of mechanical instantiations of music in vinyl or CD formats. The legal battles reflect an effort by an incumbent industry to preserve its very lucrative business model. The industry has, to this point, delayed the transition to peer-based distribution, but it is unclear for how long or to what extent it will be successful in preventing the gradual transition to userbased distribution. + +The movie industry has a different industrial structure and likely a different trajectory in its relations to p2p networks. First and foremost, movies began as a relatively high capital cost experience good. Making a movie, as opposed to writing a song, was something that required a studio and a large workforce. It could not be done by a musician with a guitar or a piano. Furthermore, movies were, throughout most of their history, collective experience goods. They were a medium for public performance experienced outside of the home, in a social context. With the introduction of television, it was easy to adapt movie revenue structure by delaying release of films to television viewing until after demand for the movie at the theater declined, as well as to develop their capabilities into a new line of business--television production. However, theatrical release continued to be the major source of revenue. When video came along, the movie industry cried murder in the Sony Betamax case, but actually found it quite easy to work videocassettes into yet another release window, like television, and another medium, the made-for-video movie. Digital distribution affects the distribution of cultural artifacts as packaged goods for home consumption. It does not affect the social experience of going out to the movies. At most, it could affect the consumption of the twenty-year-old mode of movie distribution: videos and DVDs. As recently as the year 2000, when the Hollywood studios were litigating the DeCSS case, they represented to the court that home video sales were roughly 40 percent of revenue, a number consistent with other reports.~{ See 111 F.Supp.2d at 310, fns. 69-70; PBS Frontline report, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hollywood/business/windows.html. }~ The remainder, composed of theatrical release revenues and various television releases, remains reasonably unthreatened as a set of modes of revenue capture to sustain the high-production value, high-cost movies that typify Hollywood. Forty percent is undoubtedly a large chunk, but unlike ,{[pg 428]}, the recording industry, which began with individually owned recordings, the movie industry preexisted videocassettes and DVDs, and is likely to outlive them even if p2p networks were to eliminate that market entirely, which is doubtful. + +The harder and more interesting question is whether cheap high-quality digital video-capture and editing technologies combined with p2p networks for efficient distribution could make film a more diverse medium than it is now. The potential hypothetical promise of p2p networks like BitTorrent is that they could offer very robust and efficient distribution networks for films outside the mainstream industry. Unlike garage bands and small-scale music productions, however, this promise is as yet speculative. We do not invest in public education for film creation, as we do in the teaching of writing. Most of the raw materials out of which a culture of digital capture and amateur editing could develop are themselves under copyright, a subject we return to when considering the content layer. There are some early efforts, like atomfilms.com, at short movie distribution. The technological capabilities are there. It is possible that if films older than thirty or even fifty years were released into the public domain, they would form the raw material out of which a new cultural production practice would form. If it did, p2p networks would likely play an important role in their distribution. However, for now, although the sound recording and movie industries stand shoulder to shoulder in the lobbying efforts, their circumstances and likely trajectory in relation to file sharing are likely quite different. + +The battles over p2p and the DMCA offer some insight into the potential, but also the limits, of tweaking the institutional ecology. The ambition of the industrial cultural producers in both cases was significant. They sought to deploy law to shape emerging technologies and social practices to make sure that the business model they had adopted for the technologies of film and sound recording continued to work in the digital environment. Doing so effectively would require substantial elimination of certain lines of innovation, like certain kinds of decryption and p2p networks. It would require outlawing behavior widely adopted by people around the world--social sharing of most things that they can easily share--which, in the case of music, has been adopted by tens of millions of people around the world. The belief that all this could be changed in a globally interconnected network through the use of law was perhaps naïve. Nonetheless, the legal efforts have had some impact on social practices and on the ready availability of materials ,{[pg 429]}, for free use. The DMCA may not have made any single copyright protection mechanism hold up to the scrutiny of hackers and crackers around the Internet. However, it has prevented circumvention devices from being integrated into mainstream platforms, like the Windows operating system or some of the main antivirus programs, which would have been "natural" places for them to appear in consumer markets. The p2p litigation did not eliminate the p2p networks, but it does seem to have successfully dampened the social practice of file sharing. One can take quite different views of these effects from a policy perspective. However, it is clear that they are selfconscious efforts to tweak the institutional ecology of the digital environment in order to dampen the most direct threats it poses for the twentieth-century industrial model of cultural production. In the case of the DMCA, this is done at the direct cost of making it substantially harder for users to make creative use of the existing stock of audiovisual materials from the twentieth century--materials that are absolutely central to our cultural selfunderstanding at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the case of p2p networks, the cost to nonmarket production is more indirect, and may vary across different cultural forms. The most important long-term effect of the pressure that this litigation has put on technology to develop decentralized search and retrieval systems may, ultimately and ironically, be to improve the efficiency of radically decentralized cultural production and distribution, and make decentralized production more, rather than less, robust to the vicissitudes of institutional ecology. + +3~ The Domain Name System: From Public Trust to the Fetishism of Mnemonics +={ domain name system +5 ; + Internet : + Web addresses +5 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + domain name system +5 ; + Web : + domain name addresses +5 ; + wireless communications : + domain name addresses +5 +} + +Not all battles over the role of property-like arrangements at the logical layer originate from Hollywood and the recording industry. One of the major battles outside of the ambit of the copyright industries concerned the allocation and ownership of domain names. At stake was the degree to which brand name ownership in the material world could be leveraged into attention on the Internet. Domain names are alphanumeric mnemonics used to represent actual Internet addresses of computers connected to the network. While 130.132.51.8 is hard for human beings to remember, www.yale.edu is easier. The two strings have identical meaning to any computer connected to the Internet--they refer to a server that responds to World Wide Web queries for Yale University's main site. Every computer connected to the Internet has a unique address, either permanent or assigned by a provider ,{[pg 430]}, for the session. That requires that someone distribute addresses--both numeric and mnemonic. Until 1992, names and numbers were assigned on a purely first-come, first-served basis by Jon Postel, one of the very first developers of the Internet, under U.S. government contract. Postel also ran a computer, called the root server, to which all computers would turn to ask the numeric address of letters.mnemonic.edu, so they could translate what the human operator remembered as the address into one their machine could use. Postel called this system "the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, IANA," whose motto he set as, "Dedicated to preserving the central coordinating functions of the global Internet for the public good." In 1992, Postel got tired of this coordinating job, and the government contracted it to a private firm called Network Solutions, Inc., or NSI. As the number of applications grew, and as the administration sought to make this system pay for itself, NSI was allowed in 1995 to begin to charge fees for assigning names and numbers. At about the same time, widespread adoption of a graphical browser made using the World Wide Web radically simpler and more intuitive to the uninitiated. These two developments brought together two forces to bear on the domain name issue--each with a very different origin and intent. The first force consisted of the engineers who had created and developed the Internet, led by Postel, who saw the domain name space to be a public trust and resisted its commercialization by NSI. The second force consisted of trademark owners and their lawyers, who suddenly realized the potential for using control over domain names to extend the value of their brand names to a new domain of trade--e-commerce. These two forces placed the U.S. government under pressure to do two things: (1) release the monopoly that NSI--a for-profit corporation--had on the domain name space, and (2) find an efficient means of allowing trademark owners to control the use of alphanumeric strings used in their trademarks as domain names. Postel initially tried to "take back the root" by asking various regional domain name servers to point to his computer, instead of to the one maintained by NSI in Virginia. This caused uproar in the government, and Postel was accused of attacking and hijacking the Internet! His stature and passion, however, placed significant weight on the side of keeping the naming system as an open public trust. That position came to an abrupt end with his death in 1996. By late 1996, a self-appointed International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC) was formed, with the blessing of the Internet Society (ISOC), a professional membership society for individuals and organizations involved in Internet planning. IAHC's membership was about half intellectual property ,{[pg 431]}, lawyers and half engineers. In February 1997, IAHC came out with a document called the gTLD-MoU (generic top-level domain name memorandum of understanding). Although the product of a small group, the gTLD-MoU claimed to speak for "The Internet Community." Although it involved no governments, it was deposited "for signature" with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Dutifully, some 226 organizations--Internet services companies, telecommunications providers, consulting firms, and a few chapters of the ISOC signed on. Section 2 of the gTLD-MoU, announcing its principles, reveals the driving forces of the project. While it begins with the announcement that the top-level domain space "is a public resource and is subject to the public trust," it quickly commits to the principle that "the current and future Internet name space stakeholders can benefit most from a self-regulatory and market-oriented approach to Internet domain name registration services." This results in two policy principles: (1) commercial competition in domain name registration by releasing the monopoly NSI had, and (2) protecting trademarks in the alphanumeric strings that make up the second-level domain names. The final, internationalizing component of the effort--represented by the interests of the WIPO and ITU bureaucracies--was attained by creating a Council of Registrars as a Swiss corporation, and creating special relationships with the ITU and the WIPO. +={ IAHC (International Ad Hock Committee) ; + IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) ; + NSI (Network Solutions. Inc.) +1 ; + Postel, Jon ; + branding : + domain names and +4 ; + gTLD-MoU document ; + proprietary rights : + domain names +4 +} + +None of this institutional edifice could be built without the U.S. government. In early 1998, the administration responded to this ferment with a green paper, seeking the creation of a private, nonprofit corporation registered in the United States to take on management of the domain name issue. By its own terms, the green paper responded to concerns of the domain name registration monopoly and of trademark issues in domain names, first and foremost, and to some extent to increasing clamor from abroad for a voice in Internet governance. Despite a cool response from the European Union, the U.S. government proceeded to finalize a white paper and authorize the creation of its preferred model--the private, nonprofit corporation. Thus was born the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as a private, nonprofit California corporation. Over time, it succeeded in large measure in loosening NSI's monopoly on domain name registration. Its efforts on the trademark side effectively created a global preemptive property right. Following an invitation in the U.S. government's white paper for ICANN to study the proper approach to trademark enforcement in the domain name space, ICANN and WIPO initiated a process ,{[pg 432]}, that began in July 1998 and ended in April 1999. As Froomkin describes his experience as a public-interest expert in this process, the process feigned transparency and open discourse, but was in actuality an opaque staff-driven drafting effort.~{ A. M. Froomkin, "Semi-Private International Rulemaking: Lessons Learned from the WIPO Domain Name Process," http://www.personal.law.miami.edu/froomkin/articles/TPRC99.pdf. }~ The result was a very strong global property right available to trademark owners in the alphanumeric strings that make up domain names. This was supported by binding arbitration. Because it controlled the root server, ICANN could enforce its arbitration decisions worldwide. If ICANN decides that, say, the McDonald's fast-food corporation and not a hypothetical farmer named Old McDonald owned www.mcdonalds.com, all computers in the world would be referred to the corporate site, not the personal one. Not entirely satisfied with the degree to which the ICANNWIPO process protected their trademarks, some of the major trademark owners lobbied the U.S. Congress to pass an even stricter law. This law would make it easier for the owners of commercial brand names to obtain domain names that include their brand, whether or not there was any probability that users would actually confuse sites like the hypothetical Old McDonald's with that of the fast-food chain. +={ Froomkin, Michael ; + ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) +} + +The degree to which the increased appropriation of the domain name space is important is a function of the extent to which the cultural practice of using human memory to find information will continue to be widespread. The underlying assumption of the value of trademarked alphanumeric strings as second-level domain names is that users will approach electronic commerce by typing in "www.brandname.com" as their standard way of relating to information on the Net. This is far from obviously the most efficient solution. In physical space, where collecting comparative information on price, quality, and so on is very costly, brand names serve an important informational role. In cyberspace, where software can compare prices, and product-review services that link to vendors are easy to set up and cheap to implement, the brand name becomes an encumbrance on good information, not its facilitator. If users are limited, for instance, to hunting around as to whether information they seek is on www.brandname.com, www.brand_ name.com, or www.brand.net, name recognition from the real world becomes a bottleneck to e-commerce. And this is precisely the reason why owners of established marks sought to assure early adoption of trademarks in domain names--it assures users that they can, in fact, find their accustomed products on the Web without having to go through search algorithms that might expose them to comparison with pesky start-up competitors. As search engines become better and more tightly integrated into the basic ,{[pg 433]}, browser functionality, the idea that a user who wants to buy from Delta Airlines would simply type "www.delta.com," as opposed to plugging "delta airlines" into an integrated search toolbar and getting the airline as a first hit becomes quaint. However, quaint inefficient cultural practices can persist. And if this indeed is one that will persist, then the contours of the property right matter. As the law has developed over the past few years, ownership of a trademark that includes a certain alphanumeric string almost always gives the owner of the trademark a preemptive right in using the letters and numbers incorporated in that mark as a domain name. + +Domain name disputes have fallen into three main categories. There are cases of simple arbitrage. Individuals who predicted that having a domain name with the brand name in it would be valuable, registered such domain names aplenty, and waited for the flat-footed brand name owners to pay them to hand over the domain. There is nothing more inefficient about this form of arbitrage than any other. The arbitrageurs "reserved" commercially valuable names so they could be auctioned, rather than taken up by someone who might have a non-negotiable interest in the name--for example, someone whose personal name it was. These arbitrageurs were nonetheless branded pirates and hijackers, and the consistent result of all the cases on domain names has been that the corporate owners of brand names receive the domain names associated with their brands without having to pay the arbitrageurs. Indeed, the arbitrageurs were subject to damage judgments. A second kind of case involved bona fide holders of domain names that made sense for them, but were nonetheless shared with a famous brand name. One child nicknamed "Pokey" registered "pokey.org," and his battle to keep that name against a toy manufacturer that sold a toy called "pokey" became a poster child for this type of case. Results have been more mixed in this case, depending on how sympathetic the early registrant was. The third type of case--and in many senses, most important from the perspective of freedom to participate not merely as a consumer in the networked environment, but as a producer--involves those who use brand names to draw attention to the fact that they are attacking the owner of the brand. One well-known example occurred when Verizon Wireless was launched. The same hacker magazine involved in the DeCSS case, 2600, purchased the domain name "verizonreallysucks.com" to poke fun at Verizon. In response to a letter requiring that they give up the domain name, the magazine purchased the domain name "VerizonShouldSpendMoreTimeFixingItsNetworkAndLess MoneyOnLawyers.com." These types of cases have again met with varying ,{[pg 434]}, degrees of sympathy from courts and arbitrators under the ICANN process, although it is fairly obvious that using a brand name in order to mock and criticize its owner and the cultural meaning it tries to attach to its mark is at the very core of fair use, cultural criticism, and free expression. +={ arbitrage, domain names } + +The point here is not to argue for one type of answer or another in terms of trademark law, constitutional law, or the logic of ICANN. It is to identify points of pressure where the drive to create proprietary rights is creating points of control over the flow of information and the freedom to make meaning in the networked environment. The domain name issue was seen by many as momentous when it was new. ICANN has drawn a variety of both yearnings and fears as a potential source of democratic governance for the Internet or a platform for U.S. hegemony. I suspect that neither of these will turn out to be true. The importance of property rights in domain names is directly based on the search practices of users. Search engines, directories, review sites, and referrals through links play a large role in enabling users to find information they are interested in. Control over the domain name space is unlikely to provide a real bottleneck that will prevent both commercial competitors and individual speakers from drawing attention to their competition or criticism. However, the battle is indicative of the efforts to use proprietary rights in a particular element of the institutional ecology of the logical layer--trademarks in domain names--to tilt the environment in favor of the owners of famous brand names, and against individuals, noncommercial actors, and smaller, less-known competitors. + +3~ The Browser Wars +={ browsers +2 ; + Internet : + Web browsers +2 ; + Internet Explorer browser +2 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + Web browsers +2 ; + Microsoft Corporation : + browser wars +2 ; + Web : + browser wars +2 ; + wireless communications : + browser wars +2 +} + +A much more fundamental battle over the logical layer has occurred in the browser wars. Here, the "institutional" component is not formal institutions, like laws or regulations, but technical practice institutions--the standards for Web site design. Unlike on the network protocol side, the device side of the logical layer--the software running personal computers--was thoroughly property-based by the mid-1990s. Microsoft's dominance in desktop operating systems was well established, and there was strong presence of other software publishers in consumer applications, pulling the logical layer toward a proprietary model. In 1995, Microsoft came to perceive the Internet and particularly the World Wide Web as a threat to its control over the desktop. The user-side Web browser threatened to make the desktop a more open environment that would undermine its monopoly. Since that time, the two pulls--the openness of the nonproprietary network and the closed nature ,{[pg 435]}, of the desktop--have engaged in a fairly energetic tug-of-war over the digital environment. This push-me-pull-you game is played out both in the domain of market share, where Microsoft has been immensely successful, and in the domain of standard setting, where it has been only moderately successful. In market share, the story is well known and has been well documented in the Microsoft antitrust litigation. Part of the reason that it is so hard for a new operating system to compete with Microsoft's is that application developers write first, and sometimes only, for the already-dominant operating system. A firm investing millions of dollars in developing a new piece of photo-editing software will usually choose to write it so that it works with the operating system that has two hundred million users, not the one that has only fifteen million users. Microsoft feared that Netscape's browser, dominant in the mid-1990s, would come to be a universal translator among applications--that developers could write their applications to run on the browser, and the browser would handle translation across different operating systems. If that were to happen, Microsoft's operating system would have to compete on intrinsic quality. Windows would lose the boost of the felicitous feedback effect, where more users mean more applications, and this greater number of applications in turn draws more new users, and so forth. To prevent this eventuality, Microsoft engaged in a series of practices, ultimately found to have violated the antitrust laws, aimed at getting a dominant majority of Internet users to adopt Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). Illegal or not, these practices succeeded in making IE the dominant browser, overtaking the original market leader, Netscape, within a short number of years. By the time the antitrust case was completed, Netscape had turned browser development over to the open-source development community, but under licensing conditions sufficiently vague so that the project generated little early engagement. Only around 2001-2002, did the Mozilla browser development project get sufficient independence and security for developers to begin to contribute energetically. It was only in late 2004, early 2005, that Mozilla Firefox became the first major release of a free software browser that showed promise of capturing some user-share back from IE. +={ Netscape and browser wars } + +Microsoft's dominance over the operating system and browser has not, as a practical matter, resulted in tight control over the information flow and use on the Internet. This is so for three reasons. First, the TCP/IP protocol is more fundamental to Internet communications. It allows any application or content to run across the network, as long as it knows how to translate itself into very simple packets with standard addressing information. To prevent ,{[pg 436]}, applications from doing this over basic TCP/IP would make the Microsoft operating system substantially crippling to many applications developers, which brings us to the second reason. Microsoft's dominance depends to a great extent on the vastly greater library of applications available to run on Windows. To make this library possible, Microsoft makes available a wide range of application program interfaces that developers can use without seeking Microsoft's permission. As a strategic decision about what enhances its core dominance, Microsoft may tilt the application development arena in its favor, but not enough to make it too hard for most applications to be implemented on a Windows platform. While not nearly as open as a genuinely open-source platform, Windows is also a far cry from a completely controlled platform, whose owner seeks to control all applications that are permitted to be developed for, and all uses that can be made of, its platform. Third, while IE controls much of the browser market share, Microsoft has not succeeded in dominating the standards for Web authoring. Web browser standard setting happens on the turf of the mythic creator of the Web-- Tim Berners Lee. Lee chairs the W3C, a nonprofit organization that sets the standard ways in which Web pages are authored so that they have a predictable appearance on the browser's screen. Microsoft has, over the years, introduced various proprietary extensions that are not part of the Web standard, and has persuaded many Web authors to optimize their Web sites to IE. If it succeeds, it will have wrested practical control over standard setting from the W3C. However, as of this writing, Web pages generally continue to be authored using mostly standard, open extensions, and anyone browsing the Internet with a free software browser, like any of the Mozilla family, will be able to read and interact with most Web sites, including the major ecommerce sites, without encountering nonstandard interfaces optimized for IE. At a minimum, these sites are able to query the browser as to whether or not it is IE, and serve it with either the open standard or the proprietary standard version accordingly. + +3~ Free Software +={ free software : + policy on +1 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + free software policies +1 ; + open-source software : + policy on +1 ; + software, open-source : + policy on +1 +} + +The role of Mozilla in the browser wars points to the much more substantial and general role of the free software movement and the open-source development community as major sources of openness, and as a backstop against appropriation of the logical layer. In some of the most fundamental uses of the Internet--Web-server software, Web-scripting software, and e-mail servers--free or open-source software has a dominant user share. In others, like ,{[pg 437]}, the operating system, it offers a robust alternative sufficiently significant to prevent enclosure of an entire component of the logical layer. Because of its licensing structure and the fact that the technical specifications are open for inspection and use by anyone, free software offers the most completely open, commons-based institutional and organizational arrangement for any resource or capability in the digital environment. Any resource in the logical layer that is the product of a free software development project is institutionally designed to be available for nonmarket, nonproprietary strategies of use. The same openness, however, makes free software resistant to control. If one tries to implement a constraining implementation of a certain function--for example, an audio driver that will not allow music to be played without proper authorization from a copyright holder--the openness of the code for inspection will allow users to identify what, and how, the software is constraining. The same institutional framework will allow any developer to "fix" the problem and change the way the software behaves. This is how free and open-source software is developed to begin with. One cannot limit access to the software--for purposes of inspection and modification--to developers whose behavior can be controlled by contract or property and still have the software be "open source" or free. As long as free software can provide a fully implemented alternative to the computing functionalities users want, perfect enclosure of the logical layer is impossible. This openness is a boon for those who wish the network to develop in response to a wide range of motivations and practices. However, it presents a serious problem for anyone who seeks to constrain the range of uses made of the Internet. And, just as they did in the context of trusted systems, the incumbent industrial culture producers--Hollywood and the recording industry-- would, in fact, like to control how the Internet is used and how software behaves. + +3~ Software Patents +={ innovation : + software patents and +2 ; + proprietary rights : + software patents +2 ; + software : + patents for +2 +} + +Throughout most of its history, software has been protected primarily by copyright, if at all. Beginning in the early 1980s, and culminating formally in the late 1990s, the Federal Circuit, the appellate court that oversees the U.S. patent law, made clear that software was patentable. The result has been that software has increasingly become the subject of patent rights. There is now pressure for the European Union to pass a similar reform, and to internationalize the patentability of software more generally. There are a variety of policy questions surrounding the advisability of software patents. Software ,{[pg 438]}, development is a highly incremental process. This means that patents tend to impose a burden on a substantial amount of future innovation, and to reward innovation steps whose qualitative improvement over past contributions may be too small to justify the discontinuity represented by a patent grant. Moreover, innovation in the software business has flourished without patents, and there is no obvious reason to implement a new exclusive right in a market that seems to have been enormously innovative without it. Most important, software components interact with each other constantly. Sometimes interoperating with a certain program may be absolutely necessary to perform a function, not because the software is so good, but because it has become the standard. The patent then may extend to the very functionality, whereas a copyright would have extended only to the particular code by which it was achieved. The primary fear is that patents over standards could become major bottlenecks. + +From the perspective of the battle over the institutional ecology, free software and open-source development stand to lose the most from software patents. A patent holder may charge a firm that develops dependent software in order to capture rents. However, there is no obvious party to charge for free software development. Even if the patent owner has a very open licensing policy--say, licensing the patent nonexclusively to anyone without discrimination for $10,000--most free software developers will not be able to play. IBM and Red Hat may pay for licenses, but the individual contributor hacking away at his or her computer, will not be able to. The basic driver of free software innovation is easy ubiquitous access to the state of the art, coupled with diverse motivations and talents brought to bear on a particular design problem. If working on a problem requires a patent license, and if any new development must not only write new source code, but also avoid replicating a broad scope patent or else pay a large fee, then the conditions for free software development are thoroughly undermined. Free software is responsible for some of the most basic and widely used innovations and utilities on the Internet today. Software more generally is heavily populated by service firms that do not functionally rely on exclusive rights, copyrights, or patents. Neither free software nor service-based software development need patents, and both, particularly free and open-source software, stand to be stifled significantly by widespread software patenting. As seen in the case of the browser war, in the case of Gnutella, and the much more widely used basic utilities of the Web--Apache server software, a number of free e-mail servers, and the Perl scripting language--free and open-source ,{[pg 439]}, software developers provide central chunks of the logical layer. They do so in a way that leaves that layer open for anyone to use and build upon. The drive to increase the degree of exclusivity available for software by adopting patents over and above copyright threatens the continued vitality of this development methodology. In particular, it threatens to take certain discrete application areas that may require access to patented standard elements or protocols out of the domain of what can be done by free software. As such, it poses a significant threat to the availability of an open logical layer for at least some forms of network use. + +2~ THE CONTENT LAYER +={ content layer of institutional ecology +35 ; + layers of institutional ecology : + content layer +35 ; + policy layers : + content layer +35 +} + +The last set of resources necessary for information production and exchange is the universe of existing information, knowledge, and culture. The battle over the scope, breadth, extent, and enforcement of copyright, patent, trademarks, and a variety of exotic rights like trespass to chattels or the right to link has been the subject of a large legal literature. Instead of covering the entire range of enclosure efforts of the past decade or more, I offer a set of brief descriptions of the choices being made in this domain. The intention is not to criticize or judge the intrinsic logic of any of these legal changes, but merely to illustrate how all these toggles of institutional ecology are being set in favor of proprietary strategies, at the expense of nonproprietary producers. + +3~ Copyright +={ content layer of institutional ecology : + copyright issues +9 : + see also proprietary rights ; + copyright issues +9 ; + proprietary rights : + copyright issues +9 +} + +The first domain in which we have seen a systematic preference for commercial producers that rely on property over commons-based producers is in copyright. This preference arises from a combination of expansive interpretations of what rights include, a niggardly interpretive attitude toward users' privileges, especially fair use, and increased criminalization. These have made copyright law significantly more industrial-production friendly than it was in the past or than it need be from the perspective of optimizing creativity or welfare in the networked information economy, rather than rent-extraction by incumbents. + +/{Right to Read}/. Jessica Litman early diagnosed an emerging new "right to read."~{ Jessica Litman, "The Exclusive Right to Read," Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal 13 (1994): 29. }~ The basic right of copyright, to control copying, was never seen to include the right to control who reads an existing copy, when, and how ,{[pg 440]}, many times. Once a user bought a copy, he or she could read it many times, lend it to a friend, or leave it on the park bench or in the library for anyone else to read. This provided a coarse valve to limit the deadweight loss associated with appropriating a public good like information. As a happenstance of computer technology, reading on a screen involves making a temporary copy of a file onto the temporary memory of the computer. An early decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, MAI Systems, treated RAM (random-access memory) copies of this sort as "copies" for purposes of copyright.~{ /{MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc.}/, 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993). }~ This position, while weakly defended, was not later challenged or rejected by other courts. Its result is that every act of reading on a screen involves "making a copy" within the meaning of the Copyright Act. As a practical matter, this interpretation expands the formal rights of copyright holders to cover any and all computer-mediated uses of their works, because no use can be made with a computer without at least formally implicating the right to copy. More important than the formal legal right, however, this universal baseline claim to a right to control even simple reading of one's copyrighted work marked a change in attitude. Justified later through various claims--such as the efficiency of private ordering or of price discrimination--it came to stand for a fairly broad proposition: Owners should have the right to control all valuable uses of their works. Combined with the possibility and existence of technical controls on actual use and the DMCA's prohibition on circumventing those controls, this means that copyright law has shifted. It existed throughout most of its history as a regulatory provision that reserved certain uses of works for exclusive control by authors, but left other, not explicitly constrained uses free. It has now become a law that gives rights holders the exclusive right to control any computer-mediated use of their works, and captures in its regulatory scope all uses that were excluded from control in prior media. +={ Litman, Jessica ; + right to read +} + +/{Fair Use Narrowed}/. Fair use in copyright was always a judicially created concept with a large degree of uncertainty in its application. This uncertainty, coupled with a broader interpretation of what counts as a commercial use, a restrictive judicial view of what counts as fair, and increased criminalization have narrowed its practical scope. +={ fair use and copyright +2 } + +First, it is important to recognize that the theoretical availability of the fair-use doctrine does not, as a practical matter, help most productions. This is due to a combination of two factors: (1) fair-use doctrine is highly fact specific and uncertain in application, and (2) the Copyright Act provides ,{[pg 441]}, large fixed statutory damages, even if there is no actual damage to the copyright owner. Lessig demonstrated this effect most clearly by working through an example of a documentary film.~{ Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (New York: Penguin Press, 2004). }~ A film will not be distributed without liability insurance. Insurance, in turn, will not be issued without formal clearance, or permission, from the owner of each copyrighted work, any portion of which is included in the film, even if the amount used is trivially small and insignificant to the documentary. A five-second snippet of a television program that happened to play on a television set in the background of a sequence captured in documentary film can therefore prevent distribution of the film, unless the filmmaker can persuade the owner of that program to grant rights to use the materials. Copyright owners in such television programs may demand thousands of dollars for even such a minimal and incidental use of "their" images. This is not because a court would ultimately find that using the image as is, with the tiny fraction of the television program in the background, was not covered by fair use. It probably would be a fair use. It is because insurance companies and distributors would refuse to incur the risk of litigation. + +Second, in the past few years, even this uncertain scope has been constricted by expanding the definitions of what counts as interference with a market and what counts as a commercial use. Consider the Free Republic case. In that case, a political Web site offered a forum for users to post stories from various newspapers as grist for a political discussion of their contents or their slant. The court held that because newspapers may one day sell access to archived articles, and because some users may read some articles on the Web forum instead of searching and retrieving them from the newspapers' archive, the use interfered with a potential market. Moreover, because Free Republic received donations from users (although it did not require them) and exchanged advertising arrangements with other political sites, the court treated the site as a "commercial user," and its use of newspaper articles to facilitate political discussion of them "a commercial use." These factors enabled the court to hold that posting an article from a medium--daily newspapers--whose existence does not depend on copyright, in a way that may one day come to have an effect on uncertain future revenues, which in any case would be marginal to the business model of the newspapers, was not a fair use even when done for purposes of political commentary. + +/{Criminalization}/. Copyright enforcement has also been substantially criminalized in the past few years. Beginning with the No Electronic Theft Act ,{[pg 442]}, (NET Act) in 1997 and later incorporated into the DMCA, criminal copyright has recently become much more expansive than it was until a few years ago. Prior to passage of the NET Act, only commercial pirates--those that slavishly made thousands of copies of video or audiocassettes and sold them for profit--would have qualified as criminal violators of copyright. Criminal liability has now been expanded to cover private copying and free sharing of copyrighted materials whose cumulative nominal price (irrespective of actual displaced demand) is quite low. As criminal copyright law is currently written, many of the tens of millions using p2p networks are felons. It is one thing when the recording industry labels tens of millions of individuals in a society "pirates" in a rhetorical effort to conform social norms to its members' business model. It is quite another when the state brands them felons and fines or imprisons them. Litman has offered the most plausible explanation of this phenomenon.~{ Jessica Litman, "Electronic Commerce and Free Speech," Journal of Ethics and Information Technology 1 (1999): 213. }~ As the network makes low-cost production and exchange of information and culture easier, the large-scale commercial producers are faced with a new source of competition--volunteers, people who provide information and culture for free. As the universe of people who can threaten the industry has grown to encompass more or less the entire universe of potential customers, the plausibility of using civil actions to force individuals to buy rather than share information goods decreases. Suing all of one's intended customers is not a sustainable business model. In the interest of maintaining the business model that relies on control over information goods and their sale as products, the copyright industry has instead enlisted criminal enforcement by the state to prevent the emergence of such a system of free exchange. These changes in formal law have, in what is perhaps a more important development, been coupled with changes in the Justice Department's enforcement policy, leading to a substantial increase in the shadow of criminal enforcement in this area.~{ See Department of Justice Intellectual Property Policy and Programs, http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ippolicy.htm. }~ +={ criminalization of copyright infringement ; + No Electrical Theft (NET) Act +} + +/{Term Extension}/. The change in copyright law that received the most widespread public attention was the extension of copyright term in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. The statute became cause celebre in the early 2000s because it was the basis of a major public campaign and constitutional challenge in the case of /{Eldred v. Ashcroft}/.~{ /{Eldred v. Ashcroft}/, 537 U.S. 186 (2003). }~ The actual marginal burden of this statute on use of existing materials could be seen as relatively small. The length of copyright protection was already very long-- seventy-five years for corporate-owned materials, life of the author plus fifty for materials initially owned by human authors. The Sonny Bono Copyright ,{[pg 443]}, Term Extension Act increased these two numbers to ninety-five and life plus seventy, respectively. The major implication, however, was that the Act showed that retroactive extension was always available. As materials that were still valuable in the stocks of Disney, in particular, came close to the public domain, their lives would be extended indefinitely. The legal challenge to the statute brought to public light the fact that, as a practical matter, almost the entire stock of twentieth-century culture and beyond would stay privately owned, and its copyright would be renewed indefinitely. For video and sound recordings, this meant that almost the entire universe of materials would never become part of the public domain; would never be available for free use as inputs into nonproprietary production. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the retroactive extension. The inordinately long term of protection in the United States, initially passed under the pretext of "harmonizing" the length of protection in the United States and in Europe, is now being used as an excuse to "harmonize" the length of protection for various kinds of materials--like sound recordings--that actually have shorter terms of protection in Europe or other countries, like Australia. At stake in all these battles is the question of when, if ever, will Errol Flynn's or Mickey Mouse's movies, or Elvis's music, become part of the public domain? When will these be available for individual users on the same terms that Shakespeare or Mozart are available? The implication of Eldred is that they may never join the public domain, unless the politics of term-extension legislation change. +={ Eldred v. Ashcroft ; + Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 ; + term of copyright +} + +/{No de Minimis Digital Sampling}/. A narrower, but revealing change is the recent elimination of digital sampling from the universe of ex ante permissible actions, even when all that is taken is a tiny snippet. The case is recent and has not been generalized by other courts as of this writing. However, it offers insight into the mind-set of judges who are confronted with digital opportunities, and who in good faith continue to see the stakes as involving purely the organization of a commercial industry, rather than defining the comparative scope of commercial industry and nonmarket commons-based creativity. Courts seem blind to the effects of their decisions on the institutional ecology within which nonproprietary, individual, and social creation must live. In Bridgeport Music, Inc., the Sixth Circuit was presented with the following problem: The defendant had created a rap song.~{ /{Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films}/, 383 F.3d 390 (6th Cir.2004). }~ In making it, he had digitally copied a two-second guitar riff from a digital recording of a 1970s song, and then looped and inserted it in various places to create a completely different musical effect than the original. The district court ,{[pg 444]}, had decided that the amount borrowed was so small as to make the borrowing de minimis--too little for the law to be concerned with. The Court of Appeals, however, decided that it would be too burdensome for courts to have to decide, on a case-by-case basis, how much was too little for law to be concerned with. Moreover, it would create too much uncertainty for recording companies; it is, as the court put it, "cheaper to license than to litigate."~{ 383 F3d 390, 400. }~ The court therefore held that any digital sampling, no matter how trivial, could be the basis of a copyright suit. Such a bright-line rule that makes all direct copying of digital bits, no matter how small, an infringement, makes digital sound recordings legally unavailable for noncommercial, individually creative mixing. There are now computer programs, like Garage Band, that allow individual users to cut and mix existing materials to create their own music. These may not result in great musical compositions. But they may. That, in any event, is not their point. They allow users to have a very different relationship to recorded music than merely passively listening to finished, unalterable musical pieces. By imagining that the only parties affected by copyright coverage of sampling are recording artists who have contracts with recording studios and seek to sell CDs, and can therefore afford to pay licensing fees for every two-second riff they borrow, the court effectively outlawed an entire model of user creativity. Given how easy it is to cut, paste, loop, slow down, and speed up short snippets, and how creatively exhilarating it is for users--young and old--to tinker with creating musical compositions with instruments they do not know how to play, it is likely that the opinion has rendered illegal a practice that will continue, at least for the time being. Whether the social practice will ultimately cause the law to change or vice versa is more difficult to predict. +={ de minimis digital sampling ; + digital sampling ; + music industry : + digital sampling ; + sampling, digital (music) +} + +3~ Contractual Enclosure: Click-Wrap Licenses and the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) +={ click-wrap licenses +3 ; + context, cultural : + see culture cultural enclosure +3 ; + licensing : + shrink-wrap (contractual enclosure) +3 ; + proprietary rights : + contractual enclosure +3 ; + shrink-wrap licenses +3 ; + UCITA (Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act) +3 +} + +Practically all academic commentators on copyright law--whether critics or proponents of this provision or that--understand copyright to be a public policy accommodation between the goal of providing incentives to creators and the goal of providing efficiently priced access to both users and downstream creators. Ideally, it takes into consideration the social costs and benefits of one settlement or another, and seeks to implement an optimal tradeoff. Beginning in the 1980s, software and other digital goods were sold with "shrink-wrap licenses." These were licenses to use the software, which purported ,{[pg 445]}, to apply to mass-market buyers because the buyer would be deemed to have accepted the contract by opening the packaging of the software. These practices later transmuted online into click-wrap licenses familiar to most anyone who has installed software and had to click "I Agree" once or more before the software would install. Contracts are not bound by the balance struck in public law. Licensors can demand, and licensees can agree to, almost any terms. Among the terms most commonly inserted in such licenses that restrict the rights of users are prohibitions on reverse engineering, and restrictions on the use of raw data in compilations, even though copyright law itself does not recognize rights in data. As Mark Lemley showed, most courts prior to the mid-1990s did not enforce such terms.~{ Mark A. Lemley, "Intellectual Property and Shrinkwrap Licenses," Southern California Law Review 68 (1995): 1239, 1248-1253. }~ Some courts refused to enforce shrink-wrap licenses in mass-market transactions by relying on state contract law, finding an absence of sufficient consent or an unenforceable contract of adhesion. Others relied on federal preemption, stating that to the extent state contract law purported to enforce a contract that prohibited fair use or otherwise protected material in the public domain--like the raw information contained in a report--it was preempted by federal copyright law that chose to leave this material in the public domain, freely usable by all. In 1996, in /{ProCD v. Zeidenberg}/, the Seventh Circuit held otherwise, arguing that private ordering would be more efficient than a single public determination of what the right balance was.~{ 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996). }~ +={ Lemley, Mark ; + privatization : + ProCD v. Zeidenberg +} + +The following few years saw substantial academic debate as to the desirability of contractual opt-outs from the public policy settlement. More important, the five years that followed saw a concerted effort to introduce a new part to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC)--a model commercial law that, though nonbinding, is almost universally adopted at the state level in the United States, with some modifications. The proposed new UCC Article 2B was to eliminate the state law concerns by formally endorsing the use of standard shrink-wrap licenses. The proposed article generated substantial academic and political heat, ultimately being dropped by the American Law Institute, one of the main sponsors of the UCC. A model law did ultimately pass under the name of the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), as part of a less universally adopted model law effort. Only two states adopted the law--Virginia and Maryland. A number of other states then passed anti-UCITA laws, which gave their residents a safe harbor from having UCITA applied to their click-wrap transactions. +={ UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) } + +The reason that ProCD and UCITA generated so much debate was the concern that click-wrap licenses were operating in an inefficient market, and ,{[pg 446]}, that they were, as a practical matter, displacing the policy balance represented by copyright law. Mass-market transactions do not represent a genuine negotiated agreement, in the individualized case, as to what the efficient contours of permissions are for the given user and the given information product. They are, rather, generalized judgments by the vendor as to what terms are most attractive for it that the market will bear. Unlike rival economic goods, information goods sold at a positive price in reliance on copyright are, by definition, priced above marginal cost. The information itself is nonrival. Its marginal cost is zero. Any transaction priced above the cost of communication is evidence of some market power in the hands of the provider, used to price based on value and elasticity of demand, not on marginal cost. Moreover, the vast majority of users are unlikely to pay close attention to license details they consider to be boilerplate. This means there is likely significant information shortfall on the part of consumers as to the content of the licenses, and the sensitivity of demand to overreaching contract terms is likely low. This is not because consumers are stupid or slothful, but because the probability that either they would be able to negotiate out from under a standard provision, or a court would enforce against them a truly abusive provision is too low to justify investing in reading and arguing about contracts for all but their largest purchases. In combination, these considerations make it difficult to claim as a general matter that privately set licensing terms would be more efficient than the publicly set background rules of copyright law.~{ For a more complete technical explanation, see Yochai Benkler, "An Unhurried View of Private Ordering in Information Transactions," Vanderbilt Law Review 53 (2000): 2063. }~ The combination of mass-market contracts enforced by technical controls over use of digital materials, which in turn are protected by the DMCA, threatens to displace the statutorily defined public domain with a privately defined realm of permissible use.~{ James Boyle, "Cruel, Mean or Lavish? Economic Analysis, Price Discrimination and Digital Intellectual Property," Vanderbilt Law Review 53 (2000); Julie E. Cohen, "Copyright and the Jurisprudence of Self-Help," Berkeley Technology Law Journal 13 (1998): 1089; Niva Elkin-Koren, "Copyright Policy and the Limits of Freedom of Contract," Berkeley Technology Law Journal 12 (1997): 93. }~ This privately defined settlement would be arrived at in non-negotiated mass-market transactions, in the presence of significant information asymmetries between consumers and vendors, and in the presence of systematic market power of at least some degree. + +3~ Trademark Dilution +={ branding : + trademark dilutation +4 ; + dilutation of trademarks +4 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + trademark dilutation +4 ; + proprietary rights : + trademark dilutation +4 ; + trademark dilutation +4 +} + +As discussed in chapter 8, the centrality of commercial interaction to social existence in early-twenty-first-century America means that much of our core iconography is commercial in origin and owned as a trademark. Mickey, Barbie, Playboy, or Coke are important signifiers of meaning in contemporary culture. Using iconography is a central means of creating rich, culturally situated expressions of one's understanding of the world. Yet, as Boyle ,{[pg 447]}, has pointed out, now that we treat flag burning as a constitutionally protected expression, trademark law has made commercial icons the sole remaining venerable objects in our law. Trademark law permits the owners of culturally significant images to control their use, to squelch criticism, and to define exclusively the meaning that the symbols they own carry. +={ Boyle, James } + +Three factors make trademark protection today more of a concern as a source of enclosure than it might have been in the past. First is the introduction of the federal Anti-Dilution Act of 1995. Second is the emergence of the brand as the product, as opposed to a signifier for the product. Third is the substantial reduction in search and other information costs created by the Net. Together, these three factors mean that owned symbols are becoming increasingly important as cultural signifiers, are being enclosed much more extensively than before precisely as cultural signifiers, and with less justification beyond the fact that trademarks, like all exclusive rights, are economically valuable to their owners. +={ Antidilutation Act of 1995 +2 } + +In 1995, Congress passed the first federal Anti-Dilution Act. Though treated as a trademark protection law, and codifying doctrines that arose in trademark common law, antidilution is a fundamentally different economic right than trademark protection. Traditional trademark protection is focused on preventing consumer confusion. It is intended to assure that consumers can cheaply tell the difference between one product and another, and to give producers incentives to create consistent quality products that can be associated with their trademark. Trademark law traditionally reflected these interests. Likelihood of consumer confusion was the sine qua non of trademark infringement. If I wanted to buy a Coca-Cola, I did not want to have to make sure I was not buying a different dark beverage in a red can called Coca-Gola. Infringement actions were mostly limited to suits among competitors in similar relevant markets, where confusion could occur. So, while trademark law restricted how certain symbols could be used, it was so only as among competitors, and only as to the commercial, not cultural, meaning of their trademark. The antidilution law changes the most relevant factors. It is intended to protect famous brand names, irrespective of a likelihood of confusion, from being diluted by use by others. The association between a particular corporation and a symbol is protected for its value to that corporation, irrespective of the use. It no longer regulates solely competitors to the benefit of competition. It prohibits many more possible uses of the symbol than was the case under traditional trademark law. It applies even to noncommercial users where there is no possibility of confusion. The emergence ,{[pg 448]}, of this antidilution theory of exclusivity is particularly important as brands have become the product itself, rather than a marker for the product. Nike and Calvin Klein are examples: The product sold in these cases is not a better shoe or shirt--the product sold is the brand. And the brand is associated with a cultural and social meaning that is developed purposefully by the owner of the brand so that people will want to buy it. This development explains why dilution has become such a desirable exclusive right for those who own it. It also explains the cost of denying to anyone the right to use the symbol, now a signifier of general social meaning, in ways that do not confuse consumers in the traditional trademark sense, but provide cultural criticism of the message signified. + +Ironically, the increase in the power of trademark owners to control uses of their trademark comes at a time when its functional importance as a mechanism for reducing search costs is declining. Traditional trademark's most important justification was that it reduced information collection costs and thereby facilitated welfare-enhancing trade. In the context of the Internet, this function is significantly less important. General search costs are lower. Individual items in commerce can provide vastly greater amounts of information about their contents and quality. Users can use machine processing to search and sift through this information and to compare views and reviews of specific items. Trademark has become less, rather than more, functionally important as a mechanism for dealing with search costs. When we move in the next few years to individual-item digital marking, such as with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, all the relevant information about contents, origin, and manufacture down to the level of the item, as opposed to the product line, will be readily available to consumers in real space, by scanning any given item, even if it is not otherwise marked at all. In this setting, where the information qualities of trademarks will significantly decline, the antidilution law nonetheless assures that owners can control the increasingly important cultural meaning of trademarks. Trademark, including dilution, is subject to a fair use exception like that of copyright. For the same reasons as operated in copyright, however, the presence of such a doctrine only ameliorates, but does not solve, the limits that a broad exclusive right places on the capacity of nonmarket-oriented creative uses of materials--in this case, culturally meaningful symbols. ,{[pg 449]}, + +3~ Database Protection +={ database protection +3 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + database protection +3 ; + proprietary rights : + database protection +3 ; + raw data : + database protection +3 +} + +In 1991, in /{Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co.}/, the Supreme Court held that raw facts in a compilation, or database, were not covered by the Copyright Act. The constitutional clause that grants Congress the power to create exclusive rights for authors, the Court held, required that works protected were original with the author. The creative element of the compilation--its organization or selectivity, for example, if sufficiently creative-- could therefore be protected under copyright law. However, the raw facts compiled could not. Copying data from an existing compilation was therefore not "piracy"; it was not unfair or unjust; it was purposefully privileged in order to advance the goals of the constitutional power to make exclusive grants--the advancement of progress and creative uses of the data.~{ /{Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc.}/, 499 U.S. 340, 349-350 (1991). }~ A few years later, the European Union passed a Database Directive, which created a discrete and expansive right in raw data compilations.~{ Directive No. 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases, 1996 O.J. (L 77) 20. }~ The years since the Court decided Feist have seen repeated efforts by the larger players in the database publishing industry to pass similar legislation in the United States that would, as a practical matter, overturn Feist and create exclusive private rights in the raw data in compilations. "Harmonization" with Europe has been presented as a major argument in favor of this law. Because the Feist Court based its decision on limits to the constitutional power to create exclusive rights in raw information, efforts to protect database providers mostly revolved around an unfair competition law, based in the Commerce Clause, rather than on precisely replicating the European right. In fact, however, the primary draft that has repeatedly been introduced walks, talks, and looks like a property right. +={ Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co. +1 ; + Database Directive +1 +} + +Sustained and careful work, most prominently by Jerome Reichman and Paul Uhlir, has shown that the proposed database right is unnecessary and detrimental, particularly to scientific research.~{ J. H. Reichman and Paul F. Uhlir, "Database Protection at the Crossroads: Recent Developments and Their Impact on Science and Technology," Berkeley Technology Law Journal 14 (1999): 793; Stephen M. Maurer and Suzanne Scotchmer, "Database Protection: Is It Broken and Should We Fix It?" Science 284 (1999): 1129. }~ Perhaps no example explains this point better than the "natural experiment" that Boyle has pointed to, and which the United States and Europe have been running over the past decade or so. The United States has formally had no exclusive right in data since 1991. Europe has explicitly had such a right since 1996. One would expect that both the European Union and the United States would look to the comparative effects on the industries in both places when the former decides whether to keep its law, and the latter decides whether to adopt one like it. The evidence is reasonably consistent and persuasive. Following the Feist decision, the U.S. database industry continued to grow steadily, without ,{[pg 450]}, a blip. The "removal" of the property right in data by Feist had no effect on growth. Europe at the time had a much smaller database industry than did the United States, as measured by the number of databases and database companies. Maurer, Hugenholz, and Onsrud showed that, following the introduction of the European sui generis right, each country saw a one-time spike in the number of databases and new database companies, but this was followed within a year or two by a decline to the levels seen before the Directive, which have been fairly stagnant since the early 1990s.~{ See Stephen M. Maurer, P. Bernt Hugenholtz, and Harlan J. Onsrud, "Europe's Database Experiment," Science 294 (2001): 789; Stephen M. Maurer, "Across Two Worlds: Database Protection in the U.S. and Europe," paper prepared for Industry Canada's Conference on Intellectual Property and Innovation in the KnowledgeBased Economy, May 23-24 2001. }~ Another study, more specifically oriented toward the appropriate policy for government-collected data, compared the practices of Europe--where government agencies are required to charge what the market will bear for access to data they collect--and the United States, where the government makes data it collects freely available at the cost of reproduction, as well as for free on the Web. That study found that the secondary uses of data, including commercial- and noncommercial-sector uses--such as, for example, markets in commercial risk management and meteorological services--contributed vastly more to the economy of the United States because of secondary uses of freely accessed government weather data than equivalent market sectors in Europe were able to contribute to their respective economies.~{ Peter Weiss, "Borders in Cyberspace: Conflicting Public Sector Information Policies and their Economic Impacts" (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, February 2002). }~ The evidence suggests, then, that the artificial imposition of rents for proprietary data is suppressing growth in European market-based commercial services and products that rely on access to data, relative to the steady growth in the parallel U.S. markets, where no such right exists. It is trivial to see that a cost structure that suppresses growth among market-based entities that would at least partially benefit from being able to charge more for their outputs would have an even more deleterious effect on nonmarket information production and exchange activities, which are burdened by the higher costs and gain no benefit from the proprietary rights. +={ Reichman, Jerome ; + Uhlir, Paul +} + +There is, then, mounting evidence that rights in raw data are unnecessary to create a basis for a robust database industry. Database manufacturers rely on relational contracts--subscriptions to continuously updated databases-- rather than on property-like rights. The evidence suggests that, in fact, exclusive rights are detrimental to various downstream industries that rely on access to data. Despite these fairly robust observations from a decade of experience, there continues to be a threat that such a law will pass in the U.S. Congress. This continued effort to pass such a law underscores two facts. First, much of the legislation in this area reflects rent seeking, rather than reasoned policy. Second, the deeply held belief that "more property-like ,{[pg 451]}, rights will lead to more productivity" is hard to shake, even in the teeth of both theoretical analysis and empirical evidence to the contrary. + +3~ Linking and Trespass to Chattels: New Forms of Information Exclusivity +={ database protection : + trespass to chattels +4 ; + eBay v. Bidder's Edge +4 ; + hyperlinking on the Web : + as trespass +4 ; + Internet : + linking as trespass +4 ; + linking on the Web : + as trespass +4 ; + network topology : + linking as trespass +4 ; + proprietary rights : + trespass to chattels +4 ; + referencing on the Web : + linking as trespass +4 ; + structure of network : + linking as trespass +4 ; + topology, network : + linking as trespass +4 ; + trespass to chattels +4 ; + Web : + linking as trespass +4 ; + wireless communications : + linking as trespass +4 +} + +Some litigants have turned to state law remedies to protect their data indirectly, by developing a common-law, trespass-to-server form of action. The primary instance of this trend is /{eBay v. Bidder's Edge}/, a suit by the leading auction site against an aggregator site. Aggregators collect information about what is being auctioned in multiple locations, and make the information about the items available in one place so that a user can search eBay and other auction sites simultaneously. The eventual bidding itself is done on the site that the item's owner chose to make his or her item available, under the terms required by that site. The court held that the automated information collection process--running a computer program that automatically requests information from the server about what is listed on it, called a spider or a bot--was a "trespass to chattels."~{ /{eBay, Inc. v. Bidder's Edge, Inc.}/, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13326 (N.D.Cal. 2000). }~ This ancient form of action, originally intended to apply to actual taking or destruction of goods, mutated into a prohibition on unlicensed automated searching. The injunction led to Bidder's Edge closing its doors before the Ninth Circuit had an opportunity to review the decision. A common-law decision like /{eBay v. Bidder's Edge}/ creates a common-law exclusive private right in information by the back door. In principle, the information itself is still free of property rights. Reading it mechanically--an absolute necessity given the volume of the information and its storage on magnetic media accessible only by mechanical means--can, however, be prohibited as "trespass." The practical result would be equivalent to some aspects of a federal exclusive private right in raw data, but without the mitigating attributes of any exceptions that would be directly introduced into legislation. It is still too early to tell whether cases such as these ultimately will be considered preempted by federal copyright law,~{ The preemption model could be similar to the model followed by the Second Circuit in /{NBA v. Motorola}/, 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997), which restricted state misappropriation claims to narrow bounds delimited by federal policy embedded in the Copyright Act. This might require actual proof that the bots have stopped service, or threaten the service's very existence. }~ or perhaps would be limited by first amendment law on the model of /{New York Times v. Sullivan}/.~{ /{New York Times v. Sullivan}/, 376 U.S. 254, 266 (1964). }~ + +Beyond the roundabout exclusivity in raw data, trespass to chattels presents one instance of a broader question that is arising in application of both common-law and statutory provisions. At stake is the legal control over information about information, like linking and other statements people make about the availability and valence of some described information. Linking--the mutual pointing of many documents to each other--is the very ,{[pg 452]}, core idea of the World Wide Web. In a variety of cases, parties have attempted to use law to control the linking practices of others. The basic structure of these cases is that A wants to tell users M and N about information presented by B. The meaning of a link is, after all, "here you can read information presented by someone other than me that I deem interesting or relevant to you, my reader." Someone, usually B, but possibly some other agent C, wants to control what M and N know or do with regard to the information B is presenting. B (or C) then sues A to prevent A from linking to the information on B's site. + +The simplest instance of such a case involved a service that Microsoft offered--sidewalk.com--that provided access to, among other things, information on events in various cities. If a user wanted a ticket to the event, the sidewalk site linked that user directly to a page on ticketmaster.com where the user could buy a ticket. Ticketmaster objected to this practice, preferring instead that sidewalk.com link to its home page, in order to expose the users to all the advertising and services Ticketmaster provided, rather than solely to the specific service sought by the user referred by sidewalk .com. At stake in these linking cases is who will control the context in which certain information is presented. If deep linking is prohibited, Ticketmaster will control the context--the other movies or events available to be seen, their relative prominence, reviews, and so forth. The right to control linking then becomes a right to shape the meaning and relevance of one's statements for others. If the choice between Ticketmaster and Microsoft as controllers of the context of information may seem of little normative consequence, it is important to recognize that the right to control linking could easily apply to a local library, or church, or a neighbor as they participate in peer-producing relevance and accreditation of the information to which they link. +={ Microsoft Corporation : + sidewalk.com ; + sidewalk.com ; + Ticketmaster +} + +The general point is this: On the Internet, there are a variety of ways that some people can let others know about information that exists somewhere on the Web. In doing so, these informers loosen someone else's control over the described information--be it the government, a third party interested in limiting access to the information, or the person offering the information. In a series of instances over the past half decade or more we have seen attempts by people who control certain information to limit the ability of others to challenge that control by providing information about the information. These are not cases in which a person without access to information is seeking affirmative access from the "owner" of information. These are ,{[pg 453]}, cases where someone who dislikes what another is saying about particular information is seeking the aid of law to control what other parties can say to each other about that information. Understood in these terms, the restrictive nature of these legal moves in terms of how they burden free speech in general, and impede the freedom of anyone, anywhere, to provide information, relevance, and accreditation, becomes clear. The /{eBay v. Bidder's Edge}/ case suggests one particular additional aspect. While much of the political attention focuses on formal "intellectual property"?style statutes passed by Congress, in the past few years we have seen that state law and common-law doctrine are also being drafted to create areas of exclusivity and boundaries on the free use of information. These efforts are often less well informed, and because they were arrived at ad hoc, often without understanding that they are actually forms of regulating information production and exchange, they include none of the balancing privileges or limitations of rights that are so common in the formal statutory frameworks. + +3~ International "Harmonization" +={ global development : + international harmonization +5 ; + harmonization, international +5 ; + international harmonization +5 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + international harmonization +5 ; + policy : + international harmonization +5 ; + proprietary rights : + international harmonization +5 +} + +One theme that has repeatedly appeared in the discussion of databases, the DMCA, and term extension, is the way in which "harmonization" and internationalization of exclusive rights are used to ratchet up the degree of exclusivity afforded rights holders. It is trite to point out that the most advanced economies in the world today are information and culture exporters. This is true of both the United States and Europe. Some of the cultural export industries--most notably Hollywood, the recording industry, some segments of the software industry, and pharmaceuticals--have business models that rely on the assertion of exclusive rights in information. Both the United States and the European Union, therefore, have spent the past decade and a half pushing for ever-more aggressive and expansive exclusive rights in international agreements and for harmonization of national laws around the world toward the highest degrees of protection. Chapter 9 discusses in some detail why this was not justified as a matter of economic rationality, and why it is deleterious as a matter of justice. Here, I only note the characteristic of internationalization and harmonization as a one-way ratchet toward ever-expanding exclusivity. + +Take a simple provision like the term of copyright protection. In the mid1990s, Europe was providing for many works (but not all) a term of life of the author plus seventy years, while the United States provided exclusivity for the life of the author plus fifty. A central argument for the Sonny Bono ,{[pg 454]}, Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was to "harmonize" with Europe. In the debates leading up to the law, one legislator actually argued that if our software manufacturers had a shorter term of copyright, they would be disadvantaged relative to the European firms. This argument assumes, of course, that U.S. software firms could stay competitive in the software business by introducing nothing new in software for seventy-five years, and that it would be the loss of revenues from products that had not been sufficiently updated for seventy-five years to warrant new copyright that would place them at a disadvantage. The newly extended period created by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is, however, longer in some cases than the protection afforded in Europe. Sound recordings, for example, are protected for fifty years in Europe. The arguments are now flowing in the opposite direction--harmonization toward the American standard for all kinds of works, for fear that the recordings of Elvis or the Beatles will fall into the European public domain within a few paltry years. "Harmonization" is never invoked to de-escalate exclusivity--for example, as a reason to eliminate the European database right in order to harmonize with the obviously successful American model of no protection, or to shorten the length of protection for sound recordings in the United States. +={ Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 ; + term of copyright +1 ; + trade policy +1 +} + +International agreements also provide a fertile forum for ratcheting up protection. Lobbies achieve a new right in a given jurisdiction--say an extension of term, or a requirement to protect technological protection measures on the model of the DMCA. The host country, usually the United States, the European Union, or both, then present the new right for treaty approval, as the United States did in the context of the WIPO treaties in the mid-1990s. Where this fails, the United States has more recently begun to negotiate bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) with individual nations. The structure of negotiation is roughly as follows: The United States will say to Thailand, or India, or whoever the trading partner is: If you would like preferential treatment of your core export, say textiles or rice, we would like you to include this provision or that in your domestic copyright or patent law. Once this is agreed to in a number of bilateral FTAs, the major IP exporters can come back to the multilateral negotiations and claim an emerging international practice, which may provide more exclusivity than their then applicable domestic law. With changes to international treaties in hand, domestic resistance to legislation can be overcome, as we saw in the United States when the WIPO treaties were used to push through Congress the DMCA anticircumvention provisions that had failed to pass two years ,{[pg 455]}, earlier. Any domestic efforts to reverse and limit exclusivity then have to overcome substantial hurdles placed by the international agreements, like the agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). The difficulty of amending international agreements to permit a nation to decrease the degree of exclusivity it grants copyright or patent holders becomes an important one-way ratchet, preventing de-escalation. + +3~ Countervailing Forces + +As this very brief overview demonstrates, most of the formal institutional moves at the content layer are pushing toward greater scope and reach for exclusive rights in the universe of existing information, knowledge, and cultural resources. The primary countervailing forces in the content layer are similar to the primary countervailing forces in the logical layer--that is, social and cultural push-back against exclusivity. Recall how central free software and the open, cooperative, nonproprietary standard-setting processes are to the openness of the logical layer. In the content layer, we are seeing the emergence of a culture of free creation and sharing developing as a countervailing force to the increasing exclusivity generated by the public, formal lawmaking system. The Public Library of Science discussed in chapter 9 is an initiative of scientists who, frustrated with the extraordinarily high journal costs for academic journals, have begun to develop systems for scientific publication whose outputs are immediately and freely available everywhere. The Creative Commons is an initiative to develop a series of licenses that allow individuals who create information, knowledge, and culture to attach simple licenses that define what others may, or may not, do with their work. The innovation represented by these licenses relative to the background copyright system is that they make it trivial for people to give others permission to use their creations. Before their introduction, there were no widely available legal forms to make it clear to the world that it is free to use my work, with or without restrictions. More important than the institutional innovation of Creative Commons is its character as a social movement. Under the moniker of the "free culture" movement, it aims to encourage widespread adoption of sharing one's creations with others. What a mature movement like the free software movement, or nascent movements like the free culture movement and the scientists' movement for open publication and open archiving are aimed at is the creation of a legally selfreinforcing domain of open cultural sharing. They do not negate propertylike rights in information, knowledge, and culture. Rather, they represent a ,{[pg 456]}, self-conscious choice by their participants to use copyrights, patents, and similar rights to create a domain of resources that are free to all for common use. +={ Creative Commons initiative } + +Alongside these institutionally instantiated moves to create a selfreinforcing set of common resources, there is a widespread, global culture of ignoring exclusive rights. It is manifest in the widespread use of file-sharing software to share copyrighted materials. It is manifest in the widespread acclaim that those who crack copy-protection mechanisms receive. This culture has developed a rhetoric of justification that focuses on the overreaching of the copyright industries and on the ways in which the artists themselves are being exploited by rights holders. While clearly illegal in the United States, there are places where courts have sporadically treated participation in these practices as copying for private use, which is exempted in some countries, including a number of European countries. In any event the sheer size of this movement and its apparent refusal to disappear in the face of lawsuits and public debate present a genuine countervailing pressure against the legal tightening of exclusivity. As a practical matter, efforts to impose perfect private ordering and to limit access to the underlying digital bits in movies and songs through technical means have largely failed under the sustained gaze of the community of computer scientists and hackers who have shown its flaws time and again. Moreover, the mechanisms developed in response to a large demand for infringing file-sharing utilities were the very mechanisms that were later available to the Swarthmore students to avoid having the Diebold files removed from the Internet and that are shared by other censorship-resistant publication systems. The tools that challenge the "entertainment-as-finished-good" business model are coming into much wider and unquestionably legitimate use. Litigation may succeed in dampening use of these tools for copying, but also creates a heightened political awareness of information-production regulation. The same students involved in the Diebold case, radicalized by the lawsuit, began a campus "free culture" movement. It is difficult to predict how this new political awareness will play out in a political arena--the making of copyrights, patents, and similar exclusive rights--that for decades has functioned as a technical backwater that could never invoke a major newspaper editorial, and was therefore largely controlled by the industries whose rents it secured. ,{[pg 457]}, + +2~ THE PROBLEM OF SECURITY +={ commercial model of communication : + security-related policy +4 ; + free software : + security considerations +4 ; + industrial model of communication : + security-related policy +4 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + security-related policy +4 ; + open-source software : + security considerations +4 ; + policy : + security-related +4 ; + security-related policy +4 ; + software, open-source : + security considerations +4 ; + traditional model of communication : + security-related policy +4 +} + +This book as a whole is dedicated to the emergence of commons-based information production and its implications for liberal democracies. Of necessity, the emphasis of this chapter too is on institutional design questions that are driven by the conflict between the industrial and networked information economies. Orthogonal to this conflict, but always relevant to it, is the perennial concern of communications policy with security and crime. Throughout much of the 1990s, this concern manifested primarily as a conflict over encryption. The "crypto-wars," as they were called, revolved around the FBI's efforts to force industry to adopt technology that had a backdoor-- then called the "Clipper Chip"--that would facilitate wiretapping and investigation. After retarding encryption adoption in the United States for almost a decade, the federal government ultimately decided that trying to hobble security in most American systems (that is, forcing everyone to adopt weaker encryption) in order to assure that the FBI could better investigate the failures of security that would inevitably follow use of such weak encryption was a bad idea. The fact that encryption research and business was moving overseas--giving criminals alternative sources for obtaining excellent encryption tools while the U.S. industry fell behind--did not help the FBI's cause. The same impulse is to some extent at work again, with the added force of the post-9/11 security mind-set. +={ encryption +1 ; + file-sharing networks : + security considerations +1 +} + +One concern is that open wireless networks are available for criminals to hide their tracks--the criminal uses someone else's Internet connection using their unencrypted WiFi access point, and when the authorities successfully track the Internet address back to the WiFi router, they find an innocent neighbor rather than the culprit. This concern has led to some proposals that manufacturers of WiFi routers set their defaults so that, out of the box, the router is encrypted. Given how "sticky" defaults are in technology products, this would have enormously deleterious effects on the development of open wireless networks. Another concern is that free and open-source software reveals its design to anyone who wants to read it. This makes it easier to find flaws that could be exploited by attackers and nearly impossible to hide purposefully designed weaknesses, such as susceptibility to wiretapping. A third is that a resilient, encrypted, anonymous peer-to-peer network, like FreeNet or some of the major p2p architectures, offers the criminals or terrorists communications systems that are, for all practical purposes, beyond the control of law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts. To the extent ,{[pg 458]}, that they take this form, security concerns tend to support the agenda of the proprietary producers. +={ open wireless networks : + security +1 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology : + peer-to-peer networks +1 ; + p2p networks : + security considerations ; + peer-to-peer networks : + security considerations ; + network topology : + peer-to-peer networks ; + structure of network : + peer-to-peer networks ; + topology, network : + peer-to-peer networks +} + +However, security concerns need not support proprietary architectures and practices. On the wireless front, there is a very wide range of anonymization techniques available for criminals and terrorists who use the Internet to cover their tracks. The marginally greater difficulty that shutting off access to WiFi routers would impose on determined criminals bent on covering their tracks is unlikely to be worth the loss of an entire approach toward constructing an additional last-mile loop for local telecommunications. One of the core concerns of security is the preservation of network capacity as a critical infrastructure. Another is assuring communications for critical security personnel. Open wireless networks that are built from ad hoc, self-configuring mesh networks are the most robust design for a local communications loop currently available. It is practically impossible to disrupt local communications in such a network, because these networks are designed so that each router will automatically look for the next available neighbor with which to make a network. These systems will self-heal in response to any attack on communications infrastructure as a function of their basic normal operational design. They can then be available both for their primary intended critical missions and for first responders as backup data networks, even when main systems have been lost--as they were, in fact, lost in downtown Manhattan after the World Trade Center attack. To imagine that security is enhanced by eliminating the possibility that such a backup local communications network will emerge in exchange for forcing criminals to use more anonymizers and proxy servers instead of a neighbor's WiFi router requires a very narrow view of security. Similarly, the same ease of study that makes flaws in free software observable to potential terrorists or criminals makes them available to the community of developers, who quickly shore up the defenses of the programs. Over the past decade, security flaws in proprietary programs, which are not open to inspection by such large numbers of developers and testers, have been much more common than security breaches in free software. Those who argue that proprietary software is more secure and allows for better surveillance seem to be largely rehearsing the thought process that typified the FBI's position in the Clipper Chip debate. +={ capacity : + securing +} + +More fundamentally, the security concerns represent a lack of ease with the great freedom enabled by the networked information environment. Some of the individuals who can now do more alone and in association with others want to do harm to the United States in particular, and to advanced liberal ,{[pg 459]}, market-based democracies more generally. Others want to trade Nazi memorabilia or child pornography. Just as the Internet makes it harder for authoritarian regimes to control their populations, so too the tremendous openness and freedom of the networked environment requires new ways of protecting open societies from destructive individuals and groups. And yet, particularly in light of the systematic and significant benefits of the networked information economy and its sharing-based open production practices to the core political commitments of liberal democracies, preserving security in these societies by eliminating the technologies that can support improvements in the very freedom being protected is perverse. Given Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, however, squelching the emergence of an open networked environment and economy hardly seems to be the most glaring of self-defeating moves in the war to protect freedom and human dignity in liberal societies. It is too early to tell whether the security urge will ultimately weigh in on the side of the industrial information economy incumbents, or will instead follow the path of the crypto-wars, and lead security concerns to support the networked information economy's ability to provide survivable, redundant, and effective critical infrastructures and information production and exchange capabilities. If the former, this impulse may well present a formidable obstacle to the emergence of an open networked information environment. ,{[pg 460]}, + +1~ Chapter 12 - Conclusion: The Stakes of Information Law and Policy +={ commercial model of communication : + stakes of information policy +21 ; + industrial model of communication : + stakes of information policy +21 ; + institutional ecology of digital environment : + stakes of information policy +21 ; + policy : + stakes of +21 ; + stakes of information policy +21 ; + traditional model of communication : + stakes of information policy +21 +} + +Complex modern societies have developed in the context of mass media and industrial information economy. Our theories of growth and innovation assume that industrial models of innovation are dominant. Our theories about how effective communications in complex societies are achieved center on market-based, proprietary models, with a professional commercial core and a dispersed, relatively passive periphery. Our conceptions of human agency, collective deliberation, and common culture in these societies are embedded in the experience and practice of capital-intensive information and cultural production practices that emphasize proprietary, market-based models and starkly separate production from consumption. Our institutional frameworks reflect these conceptual models of information production and exchange, and have come, over the past few years, to enforce these conceptions as practiced reality, even when they need not be. +={ proprietary rights : + dominance of, overstated +2 +} + +This book began with four economic observations. First, the baseline conception that proprietary strategies are dominant in our information production system is overstated. The education system, ,{[pg 461]}, from kindergarten to doctoral programs, is thoroughly infused with nonproprietary motivations, social relations, and organizational forms. The arts and sciences are replete with voluntarism and actions oriented primarily toward social-psychological motivations rather than market appropriation. Political and theological discourses are thoroughly based in nonmarket forms and motivations. Perhaps most surprisingly, even industrial research and development, while market oriented, is in most industries not based on proprietary claims of exclusion, but on improved efficiencies and customer relations that can be captured and that drive innovation, without need for proprietary strategies of appropriation. Despite the continued importance of nonproprietary production in information as a practical matter, the conceptual nuance required to acknowledge its importance ran against the grain of the increasingly dominant thesis that property and markets are the roots of all growth and productivity. Partly as a result of the ideological and military conflict with Communism, partly as a result of the theoretical elegance of a simple and tractable solution, policy makers and their advisers came to believe toward the end of the twentieth century that property in information and innovation was like property in wristwatches and automobiles. The more clearly you defined and enforced it, and the closer it was to perfect exclusive rights, the more production you would get. The rising dominance of this conceptual model combined with the rent-seeking lobbying of industrialmodel producers to underwrite a fairly rapid and substantial tipping of the institutional ecology of innovation and information production in favor of proprietary models. The U.S. patent system was overhauled in the early 1980s, in ways that strengthened and broadened the reach and scope of exclusivity. Copyright was vastly expanded in the mid-1970s, and again in the latter 1990s. Trademark was vastly expanded in the 1990s. Other associated rights were created and strengthened throughout these years. +={ cost : + proprietary models +3 ; + efficiency of information regulation +3 ; + inefficiency of information regulation +3 ; + proprietary rights, inefficiency of +3 ; + regulating information, efficiency of +3 +} + +The second economic point is that these expansions of rights operate, as a practical matter, as a tax on nonproprietary models of production in favor of the proprietary models. It makes access to information resources more expensive for all, while improving appropriability only for some. Introducing software patents, for example, may help some of the participants in the onethird of the software industry that depends on sales of finished software items. But it clearly raises the costs without increasing benefits for the twothirds of the industry that is service based and relational. As a practical matter, the substantial increases in the scope and reach of exclusive rights have adversely affected the operating conditions of nonproprietary producers. ,{[pg 462]}, + +Universities have begun to seek patents and pay royalties, impeding the sharing of information that typified past practice. Businesses that do not actually rely on asserting patents for their business model have found themselves amassing large patent portfolios at great expense, simply to fend off the threat of suit by others who would try to hold them up. Older documentary films, like Eyes on the Prize, have been hidden from public view for years, because of the cost and complexity of clearing the rights to every piece of footage or trademark that happens to have been captured by the camera. New documentaries require substantially greater funding than would have been necessary to pay for their creation, because of the costs of clearing newly expanded rights. + +The third economic observation is that the basic technologies of information processing, storage, and communication have made nonproprietary models more attractive and effective than was ever before possible. Ubiquitous low-cost processors, storage media, and networked connectivity have made it practically feasible for individuals, alone and in cooperation with others, to create and exchange information, knowledge, and culture in patterns of social reciprocity, redistribution, and sharing, rather than proprietary, market-based production. The basic material capital requirements of information production are now in the hands of a billion people around the globe who are connected to each other more or less seamlessly. These material conditions have given individuals a new practical freedom of action. If a person or group wishes to start an information-production project for any reason, that group or person need not raise significant funds to acquire the necessary capital. In the past, the necessity to obtain funds constrained information producers to find a market-based model to sustain the investment, or to obtain government funding. The funding requirements, in turn, subordinated the producers either to the demands of markets, in particular to mass-market appeal, or to the agendas of state bureaucracies. The networked information environment has permitted the emergence to much greater significance of the nonmarket sector, the nonprofit sector, and, most radically, of individuals. +={ cost : + technologies ; + peer production +2 ; + technology : + costs of +} + +The fourth and final economic observation describes and analyzes the rise of peer production. This cluster of phenomena, from free and open-source software to /{Wikipedia}/ and SETI@Home, presents a stark challenge to conventional thinking about the economics of information production. Indeed, it challenges the economic understanding of the relative roles of marketbased and nonmarket production more generally. It is important to see these ,{[pg 463]}, phenomena not as exceptions, quirks, or ephemeral fads, but as indications of a fundamental fact about transactional forms and their relationship to the technological conditions of production. It is a mistake to think that we have only two basic free transactional forms--property-based markets and hierarchically organized firms. We have three, and the third is social sharing and exchange. It is a widespread phenomenon--we live and practice it every day with our household members, coworkers, and neighbors. We coproduce and exchange economic goods and services. But we do not count these in the economic census. Worse, we do not count them in our institutional design. I suggest that the reason social production has been shunted to the peripheries of the advanced economies is that the core economic activities of the economies of steel and coal required large capital investments. These left markets, firms, or state-run enterprises dominant. As the first stage of the information economy emerged, existing information and human creativity-- each a "good" with fundamentally different economic characteristics than coal or steel--became important inputs. The organization of production nevertheless followed an industrial model, because information production and exchange itself still required high capital costs--a mechanical printing press, a broadcast station, or later, an IBM mainframe. The current networked stage of the information economy emerged when the barrier of high capital costs was removed. The total capital cost of communication and creation did not necessarily decline. Capital investment, however, became widely distributed in small dollops, owned by individuals connected in a network. We came to a stage where the core economic activities of the most advanced economies--the production and processing of information--could be achieved by pooling physical capital owned by widely dispersed individuals and groups, who have purchased the capital means for personal, household, and small-business use. Then, human creativity and existing information were left as the main remaining core inputs. Something new and radically different started to happen. People began to apply behaviors they practice in their living rooms or in the elevator--"Here, let me lend you a hand," or "What did you think of last night's speech?"--to production problems that had, throughout the twentieth century, been solved on the model of Ford and General Motors. The rise of peer production is neither mysterious nor fickle when viewed through this lens. It is as rational and efficient given the objectives and material conditions of information production at the turn of the twenty-first century as the assembly line was for the conditions at the turn of the twentieth. The pooling of human creativity and of ,{[pg 464]}, computation, communication, and storage enables nonmarket motivations and relations to play a much larger role in the production of the information environment than it has been able to for at least decades, perhaps for as long as a century and a half. + +A genuine shift in the way we produce the information environment that we occupy as individual agents, as citizens, as culturally embedded creatures, and as social beings goes to the core of our basic liberal commitments. Information and communications are core elements of autonomy and of public political discourse and decision making. Communication is the basic unit of social existence. Culture and knowledge, broadly conceived, form the basic frame of reference through which we come to understand ourselves and others in the world. For any liberal political theory--any theory that begins with a focus on individuals and their freedom to be the authors of their own lives in connection with others--the basic questions of how individuals and communities come to know and evaluate are central to the project of characterizing the normative value of institutional, social, and political systems. Independently, in the context of an information- and innovation-centric economy, the basic components of human development also depend on how we produce information and innovation, and how we disseminate its implementations. The emergence of a substantial role for nonproprietary production offers discrete strategies to improve human development around the globe. Productivity in the information economy can be sustained without the kinds of exclusivity that have made it difficult for knowledge, information, and their beneficial implementations to diffuse beyond the circles of the wealthiest nations and social groups. We can provide a detailed and specific account of why the emergence of nonmarket, nonproprietary production to a more significant role than it had in the industrial information economy could offer improvements in the domains of both freedom and justice, without sacrificing--indeed, while improving--productivity. +={ autonomy +4 ; + individual autonomy +4 ; + information production ; + production of information +} + +From the perspective of individual autonomy, the emergence of the networked information economy offers a series of identifiable improvements in how we perceive the world around us, the extent to which we can affect our perceptions of the world, the range of actions open to us and their possible outcomes, and the range of cooperative enterprises we can seek to enter to pursue our choices. It allows us to do more for and by ourselves. It allows us to form loose associations with others who are interested in a particular outcome they share with us, allowing us to provide and explore many more ,{[pg 465]}, diverse avenues of learning and speaking than we could achieve by ourselves or in association solely with others who share long-term strong ties. By creating sources of information and communication facilities that no one owns or exclusively controls, the networked information economy removes some of the most basic opportunities for manipulation of those who depend on information and communication by the owners of the basic means of communications and the producers of the core cultural forms. It does not eliminate the possibility that one person will try to act upon another as object. But it removes the structural constraints that make it impossible to communicate at all without being subject to such action by others. +={ networked public sphere +2 : + see also social relations and norms networked society +} + +From the perspective of democratic discourse and a participatory republic, the networked information economy offers a genuine reorganization of the public sphere. Except in the very early stages of a small number of today's democracies, modern democracies have largely developed in the context of mass media as the core of their public spheres. A systematic and broad literature has explored the basic limitations of commercial mass media as the core of the public sphere, as well as it advantages. The emergence of a networked public sphere is attenuating, or even solving, the most basic failings of the mass-mediated public sphere. It attenuates the power of the commercial mass-media owners and those who can pay them. It provides an avenue for substantially more diverse and politically mobilized communication than was feasible in a commercial mass media with a small number of speakers and a vast number of passive recipients. The views of many more individuals and communities can be heard. Perhaps most interestingly, the phenomenon of peer production is now finding its way into the public sphere. It is allowing loosely affiliated individuals across the network to fulfill some of the basic and central functions of the mass media. We are seeing the rise of nonmarket, distributed, and collaborative investigative journalism, critical commentary, and platforms for political mobilization and organization. We are seeing the rise of collaborative filtering and accreditation, which allows individuals engaged in public discourse to be their own source of deciding whom to trust and whose words to question. +={ diversity : + fragmentation of communication +2 ; + public sphere +1 +} + +A common critique of claims that the Internet improves democracy and autonomy is centered on information overload and fragmentation. What we have seen emerging in the networked environment is a combination of selfconscious peer-production efforts and emergent properties of large systems of human beings that have avoided this unhappy fate. We have seen the adoption of a number of practices that have made for a reasonably navigable ,{[pg 466]}, and coherent information environment without re-creating the mass-media model. There are organized nonmarket projects for producing filtering and accreditation, ranging from the Open Directory Project to mailing lists to like-minded people, like MoveOn.org. There is a widespread cultural practice of mutual pointing and linking; a culture of "Here, see for yourself, I think this is interesting." The basic model of observing the judgments of others as to what is interesting and valuable, coupled with exercising one's own judgment about who shares one's interests and whose judgment seems to be sound has created a pattern of linking and usage of the Web and the Internet that is substantially more ordered than a cacophonous free-for-all, and less hierarchically organized and controlled by few than was the massmedia environment. It turns out that we are not intellectual lemmings. Given freedom to participate in making our own information environment, we neither descend into Babel, nor do we replicate the hierarchies of the mass-mediated public spheres to avoid it. +={ attention fragmentation +1 ; + Babel objection +1 ; + communities : + fragmentation of +1 ; + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + information overload and Babel objection +1 ; + norms (social) : + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + regulation by social norms : + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + social relations and norms : + fragmentation of communication +1 ; + culture +1 +} + +The concepts of culture and society occupy more tenuous positions in liberal theory than autonomy and democracy. As a consequence, mapping the effects of the changes in information production and exchange on these domains as aspects of liberal societies is more complex. As to culture, the minimum that we can say is that the networked information environment is rendering culture more transparent. We all "occupy" culture; our perceptions, views, and structures of comprehension are all always embedded in culture. And yet there are degrees to which this fact can be rendered more or less opaque to us as inhabitants of a culture. In the networked information environment, as individuals and groups use their newfound autonomy to engage in personal and collective expression through existing cultural forms, these forms become more transparent--both through practice and through critical examination. The mass-media television culture encouraged passive consumption of polished, finished goods. The emergence of what might be thought of as a newly invigorated folk culture--created by and among individuals and groups, rather than by professionals for passive consumption-- provides both a wider set of cultural forms and practices and a bettereducated or better-practiced community of "readers" of culture. From the perspective of a liberal theory unwilling simply to ignore the fact that culture structures meaning, personal values, and political conceptions, the emergence of a more transparent and participatory cultural production system is a clear improvement over the commercial, professional mass culture of the twentieth century. In the domain of social relations, the degree of autonomy and the ,{[pg 467]}, loose associations made possible by the Internet, which play such an important role in the gains for autonomy, democracy, and a critical culture, have raised substantial concerns about how the networked environment will contribute to a further erosion of community and solidarity. As with the Babel objection, however, it appears that we are not using the Internet further to fragment our social lives. The Internet is beginning to replace twentieth-century remote media--television and telephone. The new patterns of use that we are observing as a result of this partial displacement suggest that much of network use focuses on enhancing and deepening existing real-world relations, as well as adding new online relations. Some of the time that used to be devoted to passive reception of standardized finished goods through a television is now reoriented toward communicating and making together with others, in both tightly and loosely knit social relations. Moreover, the basic experience of treating others, including strangers, as potential partners in cooperation contributes to a thickening of the sense of possible social bonds beyond merely co-consumers of standardized products. Peer production can provide a new domain of reasonably thick connection with remote others. + +The same capabilities to make information and knowledge, to innovate, and to communicate that lie at the core of the gains in freedom in liberal societies also underlie the primary advances I suggest are possible in terms of justice and human development. From the perspective of a liberal conception of justice, the possibility that more of the basic requirements of human welfare and the capabilities necessary to be a productive, self-reliant individual are available outside of the market insulates access to these basic requirements and capabilities from the happenstance of wealth distribution. From a more substantive perspective, information and innovation are central components of all aspects of a rich meaning of human development. Information and innovation are central to human health--in the production and use of both food and medicines. They are central to human learning and the development of the knowledge any individual needs to make life richer. And they are, and have for more than fifty years been known to be, central to growth of material welfare. Along all three of these dimensions, the emergence of a substantial sector of nonmarket production that is not based on exclusivity and does not require exclusion to feed its own engine contributes to global human development. The same economic characteristics that make exclusive rights in information a tool that imposes barriers to access in advanced economies make these rights a form of tax on technological latecomers. ,{[pg 468]}, What most poor and middle-income countries lack is not human creativity, but access to the basic tools of innovation. The cost of the material requirements of innovation and information production is declining rapidly in many domains, as more can be done with ever-cheaper computers and communications systems. But exclusive rights in existing innovation tools and information resources remain a significant barrier to innovation, education, and the use of information-embedded tools and goods in low- and middle-income countries. As new strategies for the production of information and knowledge are making their outputs available freely for use and continuing innovation by everyone everywhere, the networked information economy can begin to contribute significantly to improvements in human development. We already see free software and free and open Internet standards playing that role in information technology sectors. We are beginning to see it take form in academic publishing, raw information, and educational materials, like multilingual encyclopedias, around the globe. More tentatively, we are beginning to see open commons-based innovation models and peer production emerge in areas of agricultural research and bioagricultural innovation, as well as, even more tentatively, in the area of biomedical research. These are still very early examples of what can be produced by the networked information economy, and how it can contribute, even if only to a limited extent, to the capacity of people around the globe to live a long and healthy, well-educated, and materially adequate life. +={ human development and justice +1 ; + justice and human development +1 +} + +If the networked information economy is indeed a significant inflection point for modern societies along all these dimensions, it is so because it upsets the dominance of proprietary, market-based production in the sphere of the production of knowledge, information, and culture. This upset is hardly uncontroversial. It will likely result in significant redistribution of wealth, and no less importantly, power, from previously dominant firms and business models to a mixture of individuals and social groups on the one hand, and on the other hand businesses that reshape their business models to take advantage of, and build tools an platforms for, the newly productive social relations. As a practical matter, the major economic and social changes described here are not deterministically preordained by the internal logic of technological progress. What we see instead is that the happenstance of the fabrication technology of computation, in particular, as well as storage and communications, has created technological conditions conducive to a significant realignment of our information production and exchange system. The actual structure of the markets, technologies, and social practices that ,{[pg 469]}, have been destabilized by the introduction of computer-communications networks is now the subject of a large-scale and diffuse institutional battle. + +We are seeing significant battles over the organization and legal capabilities of the physical components of the digitally networked environment. Will all broadband infrastructures be privately owned? If so, how wide a margin of control will owners have to prefer some messages over others? Will we, to the contrary, permit open wireless networks to emerge as an infrastructure of first and last resort, owned by its users and exclusively controlled by no one? The drives to greater private ownership in wired infrastructure, and the push by Hollywood and the recording industry to require digital devices mechanically to comply with exclusivity-respecting standards are driving the technical and organizational design toward a closed environment that would be more conducive to proprietary strategies. Open wireless networks and the present business model of the large and successful device companies--particularly, personal computers--to use open standards push in the opposite direction. End-user equipment companies are mostly focused on making their products as valuable as possible to their users, and are therefore oriented toward offering general-purpose platforms that can be deployed by their owners as they choose. These then become equally available for marketoriented as for social behaviors, for proprietary consumption as for productive sharing. + +At the logical layer, the ethic of open standards in the technical community, the emergence of the free software movement and its apolitical cousin, open-source development practices, on the one hand, and the antiauthoritarian drives behind encryption hacking and some of the peer-to-peer technologies, on the other hand, are pushing toward an open logical layer available for all to use. The efforts of the content industries to make the Internet manageable--most visibly, the DMCA and the continued dominance of Microsoft over the desktop, and the willingness of courts and legislatures to try to stamp out copyright-defeating technologies even when these obviously have significant benefits to users who have no interest in copying the latest song in order not to pay for the CD--are the primary sources of institutional constraint on the freedom to use the logical resources necessary to communicate in the network. +={ content layer of institutional ecology +2 ; + layers of institutional ecology +2 : + content layer +2 | physical layer +2 ; + logical layer of institutional ecology ; + physical layer of institutional ecology +2 ; + policy layers +2 : + content layer +2 | physical layer +2 +} + +At the content layer--the universe of existing information, knowledge, and culture--we are observing a fairly systematic trend in law, but a growing countertrend in society. In law, we see a continual tightening of the control that the owners of exclusive rights are given. Copyrights are longer, apply ,{[pg 470]}, to more uses, and are interpreted as reaching into every corner of valuable use. Trademarks are stronger and more aggressive. Patents have expanded to new domains and are given greater leeway. All these changes are skewing the institutional ecology in favor of business models and production practices that are based on exclusive proprietary claims; they are lobbied for by firms that collect large rents if these laws are expanded, followed, and enforced. Social trends in the past few years, however, are pushing in the opposite direction. These are precisely the trends of networked information economy, of nonmarket production, of an increased ethic of sharing, and an increased ambition to participate in communities of practice that produce vast quantities of information, knowledge, and culture for free use, sharing, and followon creation by others. +={ institutional ecology of digital environment +3 } + +The political and judicial pressures to form an institutional ecology that is decidedly tilted in favor of proprietary business models are running headon into the emerging social practices described throughout this book. To flourish, a networked information economy rich in social production practices requires a core common infrastructure, a set of resources necessary for information production and exchange that are open for all to use. This requires physical, logical, and content resources from which to make new statements, encode them for communication, and then render and receive them. At present, these resources are available through a mixture of legal and illegal, planned and unplanned sources. Some aspects come from the happenstance of the trajectories of very different industries that have operated under very different regulatory frameworks: telecommunications, personal computers, software, Internet connectivity, public- and private-sector information, and cultural publication. Some come from more or less widespread adoption of practices of questionable legality or outright illegality. Peer-to-peer file sharing includes many instances of outright illegality practiced by tens of millions of Internet users. But simple uses of quotations, clips, and mix-and-match creative practices that may, or, increasingly, may not, fall into the narrowing category of fair use are also priming the pump of nonmarket production. At the same time, we are seeing an ever-more self-conscious adoption of commons-based practices as a modality of information production and exchange. Free software, Creative Commons, the Public Library of Science, the new guidelines of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on free publication of papers, new open archiving practices, librarian movements, and many other communities of practice are developing what was a contingent fact into a self-conscious social movement. As ,{[pg 471]}, the domain of existing information and culture comes to be occupied by information and knowledge produced within these free sharing movements and licensed on the model of open-licensing techniques, the problem of the conflict with the proprietary domain will recede. Twentieth-century materials will continue to be a point of friction, but a sufficient quotient of twentyfirst-century materials seem now to be increasingly available from sources that are happy to share them with future users and creators. If this socialcultural trend continues over time, access to content resources will present an ever-lower barrier to nonmarket production. +={ commercial model of communication ; + industrial model of communication +1 ; + traditional model of communication +1 +} + +The relationship of institutional ecology to social practice is a complex one. It is hard to predict at this point whether a successful sustained effort on the part of the industrial information economy producers will succeed in flipping even more of the institutional toggles in favor of proprietary production. There is already a more significant social movement than existed in the 1990s in the United States, in Europe, and around the world that is resisting current efforts to further enclose the information environment. This social movement is getting support from large and wealthy industrial players who have reoriented their business model to become the platforms, toolmakers, and service providers for and alongside the emerging nonmarket sector. IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Cisco, for example, might stand shoulder to shoulder with a nongovernment organization (NGO) like Public Knowledge in an effort to block legislation that would require personal computers to comply with standards set by Hollywood for copy protection. When Hollywood sued Grokster, the file-sharing company, and asked the Supreme Court to expand contributory liability of the makers of technologies that are used to infringe copyrights, it found itself arrayed against amicus briefs filed by Intel, the Consumer Electronics Association, and Verizon, SBC, AT&T, MCI, and Sun Microsystems, alongside briefs from the Free Software Foundation, and the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, and Public Knowledge. + +Even if laws that favor enclosure do pass in one, or even many jurisdictions, it is not entirely clear that law can unilaterally turn back a trend that combines powerful technological, social, and economic drivers. We have seen even in the area of peer-to-peer networks, where the arguments of the incumbents seemed the most morally compelling and where their legal successes have been the most complete, that stemming the tide of change is difficult--perhaps impossible. Bits are a part of a flow in the networked information environment, and trying to legislate that fact away in order to ,{[pg 472]}, preserve a business model that sells particular collections of bits as discrete, finished goods may simply prove to be impossible. Nonetheless, legal constraints significantly shape the parameters of what companies and individuals decide to market and use. It is not hard to imagine that, were Napster seen as legal, it would have by now encompassed a much larger portion of the population of Internet users than the number of users who actually now use file-sharing networks. Whether the same moderate levels of success in shaping behavior can be replicated in areas where the claims of the incumbents are much more tenuous, as a matter of both policy and moral claims--such as in the legal protection of anticircumvention devices or the contraction of fair use--is an even harder question. The object of a discussion of the institutional ecology of the networked environment is, in any event, not prognostication. It is to provide a moral framework within which to understand the many and diverse policy battles we have seen over the past decade, and which undoubtedly will continue into the coming decade, that I have written this book. + +We are in the midst of a quite basic transformation in how we perceive the world around us, and how we act, alone and in concert with others, to shape our own understanding of the world we occupy and that of others with whom we share it. Patterns of social practice, long suppressed as economic activities in the context of industrial economy, have now emerged to greater importance than they have had in a century and a half. With them, they bring the possibility of genuine gains in the very core of liberal commitments, in both advanced economies and around the globe. The rise of commons-based information production, of individuals and loose associations producing information in nonproprietary forms, presents a genuine discontinuity from the industrial information economy of the twentieth century. It brings with it great promise, and great uncertainty. We have early intimations as to how market-based enterprises can adjust to make room for this newly emerging phenomenon--IBM's adoption of open source, Second Life's adoption of user-created immersive entertainment, or Open Source Technology Group's development of a platform for Slashdot. We also have very clear examples of businesses that have decided to fight the new changes by using every trick in the book, and some, like injecting corrupt files into peer-to-peer networks, that are decidedly not in the book. Law and regulation form one important domain in which these battles over the shape of our emerging information production system are fought. As we observe these battles; as we participate in them as individuals choosing how to behave and ,{[pg 473]}, what to believe, as citizens, lobbyists, lawyers, or activists; as we act out these legal battles as legislators, judges, or treaty negotiators, it is important that we understand the normative stakes of what we are doing. + +We have an opportunity to change the way we create and exchange information, knowledge, and culture. By doing so, we can make the twentyfirst century one that offers individuals greater autonomy, political communities greater democracy, and societies greater opportunities for cultural self-reflection and human connection. We can remove some of the transactional barriers to material opportunity, and improve the state of human development everywhere. Perhaps these changes will be the foundation of a true transformation toward more liberal and egalitarian societies. Perhaps they will merely improve, in well-defined but smaller ways, human life along each of these dimensions. That alone is more than enough to justify an embrace of the networked information economy by anyone who values human welfare, development, and freedom. + +--~# + +1~!blurb Blurb + +_1 "In this book, Benkler establishes himself as the leading intellectual of the information age. Profoundly rich in its insight and truth, this work will be the central text for understanding how networks have changed how we understand the world. No work to date has more carefully or convincingly made the case for a fundamental change in how we understand the economy of society." Lawrence Lessig, professor of law, Stanford Law School + +_1 "A lucid, powerful, and optimistic account of a revolution in the making." Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of /{The Anarchist in the Library}/ + +_1 "This deeply researched book documents the fundamental changes in the ways in which we produce and share ideas, information, and entertainment. Then, drawing widely on the literatures of philosophy, economics, and political theory, it shows why these changes should be welcomed, not resisted. The trends examined, if allowed to continue, will radically alter our lives - and no other scholar describes them so clearly or champions them more effectively than Benkler." William W. Fisher III, Hale and Dorr Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Harvard University, and directory, Berkman Center for Internet and Society + +_1 "A magnificent achievement. Yochai Benkler shows us how the Internet enables new commons-based methods for producing goods, remaking culture, and participating in public life. /{The Wealth of Networks}/ is an indispensable guide to the political economy of our digitally networked world." Jack M. Balkin, professor of law and director of the Information Society Project, Yale University. + +A dedicated wiki may be found at: http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page + +Including a pdf: http://www.benkler.org/wonchapters.html + +The author's website is: http://www.benkler.org/ + +The books may be purchased at bookshops, including { Amazon.com }http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Networks-Production-Transforms-Markets/dp/0300110561/ or at { Barnes & Noble }http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0300110561 + +--+# + +% Not final copy: markup not final, output numbering is therefore subject to change + +% italics need checking + +% hyphenation in markup text needs review, pdf to text transformation not perfect + +% book index can be preserved as book pages have been kept after a fashion, should be added + +% original footnotes do not have meaning in this copy and have been removed diff --git a/markup/non-pod-samples/through_the_looking_glass.lewis_carroll.non-pod-sample.sst b/markup/non-pod-samples/through_the_looking_glass.lewis_carroll.non-pod-sample.sst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9731a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/non-pod-samples/through_the_looking_glass.lewis_carroll.non-pod-sample.sst @@ -0,0 +1,2327 @@ +# SiSU 8.0 + +title: "Through The Looking-Glass" + +creator: + author: "Carroll, Lewis" + +date: + published: "1871" + created: "1871" + issued: "1871" + available: "1871" + added_to_site: "2004-04-12" + +# 2005-10-30 + +rights: + copyright: "Lewis Carroll" + license: "Public Domain" + +classify: + topic_register: "SiSU markup sample:book:novel;book:novel:fiction:fantasy|children's fiction" + +links: [ + "{ Through the Looking Glass @ Wikipedia }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_the_Looking-Glass", + "{ Lewis Carroll @ Wikipedia }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll" + ] + +make: + doc_type: "book" + headings: + - none + - none + - none + - CHAPTER + breaks: "new=B; break=1" + +:A~ @title-author-date \\ The Millennium Fulcrum Edition 1.7 [text only] + +CHAPTER I - Looking-Glass house + +One thing was certain, that the WHITE kitten had had nothing to do with it:--it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it COULDN'T have had any hand in the mischief. + +The way Dinah washed her children's faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr--no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good. + +But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle. + +'Oh, you wicked little thing!' cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. 'Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You OUGHT, Dinah, you know you ought!' she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage--and then she scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn't get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help, if it might. + +'Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?' Alice began. 'You'd have guessed if you'd been up in the window with me--only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire--and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we'll go and see the bonfire to-morrow.' Here Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten's neck, just to see how it would look: this led to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon the floor, and yards and yards of it got unwound again. + +'Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,' Alice went on as soon as they were comfortably settled again, 'when I saw all the mischief you had been doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into the snow! And you'd have deserved it, you little mischievous darling! What have you got to say for yourself? Now don't interrupt me!' she went on, holding up one finger. 'I'm going to tell you all your faults. Number one: you squeaked twice while Dinah was washing your face this morning. Now you can't deny it, Kitty: I heard you! What's that you say?' (pretending that the kitten was speaking.) 'Her paw went into your eye? Well, that's YOUR fault, for keeping your eyes open--if you'd shut them tight up, it wouldn't have happened. Now don't make any more excuses, but listen! Number two: you pulled Snowdrop away by the tail just as I had put down the saucer of milk before her! What, you were thirsty, were you? How do you know she wasn't thirsty too? Now for number three: you unwound every bit of the worsted while I wasn't looking! + +'That's three faults, Kitty, and you've not been punished for any of them yet. You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week--Suppose they had saved up all MY punishments!' she went on, talking more to herself than the kitten. 'What WOULD they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the day came. Or--let me see--suppose each punishment was to be going without a dinner: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go without fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn't mind THAT much! I'd far rather go without them than eat them! + +'Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow LOVES the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again." And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about--whenever the wind blows--oh, that's very pretty!' cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. 'And I do so WISH it was true! I'm sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown. + +'Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile, my dear, I'm asking it seriously. Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as if you understood it: and when I said "Check!" you purred! Well, it WAS a nice check, Kitty, and really I might have won, if it hadn't been for that nasty Knight, that came wiggling down among my pieces. Kitty, dear, let's pretend--' And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favourite phrase 'Let's pretend.' She had had quite a long argument with her sister only the day before --all because Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings and queens;' and her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn't, because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last to say, 'Well, YOU can be one of them then, and I'LL be all the rest.' And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, 'Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena, and you're a bone.' + +But this is taking us away from Alice's speech to the kitten. 'Let's pretend that you're the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like her. Now do try, there's a dear!' And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the kitten as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing didn't succeed, principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn't fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held it up to the Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was--'and if you're not good directly,' she added, 'I'll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like THAT?' + +'Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room you can see through the glass--that's just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair--all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see THAT bit! I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too--but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room. + +'How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they'd give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good to drink--But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little PEEP of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking- glass House! I'm sure it's got, oh! such beautiful things in it! Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be easy enough to get through--' She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass WAS beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist. + +In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. 'So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,' thought Alice: 'warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!' + +Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall next the fire seemed to be all alive, and the very clock on the chimney-piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the Looking-glass) had got the face of a little old man, and grinned at her. + +'They don't keep this room so tidy as the other,' Alice thought to herself, as she noticed several of the chessmen down in the hearth among the cinders: but in another moment, with a little 'Oh!' of surprise, she was down on her hands and knees watching them. The chessmen were walking about, two and two! + +'Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,' Alice said (in a whisper, for fear of frightening them), 'and there are the White King and the White Queen sitting on the edge of the shovel--and here are two castles walking arm in arm--I don't think they can hear me,' she went on, as she put her head closer down, 'and I'm nearly sure they can't see me. I feel somehow as if I were invisible--' + +Here something began squeaking on the table behind Alice, and made her turn her head just in time to see one of the White Pawns roll over and begin kicking: she watched it with great curiosity to see what would happen next. + +'It is the voice of my child!' the White Queen cried out as she rushed past the King, so violently that she knocked him over among the cinders. 'My precious Lily! My imperial kitten!' and she began scrambling wildly up the side of the fender. + +'Imperial fiddlestick!' said the King, rubbing his nose, which had been hurt by the fall. He had a right to be a LITTLE annoyed with the Queen, for he was covered with ashes from head to foot. + +Alice was very anxious to be of use, and, as the poor little Lily was nearly screaming herself into a fit, she hastily picked up the Queen and set her on the table by the side of her noisy little daughter. + +The Queen gasped, and sat down: the rapid journey through the air had quite taken away her breath and for a minute or two she could do nothing but hug the little Lily in silence. As soon as she had recovered her breath a little, she called out to the White King, who was sitting sulkily among the ashes, 'Mind the volcano!' + +'What volcano?' said the King, looking up anxiously into the fire, as if he thought that was the most likely place to find one. + +'Blew--me--up,' panted the Queen, who was still a little out of breath. 'Mind you come up--the regular way--don't get blown up!' + +Alice watched the White King as he slowly struggled up from bar to bar, till at last she said, 'Why, you'll be hours and hours getting to the table, at that rate. I'd far better help you, hadn't I?' But the King took no notice of the question: it was quite clear that he could neither hear her nor see her. + +So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more slowly than she had lifted the Queen, that she mightn't take his breath away: but, before she put him on the table, she thought she might as well dust him a little, he was so covered with ashes. + +She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the King made, when he found himself held in the air by an invisible hand, and being dusted: he was far too much astonished to cry out, but his eyes and his mouth went on getting larger and larger, and rounder and rounder, till her hand shook so with laughing that she nearly let him drop upon the floor. + +'Oh! PLEASE don't make such faces, my dear!' she cried out, quite forgetting that the King couldn't hear her. 'You make me laugh so that I can hardly hold you! And don't keep your mouth so wide open! All the ashes will get into it--there, now I think you're tidy enough!' she added, as she smoothed his hair, and set him upon the table near the Queen. + +The King immediately fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still: and Alice was a little alarmed at what she had done, and went round the room to see if she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it she found he had recovered, and he and the Queen were talking together in a frightened whisper--so low, that Alice could hardly hear what they said. + +The King was saying, 'I assure, you my dear, I turned cold to the very ends of my whiskers!' + +To which the Queen replied, 'You haven't got any whiskers.' + +'The horror of that moment,' the King went on, 'I shall never, NEVER forget!' + +'You will, though,' the Queen said, 'if you don't make a memorandum of it.' + +Alice looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing. A sudden thought struck her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his shoulder, and began writing for him. + +The poor King looked puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil for some time without saying anything; but Alice was too strong for him, and at last he panted out, 'My dear! I really MUST get a thinner pencil. I can't manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I don't intend--' + +'What manner of things?' said the Queen, looking over the book (in which Alice had put 'THE WHITE KNIGHT IS SLIDING DOWN THE POKER. HE BALANCES VERY BADLY') 'That's not a memorandum of YOUR feelings!' + +There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat watching the White King (for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again), she turned over the leaves, to find some part that she could read, '--for it's all in some language I don't know,' she said to herself. + +It was like this. + +poem{ + + YKCOWREBBAJ + + sevot yhtils eht dna ,gillirb sawT' + ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD + ,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA + .ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA + +}poem + +She puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her. 'Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course! And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again.' + +This was the poem that Alice read. + +poem{ + + JABBERWOCKY + + 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves + Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; + All mimsy were the borogoves, + And the mome raths outgrabe. + + 'Beware the Jabberwock, my son! + The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! + Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun + The frumious Bandersnatch!' + + He took his vorpal sword in hand: + Long time the manxome foe he sought-- + So rested he by the Tumtum tree, + And stood awhile in thought. + + And as in uffish thought he stood, + The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, + Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, + And burbled as it came! + + One, two! One, two! And through and through + The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! + He left it dead, and with its head + He went galumphing back. + + 'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? + Come to my arms, my beamish boy! + O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' + He chortled in his joy. + + 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves + Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; + All mimsy were the borogoves, + And the mome raths outgrabe. + +}poem + +'It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, 'but it's RATHER hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) 'Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! However, SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING: that's clear, at any rate--' + +'But oh!' thought Alice, suddenly jumping up, 'if I don't make haste I shall have to go back through the Looking-glass, before I've seen what the rest of the house is like! Let's have a look at the garden first!' She was out of the room in a moment, and ran down stairs--or, at least, it wasn't exactly running, but a new invention of hers for getting down stairs quickly and easily, as Alice said to herself. She just kept the tips of her fingers on the hand-rail, and floated gently down without even touching the stairs with her feet; then she floated on through the hall, and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way, if she hadn't caught hold of the door-post. She was getting a little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find herself walking again in the natural way. + +CHAPTER II - The Garden of Live Flowers + +'I should see the garden far better,' said Alice to herself, 'if I could get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to it--at least, no, it doesn't do that--' (after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners), 'but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, THIS turn goes to the hill, I suppose--no, it doesn't! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I'll try it the other way.' + +And so she did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn, but always coming back to the house, do what she would. Indeed, once, when she turned a corner rather more quickly than usual, she ran against it before she could stop herself. + +'It's no use talking about it,' Alice said, looking up at the house and pretending it was arguing with her. 'I'm NOT going in again yet. I know I should have to get through the Looking-glass again--back into the old room--and there'd be an end of all my adventures!' + +So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once more down the path, determined to keep straight on till she got to the hill. For a few minutes all went on well, and she was just saying, 'I really SHALL do it this time--' when the path gave a sudden twist and shook itself (as she described it afterwards), and the next moment she found herself actually walking in at the door. + +'Oh, it's too bad!' she cried. 'I never saw such a house for getting in the way! Never!' + +However, there was the hill full in sight, so there was nothing to be done but start again. This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle. + +'O Tiger-lily,' said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, 'I WISH you could talk!' + +'We CAN talk,' said the Tiger-lily: 'when there's anybody worth talking to.' + +Alice was so astonished that she could not speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid voice--almost in a whisper. 'And can ALL the flowers talk?' + +'As well as YOU can,' said the Tiger-lily. 'And a great deal louder.' + +'It isn't manners for us to begin, you know,' said the Rose, 'and I really was wondering when you'd speak! Said I to myself, "Her face has got SOME sense in it, though it's not a clever one!" Still, you're the right colour, and that goes a long way.' + +'I don't care about the colour,' the Tiger-lily remarked. 'If only her petals curled up a little more, she'd be all right.' + +Alice didn't like being criticised, so she began asking questions. 'Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?' + +'There's the tree in the middle,' said the Rose: 'what else is it good for?' + +'But what could it do, if any danger came?' Alice asked. + +'It says "Bough-wough!"' cried a Daisy: 'that's why its branches are called boughs!' + +'Didn't you know THAT?' cried another Daisy, and here they all began shouting together, till the air seemed quite full of little shrill voices. 'Silence, every one of you!' cried the Tiger- lily, waving itself passionately from side to side, and trembling with excitement. 'They know I can't get at them!' it panted, bending its quivering head towards Alice, 'or they wouldn't dare to do it!' + +'Never mind!' Alice said in a soothing tone, and stooping down to the daisies, who were just beginning again, she whispered, 'If you don't hold your tongues, I'll pick you!' + +There was silence in a moment, and several of the pink daisies turned white. + +'That's right!' said the Tiger-lily. 'The daisies are worst of all. When one speaks, they all begin together, and it's enough to make one wither to hear the way they go on!' + +'How is it you can all talk so nicely?' Alice said, hoping to get it into a better temper by a compliment. 'I've been in many gardens before, but none of the flowers could talk.' + +'Put your hand down, and feel the ground,' said the Tiger-lily. 'Then you'll know why.' + +Alice did so. 'It's very hard,' she said, 'but I don't see what that has to do with it.' + +'In most gardens,' the Tiger-lily said, 'they make the beds too soft--so that the flowers are always asleep.' + +This sounded a very good reason, and Alice was quite pleased to know it. 'I never thought of that before!' she said. + +'It's MY opinion that you never think AT ALL,' the Rose said in a rather severe tone. + +'I never saw anybody that looked stupider,' a Violet said, so suddenly, that Alice quite jumped; for it hadn't spoken before. + +'Hold YOUR tongue!' cried the Tiger-lily. 'As if YOU ever saw anybody! You keep your head under the leaves, and snore away there, till you know no more what's going on in the world, than if you were a bud!' + +'Are there any more people in the garden besides me?' Alice said, not choosing to notice the Rose's last remark. + +'There's one other flower in the garden that can move about like you,' said the Rose. 'I wonder how you do it--' ('You're always wondering,' said the Tiger-lily), 'but she's more bushy than you are.' + +'Is she like me?' Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her mind, 'There's another little girl in the garden, somewhere!' + +'Well, she has the same awkward shape as you,' the Rose said, 'but she's redder--and her petals are shorter, I think.' + +'Her petals are done up close, almost like a dahlia,' the Tiger-lily interrupted: 'not tumbled about anyhow, like yours.' + +'But that's not YOUR fault,' the Rose added kindly: 'you're beginning to fade, you know--and then one can't help one's petals getting a little untidy.' + +Alice didn't like this idea at all: so, to change the subject, she asked 'Does she ever come out here?' + +'I daresay you'll see her soon,' said the Rose. 'She's one of the thorny kind.' + +'Where does she wear the thorns?' Alice asked with some curiosity. + +'Why all round her head, of course,' the Rose replied. 'I was wondering YOU hadn't got some too. I thought it was the regular rule.' + +'She's coming!' cried the Larkspur. 'I hear her footstep, thump, thump, thump, along the gravel-walk!' + +Alice looked round eagerly, and found that it was the Red Queen. 'She's grown a good deal!' was her first remark. She had indeed: when Alice first found her in the ashes, she had been only three inches high--and here she was, half a head taller than Alice herself! + +'It's the fresh air that does it,' said the Rose: 'wonderfully fine air it is, out here.' + +'I think I'll go and meet her,' said Alice, for, though the flowers were interesting enough, she felt that it would be far grander to have a talk with a real Queen. + +'You can't possibly do that,' said the Rose: '_I_ should advise you to walk the other way.' + +This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off at once towards the Red Queen. To her surprise, she lost sight of her in a moment, and found herself walking in at the front-door again. + +A little provoked, she drew back, and after looking everywhere for the queen (whom she spied out at last, a long way off), she thought she would try the plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction. + +It succeeded beautifully. She had not been walking a minute before she found herself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the hill she had been so long aiming at. + +'Where do you come from?' said the Red Queen. 'And where are you going? Look up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your fingers all the time.' + +Alice attended to all these directions, and explained, as well as she could, that she had lost her way. + +'I don't know what you mean by YOUR way,' said the Queen: 'all the ways about here belong to ME--but why did you come out here at all?' she added in a kinder tone. 'Curtsey while you're thinking what to say, it saves time.' + +Alice wondered a little at this, but she was too much in awe of the Queen to disbelieve it. 'I'll try it when I go home,' she thought to herself, 'the next time I'm a little late for dinner.' + +'It's time for you to answer now,' the Queen said, looking at her watch: 'open your mouth a LITTLE wider when you speak, and always say "your Majesty."' + +'I only wanted to see what the garden was like, your Majesty--' + +'That's right,' said the Queen, patting her on the head, which Alice didn't like at all, 'though, when you say "garden,"--I'VE seen gardens, compared with which this would be a wilderness.' + +Alice didn't dare to argue the point, but went on: '--and I thought I'd try and find my way to the top of that hill--' + +'When you say "hill,"' the Queen interrupted, '_I_ could show you hills, in comparison with which you'd call that a valley.' + +'No, I shouldn't,' said Alice, surprised into contradicting her at last: 'a hill CAN'T be a valley, you know. That would be nonsense--' + +The Red Queen shook her head, 'You may call it "nonsense" if you like,' she said, 'but I'VE heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!' + +Alice curtseyed again, as she was afraid from the Queen's tone that she was a LITTLE offended: and they walked on in silence till they got to the top of the little hill. + +For some minutes Alice stood without speaking, looking out in all directions over the country--and a most curious country it was. There were a number of tiny little brooks running straight across it from side to side, and the ground between was divided up into squares by a number of little green hedges, that reached from brook to brook. + +'I declare it's marked out just like a large chessboard!' Alice said at last. 'There ought to be some men moving about somewhere --and so there are!' She added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. 'It's a great huge game of chess that's being played--all over the world--if this IS the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I WISH I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might join--though of course I should LIKE to be a Queen, best.' + +She glanced rather shyly at the real Queen as she said this, but her companion only smiled pleasantly, and said, 'That's easily managed. You can be the White Queen's Pawn, if you like, as Lily's too young to play; and you're in the Second Square to begin with: when you get to the Eighth Square you'll be a Queen --' Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run. + +Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying 'Faster! Faster!' but Alice felt she COULD NOT go faster, though she had not breath left to say so. + +The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. 'I wonder if all the things move along with us?' thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, 'Faster! Don't try to talk!' + +Not that Alice had any idea of doing THAT. She felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and still the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster!' and dragged her along. 'Are we nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at last. + +'Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. 'Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied. + +'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy. + +The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little now.' + +Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!' + +'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?' + +'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.' + +'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!' + +'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. 'I'm quite content to stay here--only I AM so hot and thirsty!' + +'I know what YOU'D like!' the Queen said good-naturedly, taking a little box out of her pocket. 'Have a biscuit?' + +Alice thought it would not be civil to say 'No,' though it wasn't at all what she wanted. So she took it, and ate it as well as she could: and it was VERY dry; and she thought she had never been so nearly choked in all her life. + +'While you're refreshing yourself,' said the Queen, 'I'll just take the measurements.' And she took a ribbon out of her pocket, marked in inches, and began measuring the ground, and sticking little pegs in here and there. + +'At the end of two yards,' she said, putting in a peg to mark the distance, 'I shall give you your directions--have another biscuit?' + +'No, thank you,' said Alice: 'one's QUITE enough!' + +'Thirst quenched, I hope?' said the Queen. + +Alice did not know what to say to this, but luckily the Queen did not wait for an answer, but went on. 'At the end of THREE yards I shall repeat them--for fear of your forgetting them. At the end of FOUR, I shall say good-bye. And at the end of FIVE, I shall go!' + +She had got all the pegs put in by this time, and Alice looked on with great interest as she returned to the tree, and then began slowly walking down the row. + +At the two-yard peg she faced round, and said, 'A pawn goes two squares in its first move, you know. So you'll go VERY quickly through the Third Square--by railway, I should think--and you'll find yourself in the Fourth Square in no time. Well, THAT square belongs to Tweedledum and Tweedledee--the Fifth is mostly water--the Sixth belongs to Humpty Dumpty--But you make no remark?' + +'I--I didn't know I had to make one--just then,' Alice faltered out. + +'You SHOULD have said, "It's extremely kind of you to tell me all this"--however, we'll suppose it said--the Seventh Square is all forest--however, one of the Knights will show you the way--and in the Eighth Square we shall be Queens together, and it's all feasting and fun!' Alice got up and curtseyed, and sat down again. + +At the next peg the Queen turned again, and this time she said, 'Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing --turn out your toes as you walk--and remember who you are!' She did not wait for Alice to curtsey this time, but walked on quickly to the next peg, where she turned for a moment to say 'good-bye,' and then hurried on to the last. + +How it happened, Alice never knew, but exactly as she came to the last peg, she was gone. Whether she vanished into the air, or whether she ran quickly into the wood ('and she CAN run very fast!' thought Alice), there was no way of guessing, but she was gone, and Alice began to remember that she was a Pawn, and that it would soon be time for her to move. + +CHAPTER III - Looking-Glass Insects + +Of course the first thing to do was to make a grand survey of the country she was going to travel through. 'It's something very like learning geography,' thought Alice, as she stood on tiptoe in hopes of being able to see a little further. 'Principal rivers-- there ARE none. Principal mountains--I'm on the only one, but I don't think it's got any name. Principal towns--why, what ARE those creatures, making honey down there? They can't be bees-- nobody ever saw bees a mile off, you know--' and for some time she stood silent, watching one of them that was bustling about among the flowers, poking its proboscis into them, 'just as if it was a regular bee,' thought Alice. + +However, this was anything but a regular bee: in fact it was an elephant--as Alice soon found out, though the idea quite took her breath away at first. 'And what enormous flowers they must be!' was her next idea. 'Something like cottages with the roofs taken off, and stalks put to them--and what quantities of honey they must make! I think I'll go down and--no, I won't JUST yet,' she went on, checking herself just as she was beginning to run down the hill, and trying to find some excuse for turning shy so suddenly. 'It'll never do to go down among them without a good long branch to brush them away--and what fun it'll be when they ask me how I like my walk. I shall say-- "Oh, I like it well enough--"' (here came the favourite little toss of the head), '"only it was so dusty and hot, and the elephants did tease so!"' + +'I think I'll go down the other way,' she said after a pause: 'and perhaps I may visit the elephants later on. Besides, I do so want to get into the Third Square!' + +So with this excuse she ran down the hill and jumped over the first of the six little brooks. + +* * * * + + * * * + +* * * * + +'Tickets, please!' said the Guard, putting his head in at the window. In a moment everybody was holding out a ticket: they were about the same size as the people, and quite seemed to fill the carriage. + +'Now then! Show your ticket, child!' the Guard went on, looking angrily at Alice. And a great many voices all said together ('like the chorus of a song,' thought Alice), 'Don't keep him waiting, child! Why, his time is worth a thousand pounds a minute!' + +'I'm afraid I haven't got one,' Alice said in a frightened tone: 'there wasn't a ticket-office where I came from.' And again the chorus of voices went on. 'There wasn't room for one where she came from. The land there is worth a thousand pounds an inch!' + +'Don't make excuses,' said the Guard: 'you should have bought one from the engine-driver.' And once more the chorus of voices went on with 'The man that drives the engine. Why, the smoke alone is worth a thousand pounds a puff!' + +Alice thought to herself, 'Then there's no use in speaking.' The voices didn't join in this time, as she hadn't spoken, but to her great surprise, they all THOUGHT in chorus (I hope you understand what THINKING IN CHORUS means--for I must confess that _I_ don't), 'Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!' + +'I shall dream about a thousand pounds tonight, I know I shall!' thought Alice. + +All this time the Guard was looking at her, first through a telescope, then through a microscope, and then through an opera- glass. At last he said, 'You're travelling the wrong way,' and shut up the window and went away. + +'So young a child,' said the gentleman sitting opposite to her (he was dressed in white paper), 'ought to know which way she's going, even if she doesn't know her own name!' + +A Goat, that was sitting next to the gentleman in white, shut his eyes and said in a loud voice, 'She ought to know her way to the ticket-office, even if she doesn't know her alphabet!' + +There was a Beetle sitting next to the Goat (it was a very queer carriage-full of passengers altogether), and, as the rule seemed to be that they should all speak in turn, HE went on with 'She'll have to go back from here as luggage!' + +Alice couldn't see who was sitting beyond the Beetle, but a hoarse voice spoke next. 'Change engines--' it said, and was obliged to leave off. + +'It sounds like a horse,' Alice thought to herself. And an extremely small voice, close to her ear, said, 'You might make a joke on that--something about "horse" and "hoarse," you know.' + +Then a very gentle voice in the distance said, 'She must be labelled "Lass, with care," you know--' + +And after that other voices went on ('What a number of people there are in the carriage!' thought Alice), saying, 'She must go by post, as she's got a head on her--' 'She must be sent as a message by the telegraph--' 'She must draw the train herself the rest of the way--' and so on. + +But the gentleman dressed in white paper leaned forwards and whispered in her ear, 'Never mind what they all say, my dear, but take a return-ticket every time the train stops.' + +'Indeed I shan't!' Alice said rather impatiently. 'I don't belong to this railway journey at all--I was in a wood just now --and I wish I could get back there.' + +'You might make a joke on THAT,' said the little voice close to her ear: 'something about "you WOULD if you could," you know.' + +'Don't tease so,' said Alice, looking about in vain to see where the voice came from; 'if you're so anxious to have a joke made, why don't you make one yourself?' + +The little voice sighed deeply: it was VERY unhappy, evidently, and Alice would have said something pitying to comfort it, 'If it would only sigh like other people!' she thought. But this was such a wonderfully small sigh, that she wouldn't have heard it at all, if it hadn't come QUITE close to her ear. The consequence of this was that it tickled her ear very much, and quite took off her thoughts from the unhappiness of the poor little creature. + +'I know you are a friend,' the little voice went on; 'a dear friend, and an old friend. And you won't hurt me, though I AM an insect.' + +'What kind of insect?' Alice inquired a little anxiously. What she really wanted to know was, whether it could sting or not, but she thought this wouldn't be quite a civil question to ask. + +'What, then you don't--' the little voice began, when it was drowned by a shrill scream from the engine, and everybody jumped up in alarm, Alice among the rest. + +The Horse, who had put his head out of the window, quietly drew it in and said, 'It's only a brook we have to jump over.' Everybody seemed satisfied with this, though Alice felt a little nervous at the idea of trains jumping at all. 'However, it'll take us into the Fourth Square, that's some comfort!' she said to herself. In another moment she felt the carriage rise straight up into the air, and in her fright she caught at the thing nearest to her hand, which happened to be the Goat's beard. + +* * * * + + * * * + +* * * * + +But the beard seemed to melt away as she touched it, and she found herself sitting quietly under a tree--while the Gnat (for that was the insect she had been talking to) was balancing itself on a twig just over her head, and fanning her with its wings. + +It certainly was a VERY large Gnat: 'about the size of a chicken,' Alice thought. Still, she couldn't feel nervous with it, after they had been talking together so long. + +'--then you don't like all insects?' the Gnat went on, as quietly as if nothing had happened. + +'I like them when they can talk,' Alice said. 'None of them ever talk, where _{I}_ come from.' + +'What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where YOU come from?' the Gnat inquired. + +'I don't REJOICE in insects at all,' Alice explained, 'because I'm rather afraid of them--at least the large kinds. But I can tell you the names of some of them.' + +'Of course they answer to their names?' the Gnat remarked carelessly. + +'I never knew them do it.' + +'What's the use of their having names,' the Gnat said, 'if they won't answer to them?' + +'No use to THEM,' said Alice; 'but it's useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?' + +'I can't say,' the Gnat replied. 'Further on, in the wood down there, they've got no names--however, go on with your list of insects: you're wasting time.' + +'Well, there's the Horse-fly,' Alice began, counting off the names on her fingers. + +'All right,' said the Gnat: 'half way up that bush, you'll see a Rocking-horse-fly, if you look. It's made entirely of wood, and gets about by swinging itself from branch to branch.' + +'What does it live on?' Alice asked, with great curiosity. + +'Sap and sawdust,' said the Gnat. 'Go on with the list.' + +Alice looked up at the Rocking-horse-fly with great interest, and made up her mind that it must have been just repainted, it looked so bright and sticky; and then she went on. + +'And there's the Dragon-fly.' + +'Look on the branch above your head,' said the Gnat, 'and there you'll find a snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy.' + +'And what does it live on?' + +'Frumenty and mince pie,' the Gnat replied; 'and it makes its nest in a Christmas box.' + +'And then there's the Butterfly,' Alice went on, after she had taken a good look at the insect with its head on fire, and had thought to herself, 'I wonder if that's the reason insects are so fond of flying into candles--because they want to turn into Snap-dragon-flies!' + +'Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), 'you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.' + +'And what does IT live on?' + +'Weak tea with cream in it.' + +A new difficulty came into Alice's head. 'Supposing it couldn't find any?' she suggested. + +'Then it would die, of course.' + +'But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked thoughtfully. + +'It always happens,' said the Gnat. + +After this, Alice was silent for a minute or two, pondering. The Gnat amused itself meanwhile by humming round and round her head: at last it settled again and remarked, 'I suppose you don't want to lose your name?' + +'No, indeed,' Alice said, a little anxiously. + +'And yet I don't know,' the Gnat went on in a careless tone: 'only think how convenient it would be if you could manage to go home without it! For instance, if the governess wanted to call you to your lessons, she would call out "come here--," and there she would have to leave off, because there wouldn't be any name for her to call, and of course you wouldn't have to go, you know.' + +'That would never do, I'm sure,' said Alice: 'the governess would never think of excusing me lessons for that. If she couldn't remember my name, she'd call me "Miss!" as the servants do.' + +'Well, if she said "Miss," and didn't say anything more,' the Gnat remarked, 'of course you'd miss your lessons. That's a joke. I wish YOU had made it.' + +'Why do you wish _{I}_ had made it?' Alice asked. 'It's a very bad one.' + +But the Gnat only sighed deeply, while two large tears came rolling down its cheeks. + +'You shouldn't make jokes,' Alice said, 'if it makes you so unhappy.' + +Then came another of those melancholy little sighs, and this time the poor Gnat really seemed to have sighed itself away, for, when Alice looked up, there was nothing whatever to be seen on the twig, and, as she was getting quite chilly with sitting still so long, she got up and walked on. + +She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a LITTLE timid about going into it. However, on second thoughts, she made up her mind to go on: 'for I certainly won't go BACK,' she thought to herself, and this was the only way to the Eighth Square. + +'This must be the wood,' she said thoughtfully to herself, 'where things have no names. I wonder what'll become of MY name when I go in? I shouldn't like to lose it at all--because they'd have to give me another, and it would be almost certain to be an ugly one. But then the fun would be trying to find the creature that had got my old name! That's just like the advertisements, you know, when people lose dogs--"ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF 'DASH:' HAD ON A BRASS COLLAR"--just fancy calling everything you met "Alice," till one of them answered! Only they wouldn't answer at all, if they were wise.' + +She was rambling on in this way when she reached the wood: it looked very cool and shady. 'Well, at any rate it's a great comfort,' she said as she stepped under the trees, 'after being so hot, to get into the--into WHAT?' she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. 'I mean to get under the--under the--under THIS, you know!' putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. 'What DOES it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why, to be sure it hasn't!' + +She stood silent for a minute, thinking: then she suddenly began again. 'Then it really HAS happened, after all! And now, who am I? I WILL remember, if I can! I'm determined to do it!' But being determined didn't help much, and all she could say, after a great deal of puzzling, was, 'L, I KNOW it begins with L!' + +Just then a Fawn came wandering by: it looked at Alice with its large gentle eyes, but didn't seem at all frightened. 'Here then! Here then!' Alice said, as she held out her hand and tried to stroke it; but it only started back a little, and then stood looking at her again. + +'What do you call yourself?' the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had! + +'I wish I knew!' thought poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, 'Nothing, just now.' + +'Think again,' it said: 'that won't do.' + +Alice thought, but nothing came of it. 'Please, would you tell me what YOU call yourself?' she said timidly. 'I think that might help a little.' + +'I'll tell you, if you'll move a little further on,' the Fawn said. 'I can't remember here.' + +So they walked on together though the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arms. 'I'm a Fawn!' it cried out in a voice of delight, 'and, dear me! you're a human child!' A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed. + +Alice stood looking after it, almost ready to cry with vexation at having lost her dear little fellow-traveller so suddenly. 'However, I know my name now.' she said, 'that's SOME comfort. Alice--Alice--I won't forget it again. And now, which of these finger-posts ought I to follow, I wonder?' + +It was not a very difficult question to answer, as there was only one road through the wood, and the two finger-posts both pointed along it. 'I'll settle it,' Alice said to herself, 'when the road divides and they point different ways.' + +But this did not seem likely to happen. She went on and on, a long way, but wherever the road divided there were sure to be two finger-posts pointing the same way, one marked 'TO TWEEDLEDUM'S HOUSE' and the other 'TO THE HOUSE OF TWEEDLEDEE.' + +'I do believe,' said Alice at last, 'that they live in the same house! I wonder I never thought of that before--But I can't stay there long. I'll just call and say "how d'you do?" and ask them the way out of the wood. If I could only get to the Eighth Square before it gets dark!' So she wandered on, talking to herself as she went, till, on turning a sharp corner, she came upon two fat little men, so suddenly that she could not help starting back, but in another moment she recovered herself, feeling sure that they must be. + +CHAPTER IV - Tweedledum and Tweedledee + +They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other's neck, and Alice knew which was which in a moment, because one of them had 'DUM' embroidered on his collar, and the other 'DEE.' 'I suppose they've each got "TWEEDLE" round at the back of the collar,' she said to herself. + +They stood so still that she quite forgot they were alive, and she was just looking round to see if the word "TWEEDLE" was written at the back of each collar, when she was startled by a voice coming from the one marked 'DUM.' + +'If you think we're wax-works,' he said, 'you ought to pay, you know. Wax-works weren't made to be looked at for nothing, nohow!' + +'Contrariwise,' added the one marked 'DEE,' 'if you think we're alive, you ought to speak.' + +'I'm sure I'm very sorry,' was all Alice could say; for the words of the old song kept ringing through her head like the ticking of a clock, and she could hardly help saying them out loud:-- + +poem{ + + 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee + Agreed to have a battle; + For Tweedledum said Tweedledee + Had spoiled his nice new rattle. + + Just then flew down a monstrous crow, + As black as a tar-barrel; + Which frightened both the heroes so, + They quite forgot their quarrel.' + +}poem + +'I know what you're thinking about,' said Tweedledum: 'but it isn't so, nohow.' + +'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.' + +'I was thinking,' Alice said very politely, 'which is the best way out of this wood: it's getting so dark. Would you tell me, please?' + +But the little men only looked at each other and grinned. + +They looked so exactly like a couple of great schoolboys, that Alice couldn't help pointing her finger at Tweedledum, and saying 'First Boy!' + +'Nohow!' Tweedledum cried out briskly, and shut his mouth up again with a snap. + +'Next Boy!' said Alice, passing on to Tweedledee, though she felt quite certain he would only shout out 'Contrariwise!' and so he did. + +'You've been wrong!' cried Tweedledum. 'The first thing in a visit is to say "How d'ye do?" and shake hands!' And here the two brothers gave each other a hug, and then they held out the two hands that were free, to shake hands with her. + +Alice did not like shaking hands with either of them first, for fear of hurting the other one's feelings; so, as the best way out of the difficulty, she took hold of both hands at once: the next moment they were dancing round in a ring. This seemed quite natural (she remembered afterwards), and she was not even surprised to hear music playing: it seemed to come from the tree under which they were dancing, and it was done (as well as she could make it out) by the branches rubbing one across the other, like fiddles and fiddle-sticks. + +'But it certainly WAS funny,' (Alice said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of all this,) 'to find myself singing "HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH." I don't know when I began it, but somehow I felt as if I'd been singing it a long long time!' + +The other two dancers were fat, and very soon out of breath. 'Four times round is enough for one dance,' Tweedledum panted out, and they left off dancing as suddenly as they had begun: the music stopped at the same moment. + +Then they let go of Alice's hands, and stood looking at her for a minute: there was a rather awkward pause, as Alice didn't know how to begin a conversation with people she had just been dancing with. 'It would never do to say "How d'ye do?" NOW,' she said to herself: 'we seem to have got beyond that, somehow!' + +'I hope you're not much tired?' she said at last. + +'Nohow. And thank you VERY much for asking,' said Tweedledum. + +'So much obliged!' added Tweedledee. 'You like poetry?' + +'Ye-es, pretty well--SOME poetry,' Alice said doubtfully. 'Would you tell me which road leads out of the wood?' + +'What shall I repeat to her?' said Tweedledee, looking round at Tweedledum with great solemn eyes, and not noticing Alice's question. + +'"THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER" is the longest,' Tweedledum replied, giving his brother an affectionate hug. + +Tweedledee began instantly: + +'The sun was shining--' + +Here Alice ventured to interrupt him. 'If it's VERY long,' she said, as politely as she could, 'would you please tell me first which road--' + +Tweedledee smiled gently, and began again: + +poem{ + + 'The sun was shining on the sea, + Shining with all his might: + He did his very best to make + The billows smooth and bright-- + And this was odd, because it was + The middle of the night. + + The moon was shining sulkily, + Because she thought the sun + Had got no business to be there + After the day was done-- + "It's very rude of him," she said, + "To come and spoil the fun!" + + The sea was wet as wet could be, + The sands were dry as dry. + You could not see a cloud, because + No cloud was in the sky: + No birds were flying over head-- + There were no birds to fly. + + The Walrus and the Carpenter + Were walking close at hand; + They wept like anything to see + Such quantities of sand: + "If this were only cleared away," + They said, "it WOULD be grand!" + + "If seven maids with seven mops + Swept it for half a year, + Do you suppose," the Walrus said, + "That they could get it clear?" + "I doubt it," said the Carpenter, + And shed a bitter tear. + + "O Oysters, come and walk with us!" + The Walrus did beseech. + "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, + Along the briny beach: + We cannot do with more than four, + To give a hand to each." + + The eldest Oyster looked at him. + But never a word he said: + The eldest Oyster winked his eye, + And shook his heavy head-- + Meaning to say he did not choose + To leave the oyster-bed. + + But four young oysters hurried up, + All eager for the treat: + Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, + Their shoes were clean and neat-- + And this was odd, because, you know, + They hadn't any feet. + + Four other Oysters followed them, + And yet another four; + And thick and fast they came at last, + And more, and more, and more-- + All hopping through the frothy waves, + And scrambling to the shore. + + The Walrus and the Carpenter + Walked on a mile or so, + And then they rested on a rock + Conveniently low: + And all the little Oysters stood + And waited in a row. + + "The time has come," the Walrus said, + "To talk of many things: + Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- + Of cabbages--and kings-- + And why the sea is boiling hot-- + And whether pigs have wings." + + "But wait a bit," the Oysters cried, + "Before we have our chat; + For some of us are out of breath, + And all of us are fat!" + "No hurry!" said the Carpenter. + They thanked him much for that. + + "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, + "Is what we chiefly need: + Pepper and vinegar besides + Are very good indeed-- + Now if you're ready Oysters dear, + We can begin to feed." + + "But not on us!" the Oysters cried, + Turning a little blue, + "After such kindness, that would be + A dismal thing to do!" + "The night is fine," the Walrus said + "Do you admire the view? + + "It was so kind of you to come! + And you are very nice!" + The Carpenter said nothing but + "Cut us another slice: + I wish you were not quite so deaf-- + I've had to ask you twice!" + + "It seems a shame," the Walrus said, + "To play them such a trick, + After we've brought them out so far, + And made them trot so quick!" + The Carpenter said nothing but + "The butter's spread too thick!" + + "I weep for you," the Walrus said. + "I deeply sympathize." + With sobs and tears he sorted out + Those of the largest size. + Holding his pocket handkerchief + Before his streaming eyes. + + "O Oysters," said the Carpenter. + "You've had a pleasant run! + Shall we be trotting home again?" + But answer came there none-- + And that was scarcely odd, because + They'd eaten every one.' + +}poem + +'I like the Walrus best,' said Alice: 'because you see he was a LITTLE sorry for the poor oysters.' + +'He ate more than the Carpenter, though,' said Tweedledee. 'You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise.' + +'That was mean!' Alice said indignantly. 'Then I like the Carpenter best--if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus.' + +'But he ate as many as he could get,' said Tweedledum. + +This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, 'Well! They were BOTH very unpleasant characters--' Here she checked herself in some alarm, at hearing something that sounded to her like the puffing of a large steam-engine in the wood near them, though she feared it was more likely to be a wild beast. 'Are there any lions or tigers about here?' she asked timidly. + +'It's only the Red King snoring,' said Tweedledee. + +'Come and look at him!' the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping. + +'Isn't he a LOVELY sight?' said Tweedledum. + +Alice couldn't say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud--'fit to snore his head off!' as Tweedledum remarked. + +'I'm afraid he'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,' said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl. + +'He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: 'and what do you think he's dreaming about?' + +Alice said 'Nobody can guess that.' + +'Why, about YOU!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. 'And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?' + +'Where I am now, of course,' said Alice. + +'Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. 'You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!' + +'If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, 'you'd go out--bang!--just like a candle!' + +'I shouldn't!' Alice exclaimed indignantly. 'Besides, if I'M only a sort of thing in his dream, what are YOU, I should like to know?' + +'Ditto' said Tweedledum. + +'Ditto, ditto' cried Tweedledee. + +He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying, 'Hush! You'll be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise.' + +'Well, it no use YOUR talking about waking him,' said Tweedledum, 'when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.' + +'I AM real!' said Alice and began to cry. + +'You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying,' Tweedledee remarked: 'there's nothing to cry about.' + +'If I wasn't real,' Alice said--half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous--'I shouldn't be able to cry.' + +'I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?' Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt. + +'I know they're talking nonsense,' Alice thought to herself: 'and it's foolish to cry about it.' So she brushed away her tears, and went on as cheerfully as she could. 'At any rate I'd better be getting out of the wood, for really it's coming on very dark. Do you think it's going to rain?' + +Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his brother, and looked up into it. 'No, I don't think it is,' he said: 'at least--not under HERE. Nohow.' + +'But it may rain OUTSIDE?' + +'It may--if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: 'we've no objection. Contrariwise.' + +'Selfish things!' thought Alice, and she was just going to say 'Good-night' and leave them, when Tweedledum sprang out from under the umbrella and seized her by the wrist. + +'Do you see THAT?' he said, in a voice choking with passion, and his eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment, as he pointed with a trembling finger at a small white thing lying under the tree. + +'It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a careful examination of the little white thing. 'Not a rattleSNAKE, you know,' she added hastily, thinking that he was frightened: 'only an old rattle--quite old and broken.' + +'I knew it was!' cried Tweedledum, beginning to stamp about wildly and tear his hair. 'It's spoilt, of course!' Here he looked at Tweedledee, who immediately sat down on the ground, and tried to hide himself under the umbrella. + +Alice laid her hand upon his arm, and said in a soothing tone, 'You needn't be so angry about an old rattle.' + +'But it isn't old!' Tweedledum cried, in a greater fury than ever. 'It's new, I tell you--I bought it yesterday--my nice new RATTLE!' and his voice rose to a perfect scream. + +All this time Tweedledee was trying his best to fold up the umbrella, with himself in it: which was such an extraordinary thing to do, that it quite took off Alice's attention from the angry brother. But he couldn't quite succeed, and it ended in his rolling over, bundled up in the umbrella, with only his head out: and there he lay, opening and shutting his mouth and his large eyes--'looking more like a fish than anything else,' Alice thought. + +'Of course you agree to have a battle?' Tweedledum said in a calmer tone. + +'I suppose so,' the other sulkily replied, as he crawled out of the umbrella: 'only SHE must help us to dress up, you know.' + +So the two brothers went off hand-in-hand into the wood, and returned in a minute with their arms full of things--such as bolsters, blankets, hearth-rugs, table-cloths, dish-covers and coal-scuttles. 'I hope you're a good hand at pinning and tying strings?' Tweedledum remarked. 'Every one of these things has got to go on, somehow or other.' + +Alice said afterwards she had never seen such a fuss made about anything in all her life--the way those two bustled about-- and the quantity of things they put on--and the trouble they gave her in tying strings and fastening buttons--'Really they'll be more like bundles of old clothes than anything else, by the time they're ready!' she said to herself, as she arranged a bolster round the neck of Tweedledee, 'to keep his head from being cut off,' as he said. + +'You know,' he added very gravely, 'it's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle--to get one's head cut off.' + +Alice laughed aloud: but she managed to turn it into a cough, for fear of hurting his feelings. + +'Do I look very pale?' said Tweedledum, coming up to have his helmet tied on. (He CALLED it a helmet, though it certainly looked much more like a saucepan.) + +'Well--yes--a LITTLE,' Alice replied gently. + +'I'm very brave generally,' he went on in a low voice: 'only to-day I happen to have a headache.' + +'And I'VE got a toothache!' said Tweedledee, who had overheard the remark. 'I'm far worse off than you!' + +'Then you'd better not fight to-day,' said Alice, thinking it a good opportunity to make peace. + +'We MUST have a bit of a fight, but I don't care about going on long,' said Tweedledum. 'What's the time now?' + +Tweedledee looked at his watch, and said 'Half-past four.' + +'Let's fight till six, and then have dinner,' said Tweedledum. + +'Very well,' the other said, rather sadly: 'and SHE can watch us--only you'd better not come VERY close,' he added: 'I generally hit everything I can see--when I get really excited.' + +'And _{I}_ hit everything within reach,' cried Tweedledum, 'whether I can see it or not!' + +Alice laughed. 'You must hit the TREES pretty often, I should think,' she said. + +Tweedledum looked round him with a satisfied smile. 'I don't suppose,' he said, 'there'll be a tree left standing, for ever so far round, by the time we've finished!' + +'And all about a rattle!' said Alice, still hoping to make them a LITTLE ashamed of fighting for such a trifle. + +'I shouldn't have minded it so much,' said Tweedledum, 'if it hadn't been a new one.' + +'I wish the monstrous crow would come!' thought Alice. + +'There's only one sword, you know,' Tweedledum said to his brother: 'but you can have the umbrella--it's quite as sharp. Only we must begin quick. It's getting as dark as it can.' + +'And darker,' said Tweedledee. + +It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there must be a thunderstorm coming on. 'What a thick black cloud that is!' she said. 'And how fast it comes! Why, I do believe it's got wings!' + +'It's the crow!' Tweedledum cried out in a shrill voice of alarm: and the two brothers took to their heels and were out of sight in a moment. + +Alice ran a little way into the wood, and stopped under a large tree. 'It can never get at me HERE,' she thought: 'it's far too large to squeeze itself in among the trees. But I wish it wouldn't flap its wings so--it makes quite a hurricane in the wood-- here's somebody's shawl being blown away!' + +CHAPTER V - Wool and Water + +She caught the shawl as she spoke, and looked about for the owner: in another moment the White Queen came running wildly through the wood, with both arms stretched out wide, as if she were flying, and Alice very civilly went to meet her with the shawl. + +'I'm very glad I happened to be in the way,' Alice said, as she helped her to put on her shawl again. + +The White Queen only looked at her in a helpless frightened sort of way, and kept repeating something in a whisper to herself that sounded like 'bread-and-butter, bread-and-butter,' and Alice felt that if there was to be any conversation at all, she must manage it herself. So she began rather timidly: 'Am I addressing the White Queen?' + +'Well, yes, if you call that a-dressing,' The Queen said. 'It isn't MY notion of the thing, at all.' + +Alice thought it would never do to have an argument at the very beginning of their conversation, so she smiled and said, 'If your Majesty will only tell me the right way to begin, I'll do it as well as I can.' + +'But I don't want it done at all!' groaned the poor Queen. 'I've been a-dressing myself for the last two hours.' + +It would have been all the better, as it seemed to Alice, if she had got some one else to dress her, she was so dreadfully untidy. 'Every single thing's crooked,' Alice thought to herself, 'and she's all over pins!--may I put your shawl straight for you?' she added aloud. + +'I don't know what's the matter with it!' the Queen said, in a melancholy voice. 'It's out of temper, I think. I've pinned it here, and I've pinned it there, but there's no pleasing it!' + +'It CAN'T go straight, you know, if you pin it all on one side,' Alice said, as she gently put it right for her; 'and, dear me, what a state your hair is in!' + +'The brush has got entangled in it!' the Queen said with a sigh. 'And I lost the comb yesterday.' + +Alice carefully released the brush, and did her best to get the hair into order. 'Come, you look rather better now!' she said, after altering most of the pins. 'But really you should have a lady's maid!' + +'I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!' the Queen said. 'Twopence a week, and jam every other day.' + +Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said, 'I don't want you to hire ME--and I don't care for jam.' + +'It's very good jam,' said the Queen. + +'Well, I don't want any TO-DAY, at any rate.' + +'You couldn't have it if you DID want it,' the Queen said. 'The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never jam to-day.' + +'It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"' Alice objected. + +'No, it can't,' said the Queen. 'It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't any OTHER day, you know.' + +'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!' + +'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it always makes one a little giddy at first--' + +'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard of such a thing!' + +'--but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.' + +'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things before they happen.' + +'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked. + +'What sort of things do YOU remember best?' Alice ventured to ask. + +'Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless tone. 'For instance, now,' she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster [band-aid] on her finger as she spoke, 'there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.' + +'Suppose he never commits the crime?' said Alice. + +'That would be all the better, wouldn't it?' the Queen said, as she bound the plaster round her finger with a bit of ribbon. + +Alice felt there was no denying THAT. 'Of course it would be all the better,' she said: 'but it wouldn't be all the better his being punished.' + +'You're wrong THERE, at any rate,' said the Queen: 'were YOU ever punished?' + +'Only for faults,' said Alice. + +'And you were all the better for it, I know!' the Queen said triumphantly. + +'Yes, but then I HAD done the things I was punished for,' said Alice: 'that makes all the difference.' + +'But if you HADN'T done them,' the Queen said, 'that would have been better still; better, and better, and better!' Her voice went higher with each 'better,' till it got quite to a squeak at last. + +Alice was just beginning to say 'There's a mistake somewhere--,' when the Queen began screaming so loud that she had to leave the sentence unfinished. 'Oh, oh, oh!' shouted the Queen, shaking her hand about as if she wanted to shake it off. 'My finger's bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!' + +Her screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam-engine, that Alice had to hold both her hands over her ears. + +'What IS the matter?' she said, as soon as there was a chance of making herself heard. 'Have you pricked your finger?' + +'I haven't pricked it YET,' the Queen said, 'but I soon shall-- oh, oh, oh!' + +'When do you expect to do it?' Alice asked, feeling very much inclined to laugh. + +'When I fasten my shawl again,' the poor Queen groaned out: 'the brooch will come undone directly. Oh, oh!' As she said the words the brooch flew open, and the Queen clutched wildly at it, and tried to clasp it again. + +'Take care!' cried Alice. 'You're holding it all crooked!' And she caught at the brooch; but it was too late: the pin had slipped, and the Queen had pricked her finger. + +'That accounts for the bleeding, you see,' she said to Alice with a smile. 'Now you understand the way things happen here.' + +'But why don't you scream now?' Alice asked, holding her hands ready to put over her ears again. + +'Why, I've done all the screaming already,' said the Queen. 'What would be the good of having it all over again?' + +By this time it was getting light. 'The crow must have flown away, I think,' said Alice: 'I'm so glad it's gone. I thought it was the night coming on.' + +'I wish _{I}_ could manage to be glad!' the Queen said. 'Only I never can remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this wood, and being glad whenever you like!' + +'Only it is so VERY lonely here!' Alice said in a melancholy voice; and at the thought of her loneliness two large tears came rolling down her cheeks. + +'Oh, don't go on like that!' cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. 'Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!' + +Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. 'Can YOU keep from crying by considering things?' she asked. + +'That's the way it's done,' the Queen said with great decision: 'nobody can do two things at once, you know. Let's consider your age to begin with--how old are you?' + +'I'm seven and a half exactly.' + +'You needn't say "exactually,"' the Queen remarked: 'I can believe it without that. Now I'll give YOU something to believe. I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day.' + +'I can't believe THAT!' said Alice. + +'Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. 'Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.' + +Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said: 'one CAN'T believe impossible things.' + +'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!' + +The brooch had come undone as she spoke, and a sudden gust of wind blew the Queen's shawl across a little brook. The Queen spread out her arms again, and went flying after it, and this time she succeeded in catching it for herself. 'I've got it!' she cried in a triumphant tone. 'Now you shall see me pin it on again, all by myself!' + +'Then I hope your finger is better now?' Alice said very politely, as she crossed the little brook after the Queen. + +* * * * + + * * * + +* * * * + +'Oh, much better!' cried the Queen, her voice rising to a squeak as she went on. 'Much be-etter! Be-etter! Be-e-e-etter! Be-e-ehh!' The last word ended in a long bleat, so like a sheep that Alice quite started. + +She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have suddenly wrapped herself up in wool. Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She couldn't make out what had happened at all. Was she in a shop? And was that really--was it really a SHEEP that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as she could, she could make nothing more of it: she was in a little dark shop, leaning with her elbows on the counter, and opposite to her was an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spectacles. + +'What is it you want to buy?' the Sheep said at last, looking up for a moment from her knitting. + +'I don't QUITE know yet,' Alice said, very gently. 'I should like to look all round me first, if I might.' + +'You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,' said the Sheep: 'but you can't look ALL round you--unless you've got eyes at the back of your head.' + +But these, as it happened, Alice had NOT got: so she contented herself with turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them. + +The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things-- but the oddest part of it all was, that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold. + +'Things flow about so here!' she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a large bright thing, that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the shelf next above the one she was looking at. 'And this one is the most provoking of all--but I'll tell you what--' she added, as a sudden thought struck her, 'I'll follow it up to the very top shelf of all. It'll puzzle it to go through the ceiling, I expect!' + +But even this plan failed: the 'thing' went through the ceiling as quietly as possible, as if it were quite used to it. + +'Are you a child or a teetotum?' the Sheep said, as she took up another pair of needles. 'You'll make me giddy soon, if you go on turning round like that.' She was now working with fourteen pairs at once, and Alice couldn't help looking at her in great astonishment. + +'How CAN she knit with so many?' the puzzled child thought to herself. 'She gets more and more like a porcupine every minute!' + +'Can you row?' the Sheep asked, handing her a pair of knitting- needles as she spoke. + +'Yes, a little--but not on land--and not with needles--' Alice was beginning to say, when suddenly the needles turned into oars in her hands, and she found they were in a little boat, gliding along between banks: so there was nothing for it but to do her best. + +'Feather!' cried the Sheep, as she took up another pair of needles. + +This didn't sound like a remark that needed any answer, so Alice said nothing, but pulled away. There was something very queer about the water, she thought, as every now and then the oars got fast in it, and would hardly come out again. + +'Feather! Feather!' the Sheep cried again, taking more needles. 'You'll be catching a crab directly.' + +'A dear little crab!' thought Alice. 'I should like that.' + +'Didn't you hear me say "Feather"?' the Sheep cried angrily, taking up quite a bunch of needles. + +'Indeed I did,' said Alice: 'you've said it very often--and very loud. Please, where ARE the crabs?' + +'In the water, of course!' said the Sheep, sticking some of the needles into her hair, as her hands were full. 'Feather, I say!' + +'WHY do you say "feather" so often?' Alice asked at last, rather vexed. 'I'm not a bird!' + +'You are,' said the Sheep: 'you're a little goose.' + +This offended Alice a little, so there was no more conversation for a minute or two, while the boat glided gently on, sometimes among beds of weeds (which made the oars stick fast in the water, worse then ever), and sometimes under trees, but always with the same tall river-banks frowning over their heads. + +'Oh, please! There are some scented rushes!' Alice cried in a sudden transport of delight. 'There really are--and SUCH beauties!' + +'You needn't say "please" to ME about 'em,' the Sheep said, without looking up from her knitting: 'I didn't put 'em there, and I'm not going to take 'em away.' + +'No, but I meant--please, may we wait and pick some?' Alice pleaded. 'If you don't mind stopping the boat for a minute.' + +'How am _I_ to stop it?' said the Sheep. 'If you leave off rowing, it'll stop of itself.' + +So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep to get the rushes a good long way down before breaking them off--and for a while Alice forgot all about the Sheep and the knitting, as she bent over the side of the boat, with just the ends of her tangled hair dipping into the water--while with bright eager eyes she caught at one bunch after another of the darling scented rushes. + +'I only hope the boat won't tipple over!' she said to herself. 'Oh, WHAT a lovely one! Only I couldn't quite reach it.' 'And it certainly DID seem a little provoking ('almost as if it happened on purpose,' she thought) that, though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that she couldn't reach. + +'The prettiest are always further!' she said at last, with a sigh at the obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as, with flushed cheeks and dripping hair and hands, she scrambled back into her place, and began to arrange her new-found treasures. + +What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while--and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet-- but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about. + +They hadn't gone much farther before the blade of one of the oars got fast in the water and WOULDN'T come out again (so Alice explained it afterwards), and the consequence was that the handle of it caught her under the chin, and, in spite of a series of little shrieks of 'Oh, oh, oh!' from poor Alice, it swept her straight off the seat, and down among the heap of rushes. + +However, she wasn't hurt, and was soon up again: the Sheep went on with her knitting all the while, just as if nothing had happened. 'That was a nice crab you caught!' she remarked, as Alice got back into her place, very much relieved to find herself still in the boat. + +'Was it? I didn't see it,' Said Alice, peeping cautiously over the side of the boat into the dark water. 'I wish it hadn't let go--I should so like to see a little crab to take home with me!' But the Sheep only laughed scornfully, and went on with her knitting. + +'Are there many crabs here?' said Alice. + +'Crabs, and all sorts of things,' said the Sheep: 'plenty of choice, only make up your mind. Now, what DO you want to buy?' + +'To buy!' Alice echoed in a tone that was half astonished and half frightened--for the oars, and the boat, and the river, had vanished all in a moment, and she was back again in the little dark shop. + +'I should like to buy an egg, please,' she said timidly. 'How do you sell them?' + +'Fivepence farthing for one--Twopence for two,' the Sheep replied. + +'Then two are cheaper than one?' Alice said in a surprised tone, taking out her purse. + +'Only you MUST eat them both, if you buy two,' said the Sheep. + +'Then I'll have ONE, please,' said Alice, as she put the money down on the counter. For she thought to herself, 'They mightn't be at all nice, you know.' + +The Sheep took the money, and put it away in a box: then she said 'I never put things into people's hands--that would never do--you must get it for yourself.' And so saying, she went off to the other end of the shop, and set the egg upright on a shelf. + +'I wonder WHY it wouldn't do?' thought Alice, as she groped her way among the tables and chairs, for the shop was very dark towards the end. 'The egg seems to get further away the more I walk towards it. Let me see, is this a chair? Why, it's got branches, I declare! How very odd to find trees growing here! And actually here's a little brook! Well, this is the very queerest shop I ever saw!' + +* * * * + + * * * + +* * * * + +So she went on, wondering more and more at every step, as everything turned into a tree the moment she came up to it, and she quite expected the egg to do the same. + +CHAPTER VI - Humpty Dumpty + +However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was HUMPTY DUMPTY himself. 'It can't be anybody else!' she said to herself. 'I'm as certain of it, as if his name were written all over his face.' + +It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous face. Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turk, on the top of a high wall--such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his balance--and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite direction, and he didn't take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure after all. + +'And how exactly like an egg he is!' she said aloud, standing with her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fall. + +'It's VERY provoking,' Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, 'to be called an egg-- VERY!' + +'I said you LOOKED like an egg, Sir,' Alice gently explained. 'And some eggs are very pretty, you know' she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of a compliment. + +'Some people,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as usual, 'have no more sense than a baby!' + +Alice didn't know what to say to this: it wasn't at all like conversation, she thought, as he never said anything to HER; in fact, his last remark was evidently addressed to a tree--so she stood and softly repeated to herself:-- + +poem{ + + 'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall: + Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. + All the King's horses and all the King's men + Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.' + +}poem + +'That last line is much too long for the poetry,' she added, almost out loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her. + +'Don't stand there chattering to yourself like that,' Humpty Dumpty said, looking at her for the first time, 'but tell me your name and your business.' + +'My NAME is Alice, but--' + +'It's a stupid enough name!' Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. 'What does it mean?' + +'MUST a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully. + +'Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: 'MY name means the shape I am--and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.' + +'Why do you sit out here all alone?' said Alice, not wishing to begin an argument. + +'Why, because there's nobody with me!' cried Humpty Dumpty. 'Did you think I didn't know the answer to THAT? Ask another.' + +'Don't you think you'd be safer down on the ground?' Alice went on, not with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her good-natured anxiety for the queer creature. 'That wall is so VERY narrow!' + +'What tremendously easy riddles you ask!' Humpty Dumpty growled out. 'Of course I don't think so! Why, if ever I DID fall off-- which there's no chance of--but IF I did--' Here he pursed his lips and looked so solemn and grand that Alice could hardly help laughing. 'IF I did fall,' he went on, 'THE KING HAS PROMISED ME--WITH HIS VERY OWN MOUTH--to--to--' + +'To send all his horses and all his men,' Alice interrupted, rather unwisely. + +'Now I declare that's too bad!' Humpty Dumpty cried, breaking into a sudden passion. 'You've been listening at doors--and behind trees-- and down chimneys--or you couldn't have known it!' + +'I haven't, indeed!' Alice said very gently. 'It's in a book.' + +'Ah, well! They may write such things in a BOOK,' Humpty Dumpty said in a calmer tone. 'That's what you call a History of England, that is. Now, take a good look at me! I'm one that has spoken to a King, _{I}_ am: mayhap you'll never see such another: and to show you I'm not proud, you may shake hands with me!' And he grinned almost from ear to ear, as he leant forwards (and as nearly as possible fell off the wall in doing so) and offered Alice his hand. She watched him a little anxiously as she took it. 'If he smiled much more, the ends of his mouth might meet behind,' she thought: 'and then I don't know what would happen to his head! I'm afraid it would come off!' + +'Yes, all his horses and all his men,' Humpty Dumpty went on. 'They'd pick me up again in a minute, THEY would! However, this conversation is going on a little too fast: let's go back to the last remark but one.' + +'I'm afraid I can't quite remember it,' Alice said very politely. + +'In that case we start fresh,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'and it's my turn to choose a subject--' ('He talks about it just as if it was a game!' thought Alice.) 'So here's a question for you. How old did you say you were?' + +Alice made a short calculation, and said 'Seven years and six months.' + +'Wrong!' Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly. 'You never said a word like it!' + +'I though you meant "How old ARE you?"' Alice explained. + +'If I'd meant that, I'd have said it,' said Humpty Dumpty. + +Alice didn't want to begin another argument, so she said nothing. + +'Seven years and six months!' Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. 'An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have said "Leave off at seven"--but it's too late now.' + +'I never ask advice about growing,' Alice said indignantly. + +'Too proud?' the other inquired. + +Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. 'I mean,' she said, 'that one can't help growing older.' + +'ONE can't, perhaps,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'but TWO can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven.' + +'What a beautiful belt you've got on!' Alice suddenly remarked. + +(They had had quite enough of the subject of age, she thought: and if they really were to take turns in choosing subjects, it was her turn now.) 'At least,' she corrected herself on second thoughts, 'a beautiful cravat, I should have said--no, a belt, I mean--I beg your pardon!' she added in dismay, for Humpty Dumpty looked thoroughly offended, and she began to wish she hadn't chosen that subject. 'If I only knew,' she thought to herself, 'which was neck and which was waist!' + +Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or two. When he DID speak again, it was in a deep growl. + +'It is a--MOST--PROVOKING--thing,' he said at last, 'when a person doesn't know a cravat from a belt!' + +'I know it's very ignorant of me,' Alice said, in so humble a tone that Humpty Dumpty relented. + +'It's a cravat, child, and a beautiful one, as you say. It's a present from the White King and Queen. There now!' + +'Is it really?' said Alice, quite pleased to find that she HAD chosen a good subject, after all. + +'They gave it me,' Humpty Dumpty continued thoughtfully, as he crossed one knee over the other and clasped his hands round it, 'they gave it me--for an un-birthday present.' + +'I beg your pardon?' Alice said with a puzzled air. + +'I'm not offended,' said Humpty Dumpty. + +'I mean, what IS an un-birthday present?' + +'A present given when it isn't your birthday, of course.' + +Alice considered a little. 'I like birthday presents best,' she said at last. + +'You don't know what you're talking about!' cried Humpty Dumpty. 'How many days are there in a year?' + +'Three hundred and sixty-five,' said Alice. + +'And how many birthdays have you?' + +'One.' + +'And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five, what remains?' + +'Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.' + +Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. 'I'd rather see that done on paper,' he said. + +Alice couldn't help smiling as she took out her memorandum- book, and worked the sum for him: + +code{ + + 365 + 1 + ___ + + 364 + ___ + +}code + +Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it carefully. 'That seems to be done right--' he began. + +'You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted. + +'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that SEEMS to be done right--though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now--and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents--' + +'Certainly,' said Alice. + +'And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!' + +'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said. + +Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't-- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"' + +'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected. + +'When _{I}_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.' + +'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.' + +'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master-- that's all.' + +Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them-- particularly verbs, they're the proudest--adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs--however, _{I}_ can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what _{I}_ say!' + +'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice 'what that means?' + +'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.' + +'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone. + +'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.' + +'Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark. + +'Ah, you should see 'em come round me of a Saturday night,' Humpty Dumpty went on, wagging his head gravely from side to side: 'for to get their wages, you know.' + +(Alice didn't venture to ask what he paid them with; and so you see I can't tell YOU.) + +'You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,' said Alice. 'Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called "Jabberwocky"?' + +'Let's hear it,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'I can explain all the poems that were ever invented--and a good many that haven't been invented just yet.' + +This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse: + +poem{ + + 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves + Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; + All mimsy were the borogoves, + And the mome raths outgrabe. + +}poem + +'That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty interrupted: 'there are plenty of hard words there. "BRILLIG" means four o'clock in the afternoon--the time when you begin BROILING things for dinner.' + +'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and "SLITHY"?' + +'Well, "SLITHY" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as "active." You see it's like a portmanteau--there are two meanings packed up into one word.' + +'I see it now,' Alice remarked thoughtfully: 'and what are "TOVES"?' + +'Well, "TOVES" are something like badgers--they're something like lizards--and they're something like corkscrews.' + +'They must be very curious looking creatures.' + +'They are that,' said Humpty Dumpty: 'also they make their nests under sun-dials--also they live on cheese.' + +'And what's the "GYRE" and to "GIMBLE"?' + +'To "GYRE" is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To "GIMBLE" is to make holes like a gimlet.' + +'And "THE WABE" is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?' said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity. + +'Of course it is. It's called "WABE," you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it--' + +'And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice added. + +'Exactly so. Well, then, "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE" is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round-- something like a live mop.' + +'And then "MOME RATHS"?' said Alice. 'I'm afraid I'm giving you a great deal of trouble.' + +'Well, a "RATH" is a sort of green pig: but "MOME" I'm not certain about. I think it's short for "from home"--meaning that they'd lost their way, you know.' + +'And what does "OUTGRABE" mean?' + +'Well, "OUTGRABING" is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll hear it done, maybe--down in the wood yonder--and when you've once heard it you'll be QUITE content. Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?' + +'I read it in a book,' said Alice. 'But I had some poetry repeated to me, much easier than that, by--Tweedledee, I think it was.' + +'As to poetry, you know,' said Humpty Dumpty, stretching out one of his great hands, '_I_ can repeat poetry as well as other folk, if it comes to that--' + +'Oh, it needn't come to that!' Alice hastily said, hoping to keep him from beginning. + +'The piece I'm going to repeat,' he went on without noticing her remark, 'was written entirely for your amusement.' + +Alice felt that in that case she really OUGHT to listen to it, so she sat down, and said 'Thank you' rather sadly. + +poem{ + + 'In winter, when the fields are white, + I sing this song for your delight-- + +}poem + +only I don't sing it,' he added, as an explanation. + +'I see you don't,' said Alice. + +'If you can SEE whether I'm singing or not, you've sharper eyes than most.' Humpty Dumpty remarked severely. Alice was silent. + +poem{ + + 'In spring, when woods are getting green, + I'll try and tell you what I mean.' + +}poem + +'Thank you very much,' said Alice. + +poem{ + + 'In summer, when the days are long, + Perhaps you'll understand the song: + In autumn, when the leaves are brown, + Take pen and ink, and write it down.' + +}poem + +'I will, if I can remember it so long,' said Alice. + +'You needn't go on making remarks like that,' Humpty Dumpty said: 'they're not sensible, and they put me out.' + +poem{ + + 'I sent a message to the fish: + I told them "This is what I wish." + + The little fishes of the sea, + They sent an answer back to me. + + The little fishes' answer was + "We cannot do it, Sir, because--"' + +}poem + +'I'm afraid I don't quite understand,' said Alice. + +'It gets easier further on,' Humpty Dumpty replied. + +poem{ + + 'I sent to them again to say + "It will be better to obey." + + The fishes answered with a grin, + "Why, what a temper you are in!" + + I told them once, I told them twice: + They would not listen to advice. + + I took a kettle large and new, + Fit for the deed I had to do. + + My heart went hop, my heart went thump; + I filled the kettle at the pump. + + Then some one came to me and said, + "The little fishes are in bed." + + I said to him, I said it plain, + "Then you must wake them up again." + + I said it very loud and clear; + I went and shouted in his ear.' + +}poem + +Humpty Dumpty raised his voice almost to a scream as he repeated this verse, and Alice thought with a shudder, 'I wouldn't have been the messenger for ANYTHING!' + +poem{ + + 'But he was very stiff and proud; + He said "You needn't shout so loud!" + + And he was very proud and stiff; + He said "I'd go and wake them, if--" + + I took a corkscrew from the shelf: + I went to wake them up myself. + + And when I found the door was locked, + I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked. + + And when I found the door was shut, + I tried to turn the handle, but--' + +}poem + +There was a long pause. + +'Is that all?' Alice timidly asked. + +'That's all,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'Good-bye.' + +This was rather sudden, Alice thought: but, after such a VERY strong hint that she ought to be going, she felt that it would hardly be civil to stay. So she got up, and held out her hand. 'Good-bye, till we meet again!' she said as cheerfully as she could. + +'I shouldn't know you again if we DID meet,' Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake; 'you're so exactly like other people.' + +'The face is what one goes by, generally,' Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone. + +'That's just what I complain of,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'Your face is the same as everybody has--the two eyes, so--' (marking their places in the air with this thumb) 'nose in the middle, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance--or the mouth at the top--that would be SOME help.' + +'It wouldn't look nice,' Alice objected. But Humpty Dumpty only shut his eyes and said 'Wait till you've tried.' + +Alice waited a minute to see if he would speak again, but as he never opened his eyes or took any further notice of her, she said 'Good-bye!' once more, and, getting no answer to this, she quietly walked away: but she couldn't help saying to herself as she went, 'Of all the unsatisfactory--' (she repeated this aloud, as it was a great comfort to have such a long word to say) 'of all the unsatisfactory people I EVER met--' She never finished the sentence, for at this moment a heavy crash shook the forest from end to end. + +CHAPTER VII - The Lion and the Unicorn + +The next moment soldiers came running through the wood, at first in twos and threes, then ten or twenty together, and at last in such crowds that they seemed to fill the whole forest. Alice got behind a tree, for fear of being run over, and watched them go by. + +She thought that in all her life she had never seen soldiers so uncertain on their feet: they were always tripping over something or other, and whenever one went down, several more always fell over him, so that the ground was soon covered with little heaps of men. + +Then came the horses. Having four feet, these managed rather better than the foot-soldiers: but even THEY stumbled now and then; and it seemed to be a regular rule that, whenever a horse stumbled the rider fell off instantly. The confusion got worse every moment, and Alice was very glad to get out of the wood into an open place, where she found the White King seated on the ground, busily writing in his memorandum-book. + +'I've sent them all!' the King cried in a tone of delight, on seeing Alice. 'Did you happen to meet any soldiers, my dear, as you came through the wood?' + +'Yes, I did,' said Alice: 'several thousand, I should think.' + +'Four thousand two hundred and seven, that's the exact number,' the King said, referring to his book. 'I couldn't send all the horses, you know, because two of them are wanted in the game. And I haven't sent the two Messengers, either. They're both gone to the town. Just look along the road, and tell me if you can see either of them.' + +'I see nobody on the road,' said Alice. + +'I only wish _{I}_ had such eyes,' the King remarked in a fretful tone. 'To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it's as much as _{I}_ can do to see real people, by this light!' + +All this was lost on Alice, who was still looking intently along the road, shading her eyes with one hand. 'I see somebody now!' she exclaimed at last. 'But he's coming very slowly--and what curious attitudes he goes into!' (For the messenger kept skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel, as he came along, with his great hands spread out like fans on each side.) + +'Not at all,' said the King. 'He's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger-- and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He only does them when he's happy. His name is Haigha.' (He pronounced it so as to rhyme with 'mayor.') + +'I love my love with an H,' Alice couldn't help beginning, 'because he is Happy. I hate him with an H, because he is Hideous. I fed him with--with--with Ham-sandwiches and Hay. His name is Haigha, and he lives--' + +'He lives on the Hill,' the King remarked simply, without the least idea that he was joining in the game, while Alice was still hesitating for the name of a town beginning with H. 'The other Messenger's called Hatta. I must have TWO, you know--to come and go. One to come, and one to go.' + +'I beg your pardon?' said Alice. + +'It isn't respectable to beg,' said the King. + +'I only meant that I didn't understand,' said Alice. 'Why one to come and one to go?' + +'Didn't I tell you?' the King repeated impatiently. 'I must have Two--to fetch and carry. One to fetch, and one to carry.' + +At this moment the Messenger arrived: he was far too much out of breath to say a word, and could only wave his hands about, and make the most fearful faces at the poor King. + +'This young lady loves you with an H,' the King said, introducing Alice in the hope of turning off the Messenger's attention from himself--but it was no use--the Anglo-Saxon attitudes only got more extraordinary every moment, while the great eyes rolled wildly from side to side. + +'You alarm me!' said the King. 'I feel faint--Give me a ham sandwich!' + +On which the Messenger, to Alice's great amusement, opened a bag that hung round his neck, and handed a sandwich to the King, who devoured it greedily. + +'Another sandwich!' said the King. + +'There's nothing but hay left now,' the Messenger said, peeping into the bag. + +'Hay, then,' the King murmured in a faint whisper. + +Alice was glad to see that it revived him a good deal. 'There's nothing like eating hay when you're faint,' he remarked to her, as he munched away. + +'I should think throwing cold water over you would be better,' Alice suggested: 'or some sal-volatile.' + +'I didn't say there was nothing BETTER,' the King replied. 'I said there was nothing LIKE it.' Which Alice did not venture to deny. + +'Who did you pass on the road?' the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some more hay. + +'Nobody,' said the Messenger. + +'Quite right,' said the King: 'this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you.' + +'I do my best,' the Messenger said in a sulky tone. 'I'm sure nobody walks much faster than I do!' + +'He can't do that,' said the King, 'or else he'd have been here first. However, now you've got your breath, you may tell us what's happened in the town.' + +'I'll whisper it,' said the Messenger, putting his hands to his mouth in the shape of a trumpet, and stooping so as to get close to the King's ear. Alice was sorry for this, as she wanted to hear the news too. However, instead of whispering, he simply shouted at the top of his voice 'They're at it again!' + +'Do you call THAT a whisper?' cried the poor King, jumping up and shaking himself. 'If you do such a thing again, I'll have you buttered! It went through and through my head like an earthquake!' + +'It would have to be a very tiny earthquake!' thought Alice. 'Who are at it again?' she ventured to ask. + +'Why the Lion and the Unicorn, of course,' said the King. + +'Fighting for the crown?' + +'Yes, to be sure,' said the King: 'and the best of the joke is, that it's MY crown all the while! Let's run and see them.' And they trotted off, Alice repeating to herself, as she ran, the words of the old song:-- + +poem{ + + 'The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown: + The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town. + Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown; + Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them out of town.' + +}poem + +'Does--the one--that wins--get the crown?' she asked, as well as she could, for the run was putting her quite out of breath. + +'Dear me, no!' said the King. 'What an idea!' + +'Would you--be good enough,' Alice panted out, after running a little further, 'to stop a minute--just to get--one's breath again?' + +'I'm GOOD enough,' the King said, 'only I'm not strong enough. You see, a minute goes by so fearfully quick. You might as well try to stop a Bandersnatch!' + +Alice had no more breath for talking, so they trotted on in silence, till they came in sight of a great crowd, in the middle of which the Lion and Unicorn were fighting. They were in such a cloud of dust, that at first Alice could not make out which was which: but she soon managed to distinguish the Unicorn by his horn. + +They placed themselves close to where Hatta, the other messenger, was standing watching the fight, with a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other. + +'He's only just out of prison, and he hadn't finished his tea when he was sent in,' Haigha whispered to Alice: 'and they only give them oyster-shells in there--so you see he's very hungry and thirsty. How are you, dear child?' he went on, putting his arm affectionately round Hatta's neck. + +Hatta looked round and nodded, and went on with his bread and butter. + +'Were you happy in prison, dear child?' said Haigha. + +Hatta looked round once more, and this time a tear or two trickled down his cheek: but not a word would he say. + +'Speak, can't you!' Haigha cried impatiently. But Hatta only munched away, and drank some more tea. + +'Speak, won't you!' cried the King. 'How are they getting on with the fight?' + +Hatta made a desperate effort, and swallowed a large piece of bread-and-butter. 'They're getting on very well,' he said in a choking voice: 'each of them has been down about eighty-seven times.' + +'Then I suppose they'll soon bring the white bread and the brown?' Alice ventured to remark. + +'It's waiting for 'em now,' said Hatta: 'this is a bit of it as I'm eating.' + +There was a pause in the fight just then, and the Lion and the Unicorn sat down, panting, while the King called out 'Ten minutes allowed for refreshments!' Haigha and Hatta set to work at once, carrying rough trays of white and brown bread. Alice took a piece to taste, but it was VERY dry. + +'I don't think they'll fight any more to-day,' the King said to Hatta: 'go and order the drums to begin.' And Hatta went bounding away like a grasshopper. + +For a minute or two Alice stood silent, watching him. Suddenly she brightened up. 'Look, look!' she cried, pointing eagerly. 'There's the White Queen running across the country! She came flying out of the wood over yonder--How fast those Queens CAN run!' + +'There's some enemy after her, no doubt,' the King said, without even looking round. 'That wood's full of them.' + +'But aren't you going to run and help her?' Alice asked, very much surprised at his taking it so quietly. + +'No use, no use!' said the King. 'She runs so fearfully quick. You might as well try to catch a Bandersnatch! But I'll make a memorandum about her, if you like--She's a dear good creature,' he repeated softly to himself, as he opened his memorandum-book. 'Do you spell "creature" with a double "e"?' + +At this moment the Unicorn sauntered by them, with his hands in his pockets. 'I had the best of it this time?' he said to the King, just glancing at him as he passed. + +'A little--a little,' the King replied, rather nervously. 'You shouldn't have run him through with your horn, you know.' + +'It didn't hurt him,' the Unicorn said carelessly, and he was going on, when his eye happened to fall upon Alice: he turned round rather instantly, and stood for some time looking at her with an air of the deepest disgust. + +'What--is--this?' he said at last. + +'This is a child!' Haigha replied eagerly, coming in front of Alice to introduce her, and spreading out both his hands towards her in an Anglo-Saxon attitude. 'We only found it to-day. It's as large as life, and twice as natural!' + +'I always thought they were fabulous monsters!' said the Unicorn. 'Is it alive?' + +'It can talk,' said Haigha, solemnly. + +The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said 'Talk, child.' + +Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: 'Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive before!' + +'Well, now that we HAVE seen each other,' said the Unicorn, 'if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?' + +'Yes, if you like,' said Alice. + +'Come, fetch out the plum-cake, old man!' the Unicorn went on, turning from her to the King. 'None of your brown bread for me!' + +'Certainly--certainly!' the King muttered, and beckoned to Haigha. 'Open the bag!' he whispered. 'Quick! Not that one-- that's full of hay!' + +Haigha took a large cake out of the bag, and gave it to Alice to hold, while he got out a dish and carving-knife. How they all came out of it Alice couldn't guess. It was just like a conjuring-trick, she thought. + +The Lion had joined them while this was going on: he looked very tired and sleepy, and his eyes were half shut. 'What's this!' he said, blinking lazily at Alice, and speaking in a deep hollow tone that sounded like the tolling of a great bell. + +'Ah, what IS it, now?' the Unicorn cried eagerly. 'You'll never guess! _{I}_ couldn't.' + +The Lion looked at Alice wearily. 'Are you animal--vegetable --or mineral?' he said, yawning at every other word. + +'It's a fabulous monster!' the Unicorn cried out, before Alice could reply. + +'Then hand round the plum-cake, Monster,' the Lion said, lying down and putting his chin on this paws. 'And sit down, both of you,' (to the King and the Unicorn): 'fair play with the cake, you know!' + +The King was evidently very uncomfortable at having to sit down between the two great creatures; but there was no other place for him. + +'What a fight we might have for the crown, NOW!' the Unicorn said, looking slyly up at the crown, which the poor King was nearly shaking off his head, he trembled so much. + +'I should win easy,' said the Lion. + +'I'm not so sure of that,' said the Unicorn. + +'Why, I beat you all round the town, you chicken!' the Lion replied angrily, half getting up as he spoke. + +Here the King interrupted, to prevent the quarrel going on: he was very nervous, and his voice quite quivered. 'All round the town?' he said. 'That's a good long way. Did you go by the old bridge, or the market-place? You get the best view by the old bridge.' + +'I'm sure I don't know,' the Lion growled out as he lay down again. 'There was too much dust to see anything. What a time the Monster is, cutting up that cake!' + +Alice had seated herself on the bank of a little brook, with the great dish on her knees, and was sawing away diligently with the knife. 'It's very provoking!' she said, in reply to the Lion (she was getting quite used to being called 'the Monster'). 'I've cut several slices already, but they always join on again!' + +'You don't know how to manage Looking-glass cakes,' the Unicorn remarked. 'Hand it round first, and cut it afterwards.' + +This sounded nonsense, but Alice very obediently got up, and carried the dish round, and the cake divided itself into three pieces as she did so. 'NOW cut it up,' said the Lion, as she returned to her place with the empty dish. + +'I say, this isn't fair!' cried the Unicorn, as Alice sat with the knife in her hand, very much puzzled how to begin. 'The Monster has given the Lion twice as much as me!' + +'She's kept none for herself, anyhow,' said the Lion. 'Do you like plum-cake, Monster?' + +But before Alice could answer him, the drums began. + +Where the noise came from, she couldn't make out: the air seemed full of it, and it rang through and through her head till she felt quite deafened. She started to her feet and sprang across the little brook in her terror, + +* * * * + + * * * + +* * * * + +and had just time to see the Lion and the Unicorn rise to their feet, with angry looks at being interrupted in their feast, before she dropped to her knees, and put her hands over her ears, vainly trying to shut out the dreadful uproar. + +'If THAT doesn't "drum them out of town,"' she thought to herself, 'nothing ever will!' + +CHAPTER VIII - 'It's my own Invention' + +After a while the noise seemed gradually to die away, till all was dead silence, and Alice lifted up her head in some alarm. There was no one to be seen, and her first thought was that she must have been dreaming about the Lion and the Unicorn and those queer Anglo-Saxon Messengers. However, there was the great dish still lying at her feet, on which she had tried to cut the plum- cake, 'So I wasn't dreaming, after all,' she said to herself, 'unless--unless we're all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it's MY dream, and not the Red King's! I don't like belonging to another person's dream,' she went on in a rather complaining tone: 'I've a great mind to go and wake him, and see what happens!' + +At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of 'Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!' and a Knight dressed in crimson armour came galloping down upon her, brandishing a great club. Just as he reached her, the horse stopped suddenly: 'You're my prisoner!' the Knight cried, as he tumbled off his horse. + +Startled as she was, Alice was more frightened for him than for herself at the moment, and watched him with some anxiety as he mounted again. As soon as he was comfortably in the saddle, he began once more 'You're my--' but here another voice broke in 'Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!' and Alice looked round in some surprise for the new enemy. + +This time it was a White Knight. He drew up at Alice's side, and tumbled off his horse just as the Red Knight had done: then he got on again, and the two Knights sat and looked at each other for some time without speaking. Alice looked from one to the other in some bewilderment. + +'She's MY prisoner, you know!' the Red Knight said at last. + +'Yes, but then _I_ came and rescued her!' the White Knight replied. + +'Well, we must fight for her, then,' said the Red Knight, as he took up his helmet (which hung from the saddle, and was something the shape of a horse's head), and put it on. + +'You will observe the Rules of Battle, of course?' the White Knight remarked, putting on his helmet too. + +'I always do,' said the Red Knight, and they began banging away at each other with such fury that Alice got behind a tree to be out of the way of the blows. + +'I wonder, now, what the Rules of Battle are,' she said to herself, as she watched the fight, timidly peeping out from her hiding-place: 'one Rule seems to be, that if one Knight hits the other, he knocks him off his horse, and if he misses, he tumbles off himself--and another Rule seems to be that they hold their clubs with their arms, as if they were Punch and Judy--What a noise they make when they tumble! Just like a whole set of fire- irons falling into the fender! And how quiet the horses are! They let them get on and off them just as if they were tables!' + +Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they always fell on their heads, and the battle ended with their both falling off in this way, side by side: when they got up again, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off. + +'It was a glorious victory, wasn't it?' said the White Knight, as he came up panting. + +'I don't know,' Alice said doubtfully. 'I don't want to be anybody's prisoner. I want to be a Queen.' + +'So you will, when you've crossed the next brook,' said the White Knight. 'I'll see you safe to the end of the wood--and then I must go back, you know. That's the end of my move.' + +'Thank you very much,' said Alice. 'May I help you off with your helmet?' It was evidently more than he could manage by himself; however, she managed to shake him out of it at last. + +'Now one can breathe more easily,' said the Knight, putting back his shaggy hair with both hands, and turning his gentle face and large mild eyes to Alice. She thought she had never seen such a strange-looking soldier in all her life. + +He was dressed in tin armour, which seemed to fit him very badly, and he had a queer-shaped little deal box fastened across his shoulder, upside-down, and with the lid hanging open. Alice looked at it with great curiosity. + +'I see you're admiring my little box.' the Knight said in a friendly tone. 'It's my own invention--to keep clothes and sandwiches in. You see I carry it upside-down, so that the rain can't get in.' + +'But the things can get OUT,' Alice gently remarked. 'Do you know the lid's open?' + +'I didn't know it,' the Knight said, a shade of vexation passing over his face. 'Then all the things must have fallen out! And the box is no use without them.' He unfastened it as he spoke, and was just going to throw it into the bushes, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he hung it carefully on a tree. 'Can you guess why I did that?' he said to Alice. + +Alice shook her head. + +'In hopes some bees may make a nest in it--then I should get the honey.' + +'But you've got a bee-hive--or something like one--fastened to the saddle,' said Alice. + +'Yes, it's a very good bee-hive,' the Knight said in a discontented tone, 'one of the best kind. But not a single bee has come near it yet. And the other thing is a mouse-trap. I suppose the mice keep the bees out--or the bees keep the mice out, I don't know which.' + +'I was wondering what the mouse-trap was for,' said Alice. 'It isn't very likely there would be any mice on the horse's back.' + +'Not very likely, perhaps,' said the Knight: 'but if they DO come, I don't choose to have them running all about.' + +'You see,' he went on after a pause, 'it's as well to be provided for EVERYTHING. That's the reason the horse has all those anklets round his feet.' + +'But what are they for?' Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity. + +'To guard against the bites of sharks,' the Knight replied. 'It's an invention of my own. And now help me on. I'll go with you to the end of the wood--What's the dish for?' + +'It's meant for plum-cake,' said Alice. + +'We'd better take it with us,' the Knight said. 'It'll come in handy if we find any plum-cake. Help me to get it into this bag.' + +This took a very long time to manage, though Alice held the bag open very carefully, because the Knight was so VERY awkward in putting in the dish: the first two or three times that he tried he fell in himself instead. 'It's rather a tight fit, you see,' he said, as they got it in a last; 'There are so many candlesticks in the bag.' And he hung it to the saddle, which was already loaded with bunches of carrots, and fire-irons, and many other things. + +'I hope you've got your hair well fastened on?' he continued, as they set off. + +'Only in the usual way,' Alice said, smiling. + +'That's hardly enough,' he said, anxiously. 'You see the wind is so VERY strong here. It's as strong as soup.' + +'Have you invented a plan for keeping the hair from being blown off?' Alice enquired. + +'Not yet,' said the Knight. 'But I've got a plan for keeping it from FALLING off.' + +'I should like to hear it, very much.' + +'First you take an upright stick,' said the Knight. 'Then you make your hair creep up it, like a fruit-tree. Now the reason hair falls off is because it hangs DOWN--things never fall UPWARDS, you know. It's a plan of my own invention. You may try it if you like.' + +It didn't sound a comfortable plan, Alice thought, and for a few minutes she walked on in silence, puzzling over the idea, and every now and then stopping to help the poor Knight, who certainly was NOT a good rider. + +Whenever the horse stopped (which it did very often), he fell off in front; and whenever it went on again (which it generally did rather suddenly), he fell off behind. Otherwise he kept on pretty well, except that he had a habit of now and then falling off sideways; and as he generally did this on the side on which Alice was walking, she soon found that it was the best plan not to walk QUITE close to the horse. + +'I'm afraid you've not had much practice in riding,' she ventured to say, as she was helping him up from his fifth tumble. + +The Knight looked very much surprised, and a little offended at the remark. 'What makes you say that?' he asked, as he scrambled back into the saddle, keeping hold of Alice's hair with one hand, to save himself from falling over on the other side. + +'Because people don't fall off quite so often, when they've had much practice.' + +'I've had plenty of practice,' the Knight said very gravely: 'plenty of practice!' + +Alice could think of nothing better to say than 'Indeed?' but she said it as heartily as she could. They went on a little way in silence after this, the Knight with his eyes shut, muttering to himself, and Alice watching anxiously for the next tumble. + +'The great art of riding,' the Knight suddenly began in a loud voice, waving his right arm as he spoke, 'is to keep--' Here the sentence ended as suddenly as it had begun, as the Knight fell heavily on the top of his head exactly in the path where Alice was walking. She was quite frightened this time, and said in an anxious tone, as she picked him up, 'I hope no bones are broken?' + +'None to speak of,' the Knight said, as if he didn't mind breaking two or three of them. 'The great art of riding, as I was saying, is--to keep your balance properly. Like this, you know--' + +He let go the bridle, and stretched out both his arms to show Alice what he meant, and this time he fell flat on his back, right under the horse's feet. + +'Plenty of practice!' he went on repeating, all the time that Alice was getting him on his feet again. 'Plenty of practice!' + +'It's too ridiculous!' cried Alice, losing all her patience this time. 'You ought to have a wooden horse on wheels, that you ought!' + +'Does that kind go smoothly?' the Knight asked in a tone of great interest, clasping his arms round the horse's neck as he spoke, just in time to save himself from tumbling off again. + +'Much more smoothly than a live horse,' Alice said, with a little scream of laughter, in spite of all she could do to prevent it. + +'I'll get one,' the Knight said thoughtfully to himself. 'One or two--several.' + +There was a short silence after this, and then the Knight went on again. 'I'm a great hand at inventing things. Now, I daresay you noticed, that last time you picked me up, that I was looking rather thoughtful?' + +'You WERE a little grave,' said Alice. + +'Well, just then I was inventing a new way of getting over a gate--would you like to hear it?' + +'Very much indeed,' Alice said politely. + +'I'll tell you how I came to think of it,' said the Knight. 'You see, I said to myself, "The only difficulty is with the feet: the HEAD is high enough already." Now, first I put my head on the top of the gate--then I stand on my head--then the feet are high enough, you see--then I'm over, you see.' + +'Yes, I suppose you'd be over when that was done,' Alice said thoughtfully: 'but don't you think it would be rather hard?' + +'I haven't tried it yet,' the Knight said, gravely: 'so I can't tell for certain--but I'm afraid it WOULD be a little hard.' + +He looked so vexed at the idea, that Alice changed the subject hastily. 'What a curious helmet you've got!' she said cheerfully. 'Is that your invention too?' + +The Knight looked down proudly at his helmet, which hung from the saddle. 'Yes,' he said, 'but I've invented a better one than that--like a sugar loaf. When I used to wear it, if I fell off the horse, it always touched the ground directly. So I had a VERY little way to fall, you see--But there WAS the danger of falling INTO it, to be sure. That happened to me once--and the worst of it was, before I could get out again, the other White Knight came and put it on. He thought it was his own helmet.' + +The knight looked so solemn about it that Alice did not dare to laugh. 'I'm afraid you must have hurt him,' she said in a trembling voice, 'being on the top of his head.' + +'I had to kick him, of course,' the Knight said, very seriously. 'And then he took the helmet off again--but it took hours and hours to get me out. I was as fast as--as lightning, you know.' + +'But that's a different kind of fastness,' Alice objected. + +The Knight shook his head. 'It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!' he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a deep ditch. + +Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look for him. She was rather startled by the fall, as for some time he had kept on very well, and she was afraid that he really WAS hurt this time. However, though she could see nothing but the soles of his feet, she was much relieved to hear that he was talking on in his usual tone. 'All kinds of fastness,' he repeated: 'but it was careless of him to put another man's helmet on--with the man in it, too.' + +'How CAN you go on talking so quietly, head downwards?' Alice asked, as she dragged him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank. + +The Knight looked surprised at the question. 'What does it matter where my body happens to be?' he said. 'My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, the more head downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things.' + +'Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,' he went on after a pause, 'was inventing a new pudding during the meat- course.' + +'In time to have it cooked for the next course?' said Alice. 'Well, not the NEXT course,' the Knight said in a slow thoughtful tone: 'no, certainly not the next COURSE.' + +'Then it would have to be the next day. I suppose you wouldn't have two pudding-courses in one dinner?' + +'Well, not the NEXT day,' the Knight repeated as before: 'not the next DAY. In fact,' he went on, holding his head down, and his voice getting lower and lower, 'I don't believe that pudding ever WAS cooked! In fact, I don't believe that pudding ever WILL be cooked! And yet it was a very clever pudding to invent.' + +'What did you mean it to be made of?' Alice asked, hoping to cheer him up, for the poor Knight seemed quite low-spirited about it. + +'It began with blotting paper,' the Knight answered with a groan. + +'That wouldn't be very nice, I'm afraid--' + +'Not very nice ALONE,' he interrupted, quite eagerly: 'but you've no idea what a difference it makes mixing it with other things--such as gunpowder and sealing-wax. And here I must leave you.' They had just come to the end of the wood. + +Alice could only look puzzled: she was thinking of the pudding. + +'You are sad,' the Knight said in an anxious tone: 'let me sing you a song to comfort you.' + +'Is it very long?' Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day. + +'It's long,' said the Knight, 'but very, VERY beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it--either it brings the TEARS into their eyes, or else--' + +'Or else what?' said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause. + +'Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called "HADDOCKS' EYES."' + +'Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' Alice said, trying to feel interested. + +'No, you don't understand,' the Knight said, looking a little vexed. 'That's what the name is CALLED. The name really IS "THE AGED AGED MAN."' + +'Then I ought to have said "That's what the SONG is called"?' Alice corrected herself. + +'No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The SONG is called "WAYS AND MEANS": but that's only what it's CALLED, you know!' + +'Well, what IS the song, then?' said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered. + +'I was coming to that,' the Knight said. 'The song really IS "A-SITTING ON A GATE": and the tune's my own invention.' + +So saying, he stopped his horse and let the reins fall on its neck: then, slowly beating time with one hand, and with a faint smile lighting up his gentle foolish face, as if he enjoyed the music of his song, he began. + +Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey Through The Looking-Glass, this was the one that she always remembered most clearly. Years afterwards she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been only yesterday--the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight--the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her--the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet--and the black shadows of the forest behind--all this she took in like a picture, as, with one hand shading her eyes, she leant against a tree, watching the strange pair, and listening, in a half dream, to the melancholy music of the song. + +'But the tune ISN'T his own invention,' she said to herself: 'it's "I GIVE THEE ALL, I CAN NO MORE."' She stood and listened very attentively, but no tears came into her eyes. + +poem{ + + 'I'll tell thee everything I can; + There's little to relate. + I saw an aged aged man, + A-sitting on a gate. + "Who are you, aged man?" I said, + "and how is it you live?" + And his answer trickled through my head + Like water through a sieve. + + He said "I look for butterflies + That sleep among the wheat: + I make them into mutton-pies, + And sell them in the street. + I sell them unto men," he said, + "Who sail on stormy seas; + And that's the way I get my bread-- + A trifle, if you please." + + But I was thinking of a plan + To dye one's whiskers green, + And always use so large a fan + That they could not be seen. + So, having no reply to give + To what the old man said, + I cried, "Come, tell me how you live!" + And thumped him on the head. + + His accents mild took up the tale: + He said "I go my ways, + And when I find a mountain-rill, + I set it in a blaze; + And thence they make a stuff they call + Rolands' Macassar Oil-- + Yet twopence-halfpenny is all + They give me for my toil." + + But I was thinking of a way + To feed oneself on batter, + And so go on from day to day + Getting a little fatter. + I shook him well from side to side, + Until his face was blue: + "Come, tell me how you live," I cried, + "And what it is you do!" + + He said "I hunt for haddocks' eyes + Among the heather bright, + And work them into waistcoat-buttons + In the silent night. + And these I do not sell for gold + Or coin of silvery shine + But for a copper halfpenny, + And that will purchase nine. + + "I sometimes dig for buttered rolls, + Or set limed twigs for crabs; + I sometimes search the grassy knolls + For wheels of Hansom-cabs. + And that's the way" (he gave a wink) + "By which I get my wealth-- + And very gladly will I drink + Your Honour's noble health." + + I heard him then, for I had just + Completed my design + To keep the Menai bridge from rust + By boiling it in wine. + I thanked him much for telling me + The way he got his wealth, + But chiefly for his wish that he + Might drink my noble health. + + And now, if e'er by chance I put + My fingers into glue + Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot + Into a left-hand shoe, + Or if I drop upon my toe + A very heavy weight, + I weep, for it reminds me so, + Of that old man I used to know-- + + Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow, + Whose hair was whiter than the snow, + Whose face was very like a crow, + With eyes, like cinders, all aglow, + Who seemed distracted with his woe, + Who rocked his body to and fro, + And muttered mumblingly and low, + As if his mouth were full of dough, + Who snorted like a buffalo-- + That summer evening, long ago, + A-sitting on a gate.' + +}poem + +As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and turned his horse's head along the road by which they had come. 'You've only a few yards to go,' he said, 'down the hill and over that little brook, and then you'll be a Queen-- But you'll stay and see me off first?' he added as Alice turned with an eager look in the direction to which he pointed. 'I shan't be long. You'll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road? I think it'll encourage me, you see.' + +'Of course I'll wait,' said Alice: 'and thank you very much for coming so far--and for the song--I liked it very much.' + +'I hope so,' the Knight said doubtfully: 'but you didn't cry so much as I thought you would.' + +So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest. 'It won't take long to see him OFF, I expect,' Alice said to herself, as she stood watching him. 'There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily--that comes of having so many things hung round the horse--' So she went on talking to herself, as she watched the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and then she waved her handkerchief to him, and waited till he was out of sight. + +'I hope it encouraged him,' she said, as she turned to run down the hill: 'and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!' A very few steps brought her to the edge of the brook. 'The Eighth Square at last!' she cried as she bounded across, + +* * * * + + * * * + +* * * * + +and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little flower-beds dotted about it here and there. 'Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what IS this on my head?' she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her hands up to something very heavy, and fitted tight all round her head. + +'But how CAN it have got there without my knowing it?' she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set it on her lap to make out what it could possibly be. + +It was a golden crown. + +CHAPTER IX - Queen Alice + +'Well, this IS grand!' said Alice. 'I never expected I should be a Queen so soon--and I'll tell you what it is, your majesty,' she went on in a severe tone (she was always rather fond of scolding herself), 'it'll never do for you to be lolling about on the grass like that! Queens have to be dignified, you know!' + +So she got up and walked about--rather stiffly just at first, as she was afraid that the crown might come off: but she comforted herself with the thought that there was nobody to see her, 'and if I really am a Queen,' she said as she sat down again, 'I shall be able to manage it quite well in time.' + +Everything was happening so oddly that she didn't feel a bit surprised at finding the Red Queen and the White Queen sitting close to her, one on each side: she would have liked very much to ask them how they came there, but she feared it would not be quite civil. However, there would be no harm, she thought, in asking if the game was over. 'Please, would you tell me--' she began, looking timidly at the Red Queen. + +'Speak when you're spoken to!' The Queen sharply interrupted her. + +'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, 'and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for YOU to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that--' + +'Ridiculous!' cried the Queen. 'Why, don't you see, child--' here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation. 'What do you mean by "If you really are a Queen"? What right have you to call yourself so? You can't be a Queen, you know, till you've passed the proper examination. And the sooner we begin it, the better.' + +'I only said "if"!' poor Alice pleaded in a piteous tone. + +The two Queens looked at each other, and the Red Queen remarked, with a little shudder, 'She SAYS she only said "if"--' + +'But she said a great deal more than that!' the White Queen moaned, wringing her hands. 'Oh, ever so much more than that!' + +'So you did, you know,' the Red Queen said to Alice. 'Always speak the truth--think before you speak--and write it down afterwards.' + +'I'm sure I didn't mean--' Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently. + +'That's just what I complain of! You SHOULD have meant! What do you suppose is the use of child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning--and a child's more important than a joke, I hope. You couldn't deny that, even if you tried with both hands.' + +'I don't deny things with my HANDS,' Alice objected. + +'Nobody said you did,' said the Red Queen. 'I said you couldn't if you tried.' + +'She's in that state of mind,' said the White Queen, 'that she wants to deny SOMETHING--only she doesn't know what to deny!' + +'A nasty, vicious temper,' the Red Queen remarked; and then there was an uncomfortable silence for a minute or two. + +The Red Queen broke the silence by saying to the White Queen, 'I invite you to Alice's dinner-party this afternoon.' + +The White Queen smiled feebly, and said 'And I invite YOU.' + +'I didn't know I was to have a party at all,' said Alice; 'but if there is to be one, I think _{I}_ ought to invite the guests.' + +'We gave you the opportunity of doing it,' the Red Queen remarked: 'but I daresay you've not had many lessons in manners yet?' + +'Manners are not taught in lessons,' said Alice. 'Lessons teach you to do sums, and things of that sort.' + +'And you do Addition?' the White Queen asked. 'What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?' + +'I don't know,' said Alice. 'I lost count.' + +'She can't do Addition,' the Red Queen interrupted. 'Can you do Subtraction? Take nine from eight.' + +'Nine from eight I can't, you know,' Alice replied very readily: 'but--' + +'She can't do Subtraction,' said the White Queen. 'Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife--what's the answer to that?' + +'I suppose--' Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her. 'Bread-and-butter, of course. Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?' + +Alice considered. 'The bone wouldn't remain, of course, if I took it--and the dog wouldn't remain; it would come to bite me --and I'm sure I shouldn't remain!' + +'Then you think nothing would remain?' said the Red Queen. + +'I think that's the answer.' + +'Wrong, as usual,' said the Red Queen: 'the dog's temper would remain.' + +'But I don't see how--' + +'Why, look here!' the Red Queen cried. 'The dog would lose its temper, wouldn't it?' + +'Perhaps it would,' Alice replied cautiously. + +'Then if the dog went away, its temper would remain!' the Queen exclaimed triumphantly. + +Alice said, as gravely as she could, 'They might go different ways.' But she couldn't help thinking to herself, 'What dreadful nonsense we ARE talking!' + +'She can't do sums a BIT!' the Queens said together, with great emphasis. + +'Can YOU do sums?' Alice said, turning suddenly on the White Queen, for she didn't like being found fault with so much. + +The Queen gasped and shut her eyes. 'I can do Addition, if you give me time--but I can do Subtraction, under ANY circumstances!' + +'Of course you know your A B C?' said the Red Queen. + +'To be sure I do.' said Alice. + +'So do I,' the White Queen whispered: 'we'll often say it over together, dear. And I'll tell you a secret--I can read words of one letter! Isn't THAT grand! However, don't be discouraged. You'll come to it in time.' + +Here the Red Queen began again. 'Can you answer useful questions?' she said. 'How is bread made?' + +'I know THAT!' Alice cried eagerly. 'You take some flour--' + +'Where do you pick the flower?' the White Queen asked. 'In a garden, or in the hedges?' + +'Well, it isn't PICKED at all,' Alice explained: 'it's GROUND--' + +'How many acres of ground?' said the White Queen. 'You mustn't leave out so many things.' + +'Fan her head!' the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. 'She'll be feverish after so much thinking.' So they set to work and fanned her with bunches of leaves, till she had to beg them to leave off, it blew her hair about so. + +'She's all right again now,' said the Red Queen. 'Do you know Languages? What's the French for fiddle-de-dee?' + +'Fiddle-de-dee's not English,' Alice replied gravely. + +'Who ever said it was?' said the Red Queen. + +Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty this time. 'If you'll tell me what language "fiddle-de-dee" is, I'll tell you the French for it!' she exclaimed triumphantly. + +But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said 'Queens never make bargains.' + +'I wish Queens never asked questions,' Alice thought to herself. + +'Don't let us quarrel,' the White Queen said in an anxious tone. 'What is the cause of lightning?' + +'The cause of lightning,' Alice said very decidedly, for she felt quite certain about this, 'is the thunder--no, no!' she hastily corrected herself. 'I meant the other way.' + +'It's too late to correct it,' said the Red Queen: 'when you've once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.' + +'Which reminds me--' the White Queen said, looking down and nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, 'we had SUCH a thunderstorm last Tuesday--I mean one of the last set of Tuesdays, you know.' + +Alice was puzzled. 'In OUR country,' she remarked, 'there's only one day at a time.' + +The Red Queen said, 'That's a poor thin way of doing things. Now HERE, we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter we take as many as five nights together--for warmth, you know.' + +'Are five nights warmer than one night, then?' Alice ventured to ask. + +'Five times as warm, of course.' + +'But they should be five times as COLD, by the same rule--' + +'Just so!' cried the Red Queen. 'Five times as warm, AND five times as cold--just as I'm five times as rich as you are, AND five times as clever!' + +Alice sighed and gave it up. 'It's exactly like a riddle with no answer!' she thought. + +'Humpty Dumpty saw it too,' the White Queen went on in a low voice, more as if she were talking to herself. 'He came to the door with a corkscrew in his hand--' + +'What did he want?' said the Red Queen. + +'He said he WOULD come in,' the White Queen went on, 'because he was looking for a hippopotamus. Now, as it happened, there wasn't such a thing in the house, that morning.' + +'Is there generally?' Alice asked in an astonished tone. + +'Well, only on Thursdays,' said the Queen. + +'I know what he came for,' said Alice: 'he wanted to punish the fish, because--' + +Here the White Queen began again. 'It was SUCH a thunderstorm, you can't think!' ('She NEVER could, you know,' said the Red Queen.) 'And part of the roof came off, and ever so much thunder got in--and it went rolling round the room in great lumps--and knocking over the tables and things--till I was so frightened, I couldn't remember my own name!' + +Alice thought to herself, 'I never should TRY to remember my name in the middle of an accident! Where would be the use of it?' but she did not say this aloud, for fear of hurting the poor Queen's feeling. + +'Your Majesty must excuse her,' the Red Queen said to Alice, taking one of the White Queen's hands in her own, and gently stroking it: 'she means well, but she can't help saying foolish things, as a general rule.' + +The White Queen looked timidly at Alice, who felt she OUGHT to say something kind, but really couldn't think of anything at the moment. + +'She never was really well brought up,' the Red Queen went on: 'but it's amazing how good-tempered she is! Pat her on the head, and see how pleased she'll be!' But this was more than Alice had courage to do. + +'A little kindness--and putting her hair in papers--would do wonders with her--' + +The White Queen gave a deep sigh, and laid her head on Alice's shoulder. 'I AM so sleepy?' she moaned. + +'She's tired, poor thing!' said the Red Queen. 'Smooth her hair --lend her your nightcap--and sing her a soothing lullaby.' + +'I haven't got a nightcap with me,' said Alice, as she tried to obey the first direction: 'and I don't know any soothing lullabies.' + +'I must do it myself, then,' said the Red Queen, and she began: + +poem{ + + 'Hush-a-by lady, in Alice's lap! + Till the feast's ready, we've time for a nap: + When the feast's over, we'll go to the ball-- + Red Queen, and White Queen, and Alice, and all! + +}poem + +'And now you know the words,' she added, as she put her head down on Alice's other shoulder, 'just sing it through to ME. I'm getting sleepy, too.' In another moment both Queens were fast asleep, and snoring loud. + +'What AM I to do?' exclaimed Alice, looking about in great perplexity, as first one round head, and then the other, rolled down from her shoulder, and lay like a heavy lump in her lap. 'I don't think it EVER happened before, that any one had to take care of two Queens asleep at once! No, not in all the History of England--it couldn't, you know, because there never was more than one Queen at a time. Do wake up, you heavy things!' she went on in an impatient tone; but there was no answer but a gentle snoring. + +The snoring got more distinct every minute, and sounded more like a tune: at last she could even make out the words, and she listened so eagerly that, when the two great heads vanished from her lap, she hardly missed them. + +She was standing before an arched doorway over which were the words QUEEN ALICE in large letters, and on each side of the arch there was a bell-handle; one was marked 'Visitors' Bell,' and the other 'Servants' Bell.' + +'I'll wait till the song's over,' thought Alice, 'and then I'll ring--the--WHICH bell must I ring?' she went on, very much puzzled by the names. 'I'm not a visitor, and I'm not a servant. There OUGHT to be one marked "Queen," you know--' + +Just then the door opened a little way, and a creature with a long beak put its head out for a moment and said 'No admittance till the week after next!' and shut the door again with a bang. + +Alice knocked and rang in vain for a long time, but at last, a very old Frog, who was sitting under a tree, got up and hobbled slowly towards her: he was dressed in bright yellow, and had enormous boots on. + +'What is it, now?' the Frog said in a deep hoarse whisper. + +Alice turned round, ready to find fault with anybody. 'Where's the servant whose business it is to answer the door?' she began angrily. + +'Which door?' said the Frog. + +Alice almost stamped with irritation at the slow drawl in which he spoke. 'THIS door, of course!' + +The Frog looked at the door with his large dull eyes for a minute: then he went nearer and rubbed it with his thumb, as if he were trying whether the paint would come off; then he looked at Alice. + +'To answer the door?' he said. 'What's it been asking of?' He was so hoarse that Alice could scarcely hear him. + +'I don't know what you mean,' she said. + +'I talks English, doesn't I?' the Frog went on. 'Or are you deaf? What did it ask you?' + +'Nothing!' Alice said impatiently. 'I've been knocking at it!' + +'Shouldn't do that--shouldn't do that--' the Frog muttered. 'Vexes it, you know.' Then he went up and gave the door a kick with one of his great feet. 'You let IT alone,' he panted out, as he hobbled back to his tree, 'and it'll let YOU alone, you know.' + +At this moment the door was flung open, and a shrill voice was heard singing: + +poem{ + + 'To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said, + "I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head; + Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be, + Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me."' + +}poem + +And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus: + +poem{ + + 'Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can, + And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran: + Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea-- + And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!' + +}poem + +Then followed a confused noise of cheering, and Alice thought to herself, 'Thirty times three makes ninety. I wonder if any one's counting?' In a minute there was silence again, and the same shrill voice sang another verse; + +poem{ + + '"O Looking-Glass creatures," quothe Alice, "draw near! + 'Tis an honour to see me, a favour to hear: + 'Tis a privilege high to have dinner and tea + Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!"' + +}poem + +Then came the chorus again:-- + +poem{ + + 'Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink, + Or anything else that is pleasant to drink: + Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine-- + And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine!' + +}poem + +'Ninety times nine!' Alice repeated in despair, 'Oh, that'll never be done! I'd better go in at once--' and there was a dead silence the moment she appeared. + +Alice glanced nervously along the table, as she walked up the large hall, and noticed that there were about fifty guests, of all kinds: some were animals, some birds, and there were even a few flowers among them. 'I'm glad they've come without waiting to be asked,' she thought: 'I should never have known who were the right people to invite!' + +There were three chairs at the head of the table; the Red and White Queens had already taken two of them, but the middle one was empty. Alice sat down in it, rather uncomfortable in the silence, and longing for some one to speak. + +At last the Red Queen began. 'You've missed the soup and fish,' she said. 'Put on the joint!' And the waiters set a leg of mutton before Alice, who looked at it rather anxiously, as she had never had to carve a joint before. + +'You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,' said the Red Queen. 'Alice--Mutton; Mutton--Alice.' The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused. + +'May I give you a slice?' she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one Queen to the other. + +'Certainly not,' the Red Queen said, very decidedly: 'it isn't etiquette to cut any one you've been introduced to. Remove the joint!' And the waiters carried it off, and brought a large plum-pudding in its place. + +'I won't be introduced to the pudding, please,' Alice said rather hastily, 'or we shall get no dinner at all. May I give you some?' + +But the Red Queen looked sulky, and growled 'Pudding--Alice; Alice--Pudding. Remove the pudding!' and the waiters took it away so quickly that Alice couldn't return its bow. + +However, she didn't see why the Red Queen should be the only one to give orders, so, as an experiment, she called out 'Waiter! Bring back the pudding!' and there it was again in a moment like a conjuring-trick. It was so large that she couldn't help feeling a LITTLE shy with it, as she had been with the mutton; however, she conquered her shyness by a great effort and cut a slice and handed it to the Red Queen. + +'What impertinence!' said the Pudding. 'I wonder how you'd like it, if I were to cut a slice out of YOU, you creature!' + +It spoke in a thick, suety sort of voice, and Alice hadn't a word to say in reply: she could only sit and look at it and gasp. + +'Make a remark,' said the Red Queen: 'it's ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!' + +'Do you know, I've had such a quantity of poetry repeated to me to-day,' Alice began, a little frightened at finding that, the moment she opened her lips, there was dead silence, and all eyes were fixed upon her; 'and it's a very curious thing, I think-- every poem was about fishes in some way. Do you know why they're so fond of fishes, all about here?' + +She spoke to the Red Queen, whose answer was a little wide of the mark. 'As to fishes,' she said, very slowly and solemnly, putting her mouth close to Alice's ear, 'her White Majesty knows a lovely riddle--all in poetry--all about fishes. Shall she repeat it?' + +'Her Red Majesty's very kind to mention it,' the White Queen murmured into Alice's other ear, in a voice like the cooing of a pigeon. 'It would be SUCH a treat! May I?' + +'Please do,' Alice said very politely. + +The White Queen laughed with delight, and stroked Alice's cheek. Then she began: + +poem{ + + '"First, the fish must be caught." + That is easy: a baby, I think, could have caught it. + "Next, the fish must be bought." + That is easy: a penny, I think, would have bought it. + + "Now cook me the fish!" + That is easy, and will not take more than a minute. + "Let it lie in a dish!" + That is easy, because it already is in it. + + "Bring it here! Let me sup!" + It is easy to set such a dish on the table. + "Take the dish-cover up!" + Ah, THAT is so hard that I fear I'm unable! + + For it holds it like glue-- + Holds the lid to the dish, while it lies in the middle: + Which is easiest to do, + Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle?' + +}poem + +'Take a minute to think about it, and then guess,' said the Red Queen. 'Meanwhile, we'll drink your health--Queen Alice's health!' she screamed at the top of her voice, and all the guests began drinking it directly, and very queerly they managed it: some of them put their glasses upon their heads like extinguishers, and drank all that trickled down their faces--others upset the decanters, and drank the wine as it ran off the edges of the table--and three of them (who looked like kangaroos) scrambled into the dish of roast mutton, and began eagerly lapping up the gravy, 'just like pigs in a trough!' thought Alice. + +'You ought to return thanks in a neat speech,' the Red Queen said, frowning at Alice as she spoke. + +'We must support you, you know,' the White Queen whispered, as Alice got up to do it, very obediently, but a little frightened. + +'Thank you very much,' she whispered in reply, 'but I can do quite well without.' + +'That wouldn't be at all the thing,' the Red Queen said very decidedly: so Alice tried to submit to it with a good grace. + +('And they DID push so!' she said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of the feast. 'You would have thought they wanted to squeeze me flat!') + +In fact it was rather difficult for her to keep in her place while she made her speech: the two Queens pushed her so, one on each side, that they nearly lifted her up into the air: 'I rise to return thanks--' Alice began: and she really DID rise as she spoke, several inches; but she got hold of the edge of the table, and managed to pull herself down again. + +'Take care of yourself!' screamed the White Queen, seizing Alice's hair with both her hands. 'Something's going to happen!' + +And then (as Alice afterwards described it) all sorts of things happened in a moment. The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the top. As to the bottles, they each took a pair of plates, which they hastily fitted on as wings, and so, with forks for legs, went fluttering about in all directions: 'and very like birds they look,' Alice thought to herself, as well as she could in the dreadful confusion that was beginning. + +At this moment she heard a hoarse laugh at her side, and turned to see what was the matter with the White Queen; but, instead of the Queen, there was the leg of mutton sitting in the chair. 'Here I am!' cried a voice from the soup tureen, and Alice turned again, just in time to see the Queen's broad good-natured face grinning at her for a moment over the edge of the tureen, before she disappeared into the soup. + +There was not a moment to be lost. Already several of the guests were lying down in the dishes, and the soup ladle was walking up the table towards Alice's chair, and beckoning to her impatiently to get out of its way. + +'I can't stand this any longer!' she cried as she jumped up and seized the table-cloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor. + +'And as for YOU,' she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom she considered as the cause of all the mischief--but the Queen was no longer at her side--she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll, and was now on the table, merrily running round and round after her own shawl, which was trailing behind her. + +At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised at this, but she was far too much excited to be surprised at anything NOW. 'As for YOU,' she repeated, catching hold of the little creature in the very act of jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, 'I'll shake you into a kitten, that I will!' + +CHAPTER X - Shaking + +She took her off the table as she spoke, and shook her backwards and forwards with all her might. + +The Red Queen made no resistance whatever; only her face grew very small, and her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept on growing shorter--and fatter--and softer--and rounder--and-- + +CHAPTER XI - Waking + +--and it really WAS a kitten, after all. + +CHAPTER XII - Which Dreamed it? + +'Your majesty shouldn't purr so loud,' Alice said, rubbing her eyes, and addressing the kitten, respectfully, yet with some severity. 'You woke me out of oh! such a nice dream! And you've been along with me, Kitty--all through the Looking-Glass world. Did you know it, dear?' + +It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they ALWAYS purr. 'If they would only purr for "yes" and mew for "no," or any rule of that sort,' she had said, 'so that one could keep up a conversation! But how CAN you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?' + +On this occasion the kitten only purred: and it was impossible to guess whether it meant 'yes' or 'no.' + +So Alice hunted among the chessmen on the table till she had found the Red Queen: then she went down on her knees on the hearth-rug, and put the kitten and the Queen to look at each other. 'Now, Kitty!' she cried, clapping her hands triumphantly. 'Confess that was what you turned into!' + +('But it wouldn't look at it,' she said, when she was explaining the thing afterwards to her sister: 'it turned away its head, and pretended not to see it: but it looked a LITTLE ashamed of itself, so I think it MUST have been the Red Queen.') + +'Sit up a little more stiffly, dear!' Alice cried with a merry laugh. 'And curtsey while you're thinking what to--what to purr. It saves time, remember!' And she caught it up and gave it one little kiss, 'just in honour of having been a Red Queen.' + +'Snowdrop, my pet!' she went on, looking over her shoulder at the White Kitten, which was still patiently undergoing its toilet, 'when WILL Dinah have finished with your White Majesty, I wonder? That must be the reason you were so untidy in my dream-- Dinah! do you know that you're scrubbing a White Queen? Really, it's most disrespectful of you! + +'And what did DINAH turn to, I wonder?' she prattled on, as she settled comfortably down, with one elbow in the rug, and her chin in her hand, to watch the kittens. 'Tell me, Dinah, did you turn to Humpty Dumpty? I THINK you did--however, you'd better not mention it to your friends just yet, for I'm not sure. + +'By the way, Kitty, if only you'd been really with me in my dream, there was one thing you WOULD have enjoyed--I had such a quantity of poetry said to me, all about fishes! To-morrow morning you shall have a real treat. All the time you're eating your breakfast, I'll repeat "The Walrus and the Carpenter" to you; and then you can make believe it's oysters, dear! + +'Now, Kitty, let's consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear, and you should NOT go on licking your paw like that--as if Dinah hadn't washed you this morning! You see, Kitty, it MUST have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course--but then I was part of his dream, too! WAS it the Red King, Kitty? You were his wife, my dear, so you ought to know--Oh, Kitty, DO help to settle it! I'm sure your paw can wait!' But the provoking kitten only began on the other paw, and pretended it hadn't heard the question. + +Which do YOU think it was? + +poem{ + + A boat beneath a sunny sky, + Lingering onward dreamily + In an evening of July-- + + Children three that nestle near, + Eager eye and willing ear, + Pleased a simple tale to hear-- + + Long has paled that sunny sky: + Echoes fade and memories die. + Autumn frosts have slain July. + + Still she haunts me, phantomwise, + Alice moving under skies + Never seen by waking eyes. + + Children yet, the tale to hear, + Eager eye and willing ear, + Lovingly shall nestle near. + + In a Wonderland they lie, + Dreaming as the days go by, + Dreaming as the summers die: + + Ever drifting down the stream-- + Lingering in the golden gleam-- + Life, what is it but a dream? + +}poem + +THE END diff --git a/markup/non-pod-samples/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.non-pod-sample.sst b/markup/non-pod-samples/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.non-pod-sample.sst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f6f043c --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/non-pod-samples/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.non-pod-sample.sst @@ -0,0 +1,64620 @@ +# SiSU 8.0 + +title: "War and Peace" + +creator: + author: "Tolstoy, Leo" + translator: "Maude, Aylmer; Maude, Louise Shanks" + +classify: + topic_register: "SiSU:markup sample:book;book:novel:historical romance|war novel;Russian:original text;original text language:Russian" + +rights: + copyright: "Leo Tolstoy 1869, translated by Aylmer Maude, Louise Shanks Maude" + license: "Public Domain" + +date: + published: "1869" + created: "1865" + issued: "1865" + available: "1865" + modified: "1869" + added_to_site: "2004-04-12" + +make: + doc_type: "book" + breaks: "new=:B; break=1" + headings: + - BOOK|FIRST|SECOND + - none + - none + - CHAPTER + +# headings: [ BOOK|FIRST|SECOND, none, none, CHAPTER ] + +:A~ @title-author-date + +BOOK ONE: 1805 + +CHAPTER I + +"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the +Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, +if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by +that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have +nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer +my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see +I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news." + +It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna +Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya +Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man +of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her +reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as +she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in +St. Petersburg, used only by the elite. + +All her invitations without exception, written in French, and +delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows: + +"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the +prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too +terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10- +Annette Scherer." + +"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the +least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing +an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had +stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke +in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but +thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a +man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went +up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, +scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the +sofa. + +"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's +mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the +politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even +irony could be discerned. + +"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times +like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are +staying the whole evening, I hope?" + +"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I +must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is +coming for me to take me there." + +"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these +festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome." + +"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would +have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by +force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed. + +"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's +dispatch? You know everything." + +"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold, +listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that +Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to +burn ours." + +Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a +stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty +years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an +enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she +did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to +disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile +which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played +round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual +consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor +could, nor considered it necessary, to correct. + +In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna +burst out: + +"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand +things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. +She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious +sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is +the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to +perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble +that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and +crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than +ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must +avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely +on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot +understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has +refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some +secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None. +The English have not understood and cannot understand the +self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only +desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And +what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has +always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe +is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg +says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a +trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored +monarch. He will save Europe!" + +She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity. + +"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been +sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the +King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you +give me a cup of tea?" + +"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am +expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, +who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of +the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good +ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He +has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?" + +"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me," +he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred +to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive +of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke +to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts +is a poor creature." + +Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others +were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it +for the baron. + +Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she +nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or +was pleased with. + +"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her +sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone. + +As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an +expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with +sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious +patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron +Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness. + +The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the +womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna +Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of +a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him, +so she said: + +"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came +out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly +beautiful." + +The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude. + +"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer +to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that +political and social topics were ended and the time had come for +intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the +joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid +children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like +him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her +eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate +them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them." + +And she smiled her ecstatic smile. + +"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I +lack the bump of paternity." + +"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I +am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her +face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her +Majesty's and you were pitied...." + +The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly, +awaiting a reply. He frowned. + +"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all +a father could for their education, and they have both turned out +fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active +one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling +in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles +round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse +and unpleasant. + +"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a +father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna +Pavlovna, looking up pensively. + +"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my +children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That +is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!" + +He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a +gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated. + +"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?" +she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and +though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little +person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of +yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya." + +Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory +and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a +movement of the head that he was considering this information. + +"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad +current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand +rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in +five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what +we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?" + +"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He +is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army +under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is +very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very +unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise +Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here +tonight." + +"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna +Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange +that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave- +slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She +is rich and of good family and that's all I want." + +And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised +the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and +fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction. + +"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise, +young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can +be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my +apprenticeship as old maid." + +CHAPTER II + +Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest +Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age +and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged. +Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her +father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and +her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess +Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,~{ The most fascinating woman in Petersburg. }~ was +also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being +pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small +receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, +whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come. + +To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my +aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or +her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who +had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to +arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna +Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them. + +Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom +not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of +them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful +and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of +them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health +of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each +visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left +the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious +duty and did not return to her the whole evening. + +The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a +gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a +delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her +teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming +when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always +the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness +of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special +and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of +this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life +and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull +dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company +and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were +becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her, +and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her +white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that +day. + +The little princess went round the table with quick, short, +swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her +dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was +doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought +my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all +present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick +on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to +be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed." +And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, +dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast. + +"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone +else," replied Anna Pavlovna. + +"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in +French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going +to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she +added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she +turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene. + +"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince +Vasili to Anna Pavlovna. + +One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with +close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable +at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout +young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known +grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man +had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had +only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this +was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with +the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. +But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and +fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the +place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was +certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety +could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant +and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else +in that drawing room. + +"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor +invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her +aunt as she conducted him to her. + +Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look +round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to +the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate +acquaintance. + +Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the +aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health. +Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know +the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man." + +"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very +interesting but hardly feasible." + +"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and +get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now +committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady +before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak +to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big +feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the +abbe's plan chimerical. + +"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile. + +And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, +she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, +ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to +flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands +to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or +there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and +hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna +Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a +too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the +conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid +these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an +anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to +listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to +another group whose center was the abbe. + +Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna +Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all +the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like +a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of +missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the +self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he +was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he +came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he +stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young +people are fond of doing. + +CHAPTER III + +Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed +steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt, +beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face +was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company +had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed +round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the +beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little +Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump +for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna +Pavlovna. + +The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and +polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out +of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in +which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up +as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a +specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen +it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served +up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly +choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing +the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc +d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were +particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him. + +"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna, +with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in +the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte." + +The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness +to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone +to listen to his tale. + +"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of +the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to +another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a +third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest +and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef +on a hot dish. + +The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile. + +"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the +beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of +another group. + +The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with +which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly +beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed +with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and +sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her, +not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously +allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and +shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days +were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a +ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so +lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on +the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too +victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish +its effect. + +"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted +his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something +extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also +with her unchanging smile. + +"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he, +smilingly inclining his head. + +The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and +considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the +story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful +round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her +still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond +necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and +whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at +once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's +face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile. + +The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene. + +"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking +of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag." + +There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking +merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in +her seat. + +"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she +took up her work. + +Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle +and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her. + +Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary +resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that +in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features +were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by +a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation, +and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the +contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of +sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes, +nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace, +and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions. + +"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside +the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this +instrument he could not begin to speak. + +"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging +his shoulders. + +"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone +which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he +had uttered them. + +He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be +sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was +dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of +cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings. + +The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then +current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to +Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon +Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in +his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits +to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter +spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by +death. + +The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point +where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies +looked agitated. + +"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the +little princess. + +"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle +into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of +the story prevented her from going on with it. + +The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully +prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a +watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he +was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to +the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe +about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by +the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet +theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally, +which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved. + +"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of +the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one +powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place +herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its +object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would +save the world!" + +"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning. + +At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at +Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The +Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively +affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing +with women. + +"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the +society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have +had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think +of the climate," said he. + +Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more +conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the +larger circle. + +CHAPTER IV + +Just them another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew +Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome +young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. +Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, +measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little +wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing +room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look +at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so +tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. +He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome +face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned +the whole company. + +"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna. + +"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the +last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been +pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...." + +"And Lise, your wife?" + +"She will go to the country." + +"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?" + +"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same +coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has +been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!" + +Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who +from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with +glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he +looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance +with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming +face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile. + +"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to +Pierre. + +"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper +with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the +vicomte who was continuing his story. + +"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's +hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished +to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his +daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass. + +"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the +Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent +his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me +of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to +leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna. + +His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly +holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more +radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous, +almost frightened, eyes as she passed him. + +"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew. + +"Very," said Pierre. + +In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna +Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a +whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society. +Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever +women." + +Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew +his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who +had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook +Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had +assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed +only anxiety and fear. + +"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him +into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me +what news I may take back to my poor boy." + +Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to +the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an +ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might +not go away. + +"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he +would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she. + +"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered +Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I +should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn. +That would be the best way." + +The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the +best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of +society had lost her former influential connections. She had now +come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her +only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had +obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat +listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened +her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a +moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more +tightly. + +"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for +anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my +father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to +do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor," +she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked +Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always +were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes. + +"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her +beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she +stood waiting by the door. + +Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be +economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having +once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him, +he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using +his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her +second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded +him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the +first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners +that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made +up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and +are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour +after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved +him. + +"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and +weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask; +but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's +memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the +Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?" + +"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your +kindness!" He turned to go. + +"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..." +she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich +Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at +rest, and then..." + +Prince Vasili smiled. + +"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered +since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that +all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as +adjutants." + +"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..." + +"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before, +"we shall be late." + +"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?" + +"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?" + +"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise." + +"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went, +with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came +naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face. + +Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit +employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone +her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She +returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again +pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her +task was accomplished. + +CHAPTER V + +"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at +Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa +and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and +Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions +of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is +as if the whole world had gone crazy." + +Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a +sarcastic smile. + +"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'~{ God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware! }~ They say he was very +fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in +Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'" + +"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run +over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to +endure this man who is a menace to everything." + +"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite +but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis +XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he +became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward +of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they +are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper." + +And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position. + +Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time +through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the +little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde +coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much +gravity as if she had asked him to do it. + +"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said +he. + +The princess listened, smiling. + +"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the +vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which +he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others +but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone +too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French +society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed, +and then..." + +He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to +make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna, +who had him under observation, interrupted: + +"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which +always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, +"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to +choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from +the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the +arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the +royalist emigrant. + +"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite +rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it +will be difficult to return to the old regime." + +"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into +the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to +Bonaparte's side." + +"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte +without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to +know the real state of French public opinion. + +"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic +smile. + +It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his +remarks at him, though without looking at him. + +"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'" +Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting +Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I +do not know how far he was justified in saying so." + +"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the +duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some +people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero, +after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and +one hero less on earth." + +Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their +appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the +conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say +something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him. + +"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was +a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed +greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole +responsibility of that deed." + +"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper. + +"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows +greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing +her work nearer to her. + +"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices. + +"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping +his knee with the palm of his hand. + +The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at +his audience over his spectacles and continued. + +"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled +from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon +alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general +good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life." + +"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna. + +But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her. + +"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great +because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, +preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom +of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain +power." + +"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to +commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have +called him a great man," remarked the vicomte. + +"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he +might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a +great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur +Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his +extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind. + +"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that... +But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna. + +"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile. + +"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas." + +"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected +an ironical voice. + +"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most +important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation +from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas +Napoleon has retained in full force." + +"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at +last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words +were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who +does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached +liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? +On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it." + +Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the +vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment +of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was +horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had +not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was +impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the +vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator. + +"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the +fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is +innocent and untried?" + +"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the +18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at +all like the conduct of a great man!" + +"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the +little princess, shrugging her shoulders. + +"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte. + +Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. +His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled, +his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by +another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed +to ask forgiveness. + +The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly +that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. +All were silent. + +"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince +Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish +between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor. +So it seems to me." + +"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of +this reinforcement. + +"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man +was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa +where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are +other acts which it is difficult to justify." + +Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness +of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time +to go. + +Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to +attend, and asking them all to be seated began: + +"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to +it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be +lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian +as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia. +Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their +attention to his story. + +"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She +must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was +her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..." + +Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with +difficulty. + +"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a +livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some +calls.'" + +Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long +before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the +narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna +Pavlovna, did however smile. + +"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat +and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no +longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world +knew...." + +And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had +told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna +and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so +agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the +anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about +the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom, +and when and where. + +CHAPTER VI + +Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests +began to take their leave. + +Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with +huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, to enter a +drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say +something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he +was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his +own, the general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the +plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his +absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it +was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression. +Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that +expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to +see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my +dear Monsieur Pierre." + +When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again +everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions +are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am." +And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this. + +Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders +to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened +indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also +come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, +pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass. + +"Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold," said the little +princess, taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. "It is settled," she added in +a low voice. + +Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match +she contemplated between Anatole and the little princess' +sister-in-law. + +"I rely on you, my dear," said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone. +"Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au +revoir!"- and she left the hall. + +Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his +face close to her, began to whisper something. + +Two footmen, the princess' and his own, stood holding a shawl and +a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to +the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of +understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as +usual spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh. + +"I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador's," said Prince +Hippolyte "-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening, has it not? +Delightful!" + +"They say the ball will be very good," replied the princess, drawing +up her downy little lip. "All the pretty women in society will be +there." + +"Not all, for you will not be there; not all," said Prince Hippolyte +smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he +even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either +from awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after +the shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long +time, as though embracing her. + +Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at +her husband. Prince Andrew's eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did +he seem. + +"Are you ready?" he asked his wife, looking past her. + +Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest +fashion reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out +into the porch following the princess, whom a footman was helping into +the carriage. + +"Princesse, au revoir," cried he, stumbling with his tongue as +well as with his feet. + +The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the +dark carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince +Hippolyte, under pretense of helping, was in everyone's way. + +"Allow me, sir," said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold, +disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path. + +"I am expecting you, Pierre," said the same voice, but gently and +affectionately. + +The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte +laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte +whom he had promised to take home. + +"Well, mon cher," said the vicomte, having seated himself beside +Hippolyte in the carriage, "your little princess is very nice, very +nice indeed, quite French," and he kissed the tips of his fingers. +Hippolyte burst out laughing. + +"Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs," +continued the vicomte. "I pity the poor husband, that little officer +who gives himself the airs of a monarch." + +Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, "And you +were saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One +has to know how to deal with them." + +Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew's study like +one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa, +took from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was +Caesar's Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it +in the middle. + +"What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now," +said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white +hands. + +Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his +eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand. + +"That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the thing in +the right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but- I +do not know how to express it... not by a balance of political +power...." + +It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such +abstract conversation. + +"One can't everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you +at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a +diplomatist?" asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence. + +Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him. + +"Really, I don't yet know. I don't like either the one or the +other." + +"But you must decide on something! Your father expects it." + +Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe as tutor, +and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow +his father dismissed the abbe and said to the young man, "Now go to +Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to +anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money. +Write to me all about it, and I will help you in everything." Pierre +had already been choosing a career for three months, and had not +decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was +speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead. + +"But he must be a Freemason," said he, referring to the abbe whom he +had met that evening. + +"That is all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us +talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?" + +"No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to +tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for +freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the +army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in +the world is not right." + +Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish +words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to +such nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any +other answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question. + +"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no +wars," he said. + +"And that would be splendid," said Pierre. + +Prince Andrew smiled ironically. + +"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about..." + +"Well, why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre. + +"What for? I don't know. I must. Besides that I am going..." He +paused. "I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit +me!" + +CHAPTER VII + +The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince +Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it +had had in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet +from the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a +house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose +and politely placed a chair for her. + +"How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly +and fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette never got married? +How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for +saying so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative +fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!" + +"And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand why he +wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing the princess +with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their +intercourse with young women. + +The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her to the +quick. + +"Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I don't understand +it; I don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars. +How is it that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need +it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is +Uncle's aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well +known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the +Apraksins' I heard a lady asking, 'Is that the famous Prince +Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed. "He is so well received +everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You +know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were +speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?" + +Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the +conversation, gave no reply. + +"When are you starting?" he asked. + +"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of," +said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had +spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly +ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member. +"Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must +be broken off... and then you know, Andre..." (she looked +significantly at her husband) "I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered, +and a shudder ran down her back. + +Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone +besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a +tone of frigid politeness. + +"What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand," said he. + +"There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a +whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up +alone in the country." + +"With my father and sister, remember," said Prince Andrew gently. + +"Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to +be afraid." + +Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a +joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if +she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though +the gist of the matter lay in that. + +"I still can't understand what you are afraid of," said Prince +Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife. + +The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair. + +"No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have..." + +"Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said Prince Andrew. +"You had better go." + +The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip +quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about +the room. + +Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him +and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind. + +"Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?" exclaimed the little +princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a +tearful grimace. "I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you +have changed so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the +war and have no pity for me. Why is it?" + +"Lise!" was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an +entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself +regret her words. But she went on hurriedly: + +"You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you +behave like that six months ago?" + +"Lise, I beg you to desist," said Prince Andrew still more +emphatically. + +Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened +to all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to +bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself. + +"Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because... I assure you +I myself have experienced... and so... because... No, excuse me! An +outsider is out of place here... No, don't distress yourself... +Good-by!" + +Prince Andrew caught him by the hand. + +"No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of +the pleasure of spending the evening with you." + +"No, he thinks only of himself," muttered the princess without +restraining her angry tears. + +"Lise!" said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch +which indicates that patience is exhausted. + +Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess' pretty +face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful +eyes glanced askance at her husband's face, and her own assumed the +timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags +its drooping tail. + +"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she muttered, and lifting her dress with one +hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead. + +"Good night, Lise," said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand +as he would have done to a stranger. + +CHAPTER VIII + +The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre +continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his +forehead with his small hand. + +"Let us go and have supper," he said with a sigh, going to the door. + +They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining +room. Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and +glass bore that imprint of newness found in the households of the +newly married. Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his +elbows on the table and, with a look of nervous agitation such as +Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talk- as one who +has long had something on his mind and suddenly determines to speak +out. + +"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry +till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable +of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and +have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and +irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing- or +all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be +wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise. +If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you +will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed +except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with +a court lackey and an idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he +waved his arm. + +Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different +and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at +his friend in amazement. + +"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of +those rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what +would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one +to whom I mention this, because I like you." + +As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski +who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with half-closed +eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his +thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in +which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with +brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at +ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of +almost morbid irritation. + +"You don't understand why I say this," he continued, "but it is +the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career," said +he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), "but Bonaparte when he +worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had +nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself +up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And +all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and +torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and +triviality- these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I +am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know +nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic +wit," continued Prince Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen +to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and +those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and +women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial +in everything- that's what women are when you see them in their true +colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were +something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't +marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded Prince Andrew. + +"It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that you, you should +consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have +everything before you, everything. And you..." + +He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he +thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future. + +"How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He considered his +friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the +highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which +might be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always +astonished at Prince Andrew's calm manner of treating everybody, his +extraordinary memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything, +knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all +at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often struck +by Andrew's lack of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he +himself was particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a +defect but as a sign of strength. + +Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, +praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary +to wheels that they may run smoothly. + +"My part is played out," said Prince Andrew. "What's the use of +talking about me? Let us talk about you," he added after a silence, +smiling at his reassuring thoughts. + +That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre's face. + +"But what is there to say about me?" said Pierre, his face +relaxing into a careless, merry smile. "What am I? An illegitimate +son!" He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a +great effort to say this. "Without a name and without means... And +it really..." But he did not say what "it really" was. "For the +present I am free and am all right. Only I haven't the least idea what +I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously." + +Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance- friendly and +affectionate as it was- expressed a sense of his own superiority. + +"I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among +our whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you will; it's all +the same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up +visiting those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so +badly- all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!" + +"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging +his shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!" + +"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme +il faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women, +'women and wine' I don't understand!" + +Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing the +dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to +reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister. + +"Do you know?" said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy +thought, "seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading +such a life I can't decide or think properly about anything. One's +head aches, and one spends all one's money. He asked me for tonight, +but I won't go." + +"You give me your word of honor not to go?" + +"On my honor!" + +CHAPTER IX + +It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a +cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending +to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more +he felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was +light enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed +more like morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre +remembered that Anatole Kuragin was expecting the usual set for +cards that evening, after which there was generally a drinking bout, +finishing with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of. + +"I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he. + +But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go +there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so +passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so +accustomed to that he decided to go. The thought immediately +occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andrew was of no account, +because before he gave it he had already promised Prince Anatole to +come to his gathering; "besides," thought he, "all such 'words of +honor' are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if +one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so +extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all +the same!" Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort, +nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to Kuragin's. + +Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards' barracks, in which +Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the +stairs, and went in at the open door. There was no one in the +anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there +was a smell of alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the +distance. + +Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet +dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in +which were the remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw +him, was drinking on the sly what was left in the glasses. From the +third room came sounds of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, +the growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine +young men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three others +were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by the chain and +trying to set him at the others. + +"I bet a hundred on Stevens!" shouted one. + +"Mind, no holding on!" cried another. + +"I bet on Dolokhov!" cried a third. "Kuragin, you part our hands." + +"There, leave Bruin alone; here's a bet on." + +"At one draught, or he loses!" shouted a fourth. + +"Jacob, bring a bottle!" shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow +who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine +linen shirt unfastened in front. "Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here +is Petya! Good man!" cried he, addressing Pierre. + +Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes, +particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober +ring, cried from the window: "Come here; part the bets!" This was +Dolokhov, an officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler +and duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about +him merrily. + +"I don't understand. What's it all about?" + +"Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here," said Anatole, +taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre. + +"First of all you must drink!" + +Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows +at the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and +listening to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre's glass +while explaining that Dolokhov was betting with Stevens, an English +naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the +outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out. + +"Go on, you must drink it all," said Anatole, giving Pierre the last +glass, "or I won't let you go!" + +"No, I won't," said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to +the window. + +Dolokhov was holding the Englishman's hand and clearly and +distinctly repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself +particularly to Anatole and Pierre. + +Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue +eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore +no mustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, +was clearly seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely +curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed +firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two distinct smiles +played continually round the two corners of the mouth; this, +together with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes, +produced an effect which made it impossible not to notice his face. +Dolokhov was a man of small means and no connections. Yet, though +Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dolokhov lived with him and +had placed himself on such a footing that all who knew them, including +Anatole himself, respected him more than they did Anatole. Dolokhov +could play all games and nearly always won. However much he drank, +he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin and Dolokhov were at +that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg. + +The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented +anyone from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two +footmen, who were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions +and shouts of the gentlemen around. + +Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted +to smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame, +but could not move it. He smashed a pane. + +"You have a try, Hercules," said he, turning to Pierre. + +Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame +out with a crash. + +"Take it right out, or they'll think I'm holding on," said Dolokhov. + +"Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?" said Anatole. + +"First-rate," said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a bottle of +rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of +the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible. + +Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the +window sill. "Listen!" cried he, standing there and addressing those +in the room. All were silent. + +"I bet fifty imperials"- he spoke French that the Englishman might +understand him, but he did, not speak it very well- "I bet fifty +imperials... or do you wish to make it a hundred?" added he, +addressing the Englishman. + +"No, fifty," replied the latter. + +"All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole bottle of +rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on +this spot" (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the +window) "and without holding on to anything. Is that right?" + +"Quite right," said the Englishman. + +Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the +buttons of his coat and looking down at him- the Englishman was short- +began repeating the terms of the wager to him in English. + +"Wait!" cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill +to attract attention. "Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else +does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?" + +The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to +accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and +though he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on +translating Dolokhov's words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar +of the Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the +window sill, leaned over, and looked down. + +"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he muttered, looking down from the window at the +stones of the pavement. + +"Shut up!" cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad +jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs. + +Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it +easily, Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and +lowered his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he +adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the +right and then to the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought +two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was +already quite light. Dolokhov's back in his white shirt, and his curly +head, were lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the +Englishman in front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older +than the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and +angry look and wanted to seize hold of Dolokhov's shirt. + +"I say, this is folly! He'll be killed," said this more sensible +man. + +Anatole stopped him. + +"Don't touch him! You'll startle him and then he'll be killed. +Eh?... What then?... Eh?" + +Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands, +arranged himself on his seat. + +"If anyone comes meddling again," said he, emitting the words +separately through his thin compressed lips, "I will throw him down +there. Now then!" + +Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the +bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised +his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped +to pick up some broken glass remained in that position without +taking his eyes from the window and from Dolokhov's back. Anatole +stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways, +pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran +to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his face to +the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade +though his features now expressed horror and fear. All were still. +Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov still sat in the same +position, only his head was thrown further back till his curly hair +touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle was lifted +higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was +emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting +yet further back. "Why is it so long?" thought Pierre. It seemed to +him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dolokhov made +a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously; +this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the +sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered +still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the +window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered +his eyes and thought he would never never them again. Suddenly he +was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on +the window sill, with a pale but radiant face. + +"It's empty." + +He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. +Dolokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum. + +"Well done!... Fine fellow!... There's a bet for you!... Devil +take you!" came from different sides. + +The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the +money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon +the window sill. + +"Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I'll do the same thing!" he +suddenly cried. "Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a +bottle. I'll do it.... Bring a bottle!" + +"Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling. + +"What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why, +you go giddy even on a staircase," exclaimed several voices. + +"I'll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!" shouted Pierre, banging +the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb +out of the window. + +They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone +who touched him was sent flying. + +"No, you'll never manage him that way," said Anatole. "Wait a bit +and I'll get round him.... Listen! I'll take your bet tomorrow, but +now we are all going to -'s." + +"Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!... And we'll take Bruin with +us." + +And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the +ground, and began dancing round the room with it. + +CHAPTER X + +Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess +Drubetskaya who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on +the evening of Anna Pavlovna's soiree. The matter was mentioned to the +Emperor, an exception made, and Boris transferred into the regiment of +Semenov Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no +appointment to Kutuzov's staff despite all Anna Mikhaylovna's +endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pavlovna's reception Anna +Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich +relations, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when in the town and +where and where her darling Bory, who had only just entered a regiment +of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards as a +cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a +time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August, +and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join +them on the march to Radzivilov. + +It was St. Natalia's day and the name day of two of the Rostovs- the +mother and the youngest daughter- both named Nataly. Ever since the +morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going +continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostova's big house +on the Povarskaya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself +and her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing-room with the +visitors who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one +another in relays. + +The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental +type of face, evidently worn out with childbearing- she had had +twelve. A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness, +gave her a distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna +Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya, who as a member of the household was also +seated in the drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the +visitors. The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not +considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors. The +count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner. + +"I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher," or "ma chere"- he +called everyone without exception and without the slightest +variation in his tone, "my dear," whether they were above or below him +in rank- "I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose +name day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be +offended, ma chere! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come, +mon cher!" These words he repeated to everyone without exception or +variation, and with the same expression on his full, cheerful, +clean-shaven face, the same firm pressure of the hand and the same +quick, repeated bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned +to one of those who were still in the drawing room, drew a chair +toward him or her, and jauntily spreading out his legs and putting his +hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how +to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises about the +weather, or touched on questions of health, sometimes in Russian and +sometimes in very bad but self-confident French; then again, like a +man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see +some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald +patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the +anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and pantry into the +large marble dining hall, where tables were being set out for eighty +people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in silver and +china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he would +call Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and the manager of all +his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table +would say: "Well, Dmitri, you'll see that things are all as they +should be? That's right! The great thing is the serving, that's it." +And with a complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room. + +"Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!" announced the countess' +gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The +countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with +her husband's portrait on it. + +"I'm quite worn out by these callers. However, I'll see her and no +more. She is so affected. Ask her in," she said to the footman in a +sad voice, as if saying: "Very well, finish me off." + +A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling +daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling. + +"Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child... +at the Razumovski's ball... and Countess Apraksina... I was so +delighted..." came the sounds of animated feminine voices, +interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and +the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which +last out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of +dresses and say, "I am so delighted... Mamma's health... and +Countess Apraksina... and then, again rustling, pass into the +anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation +was on the chief topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and +celebrated beau of Catherine's day, Count Bezukhov, and about his +illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna +Pavlovna's reception. + +"I am so sorry for the poor count," said the visitor. "He is in such +bad health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill +him!" + +"What is that?" asked the countess as if she did not know what the +visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of +Count Bezukhov's distress some fifteen times. + +"That's what comes of a modern education," exclaimed the visitor. +"It seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as +he liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible +things that he has been expelled by the police." + +"You don't say so!" replied the countess. + +"He chose his friends badly," interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Prince +Vasili's son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up +to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it. +Dolokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov's son sent back +to Moscow. Anatole Kuragin's father managed somehow to get his son's +affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg." + +"But what have they been up to?" asked the countess. + +"They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the +visitor. "He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy +woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear +somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some +actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men +do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear +into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the +policeman on his back!" + +"What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted +the count, dying with laughter. + +"Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?" + +Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing. + +"It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the +visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who +amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so +well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has +done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in +spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite +declined: I have my daughters to consider." + +"Why do you say this young man is so rich?" asked the countess, +turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of +inattention. "His children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also +is illegitimate." + +The visitor made a gesture with her hand. + +"I should think he has a score of them." + +Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation, +evidently wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went +on in society. + +"The fact of the matter is," said she significantly, and also in a +half whisper, "everyone knows Count Cyril's reputation.... He has lost +count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite." + +"How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!" remarked the +countess. "I have never seen a handsomer man." + +"He is very much altered now," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "Well, as I +was saying, Prince Vasili is the next heir through his wife, but the +count is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to +the Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death- and he is +so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from +Petersburg- no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune, +Pierre or Prince Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of +rubles! I know it all very well for Prince Vasili told me himself. +Besides, Cyril Vladimirovich is my mother's second cousin. He's also +my Bory's godfather," she added, as if she attached no importance at +all to the fact. + +"Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on +some inspection business," remarked the visitor. + +"Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, that is a +pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladimirovich, +hearing how ill he is." + +"But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke," said the count; +and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to +the young ladies. "I can just imagine what a funny figure that +policeman cut!" + +And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly +form again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who +always eats well and, in particular, drinks well. "So do come and dine +with us!" he said. + +CHAPTER XI + +Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably, +but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they +now rose and took their leave. The visitor's daughter was already +smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when +suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls +running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a +girl of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin +frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was +evident that she had not intended her flight to bring her so far. +Behind her in the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat +collar, an officer of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump +rosy-faced boy in a short jacket. + +The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his +arms wide and threw them round the little girl who had run in. + +"Ah, here she is!" he exclaimed laughing. "My pet, whose name day it +is. My dear pet!" + +"Ma chere, there is a time for everything," said the countess with +feigned severity. "You spoil her, Ilya," she added, turning to her +husband. + +"How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your +name day," said the visitor. "What a charming child," she added, +addressing the mother. + +This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life- +with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook +her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little +legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers- was just at +that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child +is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her +flushed face in the lace of her mother's mantilla- not paying the +least attention to her severe remark- and began to laugh. She laughed, +and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she +produced from the folds of her frock. + +"Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha +managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned +against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter +that even the prim visitor could not help joining in. + +"Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you," said the +mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and +turning to the visitor she added: "She is my youngest girl." + +Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother's mantilla, +glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face. + +The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it +necessary to take some part in it. + +"Tell me, my dear," said she to Natasha, "is Mimi a relation of +yours? A daughter, I suppose?" + +Natasha did not like the visitor's tone of condescension to childish +things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously. + +Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer, Anna +Mikhaylovna's son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count's eldest +son; Sonya, the count's fifteen-year-old niece, and little Petya, +his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were +obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the +excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the +back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the +conversation had been more amusing than the drawing-room talk of +society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apraksina. Now and then +they glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter. + +The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from +childhood, were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though +not alike. Boris was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had +regular, delicate features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and +an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper +lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas +blushed when he entered the drawing room. He evidently tried to find +something to say, but failed. Boris on the contrary at once found +his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had know that +doll Mimi when she was still quite a young lady, before her nose was +broken; how she had aged during the five years he had known her, and +how her head had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he +glanced at Natasha. She turned away from him and glanced at her +younger brother, who was screwing up his eyes and shaking with +suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she +jumped up and rushed from the room as fast as her nimble little feet +would carry her. Boris did not laugh. + +"You were meaning to go out, weren't you, Mamma? Do you want the +carriage?" he asked his mother with a smile. + +"Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered, +returning his smile. + +Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. The plump +boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been +disturbed. + +CHAPTER XII + +The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting +the young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who was four +years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up +person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender +little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by +long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a +tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her +slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her +movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and +by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a +pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful +little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest +in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her +eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going to +join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile +could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear +that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more energy +and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha +and Boris, escape from the drawing room. + +"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and +pointing to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become an officer, and +so for friendship's sake he is leaving the university and me, his +old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there +was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department! +Isn't that friendship?" remarked the count in an inquiring tone. + +"But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor. + +"They've been saying so a long while," said the count, "and +they'll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My +dear, there's friendship for you," he repeated. "He's joining the +hussars." + +The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head. + +"It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and +turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from +friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation." + +He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were +both regarding him with a smile of approbation. + +"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us +today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him. +It can't be helped!" said the count, shrugging his shoulders and +speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him. + +"I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that if you don't +wish to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except +in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.- I don't +know how to hide what I feel." As he spoke he kept glancing with the +flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady +visitor. + +The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any +moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature. + +"All right, all right!" said the old count. "He always flares up! +This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he +rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it," +he added, not noticing his visitor's sarcastic smile. + +The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to +young Rostov. + +"What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so +dull without you," said she, giving him a tender smile. + +The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish +smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation +without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the +heart of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of +his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry +glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the +artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All +Nicholas' animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the +conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room to find +Sonya. + +"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their +sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went +out. "Cousinage- dangereux voisinage;"~{ Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood. }~ she added. + +"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these young people +had brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question +no one had put but which was always in her mind, "and how much +suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might +rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than +the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, +so dangerous both for girls and boys." + +"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor. + +"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess. "Till now I +have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full +confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who +imagine that their children have no secrets from them. "I know I shall +always be my daughters' first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with +his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he +will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men." + +"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed in the +count, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by +deciding that everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants to be an +hussar. What's one to do, my dear?" + +"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor; +"a little volcano!" + +"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes after me! And +what a voice she has; though she's my daughter, I tell the truth +when I say she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an +Italian to give her lessons." + +"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to +train it at that age." + +"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our +mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen." + +"And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the +countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' and went on, evidently +concerned with a thought that always occupied her: "Now you see if I +were to be severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what +they might be up to on the sly" (she meant that they would be +kissing), "but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come +running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything. +Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her +elder sister I was stricter." + +"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome +elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile. + +But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally +do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore +unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid, +quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what +she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone- +the visitors and countess alike- turned to look at her as if wondering +why she had said it, and they all felt awkward. + +"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try +to make something exceptional of them," said the visitor. + +"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too +clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned +out splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera. + +The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to +dinner. + +"What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess, +when she had seen her guests out. + +CHAPTER XIII + +When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the +conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation +in the drawing room, waiting for Boris to come out. She was already +growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not +coming at once, when she heard the young man's discreet steps +approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly +among the flower tubs and hid there. + +Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a +little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror +examined his handsome face. Natasha, very still, peered out from her +ambush, waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while +before the glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha +was about to call him but changed her mind. "Let him look for me," +thought she. Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears, +and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked +her first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place, +watching- as under an invisible cap- to see what went on in the world. +She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya, muttering +to herself, kept looking round toward the drawing-room door. It opened +and Nicholas came in. + +"Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?" said he, +running up to her. + +"It's nothing, nothing; leave me alone!" sobbed Sonya. + +"Ah, I know what it is." + +"Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!" + +"So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like +that, for a mere fancy?" said Nicholas taking her hand. + +Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not +stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with +sparkling eyes. "What will happen now?" thought she. + +"Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are +everything!" said Nicholas. "And I will prove it to you." + +"I don't like you to talk like that." + +"Well, then, I won't; only forgive me, Sonya!" He drew her to him +and kissed her. + +"Oh, how nice," thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had +gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Boris to her. + +"Boris, come here," said she with a sly and significant look. "I +have something to tell you. Here, here!" and she led him into the +conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding. + +Boris followed her, smiling. + +"What is the something?" asked he. + +She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had +thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up. + +"Kiss the doll," said she. + +Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not +reply. + +"Don't you want to? Well, then, come here," said she, and went +further in among the plants and threw down the doll. "Closer, closer!" +she whispered. + +She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity +and fear appeared on her flushed face. + +"And me? Would you like to kiss me?" she whispered almost inaudibly, +glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying +from excitement. + +Boris blushed. + +"How funny you are!" he said, bending down to her and blushing still +more, but he waited and did nothing. + +Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him +so that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, +tossing back her hair, kissed him full on the lips. + +Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of +the tubs and stood, hanging her head. + +"Natasha," he said, "you know that I love you, but..." + +"You are in love with me?" Natasha broke in. + +"Yes, I am, but please don't let us do like that.... In another four +years... then I will ask for your hand." + +Natasha considered. + +"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen," she counted on her slender +little fingers. "All right! Then it's settled?" + +A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face. + +"Settled!" replied Boris. + +"Forever?" said the little girl. "Till death itself?" + +She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the +adjoining sitting room. + +CHAPTER XIV + +After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she +gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to +invite to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished +to have a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood, +Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she +returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but +pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess. + +"With you I will be quite frank," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "There +are not many left of us old friends! That's why I so value your +friendship." + +Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her +friend's hand. + +"Vera," she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a +favorite, "how is it you have so little tact? Don't you see you are +not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..." + +The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all +hurt. + +"If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone," she replied +as she rose to go to her own room. + +But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples +sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. +Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses +for her, the first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at +the other window and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and +Natasha looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces. + +It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; +but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera. + +"How often have I asked you not to take my things?" she said. "You +have a room of your own," and she took the inkstand from Nicholas. + +"In a minute, in a minute," he said, dipping his pen. + +"You always manage to do things at the wrong time," continued +Vera. "You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt +ashamed of you." + +Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no +one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered +in the room with the inkstand in her hand. + +"And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and +Boris, or between you two? It's all nonsense!" + +"Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?" said Natasha in defense, +speaking very gently. + +She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to +everyone. + +"Very silly," said Vera. "I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!" + +"All have secrets of their own," answered Natasha, getting warmer. +"We don't interfere with you and Berg." + +"I should think not," said Vera, "because there can never be +anything wrong in my behavior. But I'll just tell Mamma how you are +behaving with Boris." + +"Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me," remarked Boris. "I have +nothing to complain of." + +"Don't, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really +tiresome," said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly. +(She used the word "diplomat," which was just then much in vogue among +the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) "Why does she +bother me?" And she added, turning to Vera, "You'll never understand +it, because you've never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a +Madame de Genlis and nothing more" (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by +Nicholas, was considered very stinging), "and your greatest pleasure +is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you +please," she finished quickly. + +"I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..." + +"Well, now you've done what you wanted," put in Nicholas- "said +unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let's go to the +nursery." + +All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room. + +"The unpleasant things were said to me," remarked Vera, "I said none +to anyone." + +"Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!" shouted laughing voices +through the door. + +The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant +effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been +said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and +scarf. Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still +colder and calmer. + +In the drawing room the conversation was still going on. + +"Ah, my dear," said the countess, "my life is not all roses +either. Don't I know that at the rate we are living our means won't +last long? It's all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the +country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows +what besides! But don't let's talk about me; tell me how you managed +everything. I often wonder at you, Annette- how at your age you can +rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those +ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It's +quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn't possibly +do it." + +"Ah, my love," answered Anna Mikhaylovna, "God grant you never +know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you +love to distraction! One learns many things then," she added with a +certain pride. "That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of +those big people I write a note: 'Princess So-and-So desires an +interview with So and-So,' and then I take a cab and go myself two, +three, or four times- till I get what I want. I don't mind what they +think of me." + +"Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?" asked the countess. +"You see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my +Nicholas is going as a cadet. There's no one to interest himself for +him. To whom did you apply?" + +"To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to +everything, and put the matter before the Emperor," said Princess Anna +Mikhaylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she +had endured to gain her end. + +"Has Prince Vasili aged much?" asked the countess. "I have not +seen him since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs' theatricals. I +expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days," said +the countess, with a smile. + +"He is just the same as ever," replied Anna Mikhaylovna, +"overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head +at all. He said to me, 'I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear +Princess. I am at your command.' Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very +kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do +anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way +that my position is now a terrible one," continued Anna Mikhaylovna, +sadly, dropping her voice. "My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and +makes no progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a +penny and don't know how to equip Boris." She took out her +handkerchief and began to cry. "I need five hundred rubles, and have +only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a state.... My only hope +now is in Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he will not assist +his godson- you know he is Bory's godfather- and allow him something +for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I +shall not be able to equip him." + +The countess' eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence. + +"I often think, though, perhaps it's a sin," said the princess, +"that here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov so rich, all +alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It's a +burden to him, and Bory's life is only just beginning...." + +"Surely he will leave something to Boris," said the countess. + +"Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish. +Still, I will take Boris and go to see him at once, and I shall +speak to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it's +really all the same to me when my son's fate is at stake." The +princess rose. "It's now two o'clock and you dine at four. There +will just be time." + +And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the +most of time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to call her son, and +went into the anteroom with him. + +"Good-by, my dear," said she to the countess who saw her to the +door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, "Wish me +good luck." + +"Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?" said the +count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added: +"If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the +house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite +him, my dear. We will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He +says Count Orlov never gave such a dinner as ours will be!" + +CHAPTER XV + +"My dear Boris," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her son as +Countess Rostova's carriage in which they were seated drove over the +straw covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril +Vladimirovich Bezukhov's house. "My dear Boris," said the mother, +drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and +tenderly on her son's arm, "be affectionate and attentive to him. +Count Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future +depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you +so well know how to be." + +"If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of +it..." answered her son coldly. "But I have promised and will do it +for your sake." + +Although the hall porter saw someone's carriage standing at the +entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to +be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the +rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady's old +cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses, +and, hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency +was worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone. + +"We may as well go back," said the son in French. + +"My dear!" exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand +on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him. + +Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without +taking off his cloak. + +"My friend," said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the +hall porter, I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich is very ill... that's +why I have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him, my +friend... I only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying +here, is he not? Please announce me." + +The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and +turned away. + +"Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to +a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat, +who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing. + +The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a +large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes +briskly ascended the carpeted stairs. + +"My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a +touch, "you promised me!" + +The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly. + +They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to +the apartments assigned to Prince Vasili. + +Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall, +were about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as +they entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and +Prince Vasili came out- wearing a velvet coat with a single star on +his breast, as was his custom when at home- taking leave of a +good-looking, dark-haired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg +doctor, Lorrain. + +"Then it is certain?" said the prince. + +"Prince, humanum est errare,~{ To err is human. }~ but..." replied the doctor, swallowing +his r's, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent. + +"Very well, very well..." + +Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the +doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of +inquiry. The son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow +suddenly clouded his mother's face, and he smiled slightly. + +"Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our +dear invalid?" said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive +look fixed on her. + +Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and +perplexed. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging +the bow turned to Anna Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a +movement of the head and lips indicating very little hope for the +patient. + +"Is it possible?" exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Oh, how awful! It +is terrible to think.... This is my son," she added, indicating Boris. +"He wanted to thank you himself." + +Boris bowed again politely. + +"Believe me, Prince, a mother's heart will never forget what you +have done for us." + +"I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna +Mikhaylovna," said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in +tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed +under an obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than +he had done in Petersburg at Anna Scherer's reception. + +"Try to serve well and show yourself worthy," added he, addressing +Boris with severity. "I am glad.... Are you here on leave?" he went on +in his usual tone of indifference. + +"I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency," +replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the prince's brusque +manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so +quietly and respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance. + +"Are you living with your mother?" + +"I am living at Countess Rostova's," replied Boris, again adding, +"your excellency." + +"That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina," said +Anna Mikhaylovna. + +"I know, I know," answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. "I +never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that +unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler +too, I am told." + +"But a very kind man, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a pathetic +smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure, +but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. "What do the +doctors say?" asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again +expressing deep sorrow. + +"They give little hope," replied the prince. + +"And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me +and Boris. He is his godson," she added, her tone suggesting that this +fact ought to give Prince Vasili much satisfaction. + +Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikhaylovna saw +that he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov's +fortune, and hastened to reassure him. + +"If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle," +said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern, +"I know his character: noble, upright... but you see he has no one +with him except the young princesses.... They are still young...." She +bent her head and continued in a whisper: "Has he performed his +final duty, Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can +make things no worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if +he is so ill. We women, Prince," and she smiled tenderly, "always know +how to say these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it +may be for me. I am used to suffering." + +Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he +had done at Anna Pavlovna's, that it would be difficult to get rid +of Anna Mikhaylovna. + +"Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna +Mikhaylovna?" said he. "Let us wait until evening. The doctors are +expecting a crisis." + +"But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the +welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a +Christian..." + +A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses, +the count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of +her body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince +Vasili turned to her. + +"Well, how is he?" + +"Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise..." said the +princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger. + +"Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy +smile, ambling lightly up to the count's niece. "I have come, and am +at your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have +gone through," and she sympathetically turned up her eyes. + +The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room +at Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position +she had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili +to take a seat beside her. + +"Boris," she said to her son with a smile, "I shall go in to see the +count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile +and don't forget to give him the Rostovs' invitation. They ask him +to dinner. I suppose he won't go?" she continued, turning to the +prince. + +"On the contrary," replied the prince, who had plainly become +depressed, "I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young +man.... Here he is, and the count has not once asked for him." + +He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight +of stairs and up another, to Pierre's rooms. + +CHAPTER XVI + +Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in +Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and +sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true. +Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now +been for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his +father's house. Though he expected that the story of his escapade +would be already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father- +who were never favorably disposed toward him- would have used it to +turn the count against him, he nevertheless on the day of his +arrival went to his father's part of the house. Entering the drawing +room, where the princesses spent most of their time, he greeted the +ladies, two of whom were sitting at embroidery frames while a third +read aloud. It was the eldest who was reading- the one who had met +Anna Mikhaylovna. The two younger ones were embroidering: both were +rosy and pretty and they differed only in that one had a little mole +on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre was received as if +he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess paused in her reading +and silently stared at him with frightened eyes; the second assumed +precisely the same expression; while the youngest, the one with the +mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition, bent over her +frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene she +foresaw. She drew her wool down through the canvas and, scarcely +able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the +pattern. + +"How do you do, cousin?" said Pierre. "You don't recognize me?" + +"I recognize you only too well, too well." + +"How is the count? Can I see him?" asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual, +but unabashed. + +"The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently +you have done your best to increase his mental sufferings." + +"Can I see the count?" Pierre again asked. + +"Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see +him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle's beef tea is ready- it is +almost time," she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were +busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he, +Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance. + +Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed +and said: "Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can +see him." + +And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of +the sister with the mole. + +Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the count's house. +He sent for Pierre and said to him: "My dear fellow, if you are +going to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very +badly; that is all I have to say to you. The count is very, very +ill, and you must not see him at all." + +Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole +time in his rooms upstairs. + +When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his +room, stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at +the wall, as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and +glaring savagely over his spectacles, and then again resuming his +walk, muttering indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and +gesticulating. + +"England is done for," said he, scowling and pointing his finger +at someone unseen. "Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the +rights of man, is sentenced to..." But before Pierre- who at that +moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just +effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured +London- could pronounce Pitt's sentence, he saw a well-built and +handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left +Moscow when Boris was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten +him, but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the +hand with a friendly smile. + +"Do you remember me?" asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile. +"I have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not +well." + +"Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him," +answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was. + +Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it +necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least +embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face. + +"Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a +considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable. + +"Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his +son, Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how +we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an +age..." + +"You are mistaken," said Boris deliberately, with a bold and +slightly sarcastic smile. "I am Boris, son of Princess Anna +Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya, and his son is +Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot." + +Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees. + +"Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I've mixed everything up. One +has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well, +now we know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne +expedition? The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon +gets across the Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible. +If only Villeneuve doesn't make a mess of things! + +Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read +the papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve's name. + +"We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal +than with politics," said he in his quiet ironical tone. "I know +nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy +with gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and +your father." + +Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his +companion's sake that the latter might say something he would +afterwards regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly, +looking straight into Pierre's eyes. + +"Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip," Boris went on. +"Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune, +though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will..." + +"Yes, it is all very horrid," interrupted Pierre, "very horrid." + +Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say +something disconcerting to himself. + +"And it must seem to you," said Boris flushing slightly, but not +changing his tone or attitude, "it must seem to you that everyone is +trying to get something out of the rich man?" + +"So it does," thought Pierre. + +"But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are +quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are +very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that +your father is rich, I don't regard myself as a relation of his, and +neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him." + +For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he +jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick, +clumsy way, and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a +feeling of mingled shame and vexation. + +"Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I +know very well..." + +But Boris again interrupted him. + +"I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You +must excuse me," said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being +put at ease by him, "but I hope I have not offended you. I always make +it a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you +come to dinner at the Rostovs'?" + +And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and +extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it, +became quite pleasant again. + +"No, but I say," said Pierre, calming down, "you are a wonderful +fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you +don't know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we +were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite +understand. I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the +courage, but it's splendid. I am very glad to have made your +acquaintance. It's queer," he added after a pause, "that you should +have suspected me!" He began to laugh. "Well, what of it! I hope we'll +get better acquainted," and he pressed Boris' hand. "Do you know, I +have not once been in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I +am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?" + +"And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?" asked +Boris with a smile. + +Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the +same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of +the Boulogne expedition. + +A footman came in to summon Boris- the princess was going. Pierre, +in order to make Boris' better acquaintance, promised to come to +dinner, and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his +spectacles into Boris' eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing +up and down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an +imaginary foe with his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance +of that pleasant, intelligent, and resolute young man. + +As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a +lonely life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man +and made up his mind that they would be friends. + +Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her +eyes and her face was tearful. + +"It is dreadful, dreadful!" she was saying, "but cost me what it may +I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be +left like this. Every moment is precious. I can't think why his nieces +put it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare +him!... Adieu, Prince! May God support you..." + +"Adieu, ma bonne," answered Prince Vasili turning away from her. + +"Oh, he is in a dreadful state," said the mother to her son when +they were in the carriage. "He hardly recognizes anybody." + +"I don't understand, Mamma- what is his attitude to Pierre?" asked +the son. + +"The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it." + +"But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?" + +"Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!" + +"Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..." + +"Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!" exclaimed the mother. + +CHAPTER XVII + +After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count +Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all +alone applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang. + +"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said crossly to the maid +who kept her waiting some minutes. "Don't you wish to serve me? Then +I'll find you another place." + +The countess was upset by her friend's sorrow and humiliating +poverty, and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with +her always found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking +to her with exaggerated politeness. + +"I am very sorry, ma'am," answered the maid. + +"Ask the count to come to me." + +The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look +as usual. + +"Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we are to +have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Taras +were not ill-spent. He is worth it!" + +He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands +ruffling his gray hair. + +"What are your commands, little countess?" + +"You see, my dear... What's that mess?" she said, pointing to his +waistcoat. "It's, the saute, most likely," she added with a smile. +"Well, you see, Count, I want some money." + +Her face became sad. + +"Oh, little countess!"... and the count began bustling to get out +his pocketbook. + +"I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles," and taking +out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband's waistcoat. + +"Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who's there?" he called out +in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call +will rush to obey the summons. "Send Dmitri to me!" + +Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the +count's house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the +room. + +"This is what I want, my dear fellow," said the count to the +deferential young man who had entered. "Bring me..." he reflected a +moment, "yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don't +bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean +ones for the countess." + +"Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please," said the countess, sighing +deeply. + +"When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri. "Allow me +to inform you... But, don't be uneasy," he added, noticing that the +count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always +a sign of approaching anger. "I was forgetting... Do you wish it +brought at once?" + +"Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess." + +"What a treasure that Dmitri is," added the count with a smile +when the young man had departed. "There is never any 'impossible' with +him. That's a thing I hate! Everything is possible." + +"Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world," +said the countess. "But I am in great need of this sum." + +"You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift," said the +count, and having kissed his wife's hand he went back to his study. + +When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov's the money, +all in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the +countess' little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something +was agitating her. + +"Well, my dear?" asked the countess. + +"Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is +so ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word..." + +"Annette, for heaven's sake don't refuse me," the countess began, +with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified, +elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief. + +Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be +ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment. + +"This is for Boris from me, for his outfit." + +Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess +wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were +kindhearted, and because they- friends from childhood- had to think +about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over.... +But those tears were pleasant to them both. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests, +was already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen +into his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes. +From time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were +expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le +terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but +for common sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was +known to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and +Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her, laughed privately at +her rudenesses, and told good stories about her, while none the less +all without exception respected and feared her. + +In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of +war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the +recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew +it had appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were +smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his +head first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers +with evident pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two +neighbors, whom he egged on against each other. + +One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and +wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a +most fashionable young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as +if quite at home and, having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his +mouth, was inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his +eyes. This was an old bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a +man with "a sharp tongue" as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to +be condescending to his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer +of the Guards, irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held +his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled +the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This +was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in the Semenov regiment with whom +Boris was to travel to join the army, and about whom Natasha had, +teased her elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her "intended." +The count sat between them and listened attentively. His favorite +occupation when not playing boston, a card game he was very fond of, +was that of listener, especially when he succeeded in setting two +loquacious talkers at one another. + +"Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse Karlovich," +said Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary +Russian expressions with the choicest French phrases- which was a +peculiarity of his speech. "Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur +l'etat;~{ You expect to make an income out of the government. }~ you want to make something out of your company?" + +"No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry +the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own +position now, Peter Nikolaevich..." + +Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His +conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain +calm and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no +direct bearing on himself. He could remain silent for hours without +being at all put out of countenance himself or making others +uncomfortable, but as soon as the conversation concerned himself he +would begin to talk circumstantially and with evident satisfaction. + +"Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the cavalry I +should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even +with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and +thirty," said he, looking at Shinshin and the count with a joyful, +pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must +always be the chief desire of everyone else. + +"Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the Guards I +shall be in a more prominent position," continued Berg, "and vacancies +occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what +can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a +little aside and to send something to my father," he went on, emitting +a smoke ring. + +"La balance y est...~{ So that squares matters. }~ A German knows how to skin a flint, as the +proverb says," remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to the other side of +his mouth and winking at the count. + +The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that +Shinshin was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or +indifference, continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards +he had already gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; +how in wartime the company commander might get killed and he, as +senior in the company, might easily succeed to the post; how popular +he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his father was +with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this, and did not +seem to suspect that others, too, might have their own interests. +But all he said was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his +youthful egotism was so obvious, that he disarmed his hearers. + +"Well, my boy, you'll get along wherever you go- foot or horse- that +I'll warrant," said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and taking +his feet off the sofa. + +Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into the +drawing room. + +It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled +guests, expecting the summons to zakuska,~{ Hors d'oeuvres. }~ avoid engaging in any +long conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in +order to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The +host and hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at +one another, and the visitors try to guess from these glances who, +or what, they are waiting for- some important relation who has not yet +arrived, or a dish that is not yet ready. + +Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in +the middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come +across, blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make +him talk, but he went on naively looking around through his spectacles +as if in search of somebody and answered all her questions in +monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one who did not +notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair with the +bear, looked with curiosity at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering +how such a clumsy, modest fellow could have played such a prank on a +policeman. + +"You have only lately arrived?" the countess asked him. + +"Oui, madame," replied he, looking around him. + +"You have not yet seen my husband?" + +"Non, madame." He smiled quite inappropriately. + +"You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it's very +interesting." + +"Very interesting." + +The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter +understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and +sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he +answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other +guests were all conversing with one another. "The Razumovskis... It +was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina..." was +heard on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom. + +"Marya Dmitrievna?" came her voice from there. + +"Herself," came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya Dmitrievna +entered the room. + +All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very +oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout, +holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood +surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if +rolling them up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian. + +"Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to +her children," she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned +all others. "Well, you old sinner," she went on, turning to the +count who was kissing her hand, "you're feeling dull in Moscow, I +daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old +man? Just see how these nestlings are growing up," and she pointed +to the girls. "You must look for husbands for them whether you like it +or not...." + +Well," said she, "how's my Cossack?" (Marya Dmitrievna always called +Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child's arm as she came up +fearless and gay to kiss her hand. "I know she's a scamp of a girl, +but I like her." + +She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge +reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with +the pleasure of her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and +addressed herself to Pierre. + +"Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit," said she, assuming a soft high +tone of voice. "Come here, my friend..." and she ominously tucked up +her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a +childlike way through his spectacles. + +"Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell +your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it's my +evident duty." She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to +follow, for this was dearly only a prelude. + +"A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed +and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame, +sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war." + +She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly +keep from laughing. + +"Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?" said Marya +Dmitrievna. + +The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the countess followed +on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them +because Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna +Mikhaylovna with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling +Julie Karagina went in with Nicholas. After them other couples +followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all the children, +tutors, and governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving +about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the +guests settled down in their places. Then the strains of the count's +household band were replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the +voices of visitors, and the soft steps of the footmen. At one end of +the table sat the countess with Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna +Mikhaylovna on her left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At +the other end sat the count, with the hussar colonel on his left and +Shinshin and the other male visitors on his right. Midway down the +long table on one side sat the grownup young people: Vera beside Berg, +and Pierre beside Boris; and on the other side, the children, +tutors, and governesses. From behind the crystal decanters and fruit +vases the count kept glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its +light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors' glasses, not +neglecting his own. The countess in turn, without omitting her +duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the +pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their +redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the ladies' +end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the men's end +the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the colonel +of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so much +that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg with +tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a +heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the +guests were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting +opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a +great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and +went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the +wines. These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in +a napkin, from behind the next man's shoulders and whispered: "Dry +Madeira"... "Hungarian"... or "Rhine wine" as the case might be. Of +the four crystal glasses engraved with the count's monogram that stood +before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank with +enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests. +Natasha, who sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen +look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the +first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny +lively little girl's look made him inclined to laugh without knowing +why. + +Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina, +to whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya +wore a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now +she turned pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what +Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept +looking round uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might +be put upon the children. The German tutor was trying to remember +all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full +description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt +greatly offended when the butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin +passed him by. He frowned, trying to appear as if he did not want +any of that wine, but was mortified because no one would understand +that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness that he wanted +it, but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge. + +CHAPTER XIX + +At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more +animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had +already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself +seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to the commander in +chief. + +"And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?" remarked +Shinshin. "He has stopped Austria's cackle and I fear it will be our +turn next." + +The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted +to the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin's +remark. + +"It is for the reasson, my goot sir," said he, speaking with a +German accent, "for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He +declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze +danger vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as +vell as ze sanctity of its alliances..." he spoke this last word +with particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter. + +Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he +repeated from the opening words of the manifesto: + +... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor's sole and +absolute aim- to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations- has +now decided him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a +new condition for the attainment of that purpose. + +"Zat, my dear sir, is vy..." he concluded, drinking a tumbler of +wine with dignity and looking to the count for approval. + +"Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:~{ Do you know the proverb? }~ 'Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but +turn spindles at home!'?" said Shinshin, puckering his brows and +smiling. "Cela nous convient a merveille.~{ That suits us down to the ground. }~ Suvorov now- he knew +what he was about; yet they beat him a plate couture,~{ Hollow. }~ and where +are we to find Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,"~{ I just ask you that. }~ said he, +continually changing from French to Russian. + +"Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!" said the +colonel, thumping the table; "and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen +all vill pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible"... +he dwelt particularly on the word possible... "as po-o-ossible," he +ended, again turning to the count. "Zat is how ve old hussars look +at it, and zere's an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a +young hussar, how do you judge of it?" he added, addressing +Nicholas, who when he heard that the war was being discussed had +turned from his partner with eyes and ears intent on the colonel. + +"I am quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up, +turning his plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as +much decision and desperation as though he were at that moment +facing some great danger. "I am convinced that we Russians must die or +conquer," he concluded, conscious- as were others- after the words +were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for +the occasion and were therefore awkward. + +"What you said just now was splendid!" said his partner Julie. + +Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them +and down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking. + +Pierre listened to the colonel's speech and nodded approvingly. + +"That's fine," said he. + +"The young man's a real hussar!" shouted the colonel, again thumping +the table. + +"What are you making such a noise about over there?" Marya +Dmitrievna's deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the +table. "What are you thumping the table for?" she demanded of the +hussar, "and why are you exciting yourself? Do you think the French +are here?" + +"I am speaking ze truce," replied the hussar with a smile. + +"It's all about the war," the count shouted down the table. "You +know my son's going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is going." + +"I have four sons in the army but still I don't fret. It is all in +God's hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a +battle," replied Marya Dmitrievna's deep voice, which easily carried +the whole length of the table. + +"That's true!" + +Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies' at the one end +and the men's at the other. + +"You won't ask," Natasha's little brother was saying; "I know you +won't ask!" + +"I will," replied Natasha. + +Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She +half rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to +what was coming, and turning to her mother: + +"Mamma!" rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice, +audible the whole length of the table. + +"What is it?" asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her +daughter's face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her +sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head. + +The conversation was hushed. + +"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" and Natasha's voice +sounded still more firm and resolute. + +The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook +her fat finger. + +"Cossack!" she said threateningly. + +Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at +the elders. + +"You had better take care!" said the countess. + +"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried +boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken +in good part. + +Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter. + +"You see! I have asked," whispered Natasha to her little brother and +to Pierre, glancing at him again. + +"Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna. + +Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even +Marya Dmitrievna. + +"Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don't like ice +cream." + +"Carrot ices." + +"No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?" she almost screamed; +"I want to know!" + +Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the +guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya Dmitrievna's answer +but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who +had dared to treat Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion. + +Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be +pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band +again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests, +leaving their seats, went up to "congratulate" the countess, and +reached across the table to clink glasses with the count, with the +children, and with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs +scraped, and in the same order in which they had entered but with +redder faces, the guests returned to the drawing room and to the +count's study. + +CHAPTER XX + +The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the +count's visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms, +some in the sitting room, some in the library. + +The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty +from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at +everything. The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered +round the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played +first. After she had played a little air with variations on the +harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging Natasha and +Nicholas, who were noted for their musical talent, to sing +something. Natasha, who was treated as though she were grown up, was +evidently very proud of this but at the same time felt shy. + +"What shall we sing?" she said. + +"'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas. + +"Well, then,let's be quick. Boris, come here," said Natasha. "But +where is Sonya?" + +She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room +ran to look for her. + +Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha ran +to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that +she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage +was the place of mourning for the younger female generation in the +Rostov household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on +Nurse's dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy +pink dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and +sobbing so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook. +Natasha's face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint's +day, suddenly changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed +down her broad neck and the corners of her mouth drooped. + +"Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!" And +Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she +began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was +crying. Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and +hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the +blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort +Sonya sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining. + +"Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers... have +come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry," and she +showed a paper she held in her hand- with the verses Nicholas had +written, "still, I should not cry, but you can't... no one can +understand... what a soul he has!" + +And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul. + +"It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and +Boris also," she went on, gaining a little strength; "he is nice... +there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin... +one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it +can't be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the +countess as her mother and called her so) "that I am spoiling +Nicholas' career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God +is my witness," and she made the sign of the cross, "I love her so +much, and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done to +her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice +everything, only I have nothing...." + +Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in +the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that +she understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble. + +"Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true +reason of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has said something to +you since dinner? Hasn't she?" + +"Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some +others, and she found them on my table and said she'd show them to +Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him +to marry me, but that he'll marry Julie. You see how he's been with +her all day... Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..." + +And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha +lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began +comforting her. + +"Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her! Do you +remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting +room after supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don't +quite remember how, but don't you remember that it could all be +arranged and how nice it all was? There's Uncle Shinshin's brother has +married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know. +And Boris says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all +about it. And he is so clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you +cry, Sonya, dear love, darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed. +"Vera's spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right and she +won't say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself, and he +doesn't care at all for Julie." + +Natasha kissed her on the hair. + +Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it +seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin +playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should. + +"Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly smoothing her +frock and hair. + +"Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that +had strayed from under her friend's plaits. + +Both laughed. + +"Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'" + +"Come along!" + +"Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!" said +Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel so happy!" + +And she set off at a run along the passage. + +Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the +verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran +after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face +and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request the young people +sang the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted. +Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned: + +poem{ + +At nighttime in the moon's fair glow +How sweet, as fancies wander free, +To feel that in this world there's one +Who still is thinking but of thee! + +That while her fingers touch the harp +Wafting sweet music music the lea, +It is for thee thus swells her heart, +Sighing its message out to thee... + +A day or two, then bliss unspoilt, +But oh! till then I cannot live!... + +}poem + +He had not finished the last verse before the young people began +to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and +the coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery. + +Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged +him, as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political +conversation in which several others joined but which bored Pierre. +When the music began Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre +said, laughing and blushing: + +"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers." + +"I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied; "but if you +will be my teacher..." And lowering his big arm he offered it to the +slender little girl. + +While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning +up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly +happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She +was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a +grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had +given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a society woman +(heaven knows when and where she had learned it) she talked with her +partner, fanning herself and smiling over the fan. + +"Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess as she +crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha. + +Natasha blushed and laughed. + +"Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be +surprised at?" + +In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs +being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya +Dmitrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the more +distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves +after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks, +entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count, +both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony +somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He +drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and +as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended, he clapped +his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing +the first violin: + +"Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?" + +This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in his +youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the +anglaise.) + +"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite +forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her +curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her +laughter. + +And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure +at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout +partner, Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened +his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot, +and, by a smile that broadened his round face more and more, +prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the +provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling +those of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of +the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic serfs- the men on +one side and the women on the other- who with beaming faces had come +to see their master making merry. + +"Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!" loudly remarked +the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways. + +The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did +not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her +powerful arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the +countess), and only her stern but handsome face really joined in the +dance. What was expressed by the whole of the count's plump figure, in +Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming +face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting more and more +into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness +of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on +his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight +exertions- the least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms +when turning, or stamp her foot- which everyone appreciated in view of +her size and habitual severity. The dance grew livelier and +livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment's attention +to their own evolutions and did not even try to do so. All were +watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha kept pulling everyone +by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look at Papa!" though as it was +they never took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the +dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the +musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more +lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round Marya +Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his +partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft +foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a +wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led +by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping +their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs. + +"That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere," said the count. + +"That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up +her sleeves and puffing heavily. + +CHAPTER XXI + +While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being +danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while +tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had +a sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a +mute confession, communion was administered to the dying man, +preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there +was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside +the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid +whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important +order for an expensive funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who +had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the +count's health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to +the celebrated grandee of Catherine's court, Count Bezukhov. + +The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up +respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an +hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging +their bows and trying to escape as quickly as from the glances fixed +on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince +Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days, +escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times +in low tones. + +When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all +alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the +other, leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his +hand. After sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him +with frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the +long corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of the +eldest princess. + +Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous +whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying +man's room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or +expectancy at his door, which creaked slightly when opened. + +"The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be o'erpassed," +said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was +listening naively to his words. + +"I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?" asked the +lady, adding the priest's clerical title, as if she had no opinion +of her own on the subject. + +"Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament, "replied the priest, passing +his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his +bald head. + +"Who was that? The Military Governor himself?" was being asked at +the other side of the room. "How young-looking he is!" + +"Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes +anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction." + +"I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times." + +The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes +red from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a +graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a +table. + +"Beautiful," said the doctor in answer to a remark about the +weather. "The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow +one feels as if one were in the country." + +"Yes, indeed," replied the princess with a sigh. "So he may have +something to drink?" + +Lorrain considered. + +"Has he taken his medicine?" + +"Yes." + +The doctor glanced at his watch. + +"Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar," +and he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch. + +"Dere has neffer been a gase," a German doctor was saying to an +aide-de-camp, "dat one liffs after de sird stroke." + +"And what a well-preserved man he was!" remarked the aide-de-camp. +"And who will inherit his wealth?" he added in a whisper. + +"It von't go begging," replied the German with a smile. + +Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second +princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to +Lorrain's instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain. + +"Do you think he can last till morning?" asked the German, +addressing Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly. + +Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger +before his nose. + +"Tonight, not later," said he in a low voice, and he moved away with +a decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to +understand and state the patient's condition. + +Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the princess' room. + +In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning +before the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt +pastilles. The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture, +whatnots, cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white +feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to +bark. + +"Ah, is it you, cousin?" + +She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely +smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and +covered with varnish. + +"Has anything happened?" she asked. "I am so terrified." + +"No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about +business, Catiche,"~{ Catherine. }~ muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on +the chair she had just vacated. "You have made the place warm, I +must say," he remarked. "Well, sit down: let's have a talk." + +"I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her +unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the +prince, she prepared to listen. + +"I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't." + +"Well, my dear?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending +it downwards as was his habit. + +It was plain that this "well?" referred to much that they both +understood without naming. + +The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for +her legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion +in her prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up +at the icons with a sigh. This might have been taken as an +expression of sorrow and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting +before long. Prince Vasili understood it as an expression of +weariness. + +"And I?" he said; "do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn +out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a +very serious talk." + +Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously, +now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant +expression which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His +eyes too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly +and at the next glanced round in alarm. + +The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony +hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili's eyes evidently resolved +not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till morning. + +"Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna," +continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not +without an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of +everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love +you all, like children of my own, as you know." + +The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the +same dull expression. + +"And then of course my family has also to be considered," Prince +Vasili went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at +her. "You know, Catiche, that we- you three sisters, Mamontov, and +my wife- are the count's only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it +is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me; +but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for +anything. Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count," pointing +to his portrait, "definitely demanded that he should be called." + +Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but could not +make out whether she was considering what he had just said or +whether she was simply looking at him. + +"There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin," she +replied, "and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow +his noble soul peacefully to leave this..." + +"Yes, yes, of course," interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently, +rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little +table that he had pushed away. "But... in short, the fact is... you +know yourself that last winter the count made a will by which he +left all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre." + +"He has made wills enough!" quietly remarked the princess. "But he +cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate." + +"But, my dear," said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the little +table and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: "what if +a letter has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for +Pierre's legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of +the count's services, his request would be granted?..." + +The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about +the subject under discussion than those they are talking with. + +"I can tell you more," continued Prince Vasili, seizing her hand, +"that letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew +of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not, +then as soon as all is over," and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate +what he meant by the words all is over, "and the count's papers are +opened, the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and +the petition will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything +as the legitimate son." + +"And our share?" asked the princess smiling ironically, as if +anything might happen, only not that. + +"But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be +the legal heir to everything and you won't get anything. You must +know, my dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether +they have been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been +overlooked, you ought to know where they are, and must find them, +because..." + +"What next?" the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and +not changing the expression of her eyes. "I am a woman, and you +think we are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot +inherit... un batard!"~{ A bastard. }~ she added, as if supposing that this +translation of the word would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the +invalidity of his contention. + +"Well, really, Catiche! Can't you understand! You are so +intelligent, how is it you don't see that if the count has written a +letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate, +it follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count +Bezukhov, and will then inherit everything under the will? And if +the will and letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing +but the consolation of having been dutiful et tout ce qui s'ensuit!~{ And all that follows therefrom. }~ +That's certain." + +"I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and +you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool," said the +princess with the expression women assume when they suppose they are +saying something witty and stinging. + +"My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili +impatiently, "I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about +your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I +tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and +the will in Pierre's favor are among the count's papers, then, my dear +girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don't believe me, +then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich" +(the family solicitor) "and he says the same." + +At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess' ideas; +her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her +voice when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she +herself evidently did not expect. + +"That would be a fine thing!" said she. "I never wanted anything and +I don't now." + +She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress. + +"And this is gratitude- this is recognition for those who have +sacrificed everything for his sake!" she cried. "It's splendid! +Fine! I don't want anything, Prince." + +"Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters..." +replied Prince Vasili. + +But the princess did not listen to him. + +"Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could +expect nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and +ingratitude- the blackest ingratitude- in this house..." + +"Do you or do you not know where that will is?" insisted Prince +Vasili, his cheeks twitching more than ever. + +"Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and +sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has +been intriguing!" + +The princees wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand. +She had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole +human race. She gave her companion an angry glance. + +"There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it +was all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was +afterwards forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to +ease his last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and +not to let him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..." + +"Who sacrificed everything for him," chimed in the princess, who +would again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, "though +he never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin," she added with a +sigh, "I shall always remember that in this world one must expect no +reward, that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this +world one has to be cunning and cruel." + +"Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart." + +"No, I have a wicked heart." + +"I know your heart," repeated the prince. "I value your friendship +and wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don't upset yourself, +and let us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or +be it but an hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above +all where it is. You must know. We will take it at once and show it to +the count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it. +You understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his +wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help +him and you." + +"Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing- I know!" cried +the princess. + +"That's not the point, my dear." + +"It's that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that +Anna Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the +infamous, vile woman!" + +"Do not let us lose any time..." + +"Ah, don't talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here +and told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us, +especially about Sophie- I can't repeat them- that it made the count +quite ill and he would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was +then he wrote this vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was +invalid." + +"We've got to it at last- why did you not tell me about it sooner?" + +"It's in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow," +said the princess, ignoring his question. "Now I know! Yes; if I +have a sin, a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!" almost +shrieked the princess, now quite changed. "And what does she come +worming herself in here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind. +The time will come!" + +CHAPTER XXII + +While these conversations were going on in the reception room and +the princess' room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent +for) and Anna Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him) +was driving into the court of Count Bezukhov's house. As the wheels +rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna, +having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that he +was asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre +followed Anna Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then began +to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him. +He noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the +back door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two +men, who looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and +hid in the shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed +several other men of the same kind hiding in the shadow of the house +on both sides. But neither Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the +coachman, who could not help seeing these people, took any notice of +them. "It seems to be all right," Pierre concluded, and followed +Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone +staircase, calling to Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow. +Though he did not see why it was necessary for him to go to the +count at all, still less why he had to go by the back stairs, yet +judging by Anna Mikhaylovna's air of assurance and haste, Pierre +concluded that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway up the +stairs they were almost knocked over by some men who, carrying +pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering. These men +pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass +and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there. + +"Is this the way to the princesses' apartments?" asked Anna +Mikhaylovna of one of them. + +"Yes," replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were +now permissible; "the door to the left, ma'am." + +"Perhaps the count did not ask for me," said Pierre when he +reached the landing. "I'd better go to my own room." + +Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come up. + +"Ah, my friend!" she said, touching his arm as she had done her +son's when speaking to him that afternoon, "believe me I suffer no +less than you do, but be a man!" + +"But really, hadn't I better go away?" he asked, looking kindly at +her over his spectacles. + +"Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done +you. Think that he is your father... perhaps in the agony of death." +She sighed. "I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust +yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests." + +Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this +had to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna who +was already opening a door. + +This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the +princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been +in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of +these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past +with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the +princess' health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The +first door on the left led into the princesses' apartments. The maid +with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything +in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna +Mikhaylovna in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where +Prince Vasili and the eldest princess were sitting close together +talking. Seeing them pass, Prince Vasili drew back with obvious +impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of +desperation slammed the door with all her might. + +This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear +depicted on Prince Vasili's face so out of keeping with his dignity +that Pierre stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his +guide. Anna Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly +and sighed, as if to say that this was no more than she had expected. + +"Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests," said she in +reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage. + +Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what +"watching over his interests" meant, but he decided that all these +things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly lit +room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those +sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front +approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and +water had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a +censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them. +They went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian +windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full +length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still +sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one +another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn +Anna Mikhaylovna as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre +who, hanging his head, meekly followed her. + +Anna Mikhaylovna's face expressed a consciousness that the +decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg +lady she now, keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even +more boldly than that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her +the person the dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured. +Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room and noticing the +count's confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble, +not exactly bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and +respectfully received the blessing first of one and then of another +priest. + +"God be thanked that you are in time," said she to one of the +priests; "all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man +is the count's son," she added more softly. "What a terrible moment!" + +Having said this she went up to the doctor. + +"Dear doctor," said she, "this young man is the count's son. Is +there any hope?" + +The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his +shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the same movement raised her +shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved +away from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful +and tenderly sad voice, she said: + +"Trust in His mercy!" and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit +and wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone +was watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind +it. + +Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly, +moved toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikhaylovna +had disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned +to him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed +that they whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him +with a kind of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had +never before received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had +been talking to the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an +aide-de-camp picked up and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the +doctors became respectfully silent as he passed by, and moved to +make way for him. At first Pierre wished to take another seat so as +not to trouble the lady, and also to pick up the glove himself and +to pass round the doctors who were not even in his way; but all at +once he felt that this would not do, and that tonight he was a +person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which everyone +expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to accept their +services. He took the glove in silence from the aide-de-camp, and +sat down in the lady's chair, placing his huge hands symmetrically +on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue, and +decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in +order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on +his own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the +will of those who were guiding him. + +Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with head erect +majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three +stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the +morning; his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and +noticed Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never +used to do), and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain +whether it was firmly fixed on. + +"Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is +well!" and he turned to go. + +But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: "How is..." and hesitated, +not knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the +count," yet ashamed to call him "father." + +"He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my +friend..." + +Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke" +suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili +in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of +illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went +through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his +whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him, +and the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the +door. Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about, +and at last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but +resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly +on the arm said: + +"The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be +administered. Come." + +Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed +that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all +followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission +to enter that room. + +CHAPTER XXIII + +Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its +walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the +columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side +and on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly +illuminated with red light like a Russian church during evening +service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in +that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed, +Pierre saw- covered to the waist by a bright green quilt- the +familiar, majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that +gray mane of hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a +lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his +handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons; his large thick +hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand, which was lying palm +downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and thumb, +and an old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it in +position. By the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling over +their magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted tapers in their +hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the service. A little behind +them stood the two younger princesses holding handkerchiefs to their +eyes, and just in front of them their eldest sister, Catiche, with a +vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though +declaring to all that she could not answer for herself should she +glance round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek, sorrowful, and +all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door near the +strange lady. Prince Vasili in front of the door, near the invalid +chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on the +carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose, and +was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward each +time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety and +resignation to the will of God. "If you do not understand these +sentiments," he seemed to be saying, "so much the worse for you!" + +Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants; +the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently +crossing themselves, and the reading of the church service, the +subdued chanting of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and +the shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna +Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that showed that she felt she +quite knew what she was about, went across the room to where Pierre +was standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by +observing those around him, began crossing himself with the hand +that held the taper. + +Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the +mole, watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and +remained with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing +Pierre she again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look +at him without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be +out of temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In +the midst of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased, +they whispered to one another, and the old servant who was holding the +count's hand got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna +stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to +Lorrain from behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he +was leaning against one of the columns in a respectful attitude +implying that he, a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith, +understood the full importance of the rite now being performed and +even approved of it. He now approached the sick man with the noiseless +step of one in full vigor of life, with his delicate white fingers +raised from the green quilt the hand that was free, and turning +sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. The sick man was given +something to drink, there was a stir around him, then the people +resumed their places and the service continued. During this interval +Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair on which he had +been leaning, and- with air which intimated that he knew what he was +about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse +for them- did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined +the eldest princess, and moved with her to the side of the room +where stood the high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the +bed both Prince Vasili and the princess passed out by a back door, but +returned to their places one after the other before the service was +concluded. Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to +the rest of what went on, having made up his mind once for all that +what he saw happening around him that evening was in some way +essential. + +The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest +was heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received +the sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as +before. Around him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and +whispers, among which Anna Mikhaylovna's was the most distinct. + +Pierre heard her say: + +"Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be +impossible..." + +The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and +servants that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face +with its gray mane- which, though he saw other faces as well, he had +not lost sight of for a single moment during the whole service. He +judged by the cautious movements of those who crowded round the +invalid chair that they had lifted the dying man and were moving him. + +"Catch hold of my arm or you'll drop him!" he heard one of the +servants say in a frightened whisper. "Catch hold from underneath. +Here!" exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the +bearers and the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the +weight they were carrying were too much for them. + +As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna, passed the young +man he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the +dying man's high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, +raised by those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his +gray, curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow +and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic +expression, was not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the +same as Pierre remembered it three months before, when the count had +sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly +with the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze +fixed itself upon nothing. + +After a few minutes' bustle beside the high bedstead, those who +had carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikhaylovna touched +Pierre's hand and said, "Come." Pierre went with her to the bed on +which the sick man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the +ceremony just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the +pillows. His hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk +quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came up the count was gazing +straight at him, but with a look the significance of which could not +be understood by mortal man. Either this look meant nothing but that +as long as one has eyes they must look somewhere, or it meant too +much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing what to do, and glanced +inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna made a hurried sign with +her eyes, glancing at the sick man's hand and moving her lips as if to +send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as not to +touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his lips to the +large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single muscle of +the count's face stirred. Once more Pierre looked questioningly at +Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he was to do next. Anna Mikhaylovna +with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre +obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing right. Anna +Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively +symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that +his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost to +look as small as possible. He looked at the count, who still gazed +at the spot where Pierre's face had been before he sat down. Anna +Mikhaylovna indicated by her attitude her consciousness of the +pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the +father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre +seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count's +face began to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth +was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre realize how near death +his father was), and from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct, +hoarse sound. Anna Mikhaylovna looked attentively at the sick man's +eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre, +then to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an inquiring +whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the sick +man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who +stood constantly at the head of the bed. + +"Wants to turn on the other side," whispered the servant, and got up +to turn the count's heavy body toward the wall. + +Pierre rose to help him. + +While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back +helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward. +Whether he noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded +that lifeless arm, or whether some other thought flitted across his +dying brain, at any rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre's +terror-stricken face, and again at the arm, and on his face a +feeble, piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his +features, that seemed to deride his own helplessness. At sight of this +smile Pierre felt an unexpected quivering in his breast and a tickling +in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. The sick man was turned on +to his side with his face to the wall. He sighed. + +"He is dozing," said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that one of the +princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. "Let us go." + +Pierre went out. + +CHAPTER XXIV + +There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasili +and the eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of +Catherine the Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre +and his companion they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the +princess hide something as she whispered: + +"I can't bear the sight of that woman." + +"Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room," said +Prince Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. "Go and take something, my poor +Anna Mikhaylovna, or you will not hold out." + +To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic +squeeze below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikhaylovna into the +small drawing room. + +"There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup +of this delicious Russian tea," Lorrain was saying with an air of +restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese +handleless cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid +in the small circular room. Around the table all who were at Count +Bezukhov's house that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre +well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors +and little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not +know how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the +ladies who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds +and pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the +brilliantly lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several +times. Now this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one +small table tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the +middle of the night a motley throng of people sat there, not +merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and betraying by every word +and movement that they none of them forgot what was happening and what +was about to happen in the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though +he would very much have liked to. He looked inquiringly at his +monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe to the +reception room where they had left Prince Vasili and the eldest +princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a +short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna was standing beside +the princess, and they were both speaking in excited whispers. + +"Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not +necessary," said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the +same state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room. + +"But, my dear princess," answered Anna Mikhaylovna blandly but +impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other +from passing, "won't this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment +when he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul +is already prepared..." + +Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar +attitude, with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which +were so flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching +violently; but he wore the air of a man little concerned in what the +two ladies were saying. + +"Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases. +You know how fond the count is of her." + +"I don't even know what is in this paper," said the younger of the +two ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to an inlaid +portfolio she held in her hand. "All I know is that his real will is +in his writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...." + +She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter sprang so as to +bar her path. + +"I know, my dear, kind princess," said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the +portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily. +"Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je +vous en conjure..." + +The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the +portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if the +princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna +Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost +none of its honeyed firmness and softness. + +"Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place +in a family consultation; is it not so, Prince?" + +"Why don't you speak, cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so +loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled. +"Why do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to +interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room? +Intriguer!" she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the +portfolio. + +But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold +on the portfolio, and changed her grip. + +Prince Vasili rose. "Oh!" said he with reproach and surprise, +"this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you." + +The princess let go. + +"And you too!" + +But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him. + +"Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will +go and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?" + +"But, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna, "after such a solemn +sacrament, allow him a moment's peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your +opinion," said she, turning to the young man who, having come quite +close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the +princess which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of +Prince Vasili. + +"Remember that you will answer for the consequences," said Prince +Vasili severely. "You don't know what you are doing." + +"Vile woman!" shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna +Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from her. + +Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands. + +At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so +long and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and +banged against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed +out wringing her hands. + +"What are you doing!" she cried vehemently. "He is dying and you +leave me alone with him!" + +Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna, stooping, +quickly caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom. +The eldest princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed +her. A few minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard +face, again biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression +showed an irrepressible hatred. + +"Yes, now you may be glad!" said she; "this is what you have been +waiting for." And bursting into tears she hid her face in her +handkerchief and rushed from the room. + +Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre +was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. +Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as +if in an ague. + +"Ah, my friend!" said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there +was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in +it before. "How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I +am near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all! +Death is awful..." and he burst into tears. + +Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow, +quiet steps. + +"Pierre!" she said. + +Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his +forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said: + +"He is no more...." + +Pierre looked at her over his spectacles. + +"Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as +tears." + +She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one +could see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned +he was fast asleep with his head on his arm. + +In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre: + +"Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you. +But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in +command of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I +know you well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but +it imposes duties on you, and you must be a man." + +Pierre was silent. + +"Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not +been there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle +promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But +he had no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your +father's wish?" + +Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in +silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna +Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the +morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details +of Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would +herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but +edifying. As to the last meeting between father and son, it was so +touching that she could not think of it without tears, and did not +know which had behaved better during those awful moments- the father +who so remembered everything and everybody at last and last and had +spoken such pathetic words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been +pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to +hide it in order not to sadden his dying father. "It is painful, but +it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count +and his worthy son," said she. Of the behavior of the eldest +princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers +and as a great secret. + +CHAPTER XXV + +At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the +arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but +this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the +old prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich +(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor +Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously +with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle +Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the +capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that +anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from +Moscow to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He +used to say that there are only two sources of human vice- idleness +and superstition, and only two virtues- activity and intelligence. +He himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these +two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry +till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time +was occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, +solving problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, +working in the garden, or superintending the building that was +always going on at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition +facilitating activity, regularity in his household was carried to +the highest point of exactitude. He always came to table under +precisely the same conditions, and not only at the same hour but at +the same minute. With those about him, from his daughter to his serfs, +the prince was sharp and invariably exacting, so that without being +a hardhearted man he inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted +men would have aroused. Although he was in retirement and had now no +influence in political affairs, every high official appointed to the +province in which the prince's estate lay considered it his duty to +visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber ante chamber just as the +architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared +punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber +experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when the +enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather +small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray +eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his +shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes. + +On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive, +Princess Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed +for the morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and +repeating a silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and +every morning prayed that the daily interview might pass off well. + +An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose +quietly and said in a whisper: "Please walk in." + +Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess +timidly opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused +at the entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after +glancing round continued his work. + +The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The +large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted +bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while +standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with +tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around- all +indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of +the small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and +the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince +still possessed the tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age. +After a few more turns of the lathe he removed his foot from the +pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to +the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. He never +gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly +cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and attentively, +said severely: + +"Quite well? All right then, sit down." He took the exercise book +containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a +chair with his foot. + +"For tomorrow!" said he, quickly finding the page and making a +scratch from one paragraph to another with his hard nail. + +The princess bent over the exercise book on the table. + +"Wait a bit, here's a letter for you," said the old man suddenly, +taking a letter addressed in a woman's hand from a bag hanging above +the table, onto which he threw it. + +At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the +princess' face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it. + +"From Heloise?" asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his +still sound, yellowish teeth. + +"Yes, it's from Julie," replied the princess with a timid glance and +a timid smile. + +"I'll let two more letters pass, but the third I'll read," said +the prince sternly; "I'm afraid you write much nonsense. I'll read the +third!" + +"Read this if you like, Father," said the princess, blushing still +more and holding out the letter. + +"The third, I said the third!" cried the prince abruptly, pushing +the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward +him the exercise book containing geometrical figures. + +"Well, madam," he began, stooping over the book close to his +daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat, +so that she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of +old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these +triangles are equal; please note that the angle ABC..." + +The princess looked in a scared way at her father's eyes +glittering close to her; the red patches on her face came and went, +and it was plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened +that her fear would prevent her understanding any of her father's +further explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was +the teacher's fault or the pupil's, this same thing happened every +day: the princess' eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear +anything, but was only conscious of her stern father's withered face +close to her, of his breath and the smell of him, and could think only +of how to get away quickly to her own room to make out the problem +in peace. The old man was beside himself: moved the chair on which +he was sitting noisily backward and forward, made efforts to control +himself and not become vehement, but almost always did become +vehement, scolded, and sometimes flung the exercise book away. + +The princess gave a wrong answer. + +"Well now, isn't she a fool!" shouted the prince, pushing the book +aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up +and down, lightly touched his daughter's hair and sat down again. + +He drew up his chair. and continued to explain. + +"This won't do, Princess; it won't do," said he, when Princess Mary, +having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day's +lesson, was about to leave: "Mathematics are most important, madam! +I don't want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and +you'll like it," and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the +nonsense out of your head." + +She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an +uncut book from the high desk. + +"Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has +sent you. Religious! I don't interfere with anyone's belief... I +have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go." + +He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her. + +Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared +expression that rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly +face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing table, on which stood +miniature portraits and which was littered with books and papers. +The princess was as untidy as her father was tidy. She put down the +geometry book and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from +her most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie Karagina +who had been at the Rostovs' name-day party. + +Julie wrote in French: + +Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is +separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my +happiness are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance +separating us our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart +rebels against fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions +around me I cannot overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in +my heart ever since we parted. Why are we not together as we were last +summer, in your big study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa? +Why cannot I now, as three months ago, draw fresh moral strength +from your look, so gentle, calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so +well and seem to see before me as I write? + +Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the +mirror which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful +figure and thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular +hopelessness at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me," +thought the princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie +did not flatter her friend, the princess' eyes- large, deep and +luminous (it seemed as if at times there radiated from them shafts +of warm light)- were so beautiful that very often in spite of the +plainness of her face they gave her an attraction more powerful than +that of beauty. But the princess never saw the beautiful expression of +her own eyes- the look they had when she was not thinking of +herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced unnatural +expression as soon as she looked in a glass. She went on reading: + +All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is +already abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on +their march to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg +and it is thought intends to expose his precious person to the chances +of war. God grant that the Corsican monster who is destroying the +peace of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the +Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing +of my brothers, this war has deprived me of one of the associations +nearest my heart. I mean young Nicholas Rostov, who with his +enthusiasm could not bear to remain inactive and has left the +university to join the army. I will confess to you, dear Mary, that in +spite of his extreme youth his departure for the army was a great +grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you last summer, is so +noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which one seldom finds +nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly, he is so frank +and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that my relations with +him, transient as they were, have been one of the sweetest comforts to +my poor heart, which has already suffered so much. Someday I will tell +you about our parting and all that was said then. That is still too +fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know these poignant +joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are generally +the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too young ever +to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic +and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of this! +The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of old +Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses +have received very little, Prince Vasili nothing, and it is Monsieur +Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been +recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezukhov and +possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince +Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair and that he +returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen. + +I confess I understand very little about all these matters of +wills and inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom +we all used to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count +Bezukhov and the owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I +am much amused to watch the change in the tone and manners of the +mammas burdened by marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies +themselves, toward him, though, between you and me, he always seemed +to me a poor sort of fellow. As for the past two years people have +amused themselves by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don't +even know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as +the future Countess Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have +no desire for the post. A propos of marriages: do you know that a +while ago that universal auntie Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the +seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you. It is neither +more nor less than with Prince Vasili's son Anatole, whom they wish to +reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguee, and it is on +you that his relations' choice has fallen. I don't know what you +will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of it. +He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is +all I have been able to find out about him. + +But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper, +and Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apraksins'. Read the +mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here. +Though there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to +grasp, it is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul. +Adieu! Give my respects to monsieur your father and my compliments +to Mademoiselle Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you. + +JULIE + +P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife. + +The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her +luminous eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then +she suddenly rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She +took a sheet of paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is +the reply she wrote, also in French: + +Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great +delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which +you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual +effect on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say, +if I dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me? +Ah, if we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why +do you suppose that I should look severely on your affection for +that young man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I +understand such feelings in others, and if never having felt them I +cannot approve of them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me +that Christian love, love of one's neighbor, love of one's enemy, is +worthier, sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful +eyes of a young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl +like yourself. + +The news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and +my father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last +representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own +turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as +late as possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune! + +I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He +always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the +quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part +played by Prince Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear +friend, our divine Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to +go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the +Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still +more sorry for Pierre. So young, and burdened with such riches- to +what temptations he will be exposed! If I were asked what I desire +most on earth, it would be to be poorer than the poorest beggar. A +thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume you have sent me and +which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you tell me that among +some good things it contains others which our weak human understanding +cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading +what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I never +could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their +minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts +and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration +quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the +Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they +contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the +terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this +flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let +us rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which +our divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to +conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less +we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God, +who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we +seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner +will He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit. + +My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me +that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince +Vasili. In regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you, +dear sweet friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution +to which we must conform. However painful it may be to me, should +the Almighty lay the duties of wife and wife and mother upon me I +shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without +disquieting myself by examining my feelings toward him whom He may +give me for husband. + +I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy +arrival at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief +one, however, for he will leave, us again to take part in this unhappy +war into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only +where you are- at the heart of affairs and of the world- is the talk +all of war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature- which +townsfolk consider characteristic of the country- rumors of war are +heard and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and +countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day +before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I +witnessed a heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts +enrolled from our people and starting to join the army. You should +have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who +were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though +mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached +love and forgiveness of injuries- and that men attribute the +greatest merit to skill in killing one another. + +Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most +Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care! + +MARY + +"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already +dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling +Mademoiselle Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and +with guttural r's. She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous, +mournful, and gloomy world a quite different atmosphere, careless, +lighthearted, and self-satisfied. + +"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and +evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with +exaggerated grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael +Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared." + +"Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to +warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge +him and would not have others do so." + +The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five +minutes late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the +sitting room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock, +as the day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played +the clavichord. + +CHAPTER XXVI + +The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the +snoring of the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side +of the house through the closed doors came the sound of difficult +passages- twenty times repeated- of a sonata by Dussek. + +Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to +the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little +wife to alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old +Tikhon, wearing a wig, put his head out of the door of the +antechamber, reported in a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and +hastily closed the door. Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival +nor any other unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed +order of the day. Prince Andrew apparently knew this as well as +Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to ascertain whether his father's +habits had changed since he was at home last, and, having assured +himself that they had not, he turned to his wife. + +"He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary's room," +he said. + +The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes +and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak +just as merrily and prettily as ever. + +"Why, this is a palace!" she said to her husband, looking around +with the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball. +"Let's come, quick, quick!" And with a glance round, she smiled at +Tikhon, at her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them. + +"Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take her by +surprise." + +Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression. + +"You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old man, who +kissed his hand. + +Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord +came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne, +rushed out apparently beside herself with delight. + +"Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must let +her know." + +"No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne," said the +little princess, kissing her. "I know you already through my +sister-in-law's friendship for you. She was not expecting us?" + +They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the +sound of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped +and made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant. + +The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the +middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary's heavy tread and the +sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who +had only met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each +other's arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they +happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her +hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready +to cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and +frowned, as lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The two +women let go of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, +seized each other's hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and +again began kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince +Andrew's surprise both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle +Bourienne also began to cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt ill at ease, +but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and +apparently it never entered their heads that it could have been +otherwise at this meeting. + +"Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!" they suddenly exclaimed, and then +laughed. "I dreamed last night..."- "You were not expecting us?..."- +"Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?..." "And you have grown stouter!..." + +"I knew the princess at once," put in Mademoiselle Bourienne. + +"And I had no idea!..." exclaimed Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I +did not see you." + +Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another, +and he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess +Mary had turned toward her brother, and through her tears the +loving, warm, gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful +at that moment, rested on Prince Andrew's face. + +The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip +continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary +and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of +glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they +had had on the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in +her condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had +left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would +have to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that +Kitty Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor +for Mary, a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess +Mary was still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful +eyes were full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was +following a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law's words. +In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fete she +addressed her brother: + +"So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said sighing. + +Lise sighed too. + +"Yes, and even tomorrow," replied her brother. + +"He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had +promotion..." + +Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of +thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her +figure. + +"Is it certain?" she said. + +The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said: +"Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..." + +Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law's +and unexpectedly again began to cry. + +"She needs rest," said Prince Andrew with a frown. "Don't you, Lise? +Take her to your room and I'll go to Father. How is he? Just the +same?" + +"Yes, just the same. Though I don't know what your opinion will be," +answered the princess joyfully. + +"And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the +lathe?" asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which +showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he +was aware of his weaknesses. + +"The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and +my geometry lessons," said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her +lessons in geometry were among the greatest delights of her life. + +When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the +old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his +father. The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor +of his son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments +while he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in +old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and +when Prince Andrew entered his father's dressing room (not with the +contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the +animated face with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting +on a large leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, +entrusting his head to Tikhon. + +"Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the old +man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was +holding fast to plait, would allow. + +"You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like +this he'll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?" And he +held out his cheek. + +The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He +used to say that a nap "after dinner was silver- before dinner, +golden.") He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his +thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father +on the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father's +favorite topic- making fun of the military men of the day, and more +particularly of Bonaparte. + +"Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my wife who is +pregnant," said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his +father's face with an eager and respectful look. "How is your health?" + +"Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy +from morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well." + +"Thank God," said his son smiling. + +"God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on," he continued, +returning to his hobby; "tell me how the Germans have taught you to +fight Bonaparte by this new science you call 'strategy.'" + +Prince Andrew smiled. + +"Give me time to collect my wits, Father," said he, with a smile +that showed that his father's foibles did not prevent his son from +loving and honoring him. "Why, I have not yet had time to settle +down!" + +"Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to +see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand. +"The house for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there +and show her over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's +their woman's way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About +Mikhelson's army I understand- Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous +expedition.... But what's the southern army to do? Prussia is +neutral... I know that. What about Austria?" said he, rising from +his chair and pacing up and down the room followed by Tikhon, who +ran after him, handing him different articles of clothing. "What of +Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?" + +Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began- at first +reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from +habit changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on- +to explain the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained +how an army, ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as +to bring her out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part +of that army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two +hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand +Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty + +thousand Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, and +how a total force of five hundred thousand men was to attack the +French from different sides. The old prince did not evince the least +interest during this explanation, but as if he were not listening to +it continued to dress while walking about, and three times +unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: "The white +one, the white one!" + +This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he +wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying: + +"And will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head +reproachfully said: "That's bad! Go on, go on." + +The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his +description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old +age: "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra."~{ "Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he'll return." }~ + +His son only smiled. + +"I don't say it's a plan I approve of," said the son; "I am only +telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now, +not worse than this one." + +"Well, you've told me nothing new," and the old man repeated, +meditatively and rapidly: + +"Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room." + +CHAPTER XXVII + +At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the +dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle +Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who +by a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted to table though +the position of that insignificant individual was such as could +certainly not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who +generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely +admitted even important government officials to his table, had +unexpectedly selected Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner +to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory +that all men are equals, and had more than once impressed on his +daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not a whit worse than you or +I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael +Ivanovich more often than to anyone else. + +In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was +exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen- one +behind each chair- stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head +butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making +signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the +door by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at +a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of +the Princes Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a +badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist +belonging to the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown- an alleged +descendant of Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew, +looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a +man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original +as to be amusing. + +"How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had +come up to him. + +Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not +understand what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired +her with reverence and was beyond question. + +"Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew. +"Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!" + +Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother's +criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were +heard coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily +as was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of +his manners with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the +great clock struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from +the drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes +from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and +rested on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar +enters, the sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired +in all around him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly +on the back of her neck. + +"I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking attentively into +her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. "Sit +down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!" + +He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman +moved the chair for her. + +"Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded +figure. "You've been in a hurry. That's bad!" + +He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips +only and not with his eyes. + +"You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he +said. + +The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She +was silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father, +and she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual +acquaintances, and she became still more animated and chattered away +giving him greetings from various people and retailing the town +gossip. + +"Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has +cried her eyes out," she said, growing more and more lively. + +As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more +sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had +formed a definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael +Ivanovich. + +"Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time of +it. Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son) "has been telling +me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I +never thought much of him." + +Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when "you and I" had said such +things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a +peg on which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he looked +inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would follow. + +"He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing to +the architect. + +And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and +the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced +not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know +the A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an +insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no +longer any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also +convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no +real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day +were playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily +bore with his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and +listened to him with evident pleasure. + +"The past always seems good," said he, "but did not Suvorov +himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not +know how to escape?" + +"Who told you that? Who?" cried the prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked +away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. "Suvorov!... Consider, +Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would +have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the +Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled +the devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those +Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what +chance has Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and +your generals won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call +in the French, so that birds of a feather may fight together. The +German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the +Frenchman, Moreau," he said, alluding to the invitation made that year +to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... "Wonderful!... Were the +Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? No, lad, either you fellows +have all lost your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help you, +but we'll see what will happen. Buonaparte has become a great +commander among them! Hm!..." + +"I don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince +Andrew, "I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may +laugh as much as you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great +generall" + +"Michael Ivanovich!" cried the old prince to the architect who, busy +with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you +Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says same thing." + +"To be sure, your excellency." replied the architect. + +The prince again laughed his frigid laugh. + +"Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got +splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only +idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began +everybody has beaten the Germans. They beat no one- except one +another. He made his reputation fighting them." + +And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to +him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His son +made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were +presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion. +He listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how +this old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could +know and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European +military and political events. + +"You think I'm an old man and don't understand the present state +of affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I don't +sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours +shown his skill?" he concluded. + +"That would take too long to tell," answered the son. + +"Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here's +another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he +exclaimed in excellent French. + +"You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!" + +"Dieu sait quand reviendra"... hummed the prince out of tune and, +with a laugh still more so, he quitted the table. + +The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of +the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her +father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she +took her sister-in-law's arm and drew her into another room. + +"What a clever man your father is," said she; "perhaps that is why I +am afraid of him." + +"Oh, he is so kind!" answered Princess Mary. + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not +altering his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little +princess was in her sister-in-law's room. Prince Andrew in a traveling +coat without epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms +assigned to him. After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing +the trunks put in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those +things he always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a +large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a +saber- a present from his father who had brought it from the siege +of Ochakov. All these traveling effects of Prince Andrew's were in +very good order: new, clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with +tapes. + +When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men +capable of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At +such moments one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince +Andrew's face looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind +him he paced briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking +straight before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear +going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?- perhaps both, +but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing +footsteps in the passage he hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped +at a table as if tying the cover of the small box, and assumed his +usual tranquil and impenetrable expression. It was the heavy tread +of Princess Mary that he heard. + +"I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she +had apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another +talk with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You +are not angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha," +she added, as if to explain such a question. + +She smiled as she uttered his pet name, "Andrusha." It was obviously +strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be +Andrusha- the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in +childhood. + +"And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her question only by a +smile. + +"She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room. +Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said she, sitting +down on the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child: such a +dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her." + +Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical +and contemptuous look that showed itself on his face. + +"One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from +them, Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been educated +in society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter +into everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.~{ To understand all is to forgive all. }~ +Think it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to, +to be parted from her husband and be left alone the country, in her +condition! It's very hard." + +Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at +those we think we thoroughly understand. + +"You live in the country and don't think the life terrible," he +replied. + +"I... that's different. Why speak of me? I don't want any other +life, and can't, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young +society woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her +life, all alone- for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what +poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best +society. There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne...." + +"I don't like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all," said Prince +Andrew. + +"No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she's much to be +pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don't need her, +and she's even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am +even more so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She +and Michael Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle +and kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne +says: 'We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as +for the good we have done them.' Father took her when she was homeless +after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father +likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads +splendidly." + +"To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father's character sometimes +makes things trying for you, doesn't it?" Prince Andrew asked +suddenly. + +Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question. + +"For me? For me?... Trying for me!..." said she. + +"He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he's getting +very trying," said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their +father in order to puzzle or test his sister. + +"You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of +intellectual pride," said the princess, following the train of her own +thoughts rather than the trend of the conversation- "and that's a +great sin. How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what +feeling except veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I +am so contented and happy with him. I only wish you were all as +happy as I am." + +Her brother shook his head incredulously. + +"The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth, +Andrew... is Father's way of treating religious subjects. I don't +understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what +is as clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing +that makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of +improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was +a monk he received and had a long talk with." + +"Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your +powder," said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly. + +"Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me. +Andrew..." she said timidly after a moment's silence, "I have a +great favor to ask of you." + +"What is it, dear?" + +"No- promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble +and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise, +Andrusha!..." said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet +taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were +the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request +was granted. + +She looked timidly at her brother. + +"Even if it were a great deal of trouble..." answered Prince Andrew, +as if guessing what it was about. + +"Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as +you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father's father, our +grandfather, wore it in all his wars." (She still did not take out +what she was holding in her reticule.) "So you promise?" + +"Of course. What is it?" + +"Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will +never take it off. Do you promise?" + +"If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won't break my neck... +To please you..." said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing the +pained expression his joke had brought to his sister's face, he +repented and added: "I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad." + +"Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring +you to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace," said she in a +voice trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before +her brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour +in a gold setting, on a finely wrought silver chain. + +She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew. + +"Please, Andrew, for my sake!..." + +Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes +lit up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her +brother would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew +understood, crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of +tenderness, for he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face. + +"Thank you, my dear." She kissed him on the forehead and sat down +again on the sofa. They were silent for a while. + +"As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you +always used to be. Don't judge Lise harshly," she began. "She is so +sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one." + +"I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Masha, or +blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?" + +Red patches appeared on Princess Mary's face and she was silent as +if she felt guilty. + +"I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to. +And I am sorry for that," he went on. + +The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried +to say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the +little princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her +forebodings about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had +complained of her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After +crying she had fallen asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister. + +"Know this, Masha: I can't reproach, have not reproached, and +never shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach +myself with anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in +whatever circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the +truth... if you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! +But why this is so I don't know..." + +As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed +her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and +unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over +her head toward the darkness of the open doorway. + +"Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or- go and wake and I'll come +in a moment. Petrushka!" he called to his valet: "Come here, take +these away. Put this on the seat and this to the right." + +Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said: +"Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him +to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have +been answered." + +"Well, may be!" said Prince Andrew. "Go, Masha; I'll come +immediately." + +On the way to his sister's room, in the passage which connected +one wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne +smiling sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic +and artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages. + +"Oh! I thought you were in your room," she said, for some reason +blushing and dropping her eyes. + +Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger +suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at +her forehead and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt +that the Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he +reached his sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry +voice, hurrying one word after another, came through the open door. +She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long +self-restraint she wished to make up for lost time. + +"No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false curls and her +mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old +age.... Ha, ha, ha! Mary!" + +This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same laugh +Prince Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of +others some five times. He entered the room softly. The little +princess, plump and rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work +in her hands, talking incessantly, repeating Petersburg +reminiscences and even phrases. Prince Andrew came up, stroked her +hair, and asked if she felt rested after their journey. She answered +him and continued her chatter. + +The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn +night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole. +Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense +house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The +domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to +the young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in +the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne, +Princess Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been +called to his father's study as the latter wished to say good-by to +him alone. All were waiting for them to come out. + +When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age +spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but +his son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round. + +"Going?" And he went on writing. + +"I've come to say good-by." + +"Kiss me here," and he touched his cheek: "Thanks, thanks!" + +"What do you thank me for?" + +"For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman's apron +strings. The Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!" And he went +on writing, so that his quill spluttered and squeaked. "If you have +anything to say, say it. These two things can be done together," he +added. + +"About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your +hands..." + +"Why talk nonsense? Say what you want." + +"When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur.... +Let him be here...." + +The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed +his stern eyes on his son. + +"I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work," said +Prince Andrew, evidently confused. "I know that out of a million cases +only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been +telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened." + +"Hm... Hm..." muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what +he was writing. "I'll do it." + +He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to +laugh. + +"It's a bad business, eh?" + +"What is bad, Father?" + +"The wife!" said the old prince, briefly and significantly. + +"I don't understand!" said Prince Andrew. + +"No, it can't be helped, lad," said the prince. "They're all like +that; one can't unmarry. Don't be afraid; I won't tell anyone, but you +know it yourself." + +He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it, +looked straight into his son's face with keen eyes which seemed to see +through him, and again laughed his frigid laugh. + +The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him. +The old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and +throwing down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed +rapidity. + +"What's to be done? She's pretty! I will do everything. Make your +mind easy," said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter. + +Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his +father understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his +son. + +"Listen!" said he; "don't worry about your wife: what can be done +shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich.~{ Kutuzov. }~ I +have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not +keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember +and like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all +right- serve him. Nicholas Bolkonski's son need not serve under anyone +if he is in disfavor. Now come here." + +He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his +son was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised +the lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled +with his bold, tall, close handwriting. + +"I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs; +hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond +and a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of +Suvorov's wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you +to read when I am gone. You will find them useful." + +Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long +time yet. He felt that he must not say it. + +"I will do it all, Father," he said. + +"Well, now, good-by!" He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced +him. "Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt +me, your old father..." he paused unexpectedly, and then in a +querulous voice suddenly shrieked: "but if I hear that you have not +behaved like a son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!" + +"You need not have said that to me, Father," said the son with a +smile. + +The old man was silent. + +"I also wanted to ask you," continued Prince Andrew, "if I'm +killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you- +as I said yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please." + +"Not let the wife have him?" said the old man, and laughed. + +They stood silent, facing one another. The old man's sharp eyes were +fixed straight on his son's. Something twitched in the lower part of +the old prince's face. + +"We've said good-by. Go!" he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry +voice, opening his door. + +"What is it? What?" asked both princesses when they saw for a moment +at the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white +dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice. + +Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply. + +"Well!" he said, turning to his wife. + +And this "Well!" sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying,: +"Now go through your performance." + +"Andrew, already!" said the little princess, turning pale and +looking with dismay at her husband. + +He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder. + +He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her +face, and carefully placed her in an easy chair. + +"Adieu, Mary," said he gently to his sister, taking her by the +hand and kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps. + +The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne +chafing her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law, +still looked with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through +which Prince Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his +direction. From the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent +sound of the old man angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince +Andrew gone when the study door opened quickly and the stern figure of +the old man in the white dressing gown looked out. + +"Gone? That's all right!" said he; and looking angrily at the +unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed +the door. + +BOOK TWO: 1805 + +CHAPTER I + +In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and +towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly +arriving from Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and +burdening the inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the +headquarters of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov. + +On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just +reached Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be +inspected by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance +of the locality and surroundings- fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled +roofs, and hills in the distance- and despite the fact that the +inhabitants (who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not +Russians, the regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment +preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia. + +On the evening of the last day's march an order had been received +that the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march. +Though the words of the order were not clear to the regimental +commander, and the question arose whether the troops were to be in +marching order or not, it was decided at a consultation between the +battalion commanders to present the regiment in parade order, on the +principle that it is always better to "bow too low than not bow low +enough." So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending +and cleaning all night long without closing their eyes, while the +adjutants and company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by +morning the regiment- instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it +had been on its last march the day before- presented a well-ordered +array of two thousand men each of whom knew his place and his duty, +had every button and every strap in place, and shone with cleanliness. +And not only externally was all in order, but had it pleased the +commander in chief to look under the uniforms he would have found on +every man a clean shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of +articles, "awl, soap, and all," as the soldiers say. There was only +one circumstance concerning which no one could be at ease. It was +the state of the soldiers' boots. More than half the men's boots +were in holes. But this defect was not due to any fault of the +regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands boots had not +been issued by the Austrian commissariat, and the regiment had marched +some seven hundred miles. + +The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and +thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider +from chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new +uniform showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold +epaulettes which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive +shoulders. He had the air of a man happily performing one of the +most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in front of the line +and at every step pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was +plain that the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and +that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to +indicate that, besides military matters, social interests and the fair +sex occupied no small part of his thoughts. + +"Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?" he said, addressing one of the +battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain +that they both felt happy). "We had our hands full last night. +However, I think the regiment is not a bad one, eh?" + +The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed. + +"It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin Meadow." + +"What?" asked the commander. + +At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had +been posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an +aide-decamp followed by a Cossack. + +The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been +clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief +wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on +the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation +whatever. + +A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the +day before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army +of the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering +this junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of +his view, to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the +troops arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the +regiment; so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the +commander in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know +these circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that +the men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and +that the commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On +hearing this the regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged +his shoulders, and spread out his arms with a choleric gesture. + +"A fine mess we've made of it!" he remarked. + +"There now! Didn't I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if it was +said 'on the march' it meant in greatcoats?" said he reproachfully +to the battalion commander. "Oh, my God!" he added, stepping +resolutely forward. "Company commanders!" he shouted in a voice +accustomed to command. "Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?" +he asked the aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently +relating to the personage he was referring to. + +"In an hour's time, I should say." + +"Shall we have time to change clothes?" + +"I don't know, General...." + +The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered +the soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders +ran off to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the +greatcoats were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares +that had up to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and +stretch and hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and +fro, throwing up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and +pulling the straps over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and +drawing the sleeves on with upraised arms. + +In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had +become gray instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his +jerky steps to the front of the regiment and examined it from a +distance. + +"Whatever is this? This!" he shouted and stood still. "Commander +of the third company!" + +"Commander of the third company wanted by the general!... +commander to the general... third company to the commander." The words +passed along the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing +officer. + +When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination +in a cry of: "The general to the third company," the missing officer +appeared from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged +man and not in the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on +his toes toward the general. The captain's face showed the +uneasiness of a schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not +learned. Spots appeared on his nose, the redness of which was +evidently due to intemperance, and his mouth twitched nervously. The +general looked the captain up and down as he came up panting, +slackening his pace as he approached. + +"You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?" +shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and +pointing at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat +of bluish cloth, which contrasted with the others. "What have you been +after? The commander in chief is expected and you leave your place? +Eh? I'll teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade.... +Eh...?" + +The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior, +pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this +pressure lay his only hope of salvation. + +"Well, why don't you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as +a Hungarian?" said the commander with an austere gibe. + +"Your excellency..." + +"Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your +excellency?... nobody knows." + +"Your excellency, it's the officer Dolokhov, who has been reduced to +the ranks," said the captain softly. + +"Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier? +If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the +others." + +"Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march." + +"Gave him leave? Leave? That's just like you young men," said the +regimental commander cooling down a little. "Leave indeed.... One says +a word to you and you... What?" he added with renewed irritation, "I +beg you to dress your men decently." + +And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his +jerky steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display +of anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further +excuse for wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished +badge, at another because his line was not straight, he reached the +third company. + +"H-o-o-w are you standing? Where's your leg? Your leg?" shouted +the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there +were still five men between him and Dolokhov with his bluish-gray +uniform. + +Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with +his clear, insolent eyes in the general's face. + +"Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his +coat... the ras..." he did not finish. + +"General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure..." +Dolokhov hurriedly interrupted. + +"No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!" + +"Not bound to endure insults," Dolokhov concluded in loud, ringing +tones. + +The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became +silent, angrily pulling down his tight scarf. + +"I request you to have the goodness to change your coat," he said as +he turned away. + +CHAPTER II + +"He's coming!" shouted the signaler at that moment. + +The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the +stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle, +righted himself, drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute +countenance, opening his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment +fluttered like a bird preening its plumage and became motionless. + +"Att-ention!" shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking +voice which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment, +and welcome for the approaching chief. + +Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a +high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly creaking on its springs +and drawn by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the caleche galloped +the suite and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian +general, in a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian +black ones. The caleche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov +and the Austrian general were talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled +slightly as treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as +if those two thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the +regimental commander did not exist. + +The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as +with a jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence +the feeble voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment +roared, "Health to your ex... len... len... lency!" and again all +became silent. At first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment +moved; then he and the general in white, accompanied by the suite, +walked between the ranks. + +From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief +and devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and +from the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals, +bending forward and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and +from the way he darted forward at every word or gesture of the +commander in chief, it was evident that he performed his duty as a +subordinate with even greater zeal than his duty as a commander. +Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its commander the +regiment, in comparison with others that had reached Braunau at the +same time, was in splendid condition. There were only 217 sick and +stragglers. Everything was in good order except the boots. + +Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few +friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war, +sometimes also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several +times shook his head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian +general with an expression which seemed to say that he was not blaming +anyone, but could not help noticing what a bad state of things it was. +The regimental commander ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to +miss a single word of the commander in chief's regarding the regiment. +Behind Kutuzov, at a distance that allowed every softly spoken word to +be heard, followed some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen +talked among themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the +commander in chief walked a handsome adjutant. This was Prince +Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer, +extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes. +Nesvitski could hardly keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar +officer who walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and +without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes, +watched the regimental commander's back and mimicked his every +movement. Each time the commander started and bent forward, the hussar +started and bent forward in exactly the same manner. Nesvitski laughed +and nudged the others to make them look at the wag. + +Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which +were starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the +third company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected +this, involuntarily came closer to him. + +"Ah, Timokhin!" said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had +been reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat. + +One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself +more than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the +regimental commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed +him he drew himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not +have sustained it had the commander in chief continued to look at him, +and so Kutuzov, who evidently understood his case and wished him +nothing but good, quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile +flitting over his scarred and puffy face. + +"Another Ismail comrade," said he. "A brave officer! Are you +satisfied with him?" he asked the regimental commander. + +And the latter- unconscious that he was being reflected in the +hussar officer as in a looking glass- started, moved forward, and +answered: "Highly satisfied, your excellency!" + +"We all have our weaknesses," said Kutuzov smiling and walking +away from him. "He used to have a predilection for Bacchus." + +The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this +and did not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of +the red-nosed captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his +expression and pose with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help +laughing. Kutuzov turned round. The officer evidently had complete +control of his face, and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a +grimace and then assume a most serious, deferential, and innocent +expression. + +The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, apparently +trying to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from +among the suite and said in French: + +"You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the +ranks in this regiment." + +"Where is Dolokhov?" asked Kutuzov. + +Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat, +did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired +soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks, +went up to the commander in chief, and presented arms. + +"Have you a complaint to make?" Kutuzov asked with a slight frown. + +"This is Dolokhov," said Prince Andrew. + +"Ah!" said Kutuzov. "I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your +duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan't forget you if you +deserve well." + +The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as +boldly as they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by +their expression to tear open the veil of convention that separates +a commander in chief so widely from a private. + +"One thing I ask of your excellency," Dolokhov said in his firm, +ringing, deliberate voice. "I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault +and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!" + +Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had +turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted over his face. He turned +away with a grimace as if to say that everything Dolokhov had said +to him and everything he could say had long been known to him, that he +was weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away +and went to the carriage. + +The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their +appointed quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and +clothes and to rest after their hard marches. + +"You won't bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?" said the +regimental commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its + +quarters and riding up to Captain Timokhin who was walking in front. +(The regimental commander's face now that the inspection was happily +over beamed with irrepressible delight.) "It's in the Emperor's +service... it can't be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on +parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very +pleased!" And he held out his hand to the captain. + +"Don't mention it, General, as if I'd be so bold!" replied the +captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where +two front teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end +of a gun at Ismail. + +"And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won't forget him- he may be quite +easy. And tell me, please- I've been meaning to ask- how is to ask- +how is he behaving himself, and in general..." + +"As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your +excellency; but his character..." said Timokhin. + +"And what about his character?" asked the regimental commander. + +"It's different on different days," answered the captain. "One day +he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he's a +wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew." + +"Oh, well, well!" remarked the regimental commander. "Still, one +must have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important +connections... Well, then, you just..." + +"I will, your excellency," said Timokhin, showing by his smile +that he understood his commander's wish. + +"Well, of course, of course!" + +The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and, +reining in his horse, said to him: + +"After the next affair... epaulettes." + +Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the +mocking smile on his lips change. + +"Well, that's all right," continued the regimental commander. "A cup +of vodka for the men from me," he added so that the soldiers could +hear. "I thank you all! God be praised!" and he rode past that company +and overtook the next one. + +"Well, he's really a good fellow, one can serve under him," said +Timokhin to the subaltern beside him. + +"In a word, a hearty one..." said the subaltern, laughing (the +regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts). + +The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected +the soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers' voices could +be heard on every side. + +"And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?" + +"And so he is! Quite blind!" + +"No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands... +he noticed everything..." + +"When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..." + +"And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were +smeared with chalk- as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as +they do the guns." + +"I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You +were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau." + +"Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn't +know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are +putting them down. When they've been put down, the war with Buonaparte +will begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you're a fool. +You'd better listen more carefully!" + +"What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is +turning into the village already... they will have their buckwheat +cooked before we reach our quarters." + +"Give me a biscuit, you devil!" + +"And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That's just it, friend! +Ah, well, never mind, here you are." + +"They might call a halt here or we'll have to do another four +miles without eating." + +"Wasn't it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still +and are drawn along." + +"And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all +seemed to be Poles- all under the Russian crown- but here they're +all regular Germans." + +"Singers to the front " came the captain's order. + +And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A +drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and +flourishing his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers' song, commencing +with the words: "Morning dawned, the sun was rising," and +concluding: "On then, brothers, on to glory, led by Father +Kamenski." This song had been composed in the Turkish campaign and now +being sung in Austria, the only change being that the words "Father +Kamenski" were replaced by "Father Kutuzov." + +Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms +as if flinging something to the ground, the drummer- a lean, +handsome soldier of forty- looked sternly at the singers and screwed +up his eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on +him, he raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but +precious object above his head and, holding it there for some seconds, +suddenly flung it down and began: + +"Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!" + +"Oh, my bower new...!" chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet +player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the +front and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his +shoulders and flourished his castanets as if threatening someone. +The soldiers, swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously, +marched with long steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the +creaking of springs, and the tramp of horses' hoofs were heard. +Kutuzov and his suite were returning to the town. The commander in +chief made a sign that the men should continue to march at ease, and +he and all his suite showed pleasure at the sound of the singing and +the sight of the dancing soldier and the gay and smartly marching men. +In the second file from the right flank, beside which the carriage +passed the company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted +notice. It was Dolokhov marching with particular grace and boldness in +time to the song and looking at those driving past as if he pitied all +who were not at that moment marching with the company. The hussar +cornet of Kutuzov's suite who had mimicked the regimental commander, +fell back from the carriage and rode up to Dolokhov. + +Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to +the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a +private and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov +had spoken to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the +cordiality of an old friend. + +"My dear fellow, how are you?" said he through the singing, making +his horse keep pace with the company. + +"How am I?" Dolokhov answered coldly. "I am as you see." + +The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy +gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of +Dolokhov's reply. + +"And how do you get on with the officers?" inquired Zherkov. + +"All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto +the staff?" + +"I was attached; I'm on duty." + +Both were silent. + +"She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve," went the +song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness. +Their conversation would probably have been different but for the +effect of that song. + +"Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?" asked Dolokhov. + +"The devil only knows! They say so." + +"I'm glad," answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the song +demanded. + +"I say, come round some evening and we'll have a game of faro!" said +Zherkov. + +"Why, have you too much money?" + +"Do come." + +"I can't. I've sworn not to. I won't drink and won't play till I get +reinstated." + +"Well, that's only till the first engagement." + +"We shall see." + +They were again silent. + +"Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the +staff..." + +Dolokhov smiled. "Don't trouble. If I want anything, I won't beg- +I'll take it!" + +"Well, never mind; I only..." + +"And I only..." + +"Good-by." + +"Good health..." + +``` block + "It's a long, long way. +To my native land..." +``` + +Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly +from foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down, +galloped past the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping +time to the song. + +CHAPTER III + +On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into +his private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers +relating to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the +letters that had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in +command of the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the +room with the required papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of +the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a plan was spread +out. + +"Ah!..." said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this +exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with +the conversation in French. + +"All I can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of +expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each +deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened +with pleasure to his own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if +the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the +Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I should long +ago have joined the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me +personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command +of the army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful +general- of whom Austria has so many- and to lay down all this heavy +responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us, +General." + +And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, "You are quite at +liberty not to believe me and I don't even care whether you do or not, +but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole +point." + +The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to +reply in the same tone. + +"On the contrary," he said, in a querulous and angry tone that +contrasted with his flattering words, "on the contrary, your +excellency's participation in the common action is highly valued by +His Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the +splendid Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have +been accustomed to win in their battles," he concluded his evidently +prearranged sentence. + +Kutuzov bowed with the same smile. + +"But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with +which His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine +that the Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a +leader as General Mack, have by now already gained a decisive +victory and no longer need our aid," said Kutuzov. + +The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an +Austrian defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the +unfavorable rumors that were afloat, and so Kutuzov's suggestion of an +Austrian victory sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on +blandly smiling with the same expression, which seemed to say that +he had a right to suppose so. And, in fact, the last letter he had +received from Mack's army informed him of a victory and stated +strategically the position of the army was very favorable. + +"Give me that letter," said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew. +"Please have a look at it"- and Kutuzov with an ironical smile about +the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian general the following +passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand's letter: + +We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men +with which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech. +Also, as we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage +of commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not +cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line +of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his +intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful +ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the +Imperial Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in +conjunction with it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the +fate he deserves. + +Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at +the member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively. + +"But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect +the worst," said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have +done with jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round +at the aide-de-camp. + +"Excuse me, General," interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince +Andrew. "Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlovski all the reports +from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is +one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these," he +said, handing him several papers, "make a neat memorandum in French +out of all this, showing all the news we have had of the movements +of the Austrian army, and then give it to his excellency." + +Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from +the first not only what had been said but also what Kutuzov would have +liked to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both, +stepped softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room. + +Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia, +he had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his +face, in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of +his former affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man +who has time to think of the impression he makes on others, but is +occupied with agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed +more satisfaction with himself and those around him, his smile and +glance were brighter and more attractive. + +Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very +kindly, promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the +other adjutants, and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more +serious commissions. From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade, +Prince Andrew's father. + +Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his +industry, firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to +have such a subordinate by me. + +On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army +generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two +quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be +different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great +things of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with +them Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority, +disliked him and considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But +among these people Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that +they respected and even feared him. + +Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers +in his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp +on duty, Kozlovski, who was sitting at the window with a book. + +"Well, Prince?" asked Kozlovski. + +"I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not +advancing." + +"And why is it?" + +Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders. + +"Any news from Mack?" + +"No." + +"If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come." + +"Probably," said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door. + +But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the +order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head, +who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door. +Prince Andrew stopped short. + +"Commander in Chief Kutuzov?" said the newly arrived general +speaking quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and +advancing straight toward the inner door. + +"The commander in chief is engaged," said Kozlovski, going hurriedly +up to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. "Whom +shall I announce?" + +The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was +rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him. + +"The commander in chief is engaged," repeated Kozlovski calmly. + +The general's face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He +took out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out +the leaf, gave it to Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and +threw himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if +asking, "Why do they look at me?" Then he lifted his head, stretched +his neck as if he intended to say something, but immediately, with +affected indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer +sound which immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened +and Kutuzov appeared in the doorway. The general with the bandaged +head bent forward as though running away from some danger, and, making +long, quick strides with his thin legs, went up to Kutuzov. + +"Vous voyez le malheureux Mack," he uttered in a broken voice. + +Kutuzov's face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly +immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a +wave and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head +respectfully, closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before +him, and closed the door himself behind him. + +The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been +beaten and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be +correct. Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various +directions with orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had +hitherto been inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy. + +Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief +interest lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack +and heard the details of his disaster he understood that half the +campaign was lost, understood all the difficulties of the Russian +army's position, and vividly imagined what awaited it and the part +he would have to play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the +thought of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week's +time he might, perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian +encounter with the French since Suvorov met them. He feared that +Bonaparte's genius might outweigh all the courage of the Russian +troops, and at the same time could not admit the idea of his hero +being disgraced. + +Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward +his room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the +corridor he met Nesvitski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag +Zherkov; they were as usual laughing. + +"Why are you so glum?" asked Nesvitski noticing Prince Andrew's pale +face and glittering eyes. + +"There's nothing to be gay about," answered Bolkonski. + +Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, there came toward +them from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian +general who on Kutuzov's staff in charge of the provisioning of the +Russian army, and the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived +the previous evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor for +the generals to pass the three officers quite easily, but Zherkov, +pushing Nesvitski aside with his arm, said in a breathless voice, + +"They're coming!... they're coming!... Stand aside, make way, please +make way!" + +The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid +embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkov there suddenly +appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress. + +"Your excellency," said he in German, stepping forward and +addressing the Austrian general, "I have the honor to congratulate +you." + +He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with +the other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson. + +The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing +the seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment's +attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening. + +"I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived, +quite well, only a little bruised just here," he added, pointing +with a beaming smile to his head. + +The general frowned, turned away, and went on. + +"Gott, wie naiv!"~{ "Good God, what simplicity!" }~ said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps. + +Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but +Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and +turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of +Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the +Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov's untimely jest. + +"If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said +sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent +your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in +my presence, I will teach you to behave yourself." + +Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst that they +gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes. + +"What's the matter? I only congratulated them," said Zherkov. + +"I am not jesting with you; please be silent!" cried Bolkonski, +and taking Nesvitski's arm he left Zherkov, who did not know what to +say. + +"Come, what's the matter, old fellow?" said Nesvitski trying to +soothe him. + +"What's the matter?" exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his +excitement. "Don't you understand that either we are officers +serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and +grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely +lackeys who care nothing for their master's business. Quarante mille +hommes massacres et l'armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la +le mot pour rire,"~{ "Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies destroyed, +and you find that a cause for jesting!" }~ he said, as if strengthening his views by this +French sentence. "C' est bien pour un garcon de rein comme cet +individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour +vous.~{ "It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow of whom +you have made a friend, but not for you, not for you." }~ Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this way," he +added in Russian- but pronouncing the word with a French accent- +having noticed that Zherkov could still hear him. + +He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he +turned and went out of the corridor. + +CHAPTER IV + +The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The +squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served as a cadet was quartered in +the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were +assigned to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known +throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. Cadet +Rostov, ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had +lived with the squadron commander. + +On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the +news of Mack's defeat, the camp life of the officers of this +squadron was proceeding as usual. Denisov, who had been losing at +cards all night, had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early +in the morning from a foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet +uniform, with a jerk to his horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg +over the saddle with a supple youthful movement, stood for a moment in +the stirrup as if loathe to part from his horse, and at last sprang +down and called to his orderly. + +"Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!" said he to the hussar who rushed up +headlong to the horse. "Walk him up and down, my dear fellow," he +continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted +young people show to everyone when they are happy. + +"Yes, your excellency," answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his +head. + +"Mind, walk him up and down well!" + +Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had +already thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse's +head. It was evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that +it paid to serve him. Rostov patted the horse's neck and then his +flank, and lingered for a moment. + +"Splendid! What a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and +holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the +porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork +in hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his +face immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon +gut Morgen!"~{ "A very good morning! A very good morning!" }~ he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased to +greet the young man. + +"Schon fleissig?"~{ "Busy already?" }~ said Rostov with the same gay brotherly smile +which did not leave his eager face. "Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen! +Kaiser Alexander hoch!"~{ "Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians! Hurrah +for Emperor Alexander!" }~ said he, quoting words often repeated by +the German landlord. + +The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and +waving it above his head cried: + +"Und die ganze Welt hoch!"~{ "And hurrah for the whole world!" }~ + +Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German and ctied +laughing, "Und vivat die ganze Welt!" Though neither the German +cleaning his cowshed nor Rostov back with his platoon from foraging +for hay had any reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with +joyful delight and brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of +their mutual affection, and parted smiling, the German returning to +his cowshed and Rostov going to the cottage he occupied with Denisov. + +"What about your master?" he asked Lavrushka, Denisov's orderly, +whom all the regiment knew for a rogue. + +"Hasn't been in since the evening. Must have been losing," +answered Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early +to brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's +lost and will come back in a rage. Will you have coffee?" + +"Yes, bring some." + +Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. "He's coming!" +said he. "Now for trouble!" Rostov looked out of the window and saw +Denisov coming home. Denisov was a small man with a red face, +sparkling black eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore +an unfastened cloak, wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a +crumpled shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch +gloomily, hanging his head. + +"Lavwuska!" he shouted loudly and angrily, "take it off, blockhead!" + +"Well, I am taking it off," replied Lavrushka's voice. + +"Ah, you're up already," said Denisov, entering the room. + +"Long ago," answered Rostov, "I have already been for the hay, and +have seen Fraulein Mathilde." + +"Weally! And I've been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a +damned fool!" cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r's. "Such ill +luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on. +Hullo there! Tea!" + +Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong +teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his +thick tangled black hair. + +"And what devil made me go to that wat?" (an officer nicknamed +"the rat") he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both +hands. "Just fancy, he didn't let me win a single cahd, not one cahd." + +He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in +his fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while +he continued to shout. + +"He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles +it; gives the singles and snatches the doubles!" + +He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it +away. Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked +cheerfully with his glittering, black eyes at Rostov. + +"If at least we had some women here; but there's nothing foh one +to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who's +there?" he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy +boots and the clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a +respectful cough. + +"The squadron quartermaster!" said Lavrushka. + +Denisov's face puckered still more. + +"Wetched!" he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in +it. "Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove +the purse undah the pillow," he said, and went out to the +quartermaster. + +Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new +coins in separate piles, began counting them. + +"Ah! Telyanin! How d'ye do? They plucked me last night," came +Denisov's voice from the next room. + +"Where? At Bykov's, at the rat's... I knew it," replied a piping +voice, and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the same +squadron, entered the room. + +Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little +hand which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been +transferred from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very +well in the regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him +and was unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to +the man. + +"Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook +was a young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.) + +The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in +the face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another. + +"I saw you riding this morning..." he added. + +"Oh, he's all right, a good horse," answered Rostov, though the +horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half +that sum. "He's begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg," he +added. + +"The hoof's cracked! That's nothing. I'll teach you what to do and +show you what kind of rivet to use." + +"Yes, please do," said Rostov. + +"I'll show you, I'll show you! It's not a secret. And it's a horse +you'll thank me for." + +"Then I'll have it brought round," said Rostov wishing to avoid +Telyanin, and he went out to give the order. + +In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on the +threshold facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing +Rostov, Denisov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder +with his thumb to the room where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned +and gave a shudder of disgust. + +"Ugh! I don't like that fellow"' he said, regardless of the +quartermaster's presence. + +Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: "Nor do I, but +what's one to do?" and, having given his order, he returned to +Telyanin. + +Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostov had +left him, rubbing his small white hands. + +"Well there certainly are disgusting people," thought Rostov as he +entered. + +"Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting +up and looking carelessly about him. + +"I have." + +"Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov about +yesterday's order. Have you got it, Denisov?" + +"Not yet. But where are you off to?" + +"I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse," said Telyanin. + +They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant +explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters. + +When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on +the table. Denisov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a +sheet of paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov's face and said: "I am +witing to her." + +He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and, +evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to +write, told Rostov the contents of his letter. + +"You see, my fwiend," he said, "we sleep when we don't love. We +are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God, +one is pua' as on the first day of cweation... Who's that now? Send +him to the devil, I'm busy!" he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to +him not in the least abashed. + +"Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It's the +quartermaster for the money." + +Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped. + +"Wetched business," he muttered to himself. "How much is left in the +puhse?" he asked, turning to Rostov. + +"Seven new and three old imperials." + +"Oh, it's wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you +sca'cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh," he shouted to Lavrushka. + +"Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know," said +Rostov, blushing. + +"Don't like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don't," growled +Denisov. + +"But if you won't accept money from me like a comrade, you will +offend me. Really I have some," Rostov repeated. + +"No, I tell you." + +And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow. + +"Where have you put it, Wostov?" + +"Under the lower pillow." + +"It's not there." + +Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there. + +"That's a miwacle." + +"Wait, haven't you dropped it?" said Rostov, picking up the +pillows one at a time and shaking them. + +He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there. + +"Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you +kept it under your head like a treasure," said Rostov. "I put it +just here. Where is it?" he asked, turning to Lavrushka. + +"I haven't been in the room. It must be where you put it." + +"But it isn't?..." + +"You're always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget +it. Feel in your pockets." + +"No, if I hadn't thought of it being a treasure," said Rostov, +"but I remember putting it there." + +Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and +under the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of +the room. Denisov silently watched Lavrushka's movements, and when the +latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found +Denisov glanced at Rostov. + +"Wostov, you've not been playing schoolboy twicks..." + +Rostov felt Denisov's gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and +instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested +somewhere below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not +draw breath. + +"And there hasn't been anyone in the room except the lieutenant +and yourselves. It must be here somewhere," said Lavrushka. + +"Now then, you devil's puppet, look alive and hunt for it!" +shouted Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man +with a threatening gesture. "If the purse isn't found I'll flog you, +I'll flog you all." + +Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his coat, buckled +on his saber, and put on his cap. + +"I must have that purse, I tell you," shouted Denisov, shaking his +orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall. + +"Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it," said Rostov, +going toward the door without raising his eyes. Denisov paused, +thought a moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted +at, seized his arm. + +"Nonsense!" he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood +out like cords. "You are mad, I tell you. I won't allow it. The +purse is here! I'll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be found." + +"I know who has taken it," repeated Rostov in an unsteady voice, and +went to the door. + +"And I tell you, don't you dahe to do it!" shouted Denisov, +rushing at the cadet to restrain him. + +But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though +Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his +face. + +"Do you understand what you're saying?" he said in a trembling +voice. "There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it +is not so, then..." + +He could not finish, and ran out of the room. + +"Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody," were the last words +Rostov heard. + +Rostov went to Telyanin's quarters. + +"The master is not in, he's gone to headquarters," said Telyanin's +orderly. "Has something happened?" he added, surprised at the +cadet's troubled face. + +"No, nothing." + +"You've only just missed him," said the orderly. + +The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and +Rostov, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was +an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to +it and saw Telyanin's horse at the porch. + +In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish +of sausages and a bottle of wine. + +"Ah, you've come here too, young man!" he said, smiling and +raising his eyebrows. + +"Yes," said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word; +and he sat down at the nearest table. + +Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in +the room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of +knives and the munching of the lieutenant. + +When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a +double purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white, +turned-up fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his +eyebrows gave it to the waiter. + +"Please be quick," he said. + +The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin. + +"Allow me to look at your purse," he said in a low, almost +inaudible, voice. + +With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin handed him +the purse. + +"Yes, it's a nice purse. Yes, yes," he said, growing suddenly +pale, and added, "Look at it, young man." + +Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in +it, and looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was looking about in his +usual way and suddenly seemed to grow very merry. + +"If we get to Vienna I'll get rid of it there but in these +wretched little towns there's nowhere to spend it," said he. "Well, +let me have it, young man, I'm going." + +Rostov did not speak. + +"And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite +decently here," continued Telyanin. "Now then, let me have it." + +He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go +of it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into +the pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his +mouth slightly open, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in +my pocket and that's quite simple and is no else's business." + +"Well, young man?" he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted +brows he glanced into Rostov's eyes. + +Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin's eyes to +Rostov's and back, and back again and again in an instant. + +"Come here," said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin's arm and almost +dragging him to the window. "That money is Denisov's; you took +it..." he whispered just above Telyanin's ear. + +"What? What? How dare you? What?" said Telyanin. + +But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an +entreaty for pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of +doubt fell from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to +pity the miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun +had to be completed. + +"Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine," muttered +Telyanin, taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room. +"We must have an explanation..." + +"I know it and shall prove it," said Rostov. + +"I..." + +Every muscle of Telyanin's pale, terrified face began to quiver, his +eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not +rising to Rostov's face, and his sobs were audible. + +"Count!... Don't ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money, +take it..." He threw it on the table. "I have an old father and +mother!..." + +Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin's eyes, and went out of the +room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced +his steps. "O God," he said with tears in his eyes, "how could you +do it?" + +"Count..." said Telyanin drawing nearer to him. + +"Don't touch me," said Rostov, drawing back. "If you need it, take +the money," and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn. + +CHAPTER V + +That same evening there was an animated discussion among the +squadron's officers in Denisov's quarters. + +"And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the colonel!" +said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and +many wrinkles on his large features, to Rostov who was crimson with +excitement. + +The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks +for affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission. + +"I will allow no one to call me a liar!" cried Rostov. "He told me I +lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on +duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me +apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it +beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..." + +"You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen," interrupted +the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache. +"You tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an +officer has stolen..." + +"I'm not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of +other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but +I am not a diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that +here one would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying- so +let him give me satisfaction..." + +"That's all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the +point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet +to demand satisfaction of his regimental commander?" + +Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the +conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered +the staff captain's question by a disapproving shake of his head. + +"You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other +officers," continued the staff captain, "and Bogdanich" (the colonel +was called Bogdanich) "shuts you up." + +"He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth." + +"Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and +must apologize." + +"Not on any account!" exclaimed Rostov. + +"I did not expect this of you," said the staff captain seriously and +severely. "You don't wish to apologize, but, man, it's not only to him +but to the whole regiment- all of us- you're to blame all round. The +case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and taken +advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the +officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and +disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of +one scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don't see it like +that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what +was not true. It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear +fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth +the thing over, some conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish +to make the whole affair public. You are offended at being put on duty +a bit, but why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever +Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel! +You're quick at taking offense, but you don't mind disgracing the +whole regiment!" The staff captain's voice began to tremble. "You have +been in the regiment next to no time, my lad, you're here today and +tomorrow you'll be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your +fingers when it is said 'There are thieves among the Pavlograd +officers!' But it's not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denisov? +It's not the same!" + +Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked +with his glittering black eyes at Rostov. + +"You value your own pride and don't wish to apologize," continued +the staff captain, "but we old fellows, who have grown up in and, +God willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of +the regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old +fellow! And all this is not right, it's not right! You may take +offense or not but I always stick to mother truth. It's not right!" + +And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov. + +"That's twue, devil take it" shouted Denisov, jumping up. "Now then, +Wostov, now then!" + +Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one +officer and then at the other. + +"No, gentlemen, no... you mustn't think... I quite understand. +You're wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of +the regiment I'd... Ah well, I'll show that in action, and for me +the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it's true I'm to blame, +to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?..." + +"Come, that's right, Count!" cried the staff captain, turning +round and clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big hand. + +"I tell you," shouted Denisov, "he's a fine fellow." + +"That's better, Count," said the staff captain, beginning to address +Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. "Go and +apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!" + +"Gentlemen, I'll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me," +said Rostov in an imploring voice, "but I can't apologize, by God I +can't, do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little +boy asking forgiveness?" + +Denisov began to laugh. + +"It'll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you'll pay +for your obstinacy," said Kirsten. + +"No, on my word it's not obstinacy! I can't describe the feeling. +I can't..." + +"Well, it's as you like," said the staff captain. "And what has +become of that scoundrel?" he asked Denisov. + +"He has weported himself sick, he's to be stwuck off the list +tomowwow," muttered Denisov. + +"It is an illness, there's no other way of explaining it," said +the staff captain. + +"Illness or not, he'd better not cwoss my path. I'd kill him!" +shouted Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone. + +Just then Zherkov entered the room. + +"What brings you here?" cried the officers turning to the newcomer. + +"We're to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his +whole army." + +"It's not true!" + +"I've seen him myself!" + +"What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?" + +"Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how +did you come here?" + +"I've been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil, +Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on +Mack's arrival... What's the matter, Rostov? You look as if you'd just +come out of a hot bath." + +"Oh, my dear fellow, we're in such a stew here these last two days." + +The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by +Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day. + +"We're going into action, gentlemen!" + +"Well, thank God! We've been sitting here too long!" + +CHAPTER VI + +Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges +over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October +23 the Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the +Russian baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were +defiling through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge. + +It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out +before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the +bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, +and then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects +could be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down +below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed +houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed +jostling masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels, +an island, and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the +confluence of the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky +left bank of the Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic +background of green treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a +convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far away on +the other side of the Enns the enemy's horse patrols could be +discerned. + +Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in +command of the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the +country through his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvitski, who +had been sent to the rearguard by the commander in chief, was +sitting on the trail of a gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied +him had handed him a knapsack and a flask, and Nesvitski was +treating some officers to pies and real doppelkummel. The officers +gladly gathered round him, some on their knees, some squatting Turkish +fashion on the wet grass. + +"Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It's +a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?" Nesvitski +was saying. + +"Thank you very much, Prince," answered one of the officers, pleased +to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. "It's a lovely +place! We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a +splendid house!" + +"Look, Prince," said another, who would have dearly liked to take +another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining +the countryside- "See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look +there in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging +something. They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with evident +approval. + +"So they will," said Nesvitski. "No, but what I should like," +added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be +to slip in over there." + +He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed +and gleamed. + +"That would be fine, gentlemen!" + +The officers laughed. + +"Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls +among them. On my word I'd give five years of my life for it!" + +"They must be feeling dull, too," said one of the bolder officers, +laughing. + +Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out +something to the general, who looked through his field glass. + +"Yes, so it is, so it is," said the general angrily, lowering the +field glass and shrugging his shoulders, "so it is! They'll be fired +on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?" + +On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and +from their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant +report of a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the +crossing. + +Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling. + +"Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?" he said. + +"It's a bad business," said the general without answering him, +"our men have been wasting time." + +"Hadn't I better ride over, your excellency?" asked Nesvitski. + +"Yes, please do," answered the general, and he repeated the order +that had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that +they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the +inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected." + +"Very good," answered Nesvitski. + +He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the +knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle. + +"I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who +watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the +hill. + +"Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!" said +the general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to +pass the time." + +"Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer. + +In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and +began loading. + +"One!" came the command. + +Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening +metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our +troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little +smoke showing the spot where it burst. + +The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone +got up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as +plainly visible as if but a stone's throw away, and the movements of +the approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came +fully out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the +solitary shot and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a +single joyous and spirited impression. + +CHAPTER VII + +Two of the enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge, +where there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who +had alighted from his horse and whose big body was body was jammed +against the railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood +a few steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each +time Prince Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed +him back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he +could do was to smile. + +"What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack to a convoy +soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were +crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow! +You can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?" + +But the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted +at the soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to +the left! Wait a bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder +to shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a +dense mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the +rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying +round the piles of the bridge chased each other along. Looking on +the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder +straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and, +under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and +listless tired expressions, and feet that moved through the sticky mud +that covered the planks of the bridge. Sometimes through the +monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of +the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different +from that of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of +wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or a +townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and sometimes like +a log floating down the river, an officers' or company's baggage +wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all sides, +moved across the bridge. + +"It's as if a dam had burst," said the Cossack hopelessly. "Are +there many more of you to come?" + +"A million all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat, +with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man. + +"If he" (he meant the enemy) "begins popping at the bridge now," +said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, "you'll forget to +scratch yourself." + +That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a +cart. + +"Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?" said an +orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it. + +And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry +soldiers who had evidently been drinking. + +"And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt +end of his gun..." a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said +gaily, with a wide swing of his arm. + +"Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a loud +laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who +had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it. + +"Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll +all be killed," a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully. + +"As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young +soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, "I +felt like dying of fright. I did, 'pon my word, I got that +frightened!" said he, as if bragging of having been frightened. + +That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had +gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a +German, and seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine +brindled cow with a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A +woman with an unweaned baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl +with bright red cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently +these fugitives were allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes +of all the soldiers turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was +passing at foot pace all the soldiers' remarks related to the two +young ones. Every face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly +thoughts about the women. + +"Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!" + +"Sell me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German, +who, angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast +eyes. + +"See how smart she's made herself! Oh, the devils!" + +"There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!" + +"I have seen as much before now, mate!" + +"Where are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an +apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl. + +The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand. + +"Take it if you like," said the officer, giving the girl an apple. + +The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the men on +the bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed. +When they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with +the same kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens, +the horses of a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the +bridge, and the whole crowd had to wait. + +"And why are they stopping? There's no proper order!" said the +soldiers. "Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can't you wait? +It'll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's an officer jammed +in too"- different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men +looked at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the +bridge. + +Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitski +suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching... +something big, that splashed into the water. + +"Just see where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly, +looking round at the sound. + +"Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another uneasily. + +The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a cannon +ball. + +"Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there! get out of +the way! Make way!" + +With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting +continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make +way for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and +those nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed +still harder from behind. + +"Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!" came a hoarse voice from +behind him. + +Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but +separated by the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska Denisov, red +and shaggy, with his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak +hanging jauntily over his shoulder. + +"Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov +evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot +whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a +small bare hand as red as his face. + +"Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with you?" + +"The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his +white teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which +twitched its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting +white foam from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his +hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider +let him. "What is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of +the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart! +I'll hack you with my saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber +from its scabbard and flourishing it + +The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and +Denisov joined Nesvitski. + +"How's it you're not drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had +ridden up to him. + +"They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov. +"They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to +fight, let's fight. But the devil knows what this is." + +"What a dandy you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's +new cloak and saddlecloth. + +Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that +diffused a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose. + +"Of course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth, +and scented myself." + +The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and the +determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and shouted +frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through +to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the +bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the +order, and having done this he rode back. + +Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge. +Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the +ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw +nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping, +resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in +front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to +emerge on his side of it. + +The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the +trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will, +estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually +encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past +them in regular order. + +"Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said one. + +"What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked +another. + +"Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose +prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers. + +"I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine +cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the +mud off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more +like a bird than a man." + +"There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look +fine," said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent +under the weight of his knapsack. + +"Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!" +the hussar shouted back. + +CHAPTER VIII + +The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing +together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last +the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last +battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denisov's squadron of hussars +remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could +be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible +from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which +the river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile +away. At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of +our Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the +high ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These +were the French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at +a trot. All the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they +tried to talk of other things and to look in other directions, thought +only of what was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking +at the patches appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the +enemy's troops. The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun +was descending brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around +it. It was calm, and at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of +the enemy could be heard from the hill. There was no one now between +the squadron and the enemy except a few scattered skirmishers. An +empty space of some seven hundred yards was all that separated them. +The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible, +and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was all the +more clearly felt. + +"One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line +dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and +death. And what is there? Who is there?- there beyond that field, that +tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to +know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner +or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is +there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other +side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and +are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So +thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the +enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness +of impression to everything that takes place at such moments. + +On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon +rose, and a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron. +The officers who had been standing together rode off to their +places. The hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence +fell on the whole squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and +at the squadron commander, awaiting the word of command. A second +and a third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the +hussars, but the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads +of the horsemen and fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not +look round, but at the sound of each shot, as at the word of +command, the whole squadron with its rows of faces so alike yet so +different, holding its breath while the ball flew past, rose in the +stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers without turning their heads +glanced at one another, curious to see their comrades' impression. +Every face, from Denisov's to that of the bugler, showed one common +expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement, around chin and +mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if +threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball +flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook- a handsome +horse despite its game leg- had the happy air of a schoolboy called up +before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he +will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear, +bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under +fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication of +something new and stern showed round the mouth. + +"Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight! +Look at me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept +turning his horse in front of the squadron. + +The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole +short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in +which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually +did, especially toward evening when he had emptied his second +bottle; he was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown +back like birds when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into +the sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling +backwards in the saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the +squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to the men to look to their +pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed, +steady mare came at a walk to meet him. His face with its long +mustache was serious as always, only his eyes were brighter than +usual. + +"Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a +fight. You'll see- we shall retire." + +"The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah, +Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it +at last." + +And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. +Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the +bridge. Denisov galloped up to him. + +"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off." + +"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his +face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping +here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the +squadron back." + +The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire +without having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in +the front line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted +the farther side of the river. + +The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up +the hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich +Schubert, came up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far +from Rostov, without taking any notice of him although they were now +meeting for the first time since their encounter concerning +Telyanin. Rostov, feeling that he was at the front and in the power of +a man toward whom he now admitted that he had been to blame, did not +lift his eyes from the colonel's athletic back, his nape covered +with light hair, and his red neck. It seemed to Rostov that +Bogdanich was only pretending not to notice him, and that his whole +aim now was to test the cadet's courage, so he drew himself up and +looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that Bogdanich rode +so near in order to show him his courage. Next he thought that his +enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to punish +him- Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdanich would +come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the +hand of reconciliation. + +The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as +he had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After +his dismissal from headquarters Zherkov had not remained in the +regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front +when he could get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and +had succeeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince +Bagration. He now came to his former chief with an order from the +commander of the rear guard. + +"Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an air of +gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an +order to stop and fire the bridge." + +"An order to who?" asked the colonel morosely. + +"I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious +tone, "but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the +hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.'" + +Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the +colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout +Nesvitski came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely +carry his weight. + +"How's this, Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to +fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are +all beside themselves over there and one can't make anything out." + +The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to +Nesvitski. + +"You spoke to me of inflammable material," said he, "but you said +nothing about firing it." + +"But, my dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap +and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand, +"wasn't I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material +had been put in position?" + +"I am not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell +me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders +strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would +it burn, I could not know by the holy spirit!" + +"Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave of the hand. +"How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov. + +"On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!" + +"You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in +an offended tone. + +"Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be +quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot." + +The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the +stout staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned. + +"I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn tone as if to announce +that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would +still do the right thing. + +Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to +blame for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second +squadron, that in which Rostov was serving under Denisov, to return to +the bridge. + +"There, it's just as I thought," said Rostov to himself. "He +wishes to test me!" His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his +face. "Let him see whether I am a coward!" he thought. + +Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression +appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov watched his enemy, +the colonel, closely- to find in his face confirmation of his own +conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and +looked as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came +the word of command. + +"Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around him. + +Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the +hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The +men were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the +colonel, he had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the +hussars, so much afraid that his heart stood still. His hand +trembled as he gave his horse into an orderly's charge, and he felt +the blood rush to his heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him, +leaning back and shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the +hussars running all around him, their spurs catching and their +sabers clattering. + +"Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him. + +Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on, +trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not +looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud, +stumbled, and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him. + +"At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who, +having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a +triumphant, cheerful face. + +Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy +and was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the +front the better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing +Rostov, shouted to him: + +"Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right! +Come back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who, +showing off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge: + +"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said. + +"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning +in his saddle. + +Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were +standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small +group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord, +and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and +then at what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side- +the blue uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as +artillery. + +"Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they +get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within +grapeshot range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each +man of the troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily +asked himself with a sinking heart- watching the bridge and the +hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from +the other side with their bayonets and guns. + +"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within +grapeshot range now." + +"He shouldn't have taken so many men," said the officer of the +suite. + +"True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have +done the job just as well." + +"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the +hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know +whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency! +How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the +Vladimir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, +the squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. +Our Bogdanich knows how things are done." + +"There now!" said the officer of the suite, "that's grapeshot." + +He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being +detached and hurriedly removed. + +On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke +appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at +the moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two +reports one after another, and a third. + +"Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the +officer of the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen, +fallen!" + +"Two, I think." + +"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning +away. + +The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue +uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but +at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the +bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening +there, as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had +succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were now +firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because the guns were +trained and there was someone to fire at. + +The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the +hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot +went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of +hussars and knocked three of them over. + +Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on +the bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he +had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the +bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like +the other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard +a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar +nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to +him with the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men +seized the hussar and began lifting him. + +"Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!" cried the wounded man, but +still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher. + +Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something, +gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, +and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, +and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what +soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer +still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, +the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of +their summits... There was peace and happiness... "I should wishing +for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there," thought Rostov. +"In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness; +but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry... +There- they are shouting again, and again are all running back +somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above +me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see the +sun, this water, that gorge!..." + +At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other +stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and +of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into +one feeling of sickening agitation. + +"O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect +me!" Rostov whispered. + +The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their +voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from +sight. + +"Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just +above his ear. + +"It's all over; but I am a coward- yes, a coward!" thought Rostov, +and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one +foot, from the orderly and began to mount. + +"Was that grapeshot?" he asked Denisov. + +"Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You worked like wegular bwicks +and it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the +dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting +at you like a target." + +And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov, +composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from +the suite. + +"Well, it seems that no one has noticed," thought Rostov. And this +was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation +which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced. + +"Here's something for you to report," said Zherkov. "See if I +don't get promoted to a sublieutenancy." + +"Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!" said the colonel +triumphantly and gaily. + +"And if he asks about the losses?" + +"A trifle," said the colonel in his bass voice: "two hussars +wounded, and one knocked out," he added, unable to restrain a happy +smile, and pronouncing the phrase "knocked out" with ringing +distinctness. + +CHAPTER IX + +Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the +command of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to +it, losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of +supplies, and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything +that had been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men +commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube, +stopping where overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions +only as far as necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its +heavy equipment. There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and +Melk; but despite the courage and endurance- acknowledged even by +the enemy- with which the Russians fought, the only consequence of +these actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had +escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated +from the Russian army, and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and +exhausted forces. The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought +of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared +in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been handed to +Kutuzov when he was in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the +sole and almost unattainable aim remaining for him was to effect a +junction with the forces that were advancing from Russia, without +losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm. + +On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the +left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with +the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the +thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left +bank, and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were +taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time, +after a fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a +fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the French. +Though the troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of +their number in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number +of sick and wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube +with a letter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the +enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems +converted into military hospitals could no longer accommodate all +the sick and wounded, yet the stand made at Krems and the victory over +Mortier raised the spirits of the army considerably. Throughout the +whole army and at headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors +were rife of the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, of some +victory gained by the Austrians, and of the retreat of the +frightened Bonaparte. + +Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the +Austrian General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse +had been wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a +bullet. As a mark of the commander in chief's special favor he was +sent with the news of this victory to the Austrian court, now no +longer at Vienna (which was threatened by the French) but at Brunn. +Despite his apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could endure +physical fatigue far better than many very muscular men, and on the +night of the battle, having arrived at Krems excited but not weary, +with dispatches from Dokhturov to Kutuzov, he was sent immediately +with a special dispatch to Brunn. To be so sent meant not only a +reward but an important step toward promotion. + +The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow +that had fallen the previous day- the day of the battle. Reviewing his +impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself +the impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the +send-off given him by the commander in chief and his fellow +officers, Prince Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise +enjoying the feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a +long-desired happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears +seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels and the sensation of +victory. Then he began to imagine that the Russians were running +away and that he himself was killed, but he quickly roused himself +with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that this was not so +but that on the contrary the French had run away. He again recalled +all the details of the victory and his own calm courage during the +battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark starry night +was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was thawing in the +sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides of the road +were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages. + +At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded. +The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the +front cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each +of the long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were +being jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he +heard Russian words), others were eating bread; the more severely +wounded looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children, +at the envoy hurrying past them. + +Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what +action they had been wounded. "Day before yesterday, on the Danube," +answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the +soldier three gold pieces. + +"That's for them all," he said to the officer who came up. + +"Get well soon, lads!" he continued, turning to the soldiers. +"There's plenty to do still." + +"What news, sir?" asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a +conversation. + +"Good news!... Go on!" he shouted to the driver, and they galloped +on. + +It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the +paved streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings, +the lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all +that atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so +attractive to a soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and +sleepless night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt +even more vigorous and alert than he had done the day before. Only his +eyes gleamed feverishly and his thoughts followed one another with +extraordinary clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the +details of the battle, no longer dim, but definite and in the +concise form concise form in which he imagined himself stating them to +the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions that +might be put to him and the answers he would give. He expected to be +at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance to the palace, +however, an official came running out to meet him, and learning that +he was a special messenger led him to another entrance. + +"To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will +find the adjutant on duty," said the official. "He will conduct you to +the Minister of War." + +The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait, +and went in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and +bowing with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along +a corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The +adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any +attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger. + +Prince Andrew's joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he +approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and +without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into +one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind +instantly suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to +despise the adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder, +they probably think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes +narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with +peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened +when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers +and making pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three +minutes taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each +side of the minister's bent bald head with its gray temples. He went +on reading to the end, without raising his eyes at the opening of +the door and the sound of footsteps. + +"Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the +papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger. + +Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov's army +interested the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he +was concerned with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger +that impression. "But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me," +he thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together, +arranged them evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual +and distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the +firm, intelligent expression on his face changed in a way evidently +deliberate and habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial +smile (which does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man +who is continually receiving many petitioners one after another. + +"From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?" he asked. "I hope it is good +news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high +time!" + +He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it +with a mournful expression. + +"Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!" he exclaimed in German. "What a +calamity! What a calamity!" + +Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and +looked at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something. + +"Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is +not captured." Again he pondered. "I am very glad you have brought +good news, though Schmidt's death is a heavy price to pay for the +victory. His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I +thank you! You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the +parade. However, I will let you know." + +The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking, +reappeared. + +"Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to +see you," he added, bowing his head. + +When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest and +happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the +indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant. +The whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle +seemed the memory of a remote event long past. + +CHAPTER X + +Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance +of his in the diplomatic service. + +"Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor," +said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. "Franz, put the +prince's things in my bedroom," said he to the servant who was +ushering Bolkonski in. "So you're a messenger of victory, eh? +Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see." + +After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's +luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin +settled down comfortably beside the fire. + +After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived +of all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life, +Prince Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious +surroundings such as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides +it was pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not +in Russian (for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who +would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the +Austrians which was then particularly strong. + +Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle +as Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in +Petersburg, but had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in +Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave +promise of rising high in the military profession, so to an even +greater extent Bilibin gave promise of rising in his diplomatic +career. He still a young man but no longer a young diplomat, as he had +entered the service at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris and +Copenhagen, and now held a rather important post in Vienna. Both the +foreign minister and our ambassador in Vienna knew him and valued him. +He was not one of those many diplomats who are esteemed because they +have certain negative qualities, avoid doing certain things, and speak +French. He was one of those, who, liking work, knew how to do it, +and despite his indolence would sometimes spend a whole night at his +writing table. He worked well whatever the import of his work. It +was not the question "What for?" but the question "How?" that +interested him. What the diplomatic matter might be he did not care, +but it gave him great pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or +report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin's services +were valued not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill in +dealing and conversing with those in the highest spheres. + +Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be +made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to +say something striking and took part in a conversation only when +that was possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with +wittily original, finished phrases of general interest. These +sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a +portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society +people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And, in +fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing +rooms and often had an influence on matters considered important. + +His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which +always looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers +after a Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the +principal play of expression on his face. Now his forehead would +pucker into deep folds and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows +would descend and deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, +deep-set eyes always twinkled and looked out straight. + +"Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he. + +Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, +described the engagement and his reception by the Minister of War. + +"They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of +skittles," said he in conclusion. + +Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared. + +"Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his nails from a +distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, "malgre la haute +estime que je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j'avoue que +votre victoire n'est pas des plus victorieuses."~{ "But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian +army, I must say that your victory was not particularly victorious." }~ + +He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those +words in Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis. + +"Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate +Mortier and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your +fingers! Where's the victory?" + +"But seriously," said Prince Andrew, "we can at any rate say without +boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm..." + +"Why didn't you capture one, just one, marshal for us?" + +"Because not everything happens as one expects or with the +smoothness of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at +their rear by seven in the morning but had not reached it by five in +the afternoon." + +"And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have +been there at seven in the morning," returned Bilibin with a smile. +"You ought to have been there at seven in the morning." + +"Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic +methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?" retorted Prince +Andrew in the same tone. + +"I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking it's very easy to +take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but +still why didn't you capture him? So don't be surprised if not only +the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and +King Francis is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor +secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of +my joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to +the Prater... True, we have no Prater here..." + +He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his +forehead. + +"It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I +confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties +here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack +loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl +give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at +last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility +of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care to hear +the details." + +"That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah for the Tsar, +for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but +what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories? +Bring us nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one +archduke's as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only +over a fire brigade of Bonaparte's, that will be another story and +we'll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on +purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke +Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its +defense- as much as to say: 'Heaven is with us, but heaven help you +and your capital!' The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you +expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit +that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived. +It's as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose +you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a +victory, what effect would that have on the general course of +events? It's too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!" + +"What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?" + +"Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count, +our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders." + +After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, +and especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could not +take in the full significance of the words he heard. + +"Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin continued, "and +showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was +fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that +your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can't be +received as a savior." + +"Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all," said Prince +Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before +Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as the +fall of Austria's capital. "How is it Vienna was taken? What of the +bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard +reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?" he said. + +"Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is +defending us- doing it very badly, I think, but still he is +defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has +not yet been taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and +orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago +have been in the mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would +have spent a bad quarter of an hour between two fires." + +"But still this does not mean that the campaign is over," said +Prince Andrew. + +"Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they +daren't say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign, +it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that +will decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin +quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, +and pausing. "The only question is what will come of the meeting +between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If +Prussia joins the Allies, Austria's hand will be forced and there will +be war. If not it is merely a question of settling where the +preliminaries of the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up." + +"What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed, +clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, "and what +luck the man has!" + +"Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to +indicate that he was about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he +repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down +laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u!~{ "We must let him off the u!" }~ I +shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!" + +"But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do you really think the +campaign is over?" + +"This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is +not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the +first place because her provinces have been pillaged- they say the +Holy Russian army loots terribly- her army is destroyed, her capital +taken, and all this for the beaux yeux~{ Fine eyes. }~ of His Sardinian Majesty. +And therefore- this is between ourselves- I instinctively feel that we +are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France +and projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately." + +"Impossible!" cried Prince Andrew. "That would be too base." + +"If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his face again +becoming smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end. + +When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in +a clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows, +he felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far +away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's treachery, +Bonaparte's new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade, and the audience +with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts. + +He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of +musketry and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his +ears, and now again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were +descending the hill, the French were firing, and he felt his heart +palpitating as he rode forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily +whistling all around, and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as +he had not done since childhood. + +He woke up... + +"Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling happily to himself +like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber. + +CHAPTER XI + +Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first +thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be +presented to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War, + +the polite Austrian adjutant, Bilibin, and last night's +conversation. Having dressed for his attendance at court in full +parade uniform, which he had not worn for a long time, he went into +Bilibin's study fresh, animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged. +In the study were four gentlemen of the diplomatic corps. With +Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who was a secretary to the embassy, +Bolkonski was already acquainted. Bilibin introduced him to the +others. + +The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin's were young, wealthy, gay +society men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which +Bilibin, their leader, called les notres.~{ Ours. }~ This set, consisting almost +exclusively of diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had +nothing to do with war or politics but related to high society, to +certain women, and to the official side of the service. These +gentlemen received Prince Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they +did not extend to many. From politeness and to start conversation, +they asked him a few questions about the army and the battle, and then +the talk went off into merry jests and gossip. + +"But the best of it was," said one, telling of the misfortune of a +fellow diplomat, "that the Chancellor told him flatly that his +appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it. +Can you fancy the figure he cut?..." + +"But the worst of it, gentlemen- I am giving Kuragin away to you- is +that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking +advantage of it!" + +Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over +its arm. He began to laugh. + +"Tell me about that!" he said. + +"Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices. + +"You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince Andrew, +"that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the +Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing +among the women!" + +"La femme est la compagne de l'homme,"~{ "Woman is man's companion." }~ announced Prince +Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs. + +Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's +face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom- he had to +admit- he had almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the +butt of this set. + +"Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski. +"Kuragin is exquisite when he discusses politics- you should see his +gravity!" + +He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began +talking to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered +round these two. + +"The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance," began +Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, "without +expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless +His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our +alliance... + +"Wait, I have not finished..." he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him +by the arm, "I believe that intervention will be stronger than +nonintervention. And..." he paused. "Finally one cannot impute the +nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end." +And he released Bolkonski's arm to indicate that he had now quite +finished. + +"Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden +mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with +satisfaction. + +Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was +evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain +the wild laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features. + +"Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonski is my guest in +this house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I +can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it +would be easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more +difficult, and I beg you all to help me. Brunn's attractions must be +shown him. You can undertake the theater, I society, and you, +Hippolyte, of course the women." + +"We must let him see Amelie, she's exquisite!" said one of "ours," +kissing his finger tips. + +"In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane +interests," said Bilibin. + +"I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality, +gentlemen, it is already time for me to go," replied Prince Andrew +looking at his watch. + +"Where to?" + +"To the Emperor." + +"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir, Prince! Come +back early to dinner," cried several voices. "We'll take you in hand." + +"When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the +way that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated," said +Bilibin, accompanying him to the hall. + +"I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I the facts, I +can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling. + +"Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for +giving audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can't do +it, as you will see." + +CHAPTER XII + +At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he +had been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into +his face and just nodded to him with to him with his long head. But +after it was over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day +ceremoniously informed Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give +him an audience. The Emperor Francis received him standing in the +middle of the room. Before the conversation began Prince Andrew was +struck by the fact that the Emperor seemed confused and blushed as +if not knowing what to say. + +"Tell me, when did the battle begin?" he asked hurriedly. + +Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple: +"Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?" and so on. The Emperor +spoke as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions- +the answers to these questions, as was only too evident, did not +interest him. + +"At what o'clock did the battle begin?" asked the Emperor. + +"I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at +the front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after +five in the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and +expecting that he would have a chance to give a reliable account, +which he had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the +Emperor smiled and interrupted him. + +"How many miles?" + +"From where to where, Your Majesty?" + +"From Durrenstein to Krems." + +"Three and a half miles, Your Majesty." + +"The French have abandoned the left bank?" + +"According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during +the night." + +"Is there sufficient forage in Krems?" + +"Forage has not been supplied to the extent..." + +The Emperor interrupted him. + +"At what o'clock was General Schmidt killed?" + +"At seven o'clock, I believe." + +"At seven o'clock? It's very sad, very sad!" + +The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew +withdrew and was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides. +Everywhere he saw friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday's +adjutant reproached him for not having stayed at the palace, and +offered him his own house. The Minister of War came up and +congratulated him on the Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which +the Emperor was conferring on him. The Empress' chamberlain invited +him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess also wished to see him. He did +not know whom to answer, and for a few seconds collected his thoughts. +Then the Russian ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the +window, and began to talk to him. + +Contrary to Bilibin's forecast the news he had brought was +joyfully received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutuzov was +awarded the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army +received rewards. Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend +the whole morning calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries. +Between four and five in the afternoon, having made all his calls, +he was returning to Bilibin's house thinking out a letter to his +father about the battle and his visit to Brunn. At the door he found a +vehicle half full of luggage. Franz, Bilibin's man, was dragging a +portmanteau with some difficulty out of the front door. + +Before returning to Bilibin's Prince Andrew had gone to bookshop +to provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent +some time in the shop. + +"What is it?" he asked. + +"Oh, your excellency!" said Franz, with difficulty rolling the +portmanteau into the vehicle, "we are to move on still farther. The +scoundrel is again at our heels!" + +"Eh? What?" asked Prince Andrew. + +Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed +excitement. + +"There now! Confess that this is delightful," said he. "This +affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without +striking a blow!" + +Prince Andrew could not understand. + +"But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the +town knows?" + +"I come from the archduchess'. I heard nothing there." + +"And you didn't see that everybody is packing up?" + +"I did not... What is it all about?" inquired Prince Andrew +impatiently. + +"What's it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that +Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat +is now rushing along the road to Brunn and will be here in a day or +two." + +"What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was +mined?" + +"That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why." + +Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders. + +"But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It +will be cut off," said he. + +"That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered +Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday, +those gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux,~{ The marshalls. }~ Murat, Lannes,and Belliard, +mount and ride to bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.) +'Gentlemen,' says one of them, 'you know the Thabor Bridge is mined +and doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its +head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up +the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign +the Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and +take it!' 'Yes, let's!' say the others. And off they go and take the +bridge, cross it, and now with their whole army are on this side of +the Danube, marching on us, you, and your lines of communication." + +"Stop jesting," said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news +grieved him and yet he was pleased. + +As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless +situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead +it out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift +him from the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to +fame! Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching +the army he would give an opinion at the war council which would be +the only one that could save the army, and how he alone would be +entrusted with the executing of the plan. + +"Stop this jesting," he said + +"I am not jesting," Bilibin went on. "Nothing is truer or sadder. +These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white +handkerchiefs; they assure the officer on duty that they, the +marshals, are on their way to negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets +them enter the tete-de-pont.~{ Bridgehead. }~ They spin him a thousand gasconades, +saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a +meeting with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg, +and so on. The officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace +the officers, crack jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French +battalion gets to the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary +material into the water, and approaches the tete-de-pont. At length +appears the lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von +Mautern himself. 'Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of +the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another's +hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince +Auersperg's acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed, +so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his +rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals, and so +dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il n'y +voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur +l'ennemi!"~{ That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that he ought +to be firing at the enemy. }~ In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did +not forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due +appreciation. "The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes +the guns, and the bridge is taken! But what is best of all," he went +on, his excitement subsiding under the delightful interest of his +own story, "is that the sergeant in charge of the cannon which was +to give the signal to fire the mines and blow up the bridge, this +sergeant, seeing that the French troops were running onto the +bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes stayed his hand. The sergeant, +who was evidently wiser than his general, goes up to Auersperg and +says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are the French!' Murat, +seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed to speak, turns +to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a true Gascon) and says: +'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian discipline, if you +allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It was a stroke of +genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and orders the +sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair of the +Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor +rascality...." + +"It may be treachery," said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the +gray overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of +firing, and the glory that awaited him. + +"Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light," replied +Bilibin."It's not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as +at Ulm... it is..."- he seemed to be trying to find the right +expression. "C'est... c'est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes [It is... it +is a bit of Mack. We are Macked]," he concluded, feeling that he had +produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His +hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a +slight smile he began to examine his nails. + +"Where are you off to?" he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had +risen and was going toward his room. + +"I am going away." + +"Where to?" + +"To the army." + +"But you meant to stay another two days?" + +"But now I am off at once." + +And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went +to his room. + +"Do you know, mon cher," said Bilibin following him, "I have been +thinking about you. Why are you going?" + +And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles +vanished from his face. + +Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply. + +"Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back +to the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher, +it is heroism!" + +"Not at all," said Prince Andrew. + +"But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the +other side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the +contrary, is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no +longer fit for anything else.... You have not been ordered to return +and have not been dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and +go with us wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going to +Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very decent town. You and I will travel +comfortably in my caleche." + +"Do stop joking, Bilibin," cried Bolkonski. + +"I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are +you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two +things," and the skin over his left temple puckered, "either you +will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will +share defeat and disgrace with Kutuzov's whole army." + +And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was +insoluble. + +"I cannot argue about it," replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he +thought: "I am going to save the army." + +"My dear fellow, you are a hero!" said Bilibin. + +CHAPTER XIII + +That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, +Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would +find it and fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems. + +In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the +heavy baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf +Prince Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was +moving with great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was +so obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a +carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack +commander, and hungry and weary, making his way past the baggage +wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief and of his own +luggage. Very sinister reports of the position of the army reached him +as he went along, and the appearance of the troops in their disorderly +flight confirmed these rumors. + +"Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee des +extremites de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme +sort- (le sort de l'armee d'Ulm)."~{ "That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the +earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate- (the +fate of the army at Ulm)." }~ He remembered these words in +Bonaparte's address to his army at the beginning of the campaign, +and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a +feeling of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. "And should there be +nothing left but to die?" he thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it +no worse than others." + +He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of +detachments, carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and +vehicles of all kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy +road, three and sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and +before, as far as ear could reach, there were the rattle of wheels, +the creaking of carts and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the +crack of whips, shouts, the urging of horses, and the swearing of +soldiers, orderlies, and officers. All along the sides of the road +fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and +broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for +something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies, +crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned from +them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At each ascent +or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the din of +shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud +pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped, +traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers +directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their +voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their +faces that they despaired of the possibility of checking this +disorder. + +"Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought Bolkonski, +recalling Bilibin's words. + +Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up +to a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse +vehicle, evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available +materials and looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet, +and a caleche. A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in +shawls sat behind the apron under the leather hood of the vehicle. +Prince Andrew rode up and was just putting his question to a soldier +when his attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the +woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was beating +the soldier who was driving the woman's vehicle for trying to get +ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron of +the equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew +she leaned out from behind the apron and, waving her thin arms from +under the woolen shawl, cried: + +"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's sake... Protect +me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh +Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we are left behind and have lost +our people..." + +"I'll flatten you into a pancake!" shouted the angry officer to +the soldier. "Turn back with your slut!" + +"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?" screamed +the doctor's wife. + +"Kindly let this cart pass. Don't you see it's a woman?" said Prince +Andrew riding up to the officer. + +The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the +soldier. "I'll teach you to push on!... Back!" + +"Let them pass, I tell you!" repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his +lips. + +"And who are you?" cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy +rage, "who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander +here, not you! Go back or I'll flatten you into a pancake," repeated +he. This expression evidently pleased him. + +"That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp," came a voice +from behind. + +Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless, +tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his +championship of the doctor's wife in her queer trap might expose him +to what he dreaded more than anything in the world- to ridicule; but +his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence +Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised +his riding whip. + +"Kind...ly let- them- pass!" + +The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away. + +"It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there's +this disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like." + +Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the +doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with a +sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he +galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in +chief was. + +On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house, +intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to +sort out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his +mind. "This is a mob of scoundrels and not an army," he was thinking +as he went up to the window of the first house, when a familiar +voice called him by name. + +He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the +little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed +something, and flourishing his arm, called him to enter. + +"Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..." he +shouted. + +Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant +having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he +had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm. +This was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's usually laughing +countenance. + +"Where is the commander in chief?" asked Bolkonski. + +"Here, in that house," answered the adjutant. + +"Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?" asked +Nesvitski. + +"I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I +could do to get here." + +"And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack, +we're getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But sit down and +have something to eat." + +"You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything else now, +Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is," said the other +adjutant. + +"Where are headquarters?" + +"We are to spend the night in Znaim." + +"Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses," said +Nesvitski. "They've made up splendid packs for me- fit to cross the +Bohemian mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old fellow! But what's +the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that," he added, +noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock. + +"It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew. + +He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's wife +and the convoy officer. + +"What is the commander in chief doing here?" he asked. + +"I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski. + +"Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable, +abominable, quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he went off +to the house where the commander in chief was. + +Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his +suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince +Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the +house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the +Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little +Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk, +with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom +upwards. Kozlovski's face looked worn- he too had evidently not +slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to +him. + +"Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to +the clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..." + +"One can't write so fast, your honor," said the clerk, glancing +angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski. + +Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited and +dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the +sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him, +the disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the +clerk and Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to +the commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks +holding the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that +something important and disastrous was about to happen. + +He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions. + +"Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions for Bagration." + +"What about capitulation?" + +"Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle." + +Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard. +Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened, +and Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the +doorway. Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the +expression of the commander in chief's one sound eye showed him to +be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of +his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant's face without +recognizing him. + +"Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski. + +"One moment, your excellency." + +Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm, +impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in +chief. + +"I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince Andrew +rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope. + +Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!" + +Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration. + +"Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My blessing, and may +Christ be with you in your great endeavor!" + +His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his +left hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which +he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a +gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration +kissed him on the neck instead. + +"Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage. +"Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski. + +"Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to +remain with Prince Bagration's detachment." + +"Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed, +he added: "I need good officers myself, need them myself!" + +They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence. + +"There is still much, much before us," he said, as if with an old +man's penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski's +mind. "If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God," +he added as if speaking to himself. + +Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant from him +and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar +near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the +empty eye socket. "Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those +men's death," thought Bolkonski. + +"That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment," he said. + +Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had +been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently +swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince +Andrew. There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With +delicate irony he questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his +interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court +concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew. + +CHAPTER XIV + +On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the +army he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported +that the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing +in immense force upon Kutuzov's line of communication with the +troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at +Krems, Napoleon's army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut +him off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty +thousand, and he would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If +Kutuzov decided to abandon the road connecting him with the troops +arriving from Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown +parts of the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against superior +forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of a junction with +Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat along the road from Krems +to Olmutz, to unite with the troops arriving from Russia, he risked +being forestalled on that road by the French who had crossed the +Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and transport, having +to accept battle on the march against an enemy three times as +strong, who would hem him in from two sides. + +Kutuzov chose this latter course. + +The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were +advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles +off on the line of Kutuzov's retreat. If he reached Znaim before the +French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the +French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army +to a disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to +forestall the French with his whole army was impossible. The road +for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the +road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim. + +The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration's vanguard, +four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the +Krems-Znaim to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march +without resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and +if he succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as +long as possible. Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road +to Znaim. + +Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills, +with his hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as +stragglers by the way, Bagration came out on the Vienna-Znaim road +at Hollabrunn a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching +Hollabrunn from Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to +march for some days before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration +with his four thousand hungry, exhausted men would have to detain +for days the whole enemy army that came upon him at Hollabrunn, +which was clearly impossible. But a freak of fate made the +impossible possible. The success of the trick that had placed the +Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without a fight led Murat +to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way. Meeting Bagration's weak +detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be Kutuzov's whole +army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the arrival of +the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna, and with +this object offered a three days' truce on condition that both +armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared that +negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he +therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count +Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed +Murat's emissary and retired, leaving Bagration's division exposed. +Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace +negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days' truce. +Bagration replied that he was not authorized either to accept or +refuse a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutuzov to report the offer he +had received. + +A truce was Kutuzov's sole chance of gaining time, giving +Bagration's exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport +and heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French) +advance if but one stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the +only, and a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On +receiving the news he immediately dispatched Adjutant General +Wintzingerode, who was in attendance on him, to the enemy camp. +Wintzingerode was not merely to agree to the truce but also to offer +terms of capitulation, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back +to hasten to the utmost the movements of the baggage trains of the +entire army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagration's exhausted and +hungry detachment, which alone covered this movement of the +transport and of the whole army, had to remain stationary in face of +an enemy eight times as strong as itself. + +Kutuzov's expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which +were in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to +pass, and also that Murat's mistake would very soon be discovered, +proved correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen +miles from Hollabrunn) received Murat's dispatch with the proposal +of a truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the +following letter to Murat: + +Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805, + +at eight o'clock in the morning + +To PRINCE MURAT, + +I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command +only my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice +without my order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign. +Break the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him +that the general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so, +and that no one but the Emperor of Russia has that right. + +If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I +will ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the +Russian army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and +artillery. + +The Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are +nothing when they have no powers; this one had none.... The +Austrians let themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna +bridge, you are letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of +the Emperor. + +NAPOLEON + +Bonaparte's adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to +Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all +the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim +escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires, +dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first +time for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was +in store for him. + +CHAPTER XV + +Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who +had persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived at Grunth and +reported himself to Bagration. Bonaparte's adjutant had not yet +reached Murat's detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In +Bagration's detachment no one knew anything of the general position of +affairs. They talked of peace but did not believe in its +possibility; others talked of a battle but also disbelieved in the +nearness of an engagement. Bagration, knowing Bolkonski to be a +favorite and trusted adjutant, received him with distinction and +special marks of favor, explaining to him that there would probably be +an engagement that day or the next, and giving him full liberty to +remain with him during the battle or to join the rearguard and have an +eye on the order of retreat, "which is also very important." + +"However, there will hardly be an engagement today," said +Bagration as if to reassure Prince Andrew. + +"If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a +medal he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he +wishes to stay with me, let him... he'll be of use here if he's a +brave officer," thought Bagration. Prince Andrew, without replying, +asked the prince's permission to ride round the position to see the +disposition of the forces, so as to know his bearings should he be +sent to execute an order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly +dressed man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of +speaking French though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince +Andrew. + +On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who +seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors, +benches, and fencing from the village. + +"There now, Prince! We can't stop those fellows," said the staff +officer pointing to the soldiers. "The officers don't keep them in +hand. And there," he pointed to a sutler's tent, "they crowd in and +sit. This morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again. +I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won't take a +moment." + +"Yes, let's go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese," +said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything. + +"Why didn't you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you +something." + +They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed +and weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking. + +"Now what does this mean, gentlemen?" said the staff officer, in the +reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more than +once. "You know it won't do to leave your posts like this. The +prince gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you, +Captain," and he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer +who without his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to +dry), in only his stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not +altogether comfortably. + +"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?" he +continued. "One would think that as an artillery officer you would set +a good example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be +sounded and you'll be in a pretty position without your boots!" (The +staff officer smiled.) "Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of +you, all!" he added in a tone of command. + +Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery +officer Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged +foot to the other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent, +kindly eyes from Prince Andrew to the staff officer. + +"The soldiers say it feels easier without boots," said Captain +Tushin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently +wishing to adopt a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt +that his jest was unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused. + +"Kindly return to your posts," said the staff officer trying to +preserve his gravity. + +Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer's small figure. +There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather +comic, but extremely attractive. + +The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode +on. + +Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking +soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left +some entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which +showed up red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt +sleeves despite the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host +of white ants; spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown +up from behind the bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer +rode up, looked at the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it +they came upon some dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by +others, who ran from the entrenchment. They had to hold their noses +and put their horses to a trot to escape from the poisoned +atmosphere of these latrines. + +"Voila l'agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince,"~{ "This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince." }~ said the staff +officer. + +They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could +already be seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the +position. + +"That's our battery," said the staff officer indicating the +highest point. "It's in charge of the queer fellow we saw without +his boots. You can see everything from there; let's go there, Prince." + +"Thank you very much, I will go on alone," said Prince Andrew, +wishing to rid himself of this staff officer's company, "please +don't trouble yourself further." + +The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone. + +The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly +and cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had +been in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road +seven miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and +alarm could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French +lines the more confident was the appearance of our troops. The +soldiers in their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major +and company officers were counting the men, poking the last man in +each section in the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers +scattered over the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and +were building shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the +fires sat others, dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg +bands or mending boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and +porridge cookers. In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers +were gazing eagerly at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample, +which a quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an +officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had been tasted. + +Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka, +crowded round a pock-marked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who, +tilting a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to +him. The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with +reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, +and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions, +licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats. +All their faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home +awaiting peaceful encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before +an action in which at least half of them would be left on the field. +After passing a chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev +grenadiers- fine fellows busy with similar peaceful affairs- near +the shelter of the regimental commander, higher than and different +from the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of +grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held him while +two others were flourishing their switches and striking him +regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally. A stout +major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the screams +kept repeating: + +"It's a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest, +honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor +in him, he's a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!" + +So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but +unnatural screams, continued. + +"Go on, go on!" said the major. + +A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his +face stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the +adjutant as he rode by. + +Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our +front line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and +left flanks, but in the center where the men with a flag of truce +had passed that morning, the lines were so near together that the +men could see one another's faces and speak to one another. Besides +the soldiers who formed the picket line on either side, there were +many curious onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their +strange foreign enemies. + +Since early morning- despite an injunction not to approach the +picket line- the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away. +The soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a +curiosity, no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the +sight-seers and grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew +halted to have a look at the French. + +"Look! Look there!" one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a +Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer +and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark +to him jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to +keep up with him. There now, Sidorov!" + +"Wait a bit and listen. It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was +considered an adept at French. + +The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince +Andrew recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying. +Dolokhov had come from the left flank where their regiment was +stationed, with his captain. + +"Now then, go on, go on!" incited the officer, bending forward and +trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible +to him. "More, please: more! What's he saying?" + +Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot +dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about +the campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the +Russians, was trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and +had fled all the way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the +Russians had not surrendered but had beaten the French. + +"We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you +off," said Dolokhov. + +"Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!" said +the French grenadier. + +The French onlookers and listeners laughed. + +"We'll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...,"~{ "On vous fera danser." }~ said Dolokhov. + +"Qu' est-ce qu'il chante?"~{ "What's he singing about?" }~ asked a Frenchman. + +"It's ancient history," said another, guessing that it referred to a +former war. "The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the +others..." + +"Bonaparte..." began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him. + +"Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!" cried he angrily. + +"The devil skin your Emperor." + +And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier's Russian and +shouldering his musket walked away. + +"Let us go, Ivan Lukich," he said to the captain. + +"Ah, that's the way to talk French," said the picket soldiers. "Now, +Sidorov, you have a try!" + +Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber +meaningless sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, +Kaska," he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice. + +"Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!" came peals of such healthy +and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the +French involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed +to be to unload the muskets, muskets, explode the ammunition, and +all return home as quickly as possible. + +But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and +entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon +confronted one another as before. + +CHAPTER XVI + +Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left, +Prince Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff +officer had told him the whole field could be seen. Here he +dismounted, and stopped beside the farthest of the four unlimbered +cannon. Before the guns an artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he +stood at attention when the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his +measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were their limbers and +still farther back picket ropes and artillerymen's bonfires. To the +left, not far from the farthest cannon, was a small, newly constructed +wattle shed from which came the sound of officers' voices in eager +conversation. + +It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and +the greater part of the enemy's opened out from this battery. Just +facing it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schon +Grabern could be seen, and in three places to left and right the +French troops amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of +whom were evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To +the left from that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a +battery, but it was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye. +Our right flank was posted on a rather steep incline which dominated +the French position. Our infantry were stationed there, and at the +farthest point the dragoons. In the center, where Tushin's battery +stood and from which Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the +easiest and most direct descent and ascent to the brook separating +us from Schon Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse, +in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood. +The French line was wider than ours, and it was plain that they +could easily outflank us on both sides. Behind our position was a +steep and deep dip, making it difficult for artillery and cavalry to +retire. Prince Andrew took out his notebook and, leaning on the +cannon, sketched a plan of the position. He made some notes on two +points, intending to mention them to Bagration. His idea was, first, +to concentrate all the artillery in the center, and secondly, to +withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince Andrew, +being always near the commander in chief, closely following the mass +movements and general orders, and constantly studying historical +accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the course of +events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only +important possibilities: "If the enemy attacks the right flank," he +said to himself, "the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs must +hold their position till reserves from the center come up. In that +case the dragoons could successfully make a flank counterattack. If +they attack our center we, having the center battery on this high +ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and retreat +to the dip by echelons." So he reasoned.... All the time he had been +beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly, +but as often happens had not understood a word of what they were +saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the +shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen. + +"No, friend," said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, +a familiar voice, "what I say is that if it were possible to know what +is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That's so, friend." + +Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: "Afraid or not, you can't +escape it anyhow." + +"All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people," said a third +manly voice interrupting them both. "Of course you artillery men are +very wise, because you can take everything along with you- vodka and +snacks." + +And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer, +laughed. + +"Yes, one is afraid," continued the first speaker, he of the +familiar voice. "One is afraid of the unknown, that's what it is. +Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there +is no sky but only an atmosphere." + +The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer. + +"Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin," it said. + +"Why," thought Prince Andrew, "that's the captain who stood up in +the sutler's hut without his boots." He recognized the agreeable, +philosophizing voice with pleasure. + +"Some herb vodka? Certainly!" said Tushin. "But still, to conceive a +future life..." + +He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air; +nearer and nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon +ball, as if it had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded +into the ground near the shed with super human force, throwing up a +mass of earth. The ground seemed to groan at the terrible impact. + +And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth +and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed +followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer +who hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran. + +CHAPTER XVII + +Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery, +looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes +ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto +motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was a +battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two +mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A +small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill, +probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had +not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a +report. The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and +galloped back to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. He heard the +cannonade behind him growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our +guns had begun to reply. From the bottom of the slope, where the +parleys had taken place, came the report of musketry. + +Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte's stern +letter, and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at +once moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the +Russian wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the +Emperor to crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him. + +"It has begun. Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood +rush to his heart. "But where and how will my Toulon present itself?" + +Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and +drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same +rapid movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets +ready, and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that +filled his heart. "It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but +enjoyable!" was what the face of each soldier and each officer +seemed to say. + +Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up, +he saw, in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming +toward him. The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and +riding a white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped, +waiting for him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and +recognizing Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while +Prince Andrew told him what he had seen. + +The feeling, "It has begun! Here it is!" was seen even on Prince +Bagration's hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes. +Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face +and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking +and feeling at that moment. "Is there anything at all behind that +impassive face?" Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince +Bagration bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew +told him, and said, "Very good!" in a tone that seemed to imply that +everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he +had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride, +spoke quickly. Prince Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental +accent, spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that +there was no need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the +direction of Tushin's battery. Prince Andrew followed with the +suite. Behind Prince Bagration rode an officer of the suite, the +prince's personal adjutant, Zherkov, an orderly officer, the staff +officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian- an +accountant who had asked permission to be present at the battle out of +curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around +him with a naive smile of satisfaction and presented a strange +appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet +coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy officer's saddle. + +"He wants to see a battle," said Zherkov to Bolkonski, pointing to +the accountant, "but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach +already." + +"Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather +cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of +Zherkov's joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really +was. + +"It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer. +(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing +a prince, but could not get it quite right.) + +By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a +ball struck the ground in front of them. + +"What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive +smile. + +"A French pancake," answered Zherkov. + +"So that's what they hit with?" asked the accountant. "How awful!" + +He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished +speaking when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which +suddenly ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a +Cossack, riding a little to their right and behind the accountant, +crashed to earth with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent +over their saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant +stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive +curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the horse still struggled. + +Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing +the cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to +say, "Is it worth while noticing trifles?" He reined in his horse with +the case of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged +his saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber +of a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story +of Suvorov giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the +recollection was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had +reached the battery at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined +the battlefield. + +"Whose company?" asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman +standing by the ammunition wagon. + +He asked, "Whose company?" but he really meant, "Are you +frightened here?" and the artilleryman understood him. + +"Captain Tushin's, your excellency!" shouted the red-haired, +freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention. + +"Yes, yes," muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he +rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon. + +As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and +his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they +could see the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly +back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number +One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while +Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's +mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over +the tail of the gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the +general, looked out shading his eyes with his small hand. + +"Lift it two lines more and it will be just right," cried he in a +feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill suited to +his weak figure. "Number Two!" he squeaked. "Fire, Medvedev!" + +Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers to his +cap with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military +salute but like a priest's benediction, approached the general. Though +Tushin's guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing +incendiary balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just +opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing. + +No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but +after consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had +great respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set +fire to the village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the +officer's report, and began deliberately to examine the whole +battlefield extended before him. The French had advanced nearest on +our right. Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was +stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring +rolling and crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to the +right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to +Bagration a French column that was outflanking us. To the left the +horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration ordered two +battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right flank. +The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that if +these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support. +Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes looked +at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the officer's +remark was just and that really no answer could be made to it. But +at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the +commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses +of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was +in disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince +Bagration bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off +at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with +orders to attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour +later with the news that the commander of the dragoons had already +retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a heavy fire had been +opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and so had hastened +to throw some sharpshooters into the wood. + +"Very good!" said Bagration. + +As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also, +and as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go +there himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to tell the general in +command (the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at +Braunau) that he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow +in the rear, as the right flank would probably not be able to +withstand the enemy's attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion +that had been in support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince +Andrew listened attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the +commanding officers and the orders he gave them and, to his +surprise, found that no orders were really given, but that Prince +Bagration tried to make it appear that everything done by necessity, +by accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was done, if not +by his direct command, at least in accord with his intentions. +Prince Andrew noticed, however, that though what happened was due to +chance and was independent of the commander's will, owing to the +tact Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable. Officers who +approached him with disturbed countenances became calm; soldiers and +officers greeted him gaily, grew more cheerful in his presence, and +were evidently anxious to display their courage before him. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of our right +flank, began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard +but where on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer +they got to the hollow the less they could see but the more they +felt the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began to meet +wounded men. One with a bleeding head and no cap was being dragged +along by two soldiers who supported him under the arms. There was a +gurgle in his throat and he was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently +hit him in the throat or mouth. Another was walking sturdily by +himself but without his musket, groaning aloud and swinging his arm +which had just been hurt, while blood from it was streaming over his +greatcoat as from a bottle. He had that moment been wounded and his +face showed fear rather than suffering. Crossing a road they descended +a steep incline and saw several men lying on the ground; they also met +a crowd of soldiers some of whom were unwounded. The soldiers were +ascending the hill breathing heavily, and despite the general's +presence were talking loudly and gesticulating. In front of them +rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the smoke, and an +officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after the crowd of +retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagration rode up to the +ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning +the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked +with smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with +it. Some were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the +touchpans or taking charges from their pouches, while others were +firing, though who they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke +which there was no wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and +whistling of bullets were often heard. "What is this?" thought +Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of soldiers. "It can't be an +attack, for they are not moving; it can't be a square- for they are +not drawn up for that." + +The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a +pleasant smile- his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes, +giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as +a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had +been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been +repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack had +been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had +occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know +what had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to +him, and could not say with certainty whether the attack had been +repulsed or his regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at +the commencement of the action balls and shells began flying all +over his regiment and hitting men and that afterwards someone had +shouted "Cavalry!" and our men had begun firing. They were still +firing, not at the cavalry which had disappeared, but at French +infantry who had come into the hollow and were firing at our men. +Prince Bagration bowed his head as a sign that this was exactly what +he had desired and expected. Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to +bring down the two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs whom they had +just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by the changed expression on +Prince Bagration's face at this moment. It expressed the +concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of a man who +on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water. The +dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation of +profound thought. The round, steady, hawk's eyes looked before him +eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although +his movements were still slow and measured. + +The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating +him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were. +"Please, your excellency, for God's sake!" he kept saying, glancing +for support at an officer of the suite who turned away from him. +"There, you see!" and he drew attention to the bullets whistling, +singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in the tone +of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who +has picked up an ax: "We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister +your hands." He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and +his half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his words. +The staff officer joined in the colonel's appeals, but Bagration did +not reply; he only gave an order to cease firing and re-form, so as to +give room for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking, +the curtain of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising +wind, began to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible +hand, and the hill opposite, with the French moving about on it, +opened out before them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French +column advancing against them and winding down over the uneven ground. +One could already see the soldiers' shaggy caps, distinguish the +officers from the men, and see the standard flapping against its +staff. + +"They march splendidly," remarked someone in Bagration's suite. + +The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The +clash would take place on this side of it... + +The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly +formed up and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the +laggards, came two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order. +Before they had reached Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of +men marching in step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to +Bagration, marched a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a +stupid and happy expression- the same man who had rushed out of the +wattle shed. At that moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how +dashing a fellow he would appear as he passed the commander. + +With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly +with his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to +his full height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with +the heavy tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He +carried close to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and +not like a real weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and +now back at the men without losing step, his whole powerful body +turning flexibly. It was as if all the powers of his soul were +concentrated on passing the commander in the best possible manner, and +feeling that he was doing it well he was happy. "Left... left... +left..." he seemed to repeat to himself at each alternate step; and in +time to this, with stern but varied faces, the wall of soldiers +burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched in step, and each one of +these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be repeating to himself at each +alternate step, "Left... left... left..." A fat major skirted a +bush, puffing and falling out of step; a soldier who had fallen +behind, his face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot, +panting to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the air, +flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and fell into the +column to the measure of "Left... left!" "Close up!" came the +company commander's voice in jaunty tones. The soldiers passed in a +semicircle round something where the ball had fallen, and an old +trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped beside +the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling into step with a +hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous silence and the +regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one seemed to hear +left... left... left. + +"Well done, lads!" said Prince Bagration. + +"Glad to do our best, your ex'len-lency!" came a confused shout from +the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on +Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: "We +know that ourselves!" Another, without looking round, as though +fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on. + +The order was given to halt and down knapsacks. + +Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past him and +dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over +his felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The +head of the French column, with its officers leading, appeared from +below the hill. + +"Forward, with God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous +voice, turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging +his arms, he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the +awkward gait of a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible +power was leading him forward, and experienced great happiness. + +The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside +Bagration, could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets, +and even their faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who, +with gaitered legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with +difficulty.) Prince Bagration gave no further orders and silently +continued to walk on in front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after +another rang out from the French, smoke appeared all along their +uneven ranks, and musket shots sounded. Several of our men fell, among +them the round-faced officer who had marched so gaily and +complacently. But at the moment the first report was heard, +Bagration looked round and shouted, "Hurrah!" + +"Hurrah- ah!- ah!" rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and +passing Bagration and racing one another they rushed in an irregular +but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe. + +CHAPTER XIX + +The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right +flank. In the center Tushin's forgotten battery, which had managed +to set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French +advance. The French were putting out the fire which the wind was +spreading, and thus gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the +center to the other side of the dip in the ground at the rear was +hurried and noisy, but the different companies did not get mixed. +But our left- which consisted of the Azov and Podolsk infantry and the +Pavlograd hussars- was simultaneously attacked and outflanked by +superior French forces under Lannes and was thrown into confusion. +Bagration had sent Zherkov to the general commanding that left flank +with orders to retreat immediately. + +Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse +about and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagration than his +courage failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it +was dangerous. + +Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where +the firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where +they could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order. + +The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander +of the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which +Dolokhov was serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left +flank had been assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment +in which Rostov was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two +commanders were much exasperated with one another and, long after +the action had begun on the right flank and the French were already +advancing, were engaged in discussion with the sole object of +offending one another. But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry, +were by no means ready for the impending action. From privates to +general they were not expecting a battle and were engaged in +peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the horses and the +infantry collecting wood. + +"He higher iss dan I in rank," said the German colonel of the +hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, "so +let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars... +Bugler, sount ze retreat!" + +But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling +together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the +capotes of Lannes' sharpshooters were already seen crossing the +milldam and forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The +general in command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky +steps, and having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and +rode to the Pavlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows +but with secret malevolence in their hearts. + +"Once again, Colonel," said the general, "I can't leave half my +men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you," he repeated, "to +occupy the position and prepare for an attack." + +"I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!" +suddenly replied the irate colonel. "If you vere in the cavalry..." + +"I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if +you are not aware of the fact..." + +"Quite avare, your excellency," suddenly shouted the colonel, +touching his horse and turning purple in the face. "Vill you be so +goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don't +vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!" + +"You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own +pleasure and I won't allow it to be said!" + +Taking the colonel's outburst as a challenge to his courage, the +general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front +line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the +bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and +they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the +line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that +it was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken +ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The +general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another +like two fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to +detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination +successfully. As there was nothing to said, and neither wished to give +occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave +the range of fire, they would have remained there for a long time +testing each other's courage had it not been that just then they heard +the rattle of musketry and a muffled shout almost behind them in the +wood. The French had attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It +was no longer possible for the hussars to retreat with the infantry. +They were cut off from the line of retreat on the left by the +French. However inconvenient the position, it was now necessary to +attack in order to cut away through for themselves. + +The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to +mount before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns +bridge, there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and +again that terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear- +resembling the line separating the living from the dead- lay between +them. All were conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether +they would they would cross it or not, and how they would cross it, +agitated them all. + +The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to +questions put to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately +insisting on having his own way, gave an order. No one said anything +definite, but the rumor of an attack spread through the squadron. +The command to form up rang out and the sabers whizzed as they were +drawn from their scabbards. Still no one moved. The troops of the left +flank, infantry and hussars alike, felt that the commander did not +himself know what to do, and this irresolution communicated itself +to the men. + +"If only they would be quick!" thought Rostov, feeling that at +last the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which +he had so often heard from his fellow hussars. + +"Fo'ward, with God, lads!" rang out Denisov's voice. "At a twot +fo'ward!" + +The horses' croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at +the reins and started of his own accord. + +Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his +hussars and still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see +distinctly but took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some +way off. + +"Faster!" came the word of command, and Rostov felt Rook's flanks +drooping as he broke into a gallop. + +Rostov anticipated his horse's movements and became more and more +elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had +been in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible- and now he +had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but +everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. "Oh, how I +will slash at him!" thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber. + +"Hur-a-a-a-ah!" came a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now," +thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a +full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was +already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep +over the squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at +that instant the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away +from him, and Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be +carried forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same +spot. From behind him Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against +him and looked angrily at him. Bondarchuk's horse swerved and galloped +past. + +"How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!" Rostov +asked and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle +of a field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars' backs, he saw +nothing before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around +him. There was warm blood under his arm. "No, I am wounded and the +horse is killed." Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back, +pinning his rider's leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled +but could not rise. Rostov also tried to rise but fell back, his +sabretache having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men +were, and where the French, he did not know. There was no one near. + +Having disentangled his leg, he rose. "Where, on which side, was now +the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself +and could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he +wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something +superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if +it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find +blood on it. "Ah, here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing +some men running toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a +man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned, +and with a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running +behind. One of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among +the hindmost of these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar. +He was being held by the arms and his horse was being led behind him. + +"It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will +take me too? Who are these men?" thought Rostov, scarcely believing +his eyes. "Can they be French?" He looked at the approaching +Frenchmen, and though but a moment before he had been galloping to get +at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful +that he could not believe his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they +running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom +everyone is so fond of?" He remembered his mother's love for him, +and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to +kill him seemed impossible. "But perhaps they may do it!" For more +than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the +situation. The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was +already so close that the expression of his face could be seen. And +the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding +his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He seized his +pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran +with all his might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the +feeling of doubt and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns +bridge, but with the feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One +single sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed +his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled across the field +with the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay, now and then +turning his good-natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder +of terror went through him: "No, better not look," he thought, but +having reached the bushes he glanced round once more. The French had +fallen behind, and just as he looked round the first man changed his +run to a walk and, turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade +farther back. Rostov paused. "No, there's some mistake," thought he. +"They can't have wanted to kill me." But at the same time, his left +arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He +could run no more. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov +closed his eyes and stooped down. One bullet and then another whistled +past him. He mustered his last remaining strength, took hold of his +left hand with his right, and reached the bushes. Behind these were +some Russian sharpshooters. + +CHAPTER XX + +The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the +outskirts of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting +mixed, and retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his +fear, uttered the senseless cry, "Cut off!" that is so terrible in +battle, and that word infected the whole crowd with a feeling of +panic. + +"Surrounded! Cut off? We're lost!" shouted the fugitives. + +The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the +general realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment, +and the thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service +who had never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters +for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the +recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and +above all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for +self-preservation, he clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring +his horse, galloped to the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell +around, but fortunately missed him. His one desire was to know what +was happening and at any cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he +had made one, so that he, an exemplary officer of twenty-two years' +service, who had never been censured, should not be held to blame. + +Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind +the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and +descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides +the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of +soldiers attend to the voice of their commander, or would they, +disregarding him, continue their flight? Despite his desperate +shouts that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his +furious purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his former +self, and the flourishing of his saber, the soldiers all continued +to run, talking, firing into the air, and disobeying orders. The moral +hesitation which decided the fate of battles was evidently culminating +in a panic. + +The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the +powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at +that moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any +apparent reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and +Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was +Timokhin's company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood +and, having lain in ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French +unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the +enemy with such a desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination +that, taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets +and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin, killed a Frenchman at +close quarters and was the first to seize the surrendering French +officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the battalions +re-formed, and the French who had nearly cut our left flank in half +were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to join +up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and Major +Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies +pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the +commander's stirrup, almost leaning against him. The man was wearing a +bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or cap, his head was +bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung. +He had an officer's sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his +blue eyes looked impudently into the commander's face, and his lips +were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving instructions +to Major Ekonomov, he could not help taking notice of the soldier. + +"Your excellency, here are two trophies," said Dolokhov, pointing to +the French sword and pouch. "I have taken an officer prisoner. I +stopped the company." Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and +spoke in abrupt sentences. "The whole company can bear witness. I +beg you will remember this, your excellency!" + +"All right, all right," replied the commander, and turned to Major +Ekonomov. + +But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around +his head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair. + +"A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your +excellency!" + +Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of +the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the +center, send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew +also, to order the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When +the supports attached to Tushin's battery had been moved away in the +middle of the action by someone's order, the battery had continued +firing and was only not captured by the French because the enemy could +not surmise that anyone could have the effrontery to continue firing +from four quite undefended guns. On the contrary, the energetic action +of that battery led the French to suppose that here- in the center- +the main Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to +attack this point, but on each occasion had been driven back by +grapeshot from the four isolated guns on the hillock. + +Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in +setting fire to Schon Grabern. + +"Look at them scurrying! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine! +Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!" exclaimed the artillerymen, +brightening up. + +All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the +direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the +soldiers cried at each shot: "Fine! That's good! Look at it... Grand!" +The fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French +columns that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as +though in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the +right of the village and began firing them at Tushin's battery. + +In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in +successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed +this battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our +guns, one knocking over two horses and another tearing off a +munition-wagon driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were, +however, not diminished, but only changed character. The horses were +replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the wounded were +carried away, and the four guns were turned against the ten-gun +battery. Tushin's companion officer had been killed at the beginning +of the engagement and within an hour seventeen of the forty men of the +guns' crews had been disabled, but the artillerymen were still as +merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed the French appearing +below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them. + +Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly +to "refill my pipe for that one!" and then, scattering sparks from it, +ran forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the +French. + +"Smack at 'em, lads!" he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels +and working the screws himself. + +Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always +made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from +gun to gun, now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders +about replacing dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, +and shouting in his feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute. +His face grew more and more animated. Only when a man was killed or +wounded did he frown and turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at +the men who, as is always the case, hesitated about lifting the +injured or dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows and, +as is always the case in an artillery company, a head and shoulders +taller and twice as broad as their officer- all looked at their +commander like children in an embarrassing situation, and the +expression on his face was invariably reflected on theirs. + +Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and +activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense +of fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded +never occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more +elated. It seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a +day, since he had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and +that the corner of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar +ground. Though he thought of everything, considered everything, and +did everything the best of officers could do in his position, he was +in a state akin to feverish delirium or drunkenness. + +From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle +and thud of the enemy's cannon balls, from the flushed and +perspiring faces of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight +of the blood of men and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on +the enemy's side (always followed by a ball flying past and striking +the earth, a man, a gun, a horse), from the sight of all these +things a fantastic world of his own had taken possession of his +brain and at that moment afforded him pleasure. The enemy's guns +were in his fancy not guns but pipes from which occasional puffs +were blown by an invisible smoker. + +"There... he's puffing again," muttered Tushin to himself, as a +small cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left +by the wind. + +"Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back." + +"What do you want, your honor?" asked an artilleryman, standing +close by, who heard him muttering. + +"Nothing... only a shell..." he answered. + +"Come along, our Matvevna!" he said to himself. "Matvevna"~{ Daughter of Matthew. }~ was +the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which +was large and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their +guns seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard +Number One of the second gun's crew was "uncle"; Tushin looked at +him more often than at anyone else and took delight in his every +movement. The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now +diminishing, now increasing, seemed like someone's breathing. He +listened intently to the ebb and flow of these sounds. + +"Ah! Breathing again, breathing!" he muttered to himself. + +He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was +throwing cannon balls at the French with both hands. + +"Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don't let me down!" he was +saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice +called above his head: "Captain Tushin! Captain!" + +Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had +turned him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping +voice: + +"Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you..." + +"Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his +superior. + +"I... don't..." he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap. +"I..." + +But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon +ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse. +He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another +ball stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off. + +"Retire! All to retire!" he shouted from a distance. + +The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the +same order. + +It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the +space where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with +a broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed +horses. Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the +limbers lay several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he +approached and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the +mere thought of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid," +thought he, and dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the +order and did not leave the battery. He decided to have the guns +removed from their positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together +with Tushin, stepping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from +the French, he attended to the removal of the guns. + +"A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off," said an +artilleryman to Prince Andrew. "Not like your honor!" + +Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to +seem not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two +cannon that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down +the hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind), +Prince Andrew rode up to Tushin. + +"Well, till we meet again..." he said, holding out his hand to +Tushin. + +"Good-by, my dear fellow," said Tushin. "Dear soul! Good-by, my dear +fellow!" and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his eyes. + +CHAPTER XXI + +The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke, +hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing +dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous. +The cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on +the right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns, +continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range +of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the +staff, among them the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice +sent to Tushin's battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one +another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to +proceed, reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and, +silently- fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to weep +without knowing why- rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the +orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves +after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty +infantry officer who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's +wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's" +carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one +hand with the other, came up to Tushin and asked for a seat. + +"Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he said timidly. "For +God's sake... I can't walk. For God's sake!" + +It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift +and been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice. + +"Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!" + +"Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak for him to sit on, +lad," he said, addressing his favorite soldier. "And where is the +wounded officer?" + +"He has been set down. He died," replied someone. + +"Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak, +Antonov." + +The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other; he was +pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on +"Matvevna," the gun from which they had removed the dead officer. +The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his +breeches and arm. + +"What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching the gun on +which Rostov sat. + +"No, it's a sprain." + +"Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired Tushin. + +"It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered the +artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if +apologizing for the state of his gun. + +It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by +the infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they +halted. It had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the +uniforms ten paces off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, +near by on the right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of +shot gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French attack and +was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the village houses. They +all rushed out of the village again, but Tushin's guns could not move, +and the artillerymen, Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances +as they awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking +eagerly, streamed out of a side street. + +"Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one. + +"We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another push now," +said another. + +"You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows! +Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there something to +drink?" + +The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and +again in the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward, surrounded +by the humming infantry as by a frame. + +In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was +flowing always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and +the sound of hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and +voices of the wounded were more distinctly heard than any other +sound in the darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the +army was filled with their groans, which seemed to melt into one +with the darkness of the night. After a while the moving mass became +agitated, someone rode past on a white horse followed by his suite, +and said something in passing: "What did he say? Where to, now? +Halt, is it? Did he thank us?" came eager questions from all sides. +The whole moving mass began pressing closer together and a report +spread that they were ordered to halt: evidently those in front had +halted. All remained where they were in the middle of the muddy road. + +Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin, +having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a +dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a +bonfire the soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too, dragged +himself to the fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering +shook his whole body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but +he kept awake kept awake by an excruciating pain in his arm, for which +he could find no satisfactory position. He kept closing his eyes and +then again looking at the fire, which seemed to him dazzlingly red, +and at the feeble, round-shouldered figure of Tushin who was sitting +cross-legged like a Turk beside him. Tushin's large, kind, intelligent +eyes were fixed with sympathy and commiseration on Rostov, who saw +that Tushin with his whole heart wished to help him but could not. + +From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry, +who were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The +sound of voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving in mud, +the crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous +rumble. + +It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through +the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a +storm. Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed +before and around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on +his heels, held his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face. + +"You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've lost my company, +your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!" + +With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came +up to the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have the guns +moved a trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers +rushed to the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately, +each trying to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding +on to. + +"You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!" one of them +shouted hoarsely. + +Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg +band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water. + +"Must one die like a dog?" said he. + +Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier +ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry. + +"A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you, +fellow countrymen. Thanks for the fire- we'll return it with +interest," said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick. + +Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and +passed by the fire. One of them stumbled. + +"Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled he. + +"He's dead- why carry him?" said another. + +"Shut up!" + +And they disappeared into the darkness with with their load. + +"Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper. + +"Yes." + +"Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the hut here," +said a gunner, coming up to Tushin. + +"Coming, friend." + +Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight, +walked away from the fire. + +Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared +for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with some +commanding officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old +man with the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton +bone, and the general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, +flushed by a glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with +the signet ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and +Prince Andrew, pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering +eyes. + +In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French, +and the accountant with the naive face was feeling its texture, +shaking his head in perplexity- perhaps because the banner really +interested him, perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, +to look on at a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next +hut there was a French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our +dragoons. Our officers were flocking in to look at him. Prince +Bagration was thanking the individual commanders and inquiring into +details of the action and our losses. The general whose regiment had +been inspected at Braunau was informing the prince that as soon as the +action began he had withdrawn from the wood, mustered the men who were +woodcutting, and, allowing the French to pass him, had made a +bayonet charge with two battalions and had broken up the French +troops. + +"When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was +disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come +on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'- and +that's what I did." + +The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not +managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened. +Perhaps it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid +all that confusion what did or did not happen? + +"By the way, your excellency, I should inform you," he continued- +remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov and his last +interview with the gentleman-ranker- "that Private Dolokhov, who was +reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence +and particularly distinguished himself." + +"I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency," +chimed in Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the +hussars all that day, but had heard about them from an infantry +officer. "They broke up two squares, your excellency." + +Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of +his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the +glory of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious +expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie +devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel: + +"Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically: +infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were +abandoned in the center?" he inquired, searching with his eyes for +someone. (Prince Bagration did not ask about the guns on the left +flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the +very beginning of the action.) "I think I sent you?" he added, turning +to the staff officer on duty. + +"One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and the other I +can't understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had +only just left.... It is true that it was hot there," he added, +modestly. + +Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the +village and had already been sent for. + +"Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince +Andrew. + +"Of course, we only just missed one another," said the staff +officer, with a smile to Bolkonski. + +"I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince Andrew, coldly +and abruptly. + +All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made his way +timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past +the generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always +was by the sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of +the banner and stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed. + +"How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration, frowning, not +so much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom +Zherkov laughed loudest. + +Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his +guilt and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive +present themselves to Tushin in all their horror. He had been so +excited that he had not thought about it until that moment. The +officers' laughter confused him still more. He stood before +Bagration with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly able to +mutter: "I don't know... your excellency... I had no men... your +excellency." + +"You might have taken some from the covering troops." + +Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that +was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into +trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy who +has blundered looks at an examiner. + +The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not +wishing to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture +to intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from under his brows +and his fingers twitched nervously. + +"Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt +voice," you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin's battery. I +went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two +guns smashed, and no supports at all." + +Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at +Bolkonski, who spoke with suppressed agitation. + +"And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion," he +continued, "we owe today's success chiefly to the action of that +battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company," +and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table. + +Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to show +distrust in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to +credit it, bent his head, and told Tushin that he could go. Prince +Andrew went out with him. + +"Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said Tushin. + +Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He +felt sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had +hoped. + +"Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will +all this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the changing shadows +before him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense. +Irresistible drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his +eyes, and the impression of those voices and faces and a sense of +loneliness merged with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers- +wounded and unwounded- it was they who were crushing, weighing down, +and twisting the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm +and shoulder. To rid himself of them he closed his eyes. + +For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things +appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand, +Sonya's thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter, Denisov +with his voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with +Telyanin and Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing as this soldier +with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that +were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and +always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them, +but they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair's +breadth. It would not ache- it would be well- if only they did not +pull it, but it was immpossible to get rid of them. + +He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung +less than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling +snow were fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned, the +doctor had not come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was +sitting naked at the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow +body. + +"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is no one to help me or +pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He +sighed and, doing so, groaned involuntarily. + +"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his +shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt +and added: "What a lot of men have been crippled today- frightful!" + +Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes +fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm, +bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his +healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. "And why +did I come here?" he wondered. + +Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant +of Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army. + +BOOK THREE: 1805 + +CHAPTER I + +Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his +plans. Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own +advantage. He was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom +getting on had become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he +never rightly accounted to himself, but which formed the whole +interest of his life, were constantly shaping themselves in his +mind, arising from the circumstances and persons he met. Of these +plans he had not merely one or two in his head but dozens, some only +beginning to form themselves, some approaching achievement, and some +in course of disintegration. He did not, for instance, say to himself: +"This man now has influence, I must gain his confidence and friendship +and through him obtain a special grant." Nor did he say to himself: +"Pierre is a rich man, I must entice him to marry my daughter and lend +me the forty thousand rubles I need." But when he came across came +across a man of position his instinct immediately told him that this +man could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince Vasili + +took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him, become +intimate with him, and finally make his request. + +He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an +appointment as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time +conferred the status of Councilor of State, and insisted on the +young man accompanying him to Petersburg and staying at his house. +With apparent absent-mindedness, yet with unhesitating assurance +that he was doing the right thing, Prince Vasili did everything to get +Pierre to marry his daughter. Had he thought out his plans +beforehand he could not have been so natural and shown such unaffected +familiarity in intercourse with everybody both above and below him +in social standing. Something always drew him toward those richer +and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in seizing the +most opportune moment for making use of people. + +Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov and a rich man, felt +himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset +and preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He +had to sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the +purpose of which was not clear to him, to question his chief +steward, to visit his estate near Moscow, and to receive many people +who formerly did not even wish to know of his existence but would +now have been offended and grieved had he chosen not to see them. +These different people- businessmen, relations, and acquaintances +alike- were all disposed to treat the young heir in the most +friendly and flattering manner: they were all evidently firmly +convinced of Pierre's noble qualities. He was always hearing such +words as: "With your remarkable kindness," or, "With your excellent +heart," "You are yourself so honorable Count," or, "Were he as +clever as you," and so on, till he began sincerely to believe in his +own exceptional kindness and extraordinary intelligence, the more so +as in the depth of his heart it had always seemed to him that he +really was very kind and intelligent. Even people who had formerly +been spiteful toward him and evidently unfriendly now became gentle +and affectionate. The angry eldest princess, with the long waist and +hair plastered down like a doll's, had come into Pierre's room after +the funeral. With drooping eyes and frequent blushes she told him +she was very sorry about their past misunderstandings and did not +now feel she had a right to ask him for anything, except only for +permission, after the blow she had received, to remain for a few weeks +longer in the house she so loved and where she had sacrificed so much. +She could not refrain from weeping at these words. Touched that this +statuesque princess could so change, Pierre took her hand and begged +her forgiveness, without knowing what for. From that day the eldest +princess quite changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped +scarf for him. + +"Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with +a great deal from the deceased," said Prince Vasili to him, handing +him a deed to sign for the princess' benefit. + +Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to +throw this bone- a bill for thirty thousand rubles- to the poor +princess that it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the +affair of the inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after +that the princess grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became +affectionate to him, especially the youngest, the pretty one with +the mole, who often made him feel confused by her smiles and her own +confusion when meeting him. + +It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it +would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he +could not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides, +he had no time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or +not. He was always busy and always felt in a state of mild and +cheerful intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some +important and general movement; that something was constantly expected +of him, that if he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many +people, but if he did this and that, all would be well; and he did +what was demanded of him, but still that happy result always +remained in the future. + +More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession of Pierre's +affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of +Count Bezukhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air +of a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would +not, for pity's sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was +the son of his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth, +to the caprice of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few +days he spent in Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would +call Pierre, or go to him himself, and tell him what ought to be +done in a tone of weariness and assurance, as if he were adding +every time: "You know I am overwhelmed with business and it is +purely out of charity that I trouble myself about you, and you also +know quite well that what I propose is the only thing possible." + +"Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last," said Prince +Vasili one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre's elbow, +speaking as if he were saying something which had long since been +agreed upon and could not now be altered. "We start tomorrow and I'm +giving you a place in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important +business here is now settled, and I ought to have been off long ago. +Here is something I have received from the chancellor. I asked him for +you, and you have been entered in the diplomatic corps and made a +Gentleman of the Bedchamber. The diplomatic career now lies open +before you." + +Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words +were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his +career, wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasili +interrupted him in the special deep cooing tone, precluding the +possibility of interrupting his speech, which he used in extreme cases +when special persuasion was needed. + +"Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my +conscience, and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever +complained yet of being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you +could throw it up tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself +when you get to Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from +these terrible recollections." Prince Vasili sighed. "Yes, yes, my +boy. And my valet can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly +forgetting," he added. "You know, mon cher, your father and I had some +accounts to settle, so I have received what was due from the Ryazan +estate and will keep it; you won't require it. We'll go into the +accounts later." + +By "what was due from the Ryazan estate" Prince Vasili meant several +thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre's peasants, which the +prince had retained for himself. + +In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of +gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather +the rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasili had procured for + +him, and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so +numerous that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of +bewilderment, bustle, and continual expectation of some good, always +in front of him but never attained. + +Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in +Petersburg. The Guards had gone to the front; Dolokhov had been +reduced to the ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the +provinces; Prince Andrew was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity +to spend his nights as he used to like to spend them, or to open his +mind by intimate talks with a friend older than himself and whom he +respected. His whole time was taken up with dinners and balls and +was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili's house in the company of the stout +princess, his wife, and his beautiful daughter Helene. + +Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of +attitude toward him that had taken place in society. + +Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that +what he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that +remarks which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind +became foolish as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary +Hippolyte's stupidest remarks came out clever and apt. Now +everything Pierre said was charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say +so, he could see that she wished to and only refrained out of regard +for his modesty. + +In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna +Pavlovna's usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added: +"You will find the beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful +to see." + +When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some +link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and +Helene, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation +were being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased +him as an entertaining supposition. + +Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" was like the former one, only the +novelty she offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a +diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the very latest details of the +Emperor Alexander's visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august +friends had pledged themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold +the cause of justice against the enemy of the human race. Anna +Pavlovna received Pierre with a shade of melancholy, evidently +relating to the young man's recent loss by the death of Count Bezukhov +(everyone constantly considered it a duty to assure Pierre that he was +greatly afflicted by the death of the father he had hardly known), and +her melancholy was just like the august melancholy she showed at the +mention of her most august Majesty the Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre +felt flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna arranged the different groups in +her drawing room with her habitual skill. The large group, in which +were Prince Vasili and the generals, had the benefit of the +diplomat. Another group was at the tea table. Pierre wished to join +the former, but Anna Pavlovna- who was in the excited condition of a +commander on a battlefield to whom thousands of new and brilliant +ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in action- seeing +Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger, saying: + +"Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening." (She +glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) "My dear Helene, be charitable +to my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for ten +minutes. And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count +who will not refuse to accompany you." + +The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre, +looking as if she had to give some final necessary instructions. + +"Isn't she exquisite?" she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately +beauty as she glided away. "And how she carries herself! For so +young a girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It +comes from her heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least +worldly of men would occupy a most brilliant position in society. +Don't you think so? I only wanted to know your opinion," and Anna +Pavlovna let Pierre go. + +Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene's +perfection of manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was just of her +beauty and her remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in +society. + +The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed +desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene and inclined rather to +show her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if +inquiring what she was to do with these people. On leaving them, +Anna Pavlovna again touched Pierre's sleeve, saying: "I hope you won't +say that it is dull in my house again," and she glanced at Helene. + +Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the +possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt +coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to +see Helene, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome +and the same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation, +Helene turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she +gave to everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so +little meaning for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt +was just speaking of a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to +Pierre's father, Count Bezukhov, and showed them her own box. Princess +Helene asked to see the portrait of the aunt's husband on the box lid. + +"That is probably the work of Vinesse," said Pierre, mentioning a +celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the +snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table. + +He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the +snuffbox, passing it across Helene's back. Helene stooped forward to +make room, and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at +evening parties, wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut +very low at front and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like +marble to Pierre, was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could +not but perceive the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near +to his lips that he need only have bent his head a little to have +touched them. He was conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of +perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see +her marble beauty forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the +charm of her body only covered by her garments. And having once seen +this he could not help being aware it, just as we cannot renew an +illusion we have once seen through. + +"So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?" Helene seemed +to say. "You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman +who may belong to anyone- to you too," said her glance. And at that +moment Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must, be his +wife, and that it could not be otherwise. + +He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing +at the altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know, +he did not even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he +knew not why, that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would +happen. + +Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more +to see her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen +her every day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could +not, any more than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe +grass through the mist and taking it for a tree can again take it +for a tree after he has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. +She was terribly close to him. She already had power over him, and +between them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier of his +own will. + +"Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna Pavlovna's +voice, "I see you are all right there." + +And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done +anything reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him +that everyone knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself. + +A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna +said to him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?" + +This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and +Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg +house done up. + +"That's a good thing, but don't move from Prince Vasili's. It is +good to have a friend like the prince," she said, smiling at Prince +Vasili. "I know something about that. Don't I? And you are still so +young. You need advice. Don't be angry with me for exercising an old +woman's privilege." + +She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they +have mentioned their age. "If you marry it will be a different thing," +she continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at +Helene nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He +muttered something and colored. + +When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking +of what had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely +understood that the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her +beauty was mentioned he had said absent-mindedly: "Yes, she's good +looking," he had understood that this woman might belong to him. + +"But she's stupid. I have myself said she is stupid," he thought. +"There is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites +in me. I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with +her and she with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that's +why he was sent away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her +father... It's bad...." he reflected, but while he was thinking this +(the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and +was conscious that another line of thought had sprung up, and while +thinking of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be +his wife, how she would love him become quite different, and how all +he had thought and heard of her might be false. And he again saw her +not as the daughter of Prince Vasili, but visualized her whole body +only veiled by its gray dress. "But no! Why did this thought never +occur to me before?" and again he told himself that it was impossible, +that there would be something unnatural, and as it seemed to him +dishonorable, in this marriage. He recalled her former words and looks +and the words and looks of those who had seen them together. He +recalled Anna Pavlovna's words and looks when she spoke to him about +his house, recalled thousands of such hints from Prince Vasili and +others, and was seized by terror lest he had already, in some way, +bound himself to do something that was evidently wrong and that he +ought not to do. But at the very time he was expressing this +conviction to himself, in another part of his mind her image rose in +all its womanly beauty. + +CHAPTER II + +In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour of inspection +in four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to +visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son +Anatole where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince +Nicholas Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the +daughter of that rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking +these new affairs, Prince Vasili had to settle matters with Pierre, +who, it is true, had latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in +Prince Vasili's house where he was staying, and had been absurd, +excited, and foolish in Helene's presence (as a lover should be), +but had not yet proposed to her. + +"This is all very fine, but things must be settled," said Prince +Vasili to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that +Pierre who was under such obligations to him ("But never mind that") +was not behaving very well in this matter. "Youth, frivolity... +well, God be with him," thought he, relishing his own goodness of +heart, "but it must be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow +will be Lelya's name day. I will invite two or three people, and if he +does not understand what he ought to do then it will be my affair- +yes, my affair. I am her father." + +Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" and after the sleepless +night when he had decided that to marry Helene would be a calamity and +that he ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision, +had not left Prince Vasili's and felt with terror that in people's +eyes he was every day more and more connected with her, that it was +impossible for him to return to his former conception of her, that +he could not break away from her, and that though it would be a +terrible thing he would have to unite his fate with hers. He might +perhaps have been able to free himself but that Prince Vasili (who had +rarely before given receptions) now hardly let a day go by without +having an evening party at which Pierre had to be present unless he +wished to spoil the general pleasure and disappoint everyone's +expectation. Prince Vasili, in the rare moments when he was at home, +would take Pierre's hand in passing and draw it downwards, or +absent-mindedly hold out his wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek for Pierre +to kiss and would say: "Till tomorrow," or, "Be in to dinner or I +shall not see you," or, "I am staying in for your sake," and so on. +And though Prince Vasili, when he stayed in (as he said) for +Pierre's sake, hardly exchanged a couple of words with him, Pierre +felt unable to disappoint him. Every day he said to himself one and +the same thing: "It is time I understood her and made up my mind +what she really is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now? No, +she is not stupid, she is an excellent girl," he sometimes said to +himself "she never makes a mistake, never says anything stupid. She +says little, but what she does say is always clear and simple, so +she is not stupid. She never was abashed and is not abashed now, so +she cannot be a bad woman!" He had often begun to make reflections +or think aloud in her company, and she had always answered him +either by a brief but appropriate remark- showing that it did not +interest her- or by a silent look and smile which more palpably than +anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in +regarding all arguments as nonsense in comparison with that smile. + +She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant +for him alone, in which there was something more significant than in +the general smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that +everyone was waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line, +and he knew that sooner or later he would step across it, but an +incomprehensible terror seized him at the thought of that dreadful +step. A thousand times during that month and a half while he felt +himself drawn nearer and nearer to that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to +himself: "What am I doing? I need resolution. Can it be that I have +none?" + +He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this +matter he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself +and really possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when +they feel themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was +overpowered by a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at +Anna Pavlovna's, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire +paralyzed his will. + +On Helene's name day, a small party of just their own people- as his +wife said- met for supper at Prince Vasili's. All these friends and +relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young girl +would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper. +Princess Kuragina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome, +was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the +more important guests- an old general and his wife, and Anna +Pavlovna Scherer. At the other end sat the younger and less +important guests, and there too sat the members of the family, and +Pierre and Helene, side by side. Prince Vasili was not having any +supper: he went round the table in a merry mood, sitting down now by +one, now by another, of the guests. To each of them he made some +careless and agreeable remark except to Pierre and Helene, whose +presence he seemed not to notice. He enlivened the whole party. The +wax candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal gleamed, so did +the ladies' toilets and the gold and silver of the men's epaulets; +servants in scarlet liveries moved round the table, the clatter of +plates, knives, and glasses mingled with the animated hum of several +conversations. At one end of the table, the old chamberlain was +heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her passionately, at +which she laughed; at the other could be heard the story of the +misfortunes of some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the center of the +table, Prince Vasili attracted everybody's attention. With a facetious +smile on his face, he was telling the ladies about last Wednesday's +meeting of the Imperial Council, at which Sergey Kuzmich +Vyazmitinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had +received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander +from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the Emperor said that he was +receiving from all sides declarations of the people's loyalty, that +the declaration from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that +he was proud to be at the head of such a nation and would endeavor +to be worthy of it. This rescript began with the words: "Sergey +Kuzmich, From all sides reports reach me," etc. + +"Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?" asked +one of the ladies. + +"Exactly, not a hair's breadth farther," answered Prince Vasili, +laughing, "'Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides... From all sides... +Sergey Kuzmich...' Poor Vyazmitinov could not get any farther! He +began the rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered 'Sergey' +he sobbed, 'Kuz-mi-ch,' tears, and 'From all sides' was smothered in +sobs and he could get no farther. And again his handkerchief, and +again: 'Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides,'... and tears, till at last +somebody else was asked to read it." + +"Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated +laughing. + +"Don't be unkind," cried Anna Pavlovna from her end of the table +holding up a threatening finger. "He is such a worthy and excellent +man, our dear Vyazmitinov...." + +Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where +the honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and +under the influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre +and Helene sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the +table, a suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that +had nothing to do with Sergey Kuzmich- a smile of bashfulness at their +own feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, +much as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however +they avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant +as they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances +they gave that the story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the +food were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company +was directed to- Pierre and Helene. Prince Vasili mimicked the sobbing +of Sergey Kuzmich and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his +daughter, and while he laughed the expression on his face clearly +said: "Yes... it's getting on, it will all be settled today." Anna +Pavlovna threatened him on behalf of "our dear Vyazmitinov," and in +her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasili read +a congratulation on his future son-in-law and on his daughter's +happiness. The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to +the old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and +her sigh seemed to say: "Yes, there's nothing left for you and me +but to sip sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these +young ones to be thus boldly, provocatively happy." "And what nonsense +all this is that I am saying!" thought a diplomatist, glancing at +the happy faces of the lovers. "That's happiness!" + +Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting +that society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a +healthy and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this +human feeling dominated everything else and soared above all their +affected chatter. Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the +animation was evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the +footmen waiting at table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their +duties as they looked at the beautiful Helene with her radiant face +and at the red, broad, and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It +seemed as if the very light of the candles was focused on those two +happy faces alone. + +Pierre felt that he the center of it all, and this both pleased +and embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some +occupation. He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only +now and then detached ideas and impressions from the world of +reality shot unexpectedly through his mind. + +"So it is all finished!" he thought. "And how has it all happened? +How quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself +alone, but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They +are all expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I +cannot, I cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not +know, but it will certainly happen!" thought Pierre, glancing at those +dazzling shoulders close to his eyes. + +Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it +awkward to attract everyone's attention and to be considered a lucky +man and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris +possessed of a Helen. "But no doubt it always is and must be so!" he +consoled himself. "And besides, what have I done to bring it about? +How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasili. Then +there was nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I +played cards with her and picked up her reticule and drove out with +her. How did it begin, when did it all come about?" And here he was +sitting by her side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her +nearness, her breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then it would +suddenly seem to him that it was not she but he was so unusually +beautiful, and that that was why they all looked so at him, and +flattered by this general admiration he would expand his chest, +raise his head, and rejoice at his good fortune. Suddenly he heard a +familiar voice repeating something to him a second time. But Pierre +was so absorbed that he did not understand what was said. + +"I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski," repeated +Prince Vasili a third time. "How absent-minded you are, my dear +fellow." + +Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling +at him and Helene. "Well, what of it, if you all know it?" thought +Pierre. "What of it? It's the truth!" and he himself smiled his gentle +childlike smile, and Helene smiled too. + +"When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?" repeated Prince +Vasili, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a +dispute. + +"How can one talk or think of such trifles?" thought Pierre. + +"Yes, from Olmutz," he answered, with a sigh. + +After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the +drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking +leave of Helene. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an +important occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go +away, refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a +mournful silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity +of his diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre's happiness. The +old general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was. +"Oh, the old fool," he thought. "That Princess Helene will be +beautiful still when she's fifty." + +"I think I may congratulate you," whispered Anna Pavlovna to the old +princess, kissing her soundly. "If I hadn't this headache I'd have +stayed longer." + +The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her +daughter's happiness. + +While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a +long time alone with Helene in the little drawing room where they were +sitting. He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained +alone with her, but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt +that it was inevitable, but he could not make up his mind to take +the final step. He felt ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone +else's place here beside Helene. "This happiness is not for you," some +inner voice whispered to him. "This happiness is for those who have +not in them what there is in you." + +But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether +she was satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple +manner that this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest +she had ever had. + +Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in +the large drawing room. Prince Vasili came up to Pierre with languid +footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasili +gave him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just +said was so strange that one could not take it in. But then the +expression of severity changed, and he drew Pierre's hand downwards, +made him sit down, and smiled affectionately. + +"Well, Lelya?" he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and +addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural +to parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which +Prince Vasili had only acquired by imitating other parents. + +And he again turned to Pierre. + +"Sergey Kuzmich- From all sides-" he said, unbuttoning the top +button of his waistcoat. + +Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the +story about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince Vasili just then, +and Prince Vasili saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered +something and went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince +was disconcerted. The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the +world touched Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too seemed +disconcerted, and her look seemed to say: "Well, it is your own +fault." + +"The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!" thought Pierre, and +he again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergey +Kuzmich, asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it +properly. Helene answered with a smile that she too had missed it. + +When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the princess, his +wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre. + +"Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear..." + +"Marriages are made in heaven," replied the elderly lady. + +Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat +down on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and +seemed to be dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself. + +"Aline," he said to his wife, "go and see what they are about." + +The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified +and indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room. +Pierre and Helene still sat talking just as before. + +"Still the same," she said to her husband. + +Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and +his face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him. +Shaking himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps +went past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he +went joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant +that Pierre rose in alarm on seeing it. + +"Thank God!" said Prince Vasili. "My wife has told me everything!- +(He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)- "My +dear boy... Lelya... I am very pleased." (His voice trembled.) "I +loved your father... and she will make you a good wife... God bless +you!..." + +He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with +his malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks. + +"Princess, come here!" he shouted. + +The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using +her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful +Helene's hand several times. After a while they were left alone again. + +"All this had to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so +it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because +it's definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held +the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom +as it rose and fell. + +"Helene!" he said aloud and paused. + +"Something special is always said in such cases," he thought, but +could not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face. +She drew nearer to him. Her face flushed. + +"Oh, take those off... those..." she said, pointing to his +spectacles. + +Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes +have from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a +frightened and inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and +kiss it, but with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she +intercepted his lips and met them with her own. Her face struck +Pierre, by its altered, unpleasantly excited expression. + +"It is too late now, it's done; besides I love her," thought Pierre. + +"Je vous aime!"~{ "I love you." }~ he said, remembering what has to be said at such +moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of +himself. + +Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov's +large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as +people said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions +of money. + +CHAPTER III + +Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from Prince Vasili +in November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying +him a visit. "I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of +course I shall think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see +you at the same time, my honored benefactor," wrote Prince Vasili. "My + +son Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you +will allow him personally to express the deep respect that, +emulating his father, he feels for you." + +"It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors +are coming to us of their own accord," incautiously remarked the +little princess on hearing the news. + +Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing. + +A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili's servants came one +evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day. + +Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasili's +character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and +Alexander Prince Vasili had risen to high position and honors. And +now, from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little +princess, he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion +changed into a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever +he mentioned him. On the day of Prince Vasili's arrival, Prince +Bolkonski was particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether +he was in a bad temper because Prince Vasili was coming, or whether +his being in a bad temper made him specially annoyed at Prince +Vasili's visit, he was in a bad temper, and in the morning Tikhon +had already advised the architect not to go the prince with his +report. + +"Do you hear how he's walking?" said Tikhon, drawing the architect's +attention to the sound of the prince's footsteps. "Stepping flat on +his heels- we know what that means...." + +However, at nine o'clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable +collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day +before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the +habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still +visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of +the soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince +went through the conservatories, the serfs' quarters, and the +outbuildings, frowning and silent. + +"Can a sleigh pass?" he asked his overseer, a venerable man, +resembling his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him +back to the house. + +"The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor." + +The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. "God be +thanked," thought the overseer, "the storm has blown over!" + +"It would have been hard to drive up, your honor," he added. "I +heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor." + +The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him, +frowning. + +"What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?" he said in his +shrill, harsh voice. "The road is not swept for the princess my +daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!" + +"Your honor, I thought..." + +"You thought!" shouted the prince, his words coming more and more +rapidly and indistinctly. "You thought!... Rascals! Blackgaurds!... +I'll teach you to think!" and lifting his stick he swung it and +would have hit Alpatych, the overseer, had not the latter +instinctively avoided the blow. "Thought... Blackguards..." shouted +the prince rapidly. + +But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding +the stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly +before him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he +continued to shout: "Blackgaurds!... Throw the snow back on the road!" +did not lift his stick again but hurried into the house. + +Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew +that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle +Bourienne with a radiant face that said: "I know nothing, I am the +same as usual," and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with +downcast eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such +occasions she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could +not. She thought: "If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not +sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he +will say (as he has done before) that I'm in the dumps." + +The prince looked at his daughter's frightened face and snorted. + +"Fool... or dummy!" he muttered. + +"And the other one is not here. They've been telling tales," he +thought- referring to the little princess who was not in the dining +room. + +"Where is the princess?" he asked. "Hiding?" + +"She is not very well," answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a +bright smile, "so she won't come down. It is natural in her state." + +"Hm! Hm!" muttered the prince, sitting down. + +His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he +flung it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little +princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the +prince that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to +appear. + +"I am afraid for the baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne: +"Heaven knows what a fright might do." + +In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear, +and with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not +realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The +prince reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his +contempt for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to +life at Bald Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle +Bourienne, spent whole days with her, asked her to sleep in her +room, and often talked with her about the old prince and criticized +him. + +"So we are to have visitors, mon prince?" remarked Mademoiselle +Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. "His +Excellency Prince Vasili Kuragin and his son, I understand?" she +said inquiringly. + +"Hm!- his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the +service," said the prince disdainfully. "Why his son is coming I don't +understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don't +want him." (He looked at his blushing daughter.) "Are you unwell +today? Eh? Afraid of the 'minister' as that idiot Alpatych called +him this morning?" + +"No, mon pere." + +Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice +of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the +conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and +after the soup the prince became more genial. + +After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little +princess was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha, her +maid. She grew pale on seeing her father-in-law. + +She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her +cheeks had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down. + +"Yes, I feel a kind of oppression," she said in reply to the +prince's question as to how she felt. + +"Do you want anything?" + +"No, merci, mon pere." + +"Well, all right, all right." + +He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood +with bowed head. + +"Has the snow been shoveled back?" + +"Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven's sake... It was only +my stupidity." + +"All right, all right," interrupted the prince, and laughing his +unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpatych to kiss, and +then proceeded to his study. + +Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by +coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to +one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow. + +Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them. + +Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo +before a table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly +fixed his large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a +continual round of amusement which someone for some reason had to +provide for him. And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and +a rich and ugly heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought, +turn out very well and amusingly. "And why not marry her if she really +has so much money? That never does any harm," thought Anatole. + +He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had +become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his +father's room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to him. +Prince Vasili's two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked round +with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter +entered, as if to say: "Yes, that's how I want you to look." + +"I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?" Anatole asked, +as if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been +mentioned during the journey. + +"Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious +with the old prince." + +"If he starts a row I'll go away," said Prince Anatole. "I can't +bear those old men! Eh?" + +"Remember, for you everything depends on this." + +In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants' rooms +that the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of +both had been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in +her room, vainly trying to master her agitation. + +"Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never +happen!" she said, looking at herself in the glass. "How shall I enter +the drawing room? Even if I like him I can't now be myself with +him." The mere thought of her father's look filled her with terror. +The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received +from Masha, the lady's maid, the necessary report of how handsome +the minister's son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and +with what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while +the son had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time. +Having received this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle +Bourienne, whose chattering voices had reached her from the +corridor, went into Princess Mary's room. + +"You know they've come, Marie?" said the little princess, waddling +in, and sinking heavily into an armchair. + +She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the +morning, but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully +done and her face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its +sunken and faded outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg +society, it was still more noticeable how much plainer she had become. +Some unobtrusive touch had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne's +toilet which rendered her fresh and prettyface yet more attractive. + +"What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?" she +began. "They'll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing +room and we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself +up at all!" + +The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and +merrily began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary +should be dressed. Princess Mary's self-esteem was wounded by the fact +that the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both +her companions' not having the least conception that it could be +otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them +would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to +dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, +her beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it +took on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as +she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these +women quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so +plain that neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they +began dressing her with perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm +conviction women have that dress can make a face pretty. + +"No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty," said Lise, looking +sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. "You have a maroon +dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life +may be at stake. But this one is too light, it's not becoming!" + +It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary +that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little +princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were +placed in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged +lower on the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They +forgot that the frightened face and the figure could not be altered, +and that however they might change the setting and adornment of that +face, it would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three +changes to which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair +had been arranged on the top of her head (a style that quite altered +and spoiled her looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a +pale-blue scarf, the little princess walked twice round her, now +adjusting a fold of the dress with her little hand, now arranging +the scarf and looking at her with her head bent first on one side +and then on the other. + +"No, it will not do," she said decidedly, clasping her hands. "No, +Mary, really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little +gray everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie," she said +to the maid, "bring the princess her gray dress, and you'll see, +Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I shall arrange it," she added, smiling +with a foretaste of artistic pleasure. + +But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained +sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in +the mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to +burst into sobs. + +"Come, dear princess," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "just one more +little effort." + +The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to +Princess Mary. + +"Well, now we'll arrange something quite simple and becoming," she +said. + +The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne's, and Katie's, who +was laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping +of birds. + +"No, leave me alone," said Princess Mary. + +Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the +birds was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, +thoughtful eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and +imploringly at them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel +to insist. + +"At least, change your coiffure," said the little princess. +"Didn't I tell you," she went on, turning reproachfully to +Mademoiselle Bourienne, "Mary's is a face which such a coiffure does +not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change it." + +"Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same +to me," answered a voice struggling with tears. + +Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to +themselves that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse +than usual, but it was too late. She was looking at them with an +expression they both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This +expression in Princess Mary did not frighten them (she never +inspired fear in anyone), but they knew that when it appeared on her +face, she became mute and was not to be shaken in her determination. + +"You will change it, won't you?" said Lise. And as Princess Mary +gave no answer, she left the room. + +Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise's +request, she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look +in her glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with +downcast eyes and pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and +strangely attractive being rose in her imagination, and carried her +into a totally different happy world of his own. She fancied a +child, her own- such as she had seen the day before in the arms of her +nurse's daughter- at her own breast, the husband standing by and +gazing tenderly at her and the child. "But no, it is impossible, I +am too ugly," she thought. + +"Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment," came the +maid's voice at the door. + +She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking, +and before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and, +her eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit +by a lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments. +A painful doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly +love for a man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess +Mary dreamed of happiness and of children, but her strongest, most +deeply hidden longing was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide +this feeling from others and even from herself, the stronger it +grew. "O God," she said, "how am I to stifle in my heart these +temptations of the devil? How am I to renounce forever these vile +fancies, so as peacefully to fulfill Thy will?" And scarcely had she +put that question than God gave her the answer in her own heart. +"Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or +envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee, +but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be God's +will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill +His will." With this consoling thought (but yet with a hope for the +fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary sighed, +and having crossed herself went down, thinking neither of her gown and +coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what she would say. What +could all that matter in comparison with the will of God, without +Whose care not a hair of man's head can fall? + +CHAPTER IV + +When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his son were already +in the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle +Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her +heels, the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little +princess, indicating her to the gentlemen, said: "Voila Marie!" +Princess Mary saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince +Vasili's face, serious for an instant at the sight of her, but +immediately smiling again, and the little princess curiously noting +the impression "Marie" produced on the visitors. And she saw +Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon and pretty face, and her +unusually animated look which was fixed on him, but him she could +not see, she only saw something large, brilliant, and handsome +moving toward her as she entered the room. Prince Vasili approached +first, and she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her hand and +answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she +remembered him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still +could not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking hers firmly, and +she touched with her lips a white forehead, over which was beautiful +light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When she looked up at him she was +struck by his beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a +button of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in, +slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent, looked +with beaming face at the princess without speaking and evidently not +thinking about her at all. Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready +or eloquent in conversation, but he had the faculty, so invaluable +in society, of composure and imperturbable self-possession. If a man +lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction and +betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and an +anxiety to find something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was +dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the princess' hair. It +was evident that he could be silent in this way for a very long +time. "If anyone finds this silence inconvenient, let him talk, but +I don't want to"' he seemed to say. Besides this, in his behavior to +women Anatole had a manner which particularly inspires in them +curiosity, awe, and even love- a supercilious consciousness of his own +superiority. It was was as if he said to them: "I know you, I know +you, but why should I bother about you? You'd be only too glad, of +course." Perhaps he did not really think this when he met women- +even probably he did not, for in general he thought very little- but +his looks and manner gave that impression. The princess felt this, and +as if wishing to show him that she did not even dare expect to +interest him, she turned to his father. The conversation was general +and animated, thanks to Princess Lise's voice and little downy lip +that lifted over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with that +playful manner often employed by lively chatty people, and +consisting in the assumption that between the person they so address +and themselves there are some semi-private, long-established jokes and +amusing reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really exist- just +as none existed in this case. Prince Vasili readily adopted her tone +and the little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew, +into these amusing recollections of things that had never occurred. +Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them and even Princess Mary felt +herself pleasantly made to share in these merry reminiscences. + +"Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to +ourselves, dear prince," said the little princess (of course, in +French) to Prince Vasili. "It's not as at Annette's~{ Anna Pavlovna. }~ receptions +where you always ran away; you remember cette chere Annette!" + +"Ah, but you won't talk politics to me like Annette!" + +"And our little tea table?" + +"Oh, yes!" + +"Why is it you were never at Annette's?" the little princess asked +Anatole. "Ah, I know, I know," she said with a sly glance, "your +brother Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!" and she shook her +finger at him, "I have even heard of your doings in Paris!" + +"And didn't Hippolyte tell you?" asked Prince Vasili, turning to his +son and seizing the little princess' arm as if she would have run away +and he had just managed to catch her, "didn't he tell you how he +himself was pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the +door? Oh, she is a pearl among women, Princess," he added, turning +to Princess Mary. + +When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized +the opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections. + +She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long since +Anatole had left Paris and how he had liked that city. Anatole +answered the Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a +smile, talked to her about her native land. When he saw the pretty +little Bourienne, Anatole came to the conclusion that he would not +find Bald Hills dull either. "Not at all bad!" he thought, examining +her, "not at all bad, that little companion! I hope she will bring her +along with her when we're married, la petite est gentille."~{ The little one is charming. }~ + +The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and +considering what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed +him. "What are Prince Vasili and that son of his to me? Prince +Vasili is a shallow braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine +specimen," he grumbled to himself. What angered him was that the +coming of these visitors revived in his mind an unsettled question +he always tried to stifle, one about which he always deceived himself. +The question was whether he could ever bring himself to part from +his daughter and give her to a husband. The prince never directly +asked himself that question, knowing beforehand that he would have +to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only with his feelings +but with the very possibility of life. Life without Princess Mary, +little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him. "And why +should she marry?" he thought. "To be unhappy for certain. There's +Lise, married to Andrew- a better husband one would think could hardly +be found nowadays- but is she contented with her lot? And who would +marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward! They'll take her for her +connections and wealth. Are there no women living unmarried, and +even the happier for it?" So thought Prince Bolkonski while +dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off demanded an +immediate answer. Prince Vasili had brought his son with the evident +intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask +for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad. +"Well, I've nothing against it," the prince said to himself, "but he +must be worthy of her. And that is what we shall see." + +"That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!" he added +aloud. + +He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing +rapidly round the company. He noticed the change in the little +princess' dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne's ribbon, Princess Mary's +unbecoming coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne's and Anatole's smiles, +and the loneliness of his daughter amid the general conversation. "Got +herself up like a fool!" he thought, looking irritably at her. "She is +shameless, and he ignores her!" + +He went straight up to Prince Vasili. + +"Well! How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see you!" + +"Friendship laughs at distance," began Prince Vasili in his usual +rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. "Here is my second son; please +love and befriend him." + +Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole. + +"Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!" he said. "Well, come and +kiss me," and he offered his cheek. + +Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and +perfect composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his +father had told him to expect. + +Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the +sofa and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasili, pointed to it +and began questioning him about political affairs and news. He +seemed to listen attentively to what Prince Vasili said, but kept +glancing at Princess Mary. + +"And so they are writing from Potsdam already?" he said, repeating +Prince Vasili's last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his +daughter. + +"Is it for visitors you've got yourself up like that, eh?" said +he. "Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for +the visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you +are never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent." + +"It was my fault, mon pere," interceded the little princess, with +a blush. + +"You must do as you please," said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his +daughter-in-law, "but she need not make a fool of herself, she's plain +enough as it is." + +And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who +was reduced to tears. + +"On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well," +said Prince Vasili. + +"Now you, young prince, what's your name?" said Prince Bolkonski, +turning to Anatole, "come here, let us talk and get acquainted." + +"Now the fun begins," thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile +beside the old prince. + +"Well, my dear boy, I hear you've been educated abroad, not taught +to read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me, +my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?" asked the old +man, scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently. + +"No, I have been transferred to the line," said Anatole, hardly able +to restrain his laughter. + +"Ah! That's a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the +Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve. +Well, are you off to the front?" + +"No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am +attached... what is it I am attached to, Papa?" said Anatole, +turning to his father with a laugh. + +"A splendid soldier, splendid! 'What am I attached to!' Ha, ha, ha!" +laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly +Prince Bolkonski frowned. + +"You may go," he said to Anatole. + +Anatole returned smiling to the ladies. + +"And so you've had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven't you?" +said the old prince to Prince Vasili. + +"I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education +there is much better than ours." + +"Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The +lad's a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now." He took +Prince Vasili's arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were +alone together, Prince Vasili announced his hopes and wishes to the +old prince. + +"Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can't part from +her?" said the old prince angrily. "What an idea! I'm ready for it +tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better. +You know my principles- everything aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow +in your presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can +stay and I'll see." The old prince snorted. "Let her marry, it's all +the same to me!" he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting +from his son. + +"I will tell you frankly," said Prince Vasili in the tone of a +crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so +keen-sighted companion. "You know, you see right through people. +Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an +excellent son or kinsman." + +"All right, all right, we'll see!" + +As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of +time without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women +of Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real +till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing +immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have +been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full +of significance. + +Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The +handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband +absorbed all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave, +determined, manly, and magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. +Thousands of dreams of a future family life continually rose in her +imagination. She drove them away and tried to conceal them. + +"But am I not too cold with him?" thought the princess. "I try to be +reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him +already, but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine +that I do not like him." + +And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to +her new guest. "Poor girl, she's devilish ugly!" thought Anatole. + +Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole's +arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young +woman without any definite position, without relations or even a +country, did not intend to devote her life to serving Prince +Bolkonski, to reading aloud to him and being friends with Princess +Mary. Mademoiselle Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian +prince who, able to appreciate at a glance her superiority to the +plain, badly dressed, ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in +love with her and carry her off; and here at last was a Russian +prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew a story, heard from her aunt but +finished in her own way, which she liked to repeat to herself. It +was the story of a girl who had been seduced, and to whom her poor +mother (sa pauvre mere) appeared, and reproached her for yielding to a +man without being married. Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched to +tears as in imagination she told this story to him, her seducer. And +now he, a real Russian prince, had appeared. He would carry her away +and then sa pauvre mere would appear and he would marry her. So her +future shaped itself in Mademoiselle Bourienne's head at the very time +she was talking to Anatole about Paris. It was not calculation that +guided her (she did not even for a moment consider what she should +do), but all this had long been familiar to her, and now that +Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around him and she +wished and tried to please him as much as possible. + +The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet, +unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the +familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any +struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety. + +Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man +tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the +spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was +beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle +Bourienne that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him +with great suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless +actions. + +After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess +Mary was asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in +high spirits, came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside +Mademoiselle Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully +joyous emotion. Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately +poetic world and the look she felt upon her made that world still more +poetic. But Anatole's expression, though his eyes were fixed on her, +referred not to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne's +little foot, which he was then touching with his own under the +clavichord. Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess +Mary, and in her lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and +hope that was also new to the princess. + +"How she loves me!" thought Princess Mary. "How happy I am now, +and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband? +Can it be possible?" she thought, not daring to look at his face, +but still feeling his eyes gazing at her. + +In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole +kissed Princess Mary's hand. She did not know how she found the +courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came +near to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up +and kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand. (This was not etiquette, but +then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!) +Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened +look. + +"What delicacy! " thought the princess. "Is it possible that Amelie" +(Mademoiselle Bourienne) "thinks I could be jealous of her, and not +value her pure affection and devotion to me?" She went up to her and +kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess' hand. + +"No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are +behaving well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!" she +said. And smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room. + +CHAPTER V + +They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as +he got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night. + +"Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind- yes, +kind, that is the chief thing," thought Princess Mary; and fear, which +she had seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round, +it seemed to her that someone was there standing behind the screen +in the dark corner. And this someone was he- the devil- and he was +also this man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips. + +She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room. + +Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a +long time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at +someone, now working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of +her pauvre mere rebuking her for her fall. + +The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly +made. She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every +position was awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her +now more than ever because Anatole's presence had vividly recalled +to her the time when she was not like that and when everything was +light and gay. She sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and +nightcap and Katie, sleepy and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy +feather bed for the third time, muttering to herself. + +"I told you it was all lumps and holes!" the little princess +repeated. "I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it's not my +fault!" and her voice quivered like that of a child about to cry. + +The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep, heard +him pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though + +he had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more +pointed because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter, +whom he loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would +consider the whole matter and decide what was right and how he +should act, but instead of that he only excited himself more and more. + +"The first man that turns up- she forgets her father and +everything else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her +tail and is unlike herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she +knew I should notice it. Fr... fr... fr! And don't I see that that +idiot had eyes only for Bourienne- I shall have to get rid of her. And +how is it she has not pride enough to see it? If she has no pride +for herself she might at least have some for my sake! She must be +shown that the blockhead thinks nothing of her and looks only at +Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but I'll let her see...." + +The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a +mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne, +Princess Mary's self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to +be parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this +thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress. + +"What devil brought them here?" thought he, while Tikhon was putting +the nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest. "I +never invited them. They came to disturb my life- and there is not +much of it left." + +"Devil take 'em!" he muttered, while his head was still covered by +the shirt. + +Tikhon knew his master's habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and +therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive +expression of the face that emerged from the shirt. + +"Gone to bed?" asked the prince. + +Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of +his master's thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince +Vasili and his son. + +"They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency." + +"No good... no good..." said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his +feet into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing +gown, he went to the couch on which he slept. + +Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle +Bourienne, they quite understood one another as to the first part of +their romance, up to the appearance of the pauvre mere; they +understood that they had much to say to one another in private and +so they had been seeking an opportunity since morning to meet one +another alone. When Princess Mary went to her father's room at the +usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and Anatole met in the +conservatory. + +Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special +trepidation. It seemed to her that not only did everybody know that +her fate would be decided that day, but that they also knew what she +thought about it. She read this in Tikhon's face and in that of Prince +Vasili's valet, who made her a low bow when she met him in the +corridor carrying hot water. + +The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of +his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking +expression of her father's. His face wore that expression when his dry +hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in +arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her, +repeating in a low voice the same words several times over. + +He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously. + +"I have had a proposition made me concerning you," he said with an +unnatural smile. "I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasili has not +come and brought his pupil with him" (for some reason Prince Bolkonski +referred to Anatole as a "pupil") "for the sake of my beautiful +eyes. Last night a proposition was made me on your account and, as you +know my principles, I refer it to you." + +"How am I to understand you, mon pere?" said the princess, growing +pale and then blushing. + +"How understand me!" cried her father angrily. "Prince Vasili +finds you to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to +you on his pupil's behalf. That's how it's to be understood! 'How +understand it'!... And I ask you!" + +"I do not know what you think, Father," whispered the princess. + +"I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I'm not going to +get married. What about you? That's what I want to know." + +The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with +disapproval, but at that moment the thought occurred to her that her +fate would be decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not +to see the gaze under which she felt that she could not think, but +would only be able to submit from habit, and she said: "I wish only to +do your will, but if I had to express my own desire..." She had no +time to finish. The old prince interrupted her. + +"That's admirable!" he shouted. "He will take you with your dowry +and take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She'll be the +wife, while you..." + +The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on +his daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears. + +"Now then, now then, I'm only joking!" he said. "Remember this, +Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to +choose. I give you freedom. Only remember that your life's happiness +depends on your decision. Never mind me!" + +"But I do not know, Father!" + +"There's no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry +you or anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room, +think it over, and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence: +yes or no. I know you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but +you had better think it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!" he +still shouted when the princess, as if lost in a fog, had already +staggered out of the study. + +Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had +said about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be +sure, but still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of +it. She was going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing +nor hearing anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of +Mademoiselle Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps +away saw Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to +her. With a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole +looked at Princess Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the +waist of Mademoiselle Bourienne who had not yet seen her. + +"Who's that? Why? Wait a moment!" Anatole's face seemed to say. +Princess Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand +it. At last Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole +bowed to Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in +a laugh at this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders +went to the door that led to his own apartments. + +An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to the old +prince; he added that Prince Vasili was also there. When Tikhon came +to her Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding +the weeping Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her +hair. The princess' beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance +were looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle +Bourienne's pretty face. + +"No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!" said +Mademoiselle Bourienne. + +"Why? I love you more than ever," said Princess Mary, "and I will +try to do all I can for your happiness." + +"But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand +being so carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother..." + +"I quite understand," answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile. +"Calm yourself, my dear. I will go to my father," she said, and went +out. + +Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other and a +snuffbox in his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion +on his face, as if stirred to his heart's core and himself +regretting and laughing at his own sensibility, when Princess Mary +entered. He hurriedly took a pinch of snuff. + +"Ah, my dear, my dear!" he began, rising and taking her by both +hands. Then, sighing, he added: "My son's fate is in your hands. +Decide, my dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a +daughter!" + +He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye. + +"Fr... fr..." snorted Prince Bolkonski. "The prince is making a +proposition to you in his pupil's- I mean, his son's- name. Do you +wish or not to be Prince Anatole Kuragin's wife? Reply: yes or no," he +shouted, "and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion also. +Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion," added Prince Bolkonski, turning +to Prince Vasili and answering his imploring look. "Yes, or no?" + +"My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my +life from yours. I don't wish to marry," she answered positively, +glancing at Prince Vasili and at her father with her beautiful eyes. + +"Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!" cried Prince +Bolkonski, frowning and taking his daughter's hand; he did not kiss +her, but only bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and +pressed her hand so that she winced and uttered a cry. + +Prince Vasili rose. + +"My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never +forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching +this heart, so kind and generous? Say 'perhaps'... The future is so +long. Say 'perhaps.'" + +"Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you +for the honor, but I shall never be your son's wife." + +"Well, so that's finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have +seen you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!" said the +old prince. "Very, very glad to glad to have seen you," repeated he, +embracing Prince Vasili. + +"My vocation is a different one," thought Princess Mary. "My +vocation is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the +happiness of love and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will +arrange poor Amelie's happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so +passionately repents. I will do all I can to arrange the match between +them. If he is not rich I will give her the means; I will ask my +father and Andrew. I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so +unfortunate, a stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how +passionately she must love him if she could so far forget herself! +Perhaps I might have done the same!..." thought Princess Mary. + +CHAPTER VI + +It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till +midwinter was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's +handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm +and haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read +the letter. + +Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the +house, on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the +room and found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing +at the same time. + +Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still +living with the Rostovs. + +"My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry, +prepared to sympathize in any way. + +The count sobbed yet more. + +"Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling +boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How +tell the little countess!" + +Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief +wiped the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried +her own eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and +till teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God's +help, would inform her. + +At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time about the war +news and about Nikolenka, twice asked when the last letter had been +received from him, though she knew that already, and remarked that +they might very likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each +time that these hints began to make the countess anxious and she +glanced uneasily at the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very +adroitly turned the conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha, +who, of the whole family, was the most gifted with a capacity to +feel any shades of intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her +ears from the beginning of the meal and was certain that there was +some secret between her father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had +something to do with her brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was +preparing them for it. Bold as she was, Natasha, who knew how +sensitive her mother was to anything relating to Nikolenka, did not +venture to ask any questions at dinner, but she was too excited to eat +anything and kept wriggling about on her chair regardless of her +governess' remarks. After dinner, she rushed head long after Anna +Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on her neck as soon +as she overtook her in the sitting room. + +"Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!" + +"Nothing, my dear." + +"No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up- I know you know +something." + +Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head. + +"You are a little slyboots," she said. + +"A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha, +reading confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face. + +"But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your +mamma." + +"I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at +once." + +Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the +letter, on condition that she should tell no one. + +"No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha,crossing herself, "I +won't tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya. + +"Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful +triumph. + +"Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white. + +Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother's wound produced +on Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news. + +She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry. + +"A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he +wrote himself," said she through her tears. + +"There now! It's true that all you women are crybabies," remarked +Petya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. "Now I'm very +glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself +so. You are all blubberers and understand nothing." + +Natasha smiled through her tears. + +"You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya. + +"No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an +officer." + +"Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps she deceived +you. Let us go to Mamma." + +Petya paced the room in silence for a time. + +"If I'd been in Nikolenka's place I would have killed even more of +those Frenchmen," he said. "What nasty brutes they are! I'd have +killed so many that there'd have been a heap of them." + +"Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!" + +"I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said Petya. + +"Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's +silence. + +Sonya smiled. + +"Do I remember Nicholas?" + +"No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember him +perfectly, remember everything?" said Natasha, with an expressive +gesture, evidently wishing to give her words a very definite +meaning. "I remember Nikolenka too, I remember him well," she said. +"But I don't remember Boris. I don't remember him a bit." + +"What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise. + +"It's not that I don't remember- I know what he is like, but not +as I remember Nikolenka. Him- I just shut my eyes and remember, but +Boris... No!" (She shut her eyes.)"No! there's nothing at all." + +"Oh, Natasha!" said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her +friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to +say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was +out of the question, "I am in love with your brother once for all and, +whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him +as long as I live." + +Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and +said nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there +was such love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt +anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it. + +"Shall you write to him?" she asked. + +Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas, +and whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already +an officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of +herself and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had +taken on himself? + +"I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she said, +blushing. + +"And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?" + +Sonya smiled. + +"No." + +"And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to." + +"Why should you be ashamed?" + +"Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed." + +"And I know why she'd be ashamed," said Petya, offended by Natasha's +previous remark. "It's because she was in love with that fat one in +spectacles" (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new +Count Bezukhov) "and now she's in love with that singer" (he meant +Natasha's Italian singing master), "that's why she's ashamed!" + +"Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha. + +"Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old Petya, +with the air of an old brigadier. + +The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna's hints at +dinner. On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her +eyes fixed on a miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a +snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna, +with the letter, came on tiptoe to the countess' door and paused. + +"Don't come in," she said to the old count who was following her. +"Come later." And she went in, closing the door behind her. + +The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened. + +At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna +Mikhaylovna's voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then +silence, then both voices together with glad intonations, and then +footsteps. Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud +expression of a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation +and admits the public to appreciate his skill. + +"It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the +countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait +and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her +lips. + +When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him, +embraced his bald head, over which she again looked at the letter +and the portrait, and in order to press them again to her lips, she +slightly pushed away the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya +now entered the room, and the reading of the letter began. After a +brief description of the campaign and the two battles in which he +had taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his +father's and mother's hands asking for their blessing, and that he +kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya. Besides that, he sent greetings to +Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them +to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he loved and thought of just the +same as ever." When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came +into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran +away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her +dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped +down on the floor. The countess was crying. + +"Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says one +should be glad and not cry." + +This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natasha looked +at her reproachfully. "And who is it she takes after?" thought the +countess. + +Nicholas' letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were +considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she +did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses, +and Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the +letter each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it +fresh proofs of Nikolenka's virtues. How strange, how extraordinary, +how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of +whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son +about whom she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count, +that son who had first learned to say "pear" and then "granny," that +this son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange +surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man's work of his +own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages, +showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to +manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son's growth toward +manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her +as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up +in the same way. As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the +little creature who lived somewhere under her heart would ever cry, +suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that +that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son +and officer that, judging by this letter, he now was. + +"What a style! How charmingly he describes!" said she, reading the +descriptive part of the letter. "And what a soul! Not a word about +himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he +himself, I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about +his sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has +remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was +only so high- I always said...." + +For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of +letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied +out, while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of +the count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and +equipment of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna +Mikhaylovna, practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor +with army authorities to secure advantageous means of communication +for herself and her son. She had opportunities of sending her +letters to the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the +Guards. The Rostovs supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was +quite a definite address, and that if a letter reached the Grand +Duke in command of the Guards there was no reason why it should not +reach the Pavlograd regiment, which was presumably somewhere in the +same neighborhood. And so it was decided to send the letters and money +by the Grand Duke's courier to Boris and Boris was to forward them +to Nicholas. The letters were from the old count, the countess, Petya, +Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, and finally there were six thousand rubles +for his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his son. + +CHAPTER VII + +On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov's active army, in camp before +Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors- the +Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia, +spent the night ten miles from Olmutz and next morning were to come +straight to the review, reaching the field at Olmutz by ten o'clock. + +That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris, telling him +that the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles +from Olmutz and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money +for him. Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops, +after their active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp +swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all +sorts of tempting wares. The Pavlograds held feast after feast, +celebrating awards they had received for the campaign, and made +expeditions to Olmutz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who +had recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses. +Rostov, who had just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought +Denisov's horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and +the sutlers. On receiving Boris' letter he rode with a fellow +officer to Olmutz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set +off alone to the Guards' camp to find his old playmate. Rostov had not +yet had time to get his uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket, +decorated with a soldier's cross, equally shabby cadet's riding +breeches lined with worn leather, and an officer's saber with a +sword knot. The Don horse he was riding was one he had bought from a +Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a crumpled hussar cap stuck +jauntily back on one side of his head. As he rode up to the camp he +thought how he would impress Boris and all his comrades of the +Guards by his appearance- that of a fighting hussar who had been under +fire. + +The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip, +parading their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy +stages, their knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian +authorities had provided excellent dinners for the officers at every +halting place. The regiments had entered and left the town with +their bands playing, and by the Grand Duke's orders the men had +marched all the way in step (a practice on which the Guards prided +themselves), the officers on foot and at their proper posts. Boris had +been quartered, and had marched all the way, with Berg who was already +in command of a company. Berg, who had obtained his captaincy during +the campaign, had gained the confidence of his superiors by his +promptitude and accuracy and had arranged his money matters very +satisfactorily. Boris, during the campaign, had made the +acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by a +letter of recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become +acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom he hoped to +obtain a post on the commander in chief's staff. Berg and Boris, +having rested after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and +neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to +them, playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees. +Boris, in the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a +little pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while +awaiting Berg's move, and watched his opponent's face, evidently +thinking about the game as he always thought only of whatever he was +engaged on. + +"Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked. + +"We'll try to," replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing +his hand. + +At that moment the door opened. + +"Here he is at last!" shouted Rostov. "And Berg too! Oh, you +petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!" he exclaimed, imitating his Russian +nurse's French, at which he and Boris used to laugh long ago. + +"Dear me, how you have changed!" + +Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit to steady +and replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace +his friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of +youth, that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a +manner different from that of its elders which is often insincere, +Nicholas wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He +wanted to pinch him, push him, do anything but kiss him- a thing +everybody did. But notwithstanding this, Boris embraced him in a +quiet, friendly way and kissed him three times. + +They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when +young men take their first steps on life's road, each saw immense +changes in the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which +they had taken those first steps. Both had changed greatly since +they last met and both were in a hurry to show the changes that had +taken place in them. + +"Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete, +not like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger +and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his +own mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's +loud voice, popped her head in at the door. + +"Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink. + +"Why do you shout so? You'll frighten them!" said Boris. "I did +not expect you today," he added. "I only sent you the note yesterday +by Bolkonski- an adjutant of Kutuzov's, who's a friend of mine. I +did not think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you? +Been under fire already?" asked Boris. + +Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier's Cross of St. George +fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm, +glanced at Berg with a smile. + +"As you see," he said. + +"Indeed? Yes, yes!" said Boris, with a smile. "And we too have had a +splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness rode +with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and every +advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and balls! I +can't tell you. And the Tsarevich was very gracious to all our +officers." + +And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of +his hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the +pleasures and advantages of service under members of the Imperial +family. + +"Oh, you Guards!" said Rostov. "I say, send for some wine." + +Boris made a grimace. + +"If you really want it," said he. + +He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and +sent for wine. + +"Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you," he added. + +Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both +arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he +glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind +the letter. + +"Well, they've sent you a tidy sum," said Berg, eying the heavy +purse that sank into the sofa. "As for us, Count, we get along on +our pay. I can tell you for myself..." + +"I say, Berg, my dear fellow," said Rostov, "when you get a letter +from home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk +everything over with, and I happen to be there, I'll go at once, to be +out of your way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!" he +exclaimed, and immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking +amiably into his face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his +words, he added, "Don't be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak from +my heart as to an old acquaintance." + +"Oh, don't mention it, Count! I quite understand," said Berg, +getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice. + +"Go across to our hosts: they invited you," added Boris. + +Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of +dust, stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples +upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having +assured himself from the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had +been noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile. + +"Oh dear, what a beast I am!" muttered Rostov, as he read the +letter. + +"Why?" + +"Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them +such a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!" he repeated, flushing suddenly. +"Well, have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let's have +some!" + +In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of +recommendation to Bagration which the old countess at Anna +Mikhaylovna's advice had obtained through an acquaintance and sent +to her son, asking him to take it to its destination and make use of +it. + +"What nonsense! Much I need it!" said Rostov, throwing the letter +under the table. + +"Why have you thrown that away?" asked Boris. + +"It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want +it for!" + +"Why 'What the devil'?" said Boris, picking it up and reading the +address. "This letter would be of great use to you." + +"I want nothing, and I won't be anyone's adjutant." + +"Why not?" inquired Boris. + +"It's a lackey's job!" + +"You are still the same dreamer, I see," remarked Boris, shaking his +head. + +"And you're still the same diplomatist! But that's not the +point... Come, how are you?" asked Rostov. + +"Well, as you see. So far everything's all right, but I confess I +should much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front." + +"Why?" + +"Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try +to make as successful a career of it as possible." + +"Oh, that's it!" said Rostov, evidently thinking of something else. + +He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently +trying in vain to find the answer to some question. + +Old Gabriel brought in the wine. + +"Shouldn't we now send for Berg?" asked Boris. "He would drink +with you. I can't." + +"Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?" +asked Rostov, with a contemptuous smile. + +"He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow," answered +Boris. + +Again Rostov looked intently into Boris' eyes and sighed. Berg +returned, and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three +officers became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostov of their march and +how they had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They +spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke, +and told stories of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual, +kept silent when the subject did not relate to himself, but in +connection with the stories of the Grand Duke's quick temper he +related with gusto how in Galicia he had managed to deal with the +Grand Duke when the latter made a tour of the regiments and was +annoyed at the irregularity of a movement. With a pleasant smile +Berg related how the Grand Duke had ridden up to him in a violent +passion, shouting: "Arnauts!" ("Arnauts" was the Tsarevich's +favorite expression when he was in a rage) and called for the +company commander. + +"Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I +knew I was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know +the Army Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do +the Lord's Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my +company, and so my conscience was at ease. I came forward...." (Berg +stood up and showed how he presented himself, with his hand to his +cap, and really it would have been difficult for a face to express +greater respect and self-complacency than his did.) "Well, he +stormed at me, as the saying is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It +was not a matter of life but rather of death, as the saying is. +'Albanians!' and 'devils!' and 'To Siberia!'" said Berg with a +sagacious smile. "I knew I was in the right so I kept silent; was +not that best, Count?... 'Hey, are you dumb?' he shouted. Still I +remained silent. And what do you think, Count? The next day it was not +even mentioned in the Orders of the Day. That's what keeping one's +head means. That's the way, Count," said Berg, lighting his pipe and +emitting rings of smoke. + +"Yes, that was fine," said Rostov, smiling. + +But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and +skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and +where he got his wound. This pleased Rostov and he began talking about +it, and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of +his Schon Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a +battle generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to +have been, as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds +well, but not at all as it really was. Rostov was a truthful young man +and would on no account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story +meaning to tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly, +involuntarily, and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told +the truth to his hearers- who like himself had often heard stories +of attacks and had formed a definite idea of what an attack was and +were expecting to hear just such a story- they would either not have +believed him or, still worse, would have thought that Rostov was +himself to blame since what generally happens to the narrators of +cavalry attacks had not happened to him. He could not tell them simply +that everyone went at a trot and that he fell off his horse and +sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could from a Frenchman +into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as it really happened, it +would have been necessary to make an effort of will to tell only +what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young +people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story of how +beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like a +storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his +saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And +so he told them all that. + +In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: "You cannot +imagine what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack," +Prince Andrew, whom Boris was expecting, entered the room. Prince +Andrew, who liked to help young men, was flattered by being asked +for his assistance and being well disposed toward Boris, who had +managed to please him the day before, he wished to do what the young +man wanted. Having been sent with papers from Kutuzov to the +Tsarevich, he looked in on Boris, hoping to find him alone. When he +came in and saw an hussar of the line recounting his military exploits +(Prince Andrew could not endure that sort of man), he gave Boris a +pleasant smile, frowned as with half-closed eyes he looked at +Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat down languidly on the +sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad company. +Rostov flushed up on noticing this, but he did not care, this was a +mere stranger. Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw that he too +seemed ashamed of the hussar of the line. + +In spite of Prince Andrew's disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of +the contempt with which Rostov, from his fighting army point of +view, regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the +newcomer was evidently one, Rostov felt confused, blushed, and +became silent. Boris inquired what news there might be on the staff, +and what, without indiscretion, one might ask about our plans. + +"We shall probably advance," replied Bolkonski, evidently +reluctant to say more in the presence of a stranger. + +Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as +was rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies +would be doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that +he could give no opinion on such an important government order, and +Berg laughed gaily. + +"As to your business," Prince Andrew continued, addressing Boris, +"we will talk of it later" (and he looked round at Rostov). "Come to +me after the review and we will do what is possible." + +And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to +Rostov, whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now +changing to anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: "I +think you were talking of the Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?" + +"I was there," said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult the +aide-de-camp. + +Bolkonski noticed the hussar's state of mind, and it amused him. +With a slightly contemptuous smile, he said: "Yes, there are many +stories now told about that affair!" + +"Yes, stories!" repeated Rostov loudly, looking with eyes suddenly +grown furious, now at Boris, now at Bolkonski. "Yes, many stories! But +our stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy's +fire! Our stories have some weight, not like the stories of those +fellows on the staff who get rewards without doing anything!" + +"Of whom you imagine me to be one?" said Prince Andrew, with a quiet +and particularly amiable smile. + +A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this +man's self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov's soul. + +"I am not talking about you," he said, "I don't know you and, +frankly, I don't want to. I am speaking of the staff in general." + +"And I will tell you this," Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of +quiet authority, "you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree +with you that it would be very easy to do so if you haven't sufficient +self-respect, but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen. +In a day or two we shall all have to take part in a greater and more +serious duel, and besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old friend of +yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to +displease you. However," he added rising, "you know my name and +where to find me, but don't forget that I do not regard either +myself or you as having been at all insulted, and as a man older +than you, my advice is to let the matter drop. Well then, on Friday +after the review I shall expect you, Drubetskoy. Au revoir!" exclaimed +Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them both he went out. + +Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think of what he ought +to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. +He ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode +home. Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that +affected adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question +that worried him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he +would have at seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud +man when covered by his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of +all the men he knew there was none he would so much like to have for a +friend as that very adjutant whom he so hated. + +CHAPTER VIII + +The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review was held of the +Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia +and those who had been campaigning under Kutuzov. The two Emperors, +the Russian with his heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with the +Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men. + +From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move, +forming up on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and +bayonets moved and halted at the officers' command, turned with +banners flying, formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other +similar masses of infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the +rhythmic beat of hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red, +and green braided uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front +mounted on black, roan, or gray horses; then again, spreading out with +the brazen clatter of the polished shining cannon that quivered on the +gun carriages and with the smell of linstocks, came the artillery +which crawled between the infantry and cavalry and took up its +appointed position. Not only the generals in full parade uniforms, +with their thin or thick waists drawn in to the utmost, their red +necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and wearing scarves and all +their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded officers, but every +soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face and his weapons +clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed till its +coat shone like satin and every hair of its wetted mane lay smooth- +felt that no small matter was happening, but an important and solemn +affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own +insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and +yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that +enormous whole. + +From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by +ten o'clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were +drown up on the vast field. The whole army was extended in three +lines: the cavalry in front, behind it the artillery, and behind +that again the infantry. + +A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The +three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutuzov's +fighting army (with the Pavlograds on the right flank of the front); +those recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the +line; and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines, +under one command, and in a like order. + +Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: "They're coming! +They're coming!" Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final +preparation swept over all the troops. + +From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group was seen +approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light +gust of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on +the lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their +staffs. It looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was +expressing its joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was +heard shouting: "Eyes front!" Then, like the crowing of cocks at + +sunrise, this was repeated by others from various sides and all became +silent. + +In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard. +This was the Emperors' suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank, +and the trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general +march. It seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as +if the army itself, rejoicing at the Emperors' approach, had naturally +burst into music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of +the Emperor Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of +greeting, and the first regiment roared "Hurrah!" so deafeningly, +continuously, and joyfully that the men themselves were awed by +their multitude and the immensity of the power they constituted. + +Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov's army which the Tsar +approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in +that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of +might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this +triumph. + +He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass +(and he himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and +water, commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and +so he could not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence +of that word. + +"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" thundered from all sides, one regiment +after another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and +then "Hurrah!"... Then the general march, and again "Hurrah! +Hurrah!" growing ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening +roar. + +Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and +immobility seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it +became alive, its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along +which he had already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar +of those voices, amid the square masses of troops standing +motionless as if turned to stone, hundreds of riders composing the +suites moved carelessly but symmetrically and above all freely, and in +front of them two men- the Emperors. Upon them the undivided, +tensely passionate attention of that whole mass of men was +concentrated. + +The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse +Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his +pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone's +attention. + +Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight +had recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within +twenty paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of +his handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling tenderness +and ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every +movement of the Tsar's seemed to him enchanting. + +Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in +French to the Austrian Emperor and smiled. + +Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself and felt a +still stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show +that love in some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready +to cry. The Tsar called the colonel of the regiment and said a few +words to him. + +"Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?" +thought Rostov. "I should die of happiness!" + +The Tsar addressed the officers also: "I thank you all, gentlemen, I +thank you with my whole heart." To Rostov every word sounded like a +voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar! + +"You have earned the St. George's standards and will be worthy of +them." + +"Oh, to die, to die for him " thought Rostov. + +The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear, and the +soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted "Hurrah!" + +Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted "Hurrah!" with all +his might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout, +if only to express his rapture fully. + +The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if +undecided. + +"How can the Emperor be undecided?" thought Rostov, but then even +this indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like +everything else the Tsar did. + +That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar's foot, in the +narrow pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the +bobtailed bay mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up +the reins, and he moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying +sea of aides-de-camp. Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at +other regiments, till at last only his white plumes were visible to +Rostov from amid the suites that surrounded the Emperors. + +Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonski, +sitting his horse indolently and carelessly. Rostov recalled their +quarrel of yesterday and the question presented itself whether he +ought or ought not to challenge Bolkonski. "Of course not!" he now +thought. "Is it worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment? +At a time of such love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do +any of our quarrels and affronts matter? I love and forgive +everybody now." + +When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops +began a ceremonial march past him, and Rostov on Bedouin, recently +purchased from Denisov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron- +that is, alone and in full view of the Emperor. + +Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid horseman, +spurred Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in +which the animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to +his chest, his tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the +Emperor's eye upon him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a +high and graceful action, as if flying through the air without +touching the ground. + +Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and +feeling himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a +frowning but blissful face "like a vewy devil," as Denisov expressed +it. + +"Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!" remarked the Emperor. + +"My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the +fire this instant!" thought Rostov. + +When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also +Kutuzov's, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards, +about the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about +Bonaparte, and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if +the Essen corps arrived and Prussia took our side. + +But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander. +His every word and movement was described with ecstasy. + +They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against +the enemy under the Emperor's command. Commanded by the Emperor +himself they could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might: +so thought Rostov and most of the officers after the review. + +All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two +battles would have made them. + +CHAPTER IX + +The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and with his +comrade Berg's best wishes for success, rode to Olmutz to see +Bolkonski, wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for +himself the best post he could- preferably that of adjutant to some +important personage, a position in the army which seemed to him most +attractive. "It is all very well for Rostov, whose father sends him +ten thousand rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe +to anybody and not be anyone's lackey, but I who have nothing but my +brains have to make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must +avail myself of them!" he reflected. + +He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but the appearance +of the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were +stationed and the two Emperors were living with their suites, +households, and courts only strengthened his desire to belong to +that higher world. + +He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman's uniform, all these +exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages +with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military +men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the +Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be +aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief, +Kutuzov, where he inquired for Bolkonski, all the adjutants and even +the orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a +great many officers like him were always coming there and that +everybody was heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather +because of it, next day, November 15, after dinner he again went to +Olmutz and, entering the house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for +Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and Boris was shown into a large +hall probably formerly used for dancing, but in which five beds now +stood, and furniture of various kinds: a table, chairs, and a +clavichord. One adjutant, nearest the door, was sitting at the table +in a Persian dressing gown, writing. Another, the red, stout +Nesvitski, lay on a bed with his arms under his head, laughing with an +officer who had sat down beside him. A third was playing a Viennese +waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on the clavichord, sang +the tune. Bolkonski was not there. None of these gentlemen changed his +position on seeing Boris. The one who was writing and whom Boris +addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkonski was on duty +and that he should go through the door on the left into the +reception room if he wished to see him. Boris thanked him and went +to the reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals. + +When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously +(with that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says, +"If it were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment"), was +listening to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very +erect, almost on tiptoe, with a soldier's obsequious expression on his +purple face, reporting something. + +"Very well, then, be so good as to wait," said Prince Andrew to + +the general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he +affected when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Boris, +Prince Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him +imploring him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with +a cheerful smile. + +At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had before surmised, +that in the army, besides the subordination and discipline +prescribed in the military code, which he and the others knew in the +regiment, there was another, more important, subordination, which made +this tight-laced, purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain +Prince Andrew, for his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant +Drubetskoy. More than ever was Boris resolved to serve in future not +according to the written code, but under this unwritten law. He felt +now that merely by having been recommended to Prince Andrew he had +already risen above the general who at the front had the power to +annihilate him, a lieutenant of the Guards. Prince Andrew came up to +him and took his hand. + +"I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing +about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the +dispositions. When Germans start being accurate, there's no end to +it!" + +Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to +as something generally known. But it the first time he had heard +Weyrother's name, or even the term "dispositions." + +"Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have +been thinking about you." + +"Yes, I was thinking"- for some reason Boris could not help +blushing- "of asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter +from Prince Kuragin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear +the Guards won't be in action," he added as if in apology. + +"All right, all right. We'll talk it over," replied Prince Andrew. +"Only let me report this gentleman's business, and I shall be at +your disposal." + +While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general, +that gentleman- evidently not sharing Boris' conception of the +advantages of the unwritten code of subordination- looked so fixedly +at the presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he +had to say to the adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He turned +away and waited impatiently for Prince Andrew's return from the +commander in chief's room. + +"You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you," said +Prince Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the +clavichord was. "It's no use your going to the commander in chief. +He would say a lot of pleasant things, ask you to dinner" ("That would +not be bad as regards the unwritten code," thought Boris), "but +nothing more would come of it. There will soon be a battalion of us +aides-de-camp and adjutants! But this is what we'll do: I have a +good friend, an adjutant general and an excellent fellow, Prince +Dolgorukov; and though you may not know it, the fact is that now +Kutuzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing. Everything +is now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to Dolgorukov; I have +to go there anyhow and I have already spoken to him about you. We +shall see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find a place +for you somewhere nearer the sun." + +Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a +young man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining +help of this kind for another, which from pride he would never +accept for himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers +success and which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris' +cause and went with him to Dolgorukov. + +It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmutz +occupied by the Emperors and their retinues. + +That same day a council of war had been held in which all the +members of the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that +council, contrary to the views of the old generals Kutuzov and +Prince Schwartzenberg, it had been decided to advance immediately +and give battle to Bonaparte. The council of war was just over when +Prince Andrew accompanied by Boris arrived at the palace to find +Dolgorukov. Everyone at headquarters was still under the spell of +the day's council, at which the party of the young had triumphed. +The voices of those who counseled delay and advised waiting for +something else before advancing had been so completely silenced and +their arguments confuted by such conclusive evidence of the advantages +of attacking that what had been discussed at the council- the coming +battle and the victory that would certainly result from it- no +longer seemed to be in the future but in the past. All the +advantages were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior +to Napoleon's, were concentrated in one place, the troops inspired +by the Emperors' presence were eager for action. The strategic +position where the operations would take place was familiar in all its +details to the Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had +ordained that the Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on +the very fields where the French had now to be fought; the adjacent +locality was known and shown in every detail on the maps, and +Bonaparte, evidently weakened, was undertaking nothing. + +Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just +returned from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud +of the victory that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his +protege, but Prince Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand +said nothing to Boris and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts +which were uppermost in his mind at that moment, addressed Prince +Andrew in French. + +"Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that +the one that will result from it will be as victorious! However, +dear fellow," he said abruptly and eagerly, "I must confess to +having been unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother. +What exactitude, what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what +foresight for every eventuality, every possibility even to the +smallest detail! No, my dear fellow, no conditions better than our +present ones could have been devised. This combination of Austrian +precision with Russian valor- what more could be wished for?" + +"So the attack is definitely resolved on?" asked Bolkonski. + +"And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte +has decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received +from him today for the Emperor." Dolgorukov smiled significantly. + +"Is that so? And what did he say?" inquired Bolkonski. + +"What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain +time. I tell you he is in our hands, that's certain! But what was most +amusing," he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, "was that +we could not think how to address the reply! If not as 'Consul' and of +course not as 'Emperor,' it seemed to me it should be to 'General +Bonaparte.'" + +"But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him +General Bonaparte, there is a difference," remarked Bolkonski. + +"That's just it," interrupted Dolgorukov quickly, laughing. "You +know Bilibin- he's a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him +as 'Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.'" + +Dolgorukov laughed merrily. + +"Only that?" said Bolkonski. + +"All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for the +address. He is a wise and clever fellow." + +"What was it?" + +"To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement +francais," said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. "Good, wasn't +it?" + +"Yes, but he will dislike it extremely," said Bolkonski. + +"Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he's dined with him- the +present Emperor- more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met +a more cunning or subtle diplomatist- you know, a combination of +French adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale +about him and Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who knew how +to handle him. You know the story of the handkerchief? It is +delightful!" + +And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince +Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markov, our ambassador, +purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking +at Markov, probably expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how +Markov immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up +without touching Bonaparte's. + +"Delightful!" said Bolkonski. "But I have come to you, Prince, as +a petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see..." but before +Prince Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon +Dolgorukov to the Emperor. + +"Oh, what a nuisance," said Dolgorukov, getting up hurriedly and +pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Boris. "You know I should be +very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young +man." Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of +good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. "But you see... another +time!" + +Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher +powers as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious +that here he was in contact with the springs that set in motion the +enormous movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt +himself a tiny, obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince +Dolgorukov out into the corridor and met- coming out of the door of +the Emperor's room by which Dolgorukov had entered- a short man in +civilian clothes with a clever face and sharply projecting jaw +which, without spoiling his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and +shiftiness of expression. This short man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an +intimate friend and stared at Prince Andrew with cool intensity, +walking straight toward him and evidently expecting him to bow or to +step out of his way. Prince Andrew did neither: a look of animosity +appeared on his face and the other turned away and went down the +side of the corridor. + +"Who was that?" asked Boris. + +"He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men- +the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski.... It is +such men as he who decide the fate of nations," added Bolkonski with a +sigh he could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace. + +Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle +of Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either Prince Andrew or +Dolgorukov again and remained for a while with the Ismaylov regiment. + +CHAPTER X + +At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov's squadron, in which +Nicholas Rostov served and which was in Prince Bagration's detachment, +moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing into +action as arranged, and after going behind other columns for about two +thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostov saw the +Cossacks and then the first and second squadrons of hussars and +infantry battalions and artillery pass by and go forward and then +Generals Bagration and Dolgorukov ride past with their adjutants. +All the fear before action which he had experienced as previously, all +the inner struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of +distinguishing himself as a true hussar in this battle, had been +wasted. Their squadron remained in reserve and Nicholas Rostov spent +that day in a dull and wretched mood. At nine in the morning, he heard +firing in front and shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought +back (there were not many of them), and at last he saw how a whole +detachment of French cavalry was brought in, convoyed by a sontnya +of Cossacks. Evidently the affair was over and, though not big, had +been a successful engagement. The men and officers returning spoke +of a brilliant victory, of the occupation of the town of Wischau and +the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was bright and sunny +after a sharp night frost, and the cheerful glitter of that autumn day +was in keeping with the news of victory which was conveyed, not only +by the tales of those who had taken part in it, but also by the joyful +expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and +adjutants, as they passed Rostov going or coming. And Nicholas, who +had vainly suffered all the dread that precedes a battle and had spent +that happy day in inactivity, was all the more depressed. + +"Come here, Wostov. Let's dwink to dwown our gwief!" shouted +Denisov, who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some +food. + +The officers gathered round Denisov's canteen, eating and talking. + +"There! They are bringing another!" cried one of the officers, +indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot +by two Cossacks. + +One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he +had taken from the prisoner. + +"Sell us that horse!" Denisov called out to the Cossacks. + +"If you like, your honor!" + +The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner. +The French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German +accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when +he heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers, +addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been +taken, it was not his fault but the corporal's who had sent him to +seize some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were +there. And at every word he added: "But don't hurt my little horse!" +and stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where +he was. Now he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now, +imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly +discipline and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our +rearguard all the freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which +was so alien to us. + +The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being +the richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought +it. + +"But don't hurt my little horse!" said the Alsatian good-naturedly +to Rostov when the animal was handed over to the hussar. + +Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money. + +"Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to +make him go on. + +"The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the hussars. + +All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up the road +behind him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment +everyone was in his place, waiting. + +Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted. +Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected +mood amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every +thought of himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his +nearness to the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made +up to him for the day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the +longed-for moment of meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and +without looking round, he was ecstatically conscious of his +approach. He felt it not only from the sound of the hoofs of the +approaching cavalcade, but because as he drew near everything grew +brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more festive around +him. Nearer and nearer to Rostov came that sun shedding beams of +mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself +enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm, and +majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with +Rostov's feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was heard +the Emperor's voice. + +"The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired. + +"The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one compared +to that which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?" + +The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted. Alexander's face +was even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the +review. It shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that +it suggested the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was +the face of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the +squadron, the Emperor's eyes met Rostov's and rested on them for not +more than two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was +going on in Rostov's soul (it seemed to Rostov that he understood +everything), at any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two +seconds into Rostov's face. A gentle, mild light poured from them. +Then all at once he raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse +with his left foot, and galloped on. + +The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the +battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at +twelve o'clock left the third column with which he had been and +galloped toward the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars, +several adjutants met him with news of the successful result of the +action. + +This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron, +was represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the +Emperor and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over the +battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were +retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had +passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau +itself, a petty German town, Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the +market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the +Emperor's arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom +there had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his +suite of officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, +a different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and +bending to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes +and looked at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered +head. The wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his +proximity to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the +Emperor's rather round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run +down them, how his left foot began convulsively tapping the horse's +side with the spur, and how the well-trained horse looked round +unconcerned and did not stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the +soldier under the arms to place him on a stretcher that had been +brought. The soldier groaned. + +"Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor +apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away. + +Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor's eyes and heard him, as he was +riding away, say to Czartoryski: "What a terrible thing war is: what a +terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!" + +The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within +sight of the enemy's lines, which all day long had yielded ground to +us at the least firing. The Emperor's gratitude was announced to the +vanguard, rewards were promised, and the men received a double +ration of vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers' songs +resounded even more merrily than on the previous night. Denisov +celebrated his promotion to the rank of major, and Rostov, who had +already drunk enough, at the end of the feast proposed the Emperor's +health. "Not 'our Sovereign, the Emperor,' as they say at official +dinners," said he, "but the health of our Sovereign, that good, +enchanting, and great man! Let us drink to his health and to the +certain defeat of the French!" + +"If we fought before," he said, "not letting the French pass, as +at Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We +will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not +saying it right, I have drunk a good deal- but that is how I feel, and +so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!" + +"Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers. + +And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and +no less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov. + +When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kirsten +filled others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand +to the soldiers' bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white +chest showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the +light of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm. + +"Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our +enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone. + +The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts. + +Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand +patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder. + +"As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen +in love with the Tsar," he said. + +"Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such a +lofty, beautiful feeling, such a..." + +"I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..." + +"No, you don't understand!" + +And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming +of what happiness it would be to die- not in saving the Emperor's life +(he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before +his eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the +Russian arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only +man to experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding +the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army +were then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the +glory of the Russian arms. + +CHAPTER XI + +The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his +physician, was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and +among the troops near by the news spread that the Emperor was +unwell. He ate nothing and had slept badly that night, those around +him reported. The cause of this indisposition was the strong +impression made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and +wounded. + +At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a +flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was +brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The +Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At +midday he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off +with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army. + +It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a +meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a +personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince +Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate +with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were +actuated by a real desire for peace. + +Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar, +and remained alone with him for a long time. + +On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced +two days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange +of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the +nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted +till the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of +Austerlitz was fought. + +Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity- the eager talk, running +to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants- was confined to the +Emperor's headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this +activity reached Kutiizov's headquarters and the staffs of the +commanders of columns. By evening, the adjutants had spread it to +all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the nineteenth +to the twentieth, the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from +their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started +in one enormous mass six miles long. + +The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's +headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that +followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large +tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and +a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and +cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands +to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity. + +Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the +military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and +just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is +transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse +has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage +one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their +movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though +it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment +comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel +begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of +which are beyond its ken. + +Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of +innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement +of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated +human activities of 160,000 Russians and French- all their passions, +desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, +fear, and enthusiasm- was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, +the so-called battle of the three Emperors- that is to say, a slow +movement of the hand on the dial of human history. + +Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the +commander in chief. + +At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters +and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand +marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy. + +Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the +coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and +dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were +dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters +everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something +others do not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov. + +"Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was +sitting at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your +old fellow? Out of sorts?" + +"I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be +heard." + +"But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when +he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when +Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible." + +"Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is +Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?" + +"Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a +general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this +general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with +Napoleon. "If he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that +interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat +is so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is +afraid, afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!" + +"But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again. + +"He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him +'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me! +That's the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov, +looking round at Bilibin with a smile. + +"Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should +be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a +chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in +our hands! No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule- not to put +yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe +me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than +all the experience of old Cunctators." + +"But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the +outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces +are situated," said Prince Andrew. + +He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself +formed. + +"Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting +up he spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been +foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn..." + +And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's +plan of a flanking movement. + +Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which +might have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage +that Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew +began to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his +own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed +absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face. + +"There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you +can say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov. + +"I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map. + +"Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who, +till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and +now was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings +victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except +your Kutuzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column! +The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le +Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally +Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names." + +"Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are +now two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a +third, Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak." + +"However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew. +"I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out +after shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin. + +On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking +Kutuzov, who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of +tomorrow's battle. + +Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, +replied: "I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy +and asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But, +my dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after +military matters yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!" + +CHAPTER XII + +Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his +plans to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held. +All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in +chief's and with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to +come, were all there at the appointed time. + +Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his +eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the +dissatisfied and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of +chairman and president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt +himself to be at the head of a movement that had already become +unrestrainable. He was like a horse running downhill harnessed to a +heavy cart. Whether he was pulling it or being pushed by it he did not +know, but rushed along at headlong speed with no time to consider what +this movement might lead to. Weyrother had been twice that evening +to the enemy's picket line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the +Emperors, Russian and Austrian, to report and explain, and to his +headquarters where he had dictated the dispositions in German, and +now, much exhausted, he arrived at Kutuzov's. + +He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the +commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and +indistinctly, without looking at the man he was addressing, and did +not reply to questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had +a pitiful, weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was +haughty and self-confident. + +Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman's castle of modest dimensions +near Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the +commander in chief's office were gathered Kutuzov himself, +Weyrother, and the members of the council of war. They were drinking +tea, and only awaited Prince Bagration to begin the council. At last +Bagration's orderly came with the news that the prince could not +attend. Prince Andrew came in to inform the commander in chief of this +and, availing himself of permission previously given him by Kutuzov to +be present at the council, he remained in the room. + +"Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin," said +Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on +which an enormous map of the environs of Brunn was spread out. + +Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged +over his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low +chair, with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms. +At the sound of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an +effort. + +"Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and +nodding his head he let it droop and again closed his eye. + +If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was +pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading +that followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was +absorbed by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his +contempt for the dispositions or anything else- he was engaged in +satisfying the irresistible human need for sleep. He really was +asleep. Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a +moment, glanced at Kutuzov and, having convinced himself that he was +asleep, took up a paper and in a loud, monotonous voice began to +read out the dispositions for the impending battle, under a heading +which he also read out: + +"Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz +and Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805." + +The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began +as follows: + +"As the enemy's left wing rests on wooded hills and his right +extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there, +while we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his +right, it is advantageous to attack the enemy's latter wing especially +if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can +both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between +Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of +Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy's front. For this +object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The +second column marches... The third column marches..." and so on, +read Weyrother. + +The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult +dispositions. The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden stood, leaning +his back against the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and +seemed not to listen or even to wish to be thought to listen. +Exactly opposite Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed +upon him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy +Miloradovich in a military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands +on his knees, and his shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly silent, +gazing at Weyrother's face, and only turned away his eyes when the +Austrian chief of staff finished reading. Then Miloradovich looked +round significantly at the other generals. But one could not tell from +that significant look whether he agreed or disagreed and was satisfied +or not with the arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count Langeron +who, with a subtle smile that never left his typically southern French +face during the whole time of the reading, gazed at his delicate +fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners a gold snuffbox on +which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the longest sentences, +he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised his head, and +with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his thin lips +interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the Austrian +general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his elbows, as +if to say: "You can tell me your views later, but now be so good as to +look at the map and listen." Langeron lifted his eyes with an +expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as if seeking +an explanation, but meeting the latter's impressive but meaningless +gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox. + +"A geography lesson!" he muttered as if to himself, but loud +enough to be heard. + +Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his +hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in +attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an +assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map +conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar +locality. He asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had +not clearly heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother +complied and Dohkturov noted them down. + +When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron +again brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother +or at anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry +out such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known, +whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement. +Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief +aim was to show General Weyrother- who had read his dispositions +with as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children- +that he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him +something in military matters. + +When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov +opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the +mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if +remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed +his eye again, and let his head sink still lower. + +Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's +vanity as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might +easily attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of +this plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a +firm and contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all +objections be they what they might. + +"If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he. + +"So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron. + +"He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the +smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the +treatment of a case. + +"In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack," +said Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round +for support to Miloradovich who was near him. + +But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything +rather than of what the generals were disputing about. + +"Ma foi!" said he, "tomorrow we shall see all that on the +battlefield." + +Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it +was strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals +and to have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced +himself of, but had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of. + +"The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard +from his camp," said he. "What does that mean? Either he is +retreating, which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing +his position." (He smiled ironically.) "But even if he also took up +a position in the Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of +trouble and all our arrangements to the minutest detail remain the +same." + +"How is that?..." began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting +an opportunity to express his doubts. + +Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the +generals. + +"Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow- or rather for today, +for it is past midnight- cannot now be altered," said he. "You have +heard them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there +is nothing more important..." he paused, "than to have a good sleep." + +He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was +past midnight. Prince Andrew went out. + +The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to +express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy +impression. Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron, +and the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were +right- he did not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to +state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account +of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and +my life, my life," he thought, "must be risked?" + +"Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow," he +thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of +most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he +remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he +remembered the days when he first loved her. He thought of her +pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously +emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he was +billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk up and down before it. + +The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed +mysteriously. "Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!" he thought. "Tomorrow +everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more, +none of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even +certainly, I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall +have to show all I can do." And his fancy pictured the battle, its +loss, the concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation +of all the commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for +which he had so long waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly +and clearly expresses his opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to the +Emperors. All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one +undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division- +stipulates that no one is to interfere with his arrangements- leads +his division to the decisive point, and gains the victory alone. +"But death and suffering?" suggested another voice. Prince Andrew, +however, did not answer that voice and went on dreaming of his +triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are planned by him +alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov's staff, but he +does everything alone. The next battle is won by him alone. Kutuzov is +removed and he is appointed... "Well and then?" asked the other voice. +"If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed, +well... what then?..." "Well then," Prince Andrew answered himself, "I +don't know what will happen and don't want to know, and can't, but +if I want this- want glory, want to be known to men, want to be +loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want nothing +but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never +tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame +and men's esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of family- I fear nothing. +And precious and dear as many persons are to me- father, sister, wife- +those dearest to me- yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would +give them all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of +love from men I don't know and never shall know, for the love of these +men here," he thought, as he listened to voices in Kutuzov's +courtyard. The voices were those of the orderlies who were packing up; +one voice, probably a coachman's, was teasing Kutuzov's old cook +whom Prince Andrew knew, and who was called Tit. He was saying, +"Tit, I say, Tit!" + +"Well?" returned the old man. + +"Go, Tit, thresh a bit!" said the wag. + +"Oh, go to the devil!" called out a voice, drowned by the laughter +of the orderlies and servants. + +"All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I +value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in +this mist!" + +CHAPTER XIII + +That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in +front of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the +line in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master +the sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with +our army's campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind +him; in front of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing, +peer as he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray, +now there was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer +where the enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in +his own eyes. His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared- now +the Emperor, now Denisov, and now Moscow memories- and he again +hurriedly opened his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears +of the horse he was riding, and sometimes, when he came within six +paces of them, the black figures of hussars, but in the distance was +still the same misty darkness. "Why not?... It might easily happen," +thought Rostov, "that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as +he would to any other officer; he'll say: 'Go and find out what's +there.' There are many stories of his getting to know an officer in +just such a chance way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave +me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him +the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!" And in order to +realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to +himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would not only kill +with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before the Emperor. +Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened his eyes. + +"Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and +watchword- shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in +reserve tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front, +this may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now +before I am off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back +I'll go to the general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the +saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars. +It seemed to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a +sloping descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as +steep as a wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostov +could not at all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the +moon, or some unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even thought +something moved on that white spot. "I expect it's snow... that +spot... a spot- une tache," he thought. "There now... it's not a +tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won't she be +surprised when I tell her how I've seen the Emperor?) Natasha... +take my sabretache..."- "Keep to the right, your honor, there are +bushes here," came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostov was riding +in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head that had sunk +almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was +succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. "But what +was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor? +No, that's not it- that's tomorrow. Oh yes! Natasha... sabretache... +saber them...Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches. +Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought +about him too, just opposite Guryev's house... Old Guryev.... Oh, +but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all nonsense. The chief +thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to +say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not. But +that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important +thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes! +That's right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck. All at +once it seemed to him that he was being fired at. "What? What? +What?... Cut them down! What?..." said Rostov, waking up. At the +moment he opened his eyes his eyes he heard in front of him, where the +enemy was, the long-drawn shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and +the horse of the hussar near him pricked their ears at these shouts. +Over there, where the shouting came from, a fire flared up and went +out again, then another, and all along the French line on the hill +fires flared up and the shouting grew louder and louder. Rostov +could hear the sound of French words but could not distinguish them. +The din of many voices was too great; all he could hear was: "ahahah!" +and "rrrr!" + +"What's that? What do you make of it?" said Rostov to the hussar +beside him. "That must be the enemy's camp!" + +The hussar did not reply. + +"Why, don't you hear it?" Rostov asked again, after waiting for a +reply. + +"Who can tell, your honor?" replied the hussar reluctantly. + +"From the direction, it must be the enemy," repeated Rostov. + +"It may be he or it may be nothing," muttered the hussar. "It's +dark... Steady!" he cried to his fidgeting horse. + +Rostov's horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground, +pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting +grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army +of several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and +farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no +longer wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy +army had a stimulating effect on him. "Vive l'Empereur! L'Empereur!" +he now heard distinctly. + +"They can't be far off, probably just beyond the stream," he said to +the hussar beside him. + +The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The +sound of horse's hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars +was heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of +hussars suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant. + +"Your honor, the generals!" said the sergeant, riding up to Rostov. + +Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode +with the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the +line. One was on a white horse. Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov +with their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the +lights and shouts in the enemy's camp. Rostov rode up to Bagration, +reported to him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the +generals were saying. + +"Believe me," said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, "it is +nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to +kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us." + +"Hardly," said Bagration. "I saw them this evening on that knoll; if +they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too.... +Officer!" said Bagration to Rostov, "are the enemy's skirmishers still +there?" + +"They were there this evening, but now I don't know, your +excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?" replied +Rostov. + +Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov's face +in the mist. + +"Well, go and see," he said, after a pause. + +"Yes, sir." + +Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other +hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the +direction from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and +pleased to be riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and +dangerous misty distance where no one had been before him. Bagration +called to him from the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov +pretended not to hear him and did not stop but rode on and on, +continually mistaking bushes for trees and gullies for men and +continually discovering his mistakes. Having descended the hill at a +trot, he no longer saw either our own or the enemy's fires, but +heard the shouting of the French more loudly and distinctly. In the +valley he saw before him something like a river, but when he reached +it he found it was a road. Having come out onto the road he reined +in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it and ride +over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which +gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it would be +easier to see people coming along it. "Follow me!" said he, crossed +the road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the point +where the French pickets had been standing that evening. + +"Your honor, there he is!" cried one of the hussars behind him. +And before Rostov had time to make out what the black thing was that +had suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a +report, and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive +sound passed out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in +the pan. Rostov turned his horse and galloped back. Four more +reports followed at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the +fog singing in different tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose +spirits had risen, like his own, at the firing, and went back at a +footpace. "Well, some more! Some more!" a merry voice was saying in +his soul. But no more shots came. + +Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his horse gallop +again, and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general. + +Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had +only lit fires to deceive us. + +"What does that prove?" he was saying as Rostov rode up. "They might +retreat and leave the pickets." + +"It's plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince," said +Bagration. "Wait till tomorrow morning, we'll find out everything +tomorrow." + +"The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was +in the evening," reported Rostov, stooping forward with his hand at +the salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his +ride and especially by the sound of the bullets. + +"Very good, very good," said Bagration. "Thank you, officer." + +"Your excellency," said Rostov, "may I ask a favor?" + +"What is it?" + +"Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached +to the first squadron?" + +"What's your name?" + +"Count Rostov." + +"Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me." + +"Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov. + +But Rostov did not reply. + +"Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?" + +"I will give the order." + +"Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the +Emperor," thought Rostov. + +"Thank God!" + +The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the +fact that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops +the Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing +him, lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, "Vive +l'Empereur!" Napoleon's proclamation was as follows: + +Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the +Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at +Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position +we occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round +me on the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will +myself direct your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with +your habitual valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy's +ranks, but should victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see +your Emperor exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for +there must be no doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is +at stake is the honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the +honor of our nation. + +Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let +every man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these +hirelings of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This +victory will conclude our campaign and we can return to winter +quarters, where fresh French troops who are being raised in France +will join us, and the peace I shall conclude will be worthy of my +people, of you, and of myself. + +NAPOLEON + +CHAPTER XIV + +At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the +center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not yet moved, +but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, +which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French +right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to +plan, were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into +which they were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes +smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking +tea and breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a +tattoo with their feet to warm themselves, gathering round the fires +throwing into the flames the remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, +tubs, and everything that they did not want or could not carry away +with them. Austrian column guides were moving in and out among the +Russian troops and served as heralds of the advance. As soon as an +Austrian officer showed himself near a commanding officer's +quarters, the regiment began to move: the soldiers ran from the fires, +thrust their pipes into their boots, their bags into the carts, got +their muskets ready, and formed rank. The officers buttoned up their +coats, buckled on their swords and pouches, and moved along the +ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and packed +the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion and +regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final +instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who +remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet +resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and +unable, from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, +to see either the place they were leaving or that to which they were +going. + +A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his +regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has +walked, whatever strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches, +just as a sailor is always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and +rigging of his ship, so the soldier always has around him the same +comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the +same company dog Jack, and the same commanders. The sailor rarely +cares to know the latitude in which his ship is sailing, but on the +day of battle- heaven knows how and whence- a stern note of which +all are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere of an army, +announcing the approach of something decisive and solemn, and +awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of battle the +soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their +regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning +what is going on around them. + +The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they +could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and +level ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one +might encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns +advanced for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and +ascending hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and +unknown ground, and nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary, +the soldiers became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides, +other Russian columns were moving in the same direction. Every soldier +felt glad to know that to the unknown place where he was going, many +more of our men were going too. + +"There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was being said in the +ranks. + +"It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last +night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A +regular Moscow!" + +Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or +talked to the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war, +were out of humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not +exert themselves to cheer the men but merely carried out the +orders), yet the troops marched gaily, as they always do when going +into action, especially to an attack. But when they had marched for +about an hour in the dense fog, the greater part of the men had to +halt and an unpleasant consciousness of some dislocation and blunder +spread through the ranks. How such a consciousness is communicated +is very difficult to define, but it certainly is communicated very +surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly, and irrepressibly, as +water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been alone without any +allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before this +consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as +it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the +stupid Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had +been occasioned by the sausage eaters. + +"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up +against the French?" + +"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had." + +"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in +the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned +Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!" + +"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up +behind. And now here we stand hungry." + +"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking +the way," said an officer. + +"Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own country!" +said another. + +"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding up. + +"The Eighteenth." + +"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you +won't get there till evening." + +"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what they are +doing!" said the officer and rode off. + +Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian. + +"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out," said a +soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd shoot them, +the scoundrels!" + +"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven't +got halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated on different sides. + +And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to +turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the +Germans. + +The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was +moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center +was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all +ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in +front of the infantry, who had to wait. + +At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a +Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry +should be halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher +command, was to blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and +dispirited. After an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending +the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more +densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a +shot was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying +intervals- trata... tat- and then more and more regularly and rapidly, +and the action at the Goldbach Stream began. + +Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having +stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their +commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading +through the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front +or around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the +enemy lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders +from the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in +those unknown surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this +way the action began for the first, second, and third columns, which +had gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov +was, stood on the Pratzen Heights. + +Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog; +on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of +what was going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we +supposed, six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea +of mist, no one knew till after eight o'clock. + +It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a +sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where +Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above +him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a +huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist. +The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff, +were not on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and +Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and +begin the action, but were on this side, so close to our own forces +that Napoleon with the naked eye could distinguish a mounted man +from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak which he had worn on his +Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab horse a little in front +of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills which seemed to rise +out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian troops were moving +in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the +valley. Not a single muscle of his face- which in those days was still +thin- moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one spot. His +predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian force had +already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes and +part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack +and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that +in a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian +columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one +direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into +the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from +the sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the +night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all +indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far +away in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen +constituted the center of the Russian army, and that that center was +already sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still +he did not begin the engagement. + +Today was a great day for him- the anniversary of his coronation. +Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and +in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field in +that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything +succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above +the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident, +self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily +in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his +attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun +floating up out of the mist. + +When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and +mist were aglow with dazzling light- as if he had only awaited this to +begin the action- he drew the glove from his shapely white hand, +made a sign with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to +begin. The marshals, accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in +different directions, and a few minutes later the chief forces of +the French army moved rapidly toward those Pratzen Heights which +were being more and more denuded by Russian troops moving down the +valley to their left. + +CHAPTER XV + +At eight o'clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth +column, Miloradovich's, the one that was to take the place of +Przebyszewski's and Langeron's columns which had already gone down +into the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and +gave them the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to +lead that column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen +he halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number +forming the commander in chief's suite. He was in a state of +suppressed excitement and irritation, though controlledly calm as a +man is at the approach of a long-awaited moment. He was firmly +convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his bridge of +Arcola. How it would come about he did not know, but he felt sure it +would do so. The locality and the position of our troops were known to +him as far as they could be known to anyone in our army. His own +strategic plan, which obviously could not now be carried out, was +forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince Andrew +considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such as +might call for his rapidity of perception and decision. + +To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen +forces could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight +would concentrate. "There we shall encounter difficulties, and there," +thought he, "I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there, +standard in hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of +me." + +He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions. +Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with +which I shall lead the army." + +In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights +was a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay +like a milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left +into which our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of +firing. Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the +vast orb of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that +sea of mist, some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there +the enemy probably was, for something could be descried. On the +right the Guards were entering the misty region with a sound of +hoofs and wheels and now and then a gleam of bayonets; to the left +beyond the village similar masses of cavalry came up and disappeared +in the sea of mist. In front and behind moved infantry. The +commander in chief was standing at the end of the village letting +the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed worn and +irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt without +any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in front. + +"Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the +village!" he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you +understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile +through narrow village streets when we are marching against the +enemy?" + +"I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency," +answered the general. + +Kutuzov laughed bitterly. + +"You'll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy! +Very fine!" + +"The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the +dispositions..." + +"The dispositions!" exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. "Who told you +that?... Kindly do as you are ordered." + +"Yes, sir." + +"My dear fellow," Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew, "the old man +is as surly as a dog." + +An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his +hat galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor's name had the +fourth column advanced into action. + +Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to +fall upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutuzov's +malevolent and caustic expression softened, as if admitting that +what was being done was not his adjutant's fault, and still not +answering the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski. + +"Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed +the village. Tell it to stop and await my orders." + +Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him. + +"And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted," he added. "What +are they doing? What are they doing?" he murmured to himself, still +not replying to the Austrian. + +Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order. + +Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped +the third division and convinced himself that there really were no +sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of +the regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief's order to +throw out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were +other troops in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six +miles away. There was really nothing to be seen in front except a +barren descent hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the +commander in chief's name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew +galloped back. Kutuzov still in the same place, his stout body resting +heavily in the saddle with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily +with closed eyes. The troops were no longer moving, but stood with the +butts of their muskets on the ground. + +"All right, all right!" he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a +general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all +the left-flank columns had already descended. + +"Plenty of time, your excellency," muttered Kutuzov in the midst +of a yawn. "Plenty of time," he repeated. + +Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the sound of +regiments saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole +extended line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person +they were greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the +regiment in front of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he +rode a little to one side and looked round with a frown. Along the +road from Pratzen galloped what looked like a squadron of horsemen +in various uniforms. Two of them rode side by side in front, at full +gallop. One in a black uniform with white plumes in his hat rode a +bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who was in a white uniform rode +a black one. These were the two Emperors followed by their suites. +Kutuzov, affecting the manners of an old soldier at the front, gave +the command "Attention!" and rode up to the Emperors with a salute. +His whole appearance and manner were suddenly transformed. He put on +the air of a subordinate who obeys without reasoning. With an +affectation of respect which evidently struck Alexander +unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted. + +This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy +face of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and +vanished. After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than +on the field of Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time +abroad, but there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty +and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the +same capacity for varying expression and the same prevalent appearance +of goodhearted innocent youth. + +At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed +brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping +two miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked +round at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own. +Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others, +all richly dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh, +only slightly heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had +stopped behind the Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced +young man, sat very erect on his handsome black horse, looking about +him in a leisurely and preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his +white adjutants and asked some question- "Most likely he is asking +at what o'clock they started," thought Prince Andrew, watching his old +acquaintance with a smile he could not repress as he recalled his +reception at Brunn. In the Emperors' suite were the picked young +orderly officers of the Guard and line regiments, Russian and +Austrian. Among them were grooms leading the Tsar's beautiful relay +horses covered with embroidered cloths. + +As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields +enters a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and +confidence of success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the +galloping advent of all these brilliant young men. + +"Why aren't you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?" said the Emperor +Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing courteously at the same +time at the Emperor Francis. + +"I am waiting, Your Majesty," answered Kutuzov, bending forward +respectfully. + +The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had +not quite heard. + +"Waiting, Your Majesty," repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that +Kutuzov's upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word +"waiting.") "Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty." + +The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his +rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as +if complaining of Kutuzov. + +"You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not are not on the +Empress' Field where a parade does not begin till all the troops are +assembled," said the Tsar with another glance at the Emperor +Francis, as if inviting him if not to join in at least to listen to +what he was saying. But the Emperor Francis continued to look about +him and did not listen. + +"That is just why I do not begin, sire," said Kutuzov in a +resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not +being heard, and again something in his face twitched- "That is just +why I do not begin, sire, because we are not on parade and not on +the Empress' Field." said clearly and distinctly. + +In the Emperor's suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed +dissatisfaction and reproach. "Old though he may be, he should not, he +certainly should not, speak like that," their glances seemed to say. + +The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov's eye +waiting to hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutuzov, +with respectfully bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence +lasted for about a minute. + +"However, if you command it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, lifting +his head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning, +but submissive general. + +He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich, the commander +of the column, gave him the order to advance. + +The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Novgorod +and one of the Apsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor. + +As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Miloradovich, +without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous +tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners +front and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing +salute reined in his horse before the Emperor. + +"God be with you, general!" said the Emperor. + +"Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite, +sire,"~{ "Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to do, Sire." }~ he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among +the gentlemen of the Tsar's suite by his poor French. + +Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a +little behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men, excited by the Tsar's +presence, passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a +bold, brisk pace. + +"Lads!" shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery +voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect +of battle, and by the sight of the gallant Apsherons, his comrades +in Suvorov's time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors, +that he forgot the sovereigns' presence. "Lads, it's not the first +village you've had to take," cried he. + +"Glad to do our best!" shouted the soldiers. + +The Emperor's horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had +carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the +field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot +and pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the +Empress' Field, not understanding the significance of the firing, +nor of the nearness of the Emperor Francis' black cob, nor of all that +was being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider. + +The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a +remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons. + +CHAPTER XVI + +Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind +the carabineers. + +When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column +he stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been +an inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops +were marching along both. + +The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly +visible about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down +below, on the left, the firing became more distinct. Kutuzov had +stopped and was speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who +was a little behind looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask +him for a field glass. + +"Look, look!" said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the +distance, but down the hill before him. "It's the French!" + +The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass, +trying to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their +faces suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to +be a mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly +appeared just in front of us. + +"It's the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But +how is that?" said different voices. + +With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not +more than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a +dense French column coming up to meet the Apsherons. + +"Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come," +thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutuzov. + +"The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency," cried he. But at +that very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was +heard quite close at hand, and a voice of naive terror barely two +steps from Prince Andrew shouted, "Brothers! All's lost!" And at +this as if at a command, everyone began to run. + +Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where +five minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would +it have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible +not to be carried back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to +lose touch with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp +what was happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face, +red and unlike himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did not +ride away at once he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov +remained in the same place and without answering drew out a +handkerchief. Blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced +his way to him. + +"You are wounded?" he asked, hardly able to master the trembling +of his lower jaw. + +"The wound is not here, it is there!" said Kutuzov, pressing the +handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing +soldiers. "Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably +realizing that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and +rode to the right. + +A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it. + +The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by +them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, "Get on! Why +are you hindering us?" Another in the same place turned round and +fired in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode. +Having by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of +men, Kutuzov, with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward +a sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the +crowd of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on +the slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was +still firing and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some +Russian infantry, neither moving forward to protect the battery nor +backward with the fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself +from the infantry and approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four +remained. They were all pale and exchanged looks in silence. + +"Stop those wretches!" gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander, +pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to +punish him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment +and across Kutuzov's suite like a flock of little birds. + +The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing +at him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his +leg; several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding +the flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on +the muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing +without orders. + +"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked around.... +"Bolkonski!" he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of +the feebleness of age, "Bolkonski!" he whispered, pointing to the +disordered battalion and at the enemy, "what's that?" + +But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of +shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and +run to the standard. + +"Forward, lads!" he shouted in a voice piercing as a child's. + +"Here it is!" thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and +hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him. +Several soldiers fell. + +"Hurrah!" shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up the +heavy standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole +battalion would follow him. + +And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then +another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting "Hurrah!" +and overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag +that was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew's hands, but he +was immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and, +dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw +our artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having +abandoned their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French +infantry soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning +the guns round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within +twenty paces of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above +him unceasingly and to right and left of him soldiers continually +groaned and dropped. But he did not look at them: he looked only at +what was going on in front of him- at the battery. He now saw +clearly the figure of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry, +pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other. +He could distinctly see the distraught yet angry expression on the +faces of these two men, who evidently did not realize what they were +doing. + +"What are they about?" thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them. +"Why doesn't the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed? Why +doesn't the Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the +Frenchman remembers his bayonet and stabs him...." + +And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to +the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had +triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited +him, was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it +ended. It seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him +on the head with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but +the worst of it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his +seeing what he had been looking at. + +"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way," thought he, and +fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle +of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner +had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or +saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the +sky- the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with +gray clouds gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peaceful, and +solemn; not at all as I ran," thought Prince Andrew- "not as we ran, +shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with +frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do +those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did +not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it +at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite +sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not +exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!..." + +CHAPTER XVII + +On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine o'clock the +battle had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorukov's +demand to commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility +from himself, Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to +inquire of the commander in chief. Bagration knew that as the distance +between the two flanks was more than six miles, even if the +messenger were not killed (which he very likely would be), and found +the commander in chief (which would be very difficult), he would not +be able to get back before evening. + +Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his +suite, and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and +hope, was the first to catch his eye. He sent him. + +"And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in +chief, your excellency?" said Rostov, with his hand to his cap. + +"You can give the message to His Majesty," said Dolgorukov, +hurriedly interrupting Bagration. + +On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed to get a few +hours' sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute, +with elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and +generally in that state of mind which makes everything seem +possible, pleasant, and easy. + +All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be +a general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he +was orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going +with a message to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself. +The morning was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart +was full of joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his +horse the rein and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the +line of Bagration's troops, which had not yet advanced into action but +were standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by +Uvarov's cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation +for battle; having passed Uvarov's cavalry he clearly heard the +sound of cannon and musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder +and louder. + +In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket +shots at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two +cannon shots, but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the +hill before Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon +that sometimes several of them were not separated from one another but +merged into a general roar. + +He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one +another down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling, +spreading, and mingling with one another. He could also, by the +gleam of bayonets visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of +infantry and narrow lines of artillery with green caissons. + +Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was +going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand +or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men +of some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of +troops; but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make +out. These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating +effect on him; on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and +determination. + +"Go on! Go on! Give it them!" he mentally exclaimed at these sounds, +and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther +and farther into the region where the army was already in action. + +"How it will be there I don't know, but all will be well!" thought +Rostov. + +After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part +of the line (the Guards) was already in action. + +"So much the better! I shall see it close," he thought. + +He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came +galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered ranks +were returning from the attack. Rostov got out of their way, +involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on. + +"That is no business of mine," he thought. He had not ridden many +hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole +width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white +uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and +across his path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the +way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at +the same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of +the horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud of their +hoofs and the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their +figures, and even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our +Horse Guards, advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming +to meet them. + +The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their +horses. Rostov could already see their faces and heard the command: +"Charge!" shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to +full speed. Rostov, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack +on the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go, +but still was not in time to avoid them. + +The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned +angrily on seeing Rostov before him, with whom he would inevitably +collide. This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his +Bedouin over (Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to +these gigantic men and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to +flourish his whip before the eyes of the Guardsman's horse. The +heavy black horse, sixteen hands high, shied, throwing back its +ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove his huge spurs in +violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and extending its neck, +galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards passed Rostov +before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back saw that +their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry with +red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for +immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke +enveloped everything. + +At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him, +disappeared in the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after +them or to go where he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of +the Horse Guards that amazed the French themselves. Rostov was +horrified to hear later that of all that mass of huge and handsome +men, of all those brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had +galloped past him on their thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were +left after the charge. + +"Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall +see the Emperor immediately! " thought Rostov and galloped on. + +When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them +and around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so +much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on +the soldiers' faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the +officers. + +Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he +heard a voice calling him by name. + +"Rostov!" + +"What?" he answered, not recognizing Boris. + +"I say, we've been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!" said +Boris with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have +been under fire for the first time. + +Rostov stopped. + +"Have you?" he said. "Well, how did it go?" + +"We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing +talkative. "Can you imagine it?" and he began describing how the +Guards, having taken up their position and seeing troops before +them, thought they were Austrians, and all at once discovered from the +cannon balls discharged by those troops that they were themselves in +the front line and had unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov +without hearing Boris to the end spurred his horse. + +"Where are you off to?" asked Boris. + +"With a message to His Majesty." + +"There he is!" said Boris, thinking Rostov had said "His +Highness," and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high +shoulders and frowning brows stood a hundred paces away from them in +his helmet and Horse Guards' jacket, shouting something to a pale, +white uniformed Austrian officer. + +"But that's the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the +Emperor," said Rostov, and was about to spur his horse. + +"Count! Count!" shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager +as Boris. "Count! I am wounded in my right hand" (and he showed his +bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) "and I remained at +the front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family- the +von Bergs- have been knights!" + +He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear it and +rode away. + +Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostov, to +avoid again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the +Horse Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round +the place where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard. +Suddenly he heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind +our troops, where he could never have expected the enemy to be. + +"What can it be?" he thought. "The enemy in the rear of our army? +Impossible!" And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself +and for the issue of the whole battle. "But be that what it may," he +reflected, "there is no riding round it now. I must look for the +commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish +with the rest." + +The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more +and more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the +village of Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds. + +"What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is +firing?" Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian +soldiers running in confused crowds across his path. + +"The devil knows! They've killed everybody! It's all up now!" he was +told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who +understood what was happening as little as he did. + +"Kill the Germans!" shouted one. + +"May the devil take them- the traitors!" + +"Zum Henker diese Russen!"~{ "Hang these Russians!" }~ muttered a German. + +Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse, +screams, and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing +died down. Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had +been firing at one another. + +"My God! What does it all mean?" thought he. "And here, where at any +moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a +handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can't be that, it +can't be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!" + +The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head. +Though he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights +just where he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief, +he could not, did not wish to, believe that. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the +village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer +were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He +urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but +the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on +which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all +sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and +some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the +dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries +stationed on the Pratzen Heights. + +"Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov kept asking +everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone. + +At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer. + +"Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said the soldier, +laughing for some reason and shaking himself free. + +Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped the +horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to +question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a +carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and +that he was dangerously wounded. + +"It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been someone else." + +"I saw him myself." replied the man with a self-confident smile of +derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I've +seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat +in the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black +horses fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It's time I knew the +Imperial horses and Ilya Ivanych. I don't think Ilya drives anyone +except the Tsar!" + +Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a +wounded officer passing by addressed him: + +"Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander in chief? He was +killed by a cannon ball- struck in the breast before our regiment." + +"Not killed- wounded!" another officer corrected him. + +"Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov. + +"Not Kutuzov, but what's his name- well, never mind... there are not +many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders +are there," said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek, +and he walked on. + +Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now +going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible +to doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed out to him, in +which he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now +to say to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and +unwounded? + +"Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!" a +soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you there!" + +"Oh, what are you talking about?" said another. "Where is he to +go? That way is nearer." + +Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they said he +would be killed. + +"It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to +save myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region where the +greatest number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The +French had not yet occupied that region, and the Russians- the +uninjured and slightly wounded- had left it long ago. All about the +field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to +fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres. The wounded crept +together in twos and threes and one could hear their distressing +screams and groans, sometimes feigned- or so it seemed to Rostov. He +put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men, and +he felt afraid- afraid not for his life, but for the courage he needed +and which he knew would not stand the sight of these unfortunates. + +The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and +wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an +adjutant riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several +shots. The sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the +corpses around him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of +terror and pity for himself. He remembered his mother's last letter. +"What would she feel," thought he, "if she saw me here now on this +field with the cannon aimed at me?" + +In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from +the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less +disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry +fire sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the +battle was lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the +Emperor or Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was +wounded was correct, others that it was not, and explained the false +rumor that had spread by the fact that the Emperor's carriage had +really galloped from the field of battle with the pale and terrified +Ober-Hofmarschal Count Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the +battlefield with others in the Emperor's suite. One officer told +Rostov that he had seen someone from headquarters behind the village +to the left, and thither Rostov rode, not hoping to find anyone but +merely to ease his conscience. When he had ridden about two miles +and had passed the last of the Russian troops, he saw, near a +kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on horseback facing +the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed familiar to +Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which Rostov +fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his horse +with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a +little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse's hind hoofs. +Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and +deferentially addressed the horseman with the white plumes, +evidently suggesting that he should do the same. The rider, whose +figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted his +attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and hand and by +that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lamented and adored +monarch. + +"But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!" +thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov +saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. +The Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the +charm, the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was +happy in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded +were false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and +even ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorukov had +ordered him to deliver. + +But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter +the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help +or a chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and +he is alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he +had longed for more than anything else in the world, did not know +how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him +why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so. + +"What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of +his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant +or painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to +him now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere +sight of him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the +Emperor that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall. +Those speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for +the most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph, +generally when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked +him for heroic deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his +actions had proved. + +"Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the +right flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the battle is lost? +No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his +reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind +look or bad opinion from him," Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and +with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at +the Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision. + +While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away, +Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the +Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him +to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling +unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him. +Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke +long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping, +covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll's hand. + +"And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov, and hardly +restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter +despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding. + +His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness +was the cause his grief. + +He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the +sovereign. It was a unique chance to show his devotion to the +Emperor and he had not made use of it.... "What have I done?" +thought he. And he turned round and galloped back to the place where +he had seen the Emperor, but there was no one beyond the ditch now. +Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From one of the drivers +he learned that Kutuzov's staff were not far off, in the village the +vehicles were going to. Rostov followed them. In front of him walked +Kutuzov's groom leading horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and +behind that walked an old, bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked +cap and sheepskin coat. + +"Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom. + +"What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly. + +"Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!" + +"Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed +in silence, and then the same joke was repeated. + +Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. +More than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French. + +Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other +columns after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly +confused masses. + +The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were +crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of +Augesd. + +After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot +cannonade (delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from +numerous batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, +directed at our retreating forces. + +In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions kept +up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. +It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many +years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap +peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled +up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on +that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and +blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with +wheat and had returned dusty with flour whitening their carts- on that +narrow dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and +between the wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now +crowded together, crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying +and killing one another, only to move on a few steps and be killed +themselves in the same way. + +Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around, +or a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and +splashing with blood those near them. + +Dolokhov- now an officer- wounded in the arm, and on foot, with +the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company, +represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by +the crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and, +jammed in on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had +fallen under a cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon +ball killed someone behind them, another fell in front and splashed +Dolokhov with blood. The crowd, pushing forward desperately, +squeezed together, moved a few steps, and again stopped. + +"Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here +another two minutes and it is certain death," thought each one. + +Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the +edge of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto +the slippery ice that covered the millpool. + +"Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked +under him; "turn this way!" he shouted to those with the gun. "It +bears!..." + +The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it +would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon +even under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to +the bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at +the entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to +address Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd +that everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general +fell from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or +thought of raising him. + +"Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you hear? Go +on!" innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the +general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were +shouting. + +One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto +the ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen +pond. The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg +slipped into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to +his waist. The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped +his horse, but from behind still came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why +do you stop? Go on! Go on!" And cries of horror were heard in the +crowd. The soldiers near the gun waved their arms and beat the +horses to make them turn and move on. The horses moved off the bank. +The ice, that had held under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, +and some forty men who were on it dashed, some forward and some +back, drowning one another. + +Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop +onto the ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd +that covered the dam, the pond, and the bank. + +CHAPTER XIX + +On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in +his hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusely and +unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan. + +Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did +not know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt +that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his +head. + +"Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw +today?" was his first thought. "And I did not know this suffering +either," he thought. "Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all +till now. But where am I?" + +He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices +speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same +lofty sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher, +and between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and +did not see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had +ridden up and stopped near him. + +It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding +over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the +batteries firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and +wounded left on the field. + +"Fine men!" remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian +grenadier, who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened +nape, lay on his stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide. + +"The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your +Majesty," said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were +firing at Augesd. + +"Have some brought from the reserve," said Napoleon, and having gone +on a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back +with the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had +already been taken by the French as a trophy.) + +"That's a fine death!" said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski. + +Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was +Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he +heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not +only did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at +once forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to +death, and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He +knew it was Napoleon- his hero- but at that moment Napoleon seemed +to him such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was +passing now between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the +clouds flying over it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who +might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only +glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they +would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so +beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so +differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and utter a sound. +He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan which aroused +his own pity. + +"Ah! He is alive," said Napoleon. "Lift this young man up and +carry him to the dressing station." + +Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who, +hat in hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the +victory. + +Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from +the terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting +while being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing +station. He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when +with other wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the +hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was +able to look about him and even speak. + +The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a +French convoy officer, who said rapidly: "We must halt here: the +Emperor will pass here immediately; it will please him to see these +gentlemen prisoners." + +"There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army, +that he is probably tired of them," said another officer. + +"All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor +Alexander's Guards," said the first one, indicating a Russian +officer in the white uniform of the Horse Guards. + +Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met in Petersburg +society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of +the Horse Guards. + +Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse. + +"Which is the senior?" he asked, on seeing the prisoners. + +They named the colonel, Prince Repnin. + +"You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander's regiment of +Horse Guards?" asked Napoleon. + +"I commanded a squadron," replied Repnin. + +"Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably," said Napoleon. + +"The praise of a great commander is a soldier's highest reward," +said Repnin. + +"I bestow it with pleasure," said Napoleon. "And who is that young +man beside you?" + +Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen. + +After looking at him Napoleon smiled. + +"He's very young to come to meddle with us." + +"Youth is no hindrance to courage," muttered Sukhtelen in a +failing voice. + +"A splendid reply!" said Napoleon. "Young man, you will go far!" + +Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the +Emperor's eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to +attract his attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on +the battlefield and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young +man" that was connected in his memory with Prince Andrew. + +"Well, and you, young man," said he. "How do you feel, mon brave?" + +Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few +words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed +straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that +moment seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so +mean did his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory +appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he +had seen and understood, that he could not answer him. + +Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the +stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood, +suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into +Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of +greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and +the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one +alive could understand or explain. + +The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to +one of the officers as he went: "Have these gentlemen attended to +and taken to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their +wounds. Au revoir, Prince Repnin!" and he spurred his horse and +galloped away. + +His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure. + +The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the +little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother's neck, +but seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now +hastened to return the holy image. + +Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the +little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his +chest outside his uniform. + +"It would be good," thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon +his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, +"it would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems +to Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this +life, and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm +I should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to +whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, +incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which I cannot +even express in words- the Great All or Nothing-" said he to +himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! +There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of +everything I understand, and the greatness of something +incomprehensible but all-important. + +The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable +pain; his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his +father, wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt +the night before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little +Napoleon, and above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief +subjects of his delirious fancies. + +The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented +itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that little +Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of +shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and +torments had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward +morning all these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness +of unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon's +doctor, Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in +convalescence. + +"He is a nervous, bilious subject," said Larrey, "and will not +recover." + +And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care +of the inhabitants of the district. + +BOOK FOUR: 1806 + +CHAPTER I + +Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home on leave. +Denisov was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to +travel with him as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a +comrade at the last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had +drunk three bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts +across the snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to +Moscow, but lay at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew +more and more impatient the nearer they got to Moscow. + +"How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets, +shops, bakers' signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!" thought Rostov, +when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had +entered Moscow. + +"Denisov! We're here! He's asleep," he added, leaning forward with +his whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed +of the sleigh. + +Denisov gave no answer. + +"There's the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhar, has +his stand, and there's Zakhar himself and still the same horse! And +here's the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can't you +hurry up? Now then!" + +"Which house is it?" asked the driver. + +"Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don't you see? That's +our house," said Rostov. "Of course, it's our house! Denisov, Denisov! +We're almost there!" + +Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer. + +"Dmitri," said Rostov to his valet on the box, "those lights are +in our house, aren't they?" + +"Yes, sir, and there's a light in your father's study." + +"Then they've not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now, +don't forget to put out my new coat," added Rostov, fingering his +new mustache. "Now then, get on," he shouted to the driver. "Do wake +up, Vaska!" he went on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again +nodding. "Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka- get +on!" Rostov shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his +door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at all. At last +the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostov saw +overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit of plaster broken off, +the porch, and the post by the side of the pavement. He sprang out +before the sleigh stopped, and ran into the hall. The house stood cold +and silent, as if quite regardless of who had come to it. There was no +one in the hall. "Oh God! Is everyone all right?" he thought, stopping +for a moment with a sinking heart, and then immediately starting to +run along the hall and up the warped steps of the familiar +staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always angered the +countess when it was not properly cleaned, turned as loosely as +ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the anteroom. + +Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was +so strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat +plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the +opening door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly +changed to one of delighted amazement. + +"Gracious heavens! The young count!" he cried, recognizing his young +master. "Can it be? My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with +excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order +to announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss +the young man's shoulder. + +"All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm. + +"Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have +a look at you, your excellency." + +"Is everything quite all right?" + +"The Lord be thanked, yes!" + +Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone +to forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the +large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card +tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had +already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the +drawing room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and +began hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the +same kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more +kissing, more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish +which was Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted, +talked, and kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not +there, he noticed that. + +"And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..." + +"Here he is... our own... Kolya,~{ Nicholas. }~ dear fellow... How he has +changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!..." + +"And me, kiss me!" + +"Dearest... and me!" + +Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and the old count +were all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the +room, exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing. + +Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, "And me too!" + +Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his +face with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang +away and pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked +piercingly. + +All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all +around were lips seeking a kiss. + +Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss, +looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she +longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at +this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not +taking her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave +her a grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for +someone. The old countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard +at the door, steps so rapid that they could hardly be his mother's. + +Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made +since he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her. +When they met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her +face, but only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar's jacket. +Denisov, who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there +and wiped his eyes at the sight. + +"Vasili Denisov, your son's friend," he said, introducing himself to +the count, who was looking inquiringly at him. + +"You are most welcome! I know, I know," said the count, kissing +and embracing Denisov. "Nicholas wrote us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here +is Denisov!" + +The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of +Denisov. + +"Darling Denisov!" screamed Natasha, beside herself with rapture, +springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This +escapade made everybody feel confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled +and, taking Natasha's hand, kissed it. + +Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostovs +all gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room. + +The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every +moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every +movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully +adoring eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places +nearest to him and disputed with one another who should bring him +his tea, handkerchief, and pipe. + +Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first +moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed +insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more. + +Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers +slept till ten o'clock. + +In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers, +satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly +cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The +servants were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving, +and their well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell +of tobacco. + +"Hallo, Gwiska- my pipe!" came Vasili Denisov's husky voice. +"Wostov, get up!" + +Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his +disheveled head from the hot pillow. + +"Why, is it late?" + +"Late! It's nearly ten o'clock," answered Natasha's voice. A +rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of +girls' voices came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a +crack and there was a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black +hair, and merry faces. It was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had +come to see whether they were getting up. + +"Nicholas! Get up!" Natasha's voice was again heard at the door. + +"Directly!" + +Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer +room, with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder +brother, and forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see +men undressed, opened the bedroom door. + +"Is this your saber?" he shouted. + +The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the +blanket, looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door, +having let Petya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from +behind it. + +"Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!" said Natasha's voice. + +"Is this your saber?" asked Petya. "Or is it yours?" he said, +addressing the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference. + +Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing +gown, and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just +getting her foot into the other. Sonya, when he came in, was +twirling round and was about to expand her dresses into a balloon +and sit down. They were dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and +were both fresh, rosy, and bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking +her brother's arm, led him into the sitting room, where they began +talking. They hardly gave one another time to ask questions and give +replies concerning a thousand little matters which could not +interest anyone but themselves. Natasha laughed at every word he +said or that she said herself, not because what they were saying was +amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable to control her +joy which expressed itself by laughter. + +"Oh, how nice, how splendid!" she said to everything. + +Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that +childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he +left home now for the first time after eighteen months again +brightened his soul and his face. + +"No, but listen," she said, "now you are quite a man, aren't you? +I'm awfully glad you're my brother." She touched his mustache. "I want +to know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?" + +"Why did Sonya run away?" asked Rostov. + +"Ah, yes! That's a whole long story! How are you going to speak to +her- thou or you?" + +"As may happen," said Rostov. + +"No, call her you, please! I'll tell you all about it some other +time. No, I'll tell you now. You know Sonya's my dearest friend. +Such a friend that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!" + +She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her +long, slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is +covered even by a ball dress. + +"I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in +the fire and pressed it there!" + +Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what +used to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natasha's wildly +bright eyes, Rostov re-entered that world of home and childhood +which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best +joys of his life; and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of +love did not seem to him senseless, he understood and was not +surprised at it. + +"Well, and is that all?" he asked. + +"We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just +nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does +it for life, but I don't understand that, I forget quickly." + +"Well, what then?" + +"Well, she loves me and you like that." + +Natasha suddenly flushed. + +"Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are +to forget all that.... She says: 'I shall love him always, but let him +be free.' Isn't that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn't it?" +asked Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that +what she was now saying she had talked of before, with tears. + +Rostov became thoughtful. + +"I never go back on my word," he said. "Besides, Sonya is so +charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness." + +"No, no!" cried Natasha, "she and I have already talked it over. +We knew you'd say so. But it won't do, because you see, if you say +that- if you consider yourself bound by your promise- it will seem +as if she had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were +marrying her because you must, and that wouldn't do at all." + +Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had +already struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when +he had caught a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She +was a charming girl of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with +him (he did not doubt that for an instant). Why should he not love her +now, and even marry her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so +many other pleasures and interests before him! "Yes, they have taken a +wise decision," he thought, "I must remain free." + +"Well then, that's excellent," said he. "We'll talk it over later +on. Oh, how glad I am to have you! + +"Well, and are you still true to Boris?" he continued. + +"Oh, what nonsense!" cried Natasha, laughing. "I don't think about +him or anyone else, and I don't want anything of the kind." + +"Dear me! Then what are you up now?" + +"Now?" repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her face. "Have +you seen Duport?" + +"No." + +"Not seen Duport- the famous dancer? Well then, you won't +understand. That's what I'm up to." + +Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran +back a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply +together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes. + +"See, I'm standing! See!" she said, but could not maintain herself +on her toes any longer. "So that's what I'm up to! I'll never marry +anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don't tell anyone." + +Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his bedroom, +felt envious and Natasha could not help joining in. + +"No, but don't you think it's nice?" she kept repeating. + +"Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?" + +Natasha flared up. "I don't want to marry anyone. And I'll tell +him so when I see him!" + +"Dear me!" said Rostov. + +"But that's all rubbish," Natasha chattered on. "And is Denisov +nice?" she asked. + +"Yes, indeed!" + +"Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible, +Denisov?" + +"Why terrible?" asked Nicholas. "No, Vaska is a splendid fellow." + +"You call him Vaska? That's funny! And is he very nice?" + +"Very." + +"Well then, be quick. We'll all have breakfast together." + +And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet +dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When +Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how +to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of +meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could +not be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, +was looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave +with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you- +Sonya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender +kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by +Natasha's intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked +him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom +and told her that one way or another he would never cease to love her, +for that would be impossible. + +"How strange it is," said Vera, selecting a moment when all were +silent, "that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet +like strangers." + +Vera's remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like +most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not +only Sonya, Nicholas, and Natasha, but even the old countess, who- +dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a +brilliant match- blushed like a girl. + +Denisov, to Rostov's surprise, appeared in the drawing room with +pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as +he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the +ladies and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him. + +CHAPTER II + +On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was +welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their +darling Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and +polite young man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of +hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in the city. + +The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough +that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas, +acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the +latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the +latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs, +passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself +to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be +at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His +despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money +from Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the sly- he +now recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind. +Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and +wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in +action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected +racing men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a +lady on one of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led +the mazurka at the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field +Marshal Kamenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate +terms with a colonel of forty to whom Denisov had introduced + +His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But +still, as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, +he often spoke about him and about his love for him, letting it be +understood that he had not told all and that there was something in +his feelings for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with +his whole soul he shared the adoration then common in Moscow for the +Emperor, who was spoken of as the "angel incarnate." + +During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, +he did not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away from her. She +was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, +but he was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do +that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears +to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many +other things. When he thought of Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he +said to himself, "Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such +girls somewhere whom I do not yet know. There will be time enough to +think about love when I want to, but now I have no time." Besides, +it seemed to him that the society of women was rather derogatory to +his manhood. He went to balls and into ladies' society with an +affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the English Club, +sprees with Denisov, and visits to a certain house- that was another +matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar! + +At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy +arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English Club. + +The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving +orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the Club's head +cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish +for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of +the Club from the day it was founded. To him the Club entrusted the +arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few men knew so +well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and +still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of +their own resources what might be needed for the success of the +fete. The club cook and the steward listened to the count's orders +with pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could +they so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner +costing several thousand rubles. + +"Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup, you know!" + +"Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the cook. + +The count considered. + +"We can't have less- yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said +he, bending down a finger. + +"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward. + +"Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was +forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he +clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh, +Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate," he said to the factotum +who appeared at his call. "Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to +set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must +be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred +pots here on Friday." + +Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his +"little countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of +importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club +steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the +clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count, +handsome, rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made +sleeker by his easy life in Moscow, entered the room. + +"Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile, +as if he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would +only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own +orchestra, but shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You +military men like that sort of thing." + +"Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less +before the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with +a smile. + +The old count pretended to be angry. + +"Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!" + +And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and +respectful expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the +father and son. + +"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said +he. "Laughing at us old fellows!" + +"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good +dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their +business! + +"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his +son by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and +pair at once, and go to Bezukhob's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has +sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get +them from anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in +and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay- the +coachman Ipatka knows- and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who +danced at Count Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and +bring him along to me." + +"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked +Nicholas, laughing. "Dear, dear!..." + +At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the +businesslike, preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never +left her face, Anna Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon +the count in his dressing gown every day, he invariably became +confused and begged her to excuse his costume. + +"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her +eyes. "But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now +we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in +any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is +now on the staff." + +The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself +one of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her. + +"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with +him?" he asked. + +Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was +depicted on her face. + +"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what +we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing +when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul +as young Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to +give him what consolation I can." + +"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov. + +Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply. + +"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper, +"has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited +him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here and +that daredevil after her!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show +her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half +smile betraying her sympathy for the "daredevil," as she called +Dolokhov. "They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune." + +"Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club- it will all +blow over. It will be a tremendous banquet." + +Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred +and fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting +the guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince +Bagration, to dinner. + +On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow +had been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to +victories that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not +believe it, while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so +strange an event. In the English Club, where all who were +distinguished, important, and well informed forgathered when the +news began to arrive in December, nothing was said about the war and +the last battle, as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The +men who set the tone in conversation- Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri +Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemski- did not show +themselves at the Club, but met in private houses in intimate circles, +and the Moscovites who took their opinions from others- Ilya Rostov +among them- remained for a while without any definite opinion on the +subject of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that +something was wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult, +and so it was best to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury +comes out of its room, the bigwigs who guided the Club's opinion +reappeared, and everybody began speaking clearly and definitely. +Reasons were found for the incredible, unheard-of, and impossible +event of a Russian defeat, everything became clear, and in all corners +of Moscow the same things began to be said. These reasons were the +treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat, the treachery of +the Pole Przebyszewski and of the Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov's +incapacity, and (it was whispered) the youth and inexperience of the +sovereign, who had trusted worthless and insignificant people. But the +army, the Russian army, everyone declared, was extraordinary and had +achieved miracles of valor.The soldiers, officers, and generals were +heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagration, distinguished +by his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat from Austerlitz, +where he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and had all day +beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous as his own. What also +conduced to Bagration's being selected as Moscow's hero was the fact +that he had no connections in the city and was a stranger there. In +his person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian soldier +without connections and intrigues, and to one who was associated by +memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvorov. Moreover, +paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of expressing +disapproval and dislike of Kutuzov. + +"Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent +him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire. +Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers, +calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr. + +All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on +modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting +consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and +the words of Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to +battle by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to +show them that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but +that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all +sides, new and fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of +heroism shown by our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a +standard, another had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five +cannon singlehanded. Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know +him, as having, when wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the +left, and gone forward. Of Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those +who knew him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a +pregnant wife with his eccentric father. + +CHAPTER III + +On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were +filled with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in +springtime. The members and guests of the Club wandered hither and +thither, sat, stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in +evening dress, and a few here and there with powdered hair and in +Russian kaftans. Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and +smart stockings, stood at every door anxiously noting visitors' +every movement in order to offer their services. Most of those present +were elderly, respected men with broad, self-confident faces, fat +fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. This class of guests and +members sat in certain habitual places and met in certain habitual +groups. A minority of those present were casual guests- chiefly +young men, among whom were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhov- who was +now again an officer in the Semenov regiment. The faces of these young +people, especially those who were militarymen, bore that expression of +condescending respect for their elders which seems to say to the older +generation, "We are prepared to respect and honor you, but all the +same remember that the future belongs to us." + +Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club. Pierre, who at his +wife's command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles, +went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull. +Here, as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience +to his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, +he treated them with absent-minded contempt. + +By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his +wealth and connections he belonged to the groups old and honored +guests, and so he went from one group to another. Some of the most +important old men were the center of groups which even strangers +approached respectfully to hear the voices of well-known men. The +largest circles formed round Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and +Naryshkin. Rostopchin was describing how the Russians had been +overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to force their way through +them with bayonets. + +Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been sent from +Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz. + +In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the +Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed like a cock in reply +to the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing +close by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently +failed to learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of +crowing like a cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the +wit, making him feel that in that place and on that day, it was +improper to speak so of Kutuzov. + +Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft +boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the +important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all +equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up +young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov +stood at a window with Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made +and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed +Dolokhov's hand. + +"Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been +together out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili +Ignatovich... How d'ye do, old fellow?" he said, turning to an old man +who was passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a +general stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a +frightened face: "He's arrived!" + +Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and- like rye shaken +together in a shovel- the guests who had been scattered about in +different rooms came together and crowded in the large drawing room by +the door of the ballroom. + +Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or +sword, which, in accord with the Club custom, he had given up to the +hall porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded +whip over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of +the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian +and foreign Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast. +Evidently just before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and +whiskers trimmed, which changed his appearance for the worse. There +was something naively festive in his air, which, in conjunction with +his firm and virile features, gave him a rather comical expression. +Bekleshev and Theodore Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the +doorway to allow him, as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration +was embarrassed, not wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and +this caused some delay at the doors, but after all he did at last +enter first. He walked shyly and awkwardly over the parquet floor of +the reception room, not knowing what to do with his hands; he was more +accustomed to walk over a plowed field under fire, as he had done at +the head of the Kursk regiment at Schon Grabern- and he would have +found that easier. The committeemen met him at the first door and, +expressing their delight at seeing such a highly honored guest, took +possession of him as it were, without waiting for his reply, +surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was at first +impossible to enter the drawing-room door for the crowd of members and +guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look at Bagration +over each other's shoulders, as if he were some rare animal. Count +Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, "Make way, dear boy! +Make way, make way!" pushed through the crowd more energetically +than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and seated them +on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members of the +Club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting his way +through the crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a +minute later with another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver +which he presented to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some +verses composed and printed in the hero's honor. Bagration, on +seeing the salver, glanced around in dismay, as though seeking help. +But all eyes demanded that he should submit. Feeling himself in +their power, he resolutely took the salver with both hands and +looked sternly and reproachfully at the count who had presented it +to him. Someone obligingly took the dish from Bagration (or he +would, it seemed, have held it till evening and have gone in to dinner +with it) and drew his attention to the verses. + +"Well, I will read them, then!" Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing +his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and +serious expression. But the author himself took the verses and began +reading them aloud. Bagration bowed his bead and listened: + +``` block + Bring glory then to Alexander's reign +And on the throne our Titus shield. +A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man, +A Rhipheus at home, a Caesar in the field! +E'en fortunate Napoleon +Knows by experience, now, Bagration, +And dare not Herculean Russians trouble... +``` + +But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo +announced that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the +dining room came the resounding strains of the polonaise: + +``` block + Conquest's joyful thunder waken, +Triumph, valiant Russians, now!... +``` + +and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading +his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was +more important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the +rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between +two Alexanders- Bekleshev and Naryshkin- which was a significant +allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took +their seats in the dining room, according to their rank and +importance: the more important nearer to the honored guest, as +naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest. + +Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son to +Bagration, who recognized him and said a few words to him, +disjointed and awkward, as were all the words he spoke that day, and +Count Ilya looked joyfully and proudly around while Bagration spoke to +his son. + +Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance, Dolokhov, +sat almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre, +beside Prince Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of +the committee sat facing Bagration and, as the very personification of +Moscow hospitality, did the honors to the prince. + +His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and +the other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till +the end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions +to the footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety. +Everything was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet +(at sight of which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious +pleasure), the footmen began popping corks and filling the champagne +glasses. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, the count +exchanged glances with the other committeemen. "There will be many +toasts, it's time to begin," he whispered, and taking up his glass, he +rose. All were silent, waiting for what he would say. + +"To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he cried, and at +the same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and +enthusiasm. The band immediately struck up "Conquest's joyful +thunder waken..." All rose and cried "Hurrah!" Bagration also rose and +shouted "Hurrah!" in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted it +on the field at Schon Grabern. Young Rostov's ecstatic voice could +be heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. "To the +health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he roared, "Hurrah!" and +emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many +followed his example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time. +When the voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass +and everybody sat down again, smiling at the noise they had made and +exchanging remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a note +lying beside his plate, and proposed a toast, "To the health of the +hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!" and +again his blue eyes grew moist. "Hurrah!" cried the three hundred +voices again, but instead of the band a choir began singing a +cantata composed by Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov: + +``` block + Russians! O'er all barriers on! +Courage conquest guarantees; +Have we not Bagration? +He brings foe men to their knees,... etc. +``` + +As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was +proposed and Count Ilya Rostov became more and more moved, more +glass was smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to +Bekleshev, Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the +committee, to all the Club members and to all the Club guests, and +finally to Count Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the +banquet. At that toast, the count took out his handkerchief and, +covering his face, wept outright. + +CHAPTER IV + +Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As usual, he ate +and drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed +that some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all +through dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed +eyes and a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge +of his nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and +hear nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by +some depressing and unsolved problem. + +The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by +the princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov's intimacy +with his wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that +morning, which in the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters +said that he saw badly through his spectacles, but that his wife's +connection with Dolokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre +absolutely disbelieved both the princess' hints and the letter, but he +feared now to look at Dolokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every +time he chanced to meet Dolokhov's handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt +something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly +away. Involuntarily recalling his wife's past and her relations with +Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be +true, or might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his +wife. He involuntarily remembered how Dolokhov, who had fully +recovered his former position after the campaign, had returned to +Petersburg and come to him. Availing himself of his friendly relations +with Pierre as a boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his +house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled +how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dolokhov's living at +their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife's +beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had not left +them for a day. + +"Yes, he is very handsome," thought Pierre, "and I know him. It +would be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule +me, just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended +him, and helped him. I know and understand what a spice that would add +to the pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it +were true, but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can't, +believe it." He remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in +his moments of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and +dropping them into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel +without any reason, or shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol. That +expression was often on Dolokhov's face when looking at him. "Yes, +he is a bully," thought Pierre, "to kill a man means nothing to him. +It must seem to him that everyone is afraid of him, and that must +please him. He must think that I, too, am afraid of him- and in fact I +am afraid of him," he thought, and again he felt something terrible +and monstrous rising in his soul. Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were +now sitting opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostov was talking +merrily to his two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the +other a notorious duelist and rake, and every now and then he +glanced ironically at Pierre, whose preoccupied, absent-minded, and +massive figure was a very noticeable one at the dinner. Rostov +looked inimically at Pierre, first because Pierre appeared to his +hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, and in a +word- an old woman; and secondly because Pierre in his preoccupation +and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had not +responded to his greeting. When the Emperor's health was drunk, +Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass. + +"What are you about?" shouted Rostov, looking at him in an ecstasy +of exasperation. "Don't you hear it's His Majesty the Emperor's +health?" + +Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting +till all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostov. + +"Why, I didn't recognize you!" he said. But Rostov was otherwise +engaged; he was shouting "Hurrah!" + +"Why don't you renew the acquaintance?" said Dolokhov to Rostov. + +"Confound him, he's a fool!" said Rostov. + +"One should make up to the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov. + +Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were +talking about him. He reddened and turned away. + +"Well, now to the health of handsome women!" said Dolokhov, and with +a serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his +mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre. + +"Here's to the health of lovely women, Peterkin- and their +lovers!" he added. + +Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking +at Dolokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing +leaflets with Kutuzov's cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of +the principal guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov, +leaning across, snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre +looked at Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and +monstrous that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took +possession of him. He leaned his whole massive body across the table. + +"How dare you take it?" he shouted. + +Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitski +and the neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezukhov. + +"Don't! Don't! What are you about?" whispered their frightened +voices. + +Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that +smile of his which seemed to say, "Ah! This is what I like!" + +"You shan't have it!" he said distinctly. + +Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy. + +"You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!" he ejaculated, and, +pushing back his chair, he rose from the table. + +At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt +that the question of his wife's guilt which had been tormenting him +the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative. +He hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov's +request that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to +be Dolokhov's second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements +for the duel with Nesvitski, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home, +but Rostov with Dolokhov and Denisov stayed on at the Club till +late, listening to the gypsies and other singers. + +"Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki,"said Dolokhov, as he took +leave of Rostov in the Club porch. + +"And do you feel quite calm?" Rostov asked. + +Dolokhov paused. + +"Well, you see, I'll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two +words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write +affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be +killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the +firm intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as +possible, and then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma +used to tell me. 'Everyone fears a bear,' he says, 'but when you see +one your fear's all gone, and your only thought is not to let him +get away!' And that's how it is with me. A demain, mon cher."~{ Till tomorrow, my dear fellow. }~ + +Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski drove to the +Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already +there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations +which had no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face +was yellow. He had evidently not slept that night. He looked about +distractedly and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He +was entirely absorbed by two considerations: his wife's guilt, of +which after his sleepless night he had not the slightest doubt, and +the guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor +of a man who was nothing to him.... "I should perhaps have done the +same thing in his place," thought Pierre. "It's even certain that I +should have done the same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I +shall kill him, or he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee. +Can't I go away from here, run away, bury myself somewhere?" passed +through his mind. But just at moments when such thoughts occurred to +him, he would ask in a particularly calm and absent-minded way, +which inspired the respect of the onlookers, "Will it be long? Are +things ready?" + +When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the +barriers, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to Pierre. + +"I should not be doing my duty, Count," he said in timid tones, "and +should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in +choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment +I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient +ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were +not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous..." + +"Oh yes, it is horribly stupid," said Pierre. + +"Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your +opponent will accept them," said Nesvitski (who like the others +concerned in the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not +yet believe that the affair had come to an actual duel). "You know, +Count, it is much more honorable to admit one's mistake than to let +matters become irreparable. There was no insult on either side. +Allow me to convey...." + +"No! What is there to talk about?" said Pierre. "It's all the +same.... Is everything ready?" he added. "Only tell me where to go and +where to shoot," he said with an unnaturally gentle smile. + +He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of +the trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand- a fact +that he did not to confess. + +"Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot," said he. + +"No apologies, none whatever," said Dolokhov to Denisov (who on +his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to +the appointed place. + +The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road, +where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine +forest covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up +during the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at +the farther edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces, +left tracks in the deep wet snow between the place where they had been +standing and Nesvitski's and Dolokhov's sabers, which were stuck +intothe ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and +misty; at forty paces' distance nothing could be seen. For three +minutes all had been ready, but they still delayed and all were +silent. + +CHAPTER V + +"Well begin!" said Dolokhov. + +"All right," said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling +of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly +begun could no longer be averted but was taking its course +independently of men's will. + +Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies +have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols, +and at the word thwee begin to advance. + +"O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped aside. + +The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and +nearer to one another, beginning to see one another through the +mist. They had the right to fire when they liked as they approached +the barrier. Dolokhov walked slowly without raising his pistol, +looking intently with his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his +antagonist's face. His mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile. + +"So I can fire when I like!" said Pierre, and at the word "three," +he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into +the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at arm's length, +apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he held +carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it +and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed +off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then +quickly glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been +shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre +shuddered at the sound and then, smiling at his own sensations, +stood still. The smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him +from seeing anything for an instant, but there was no second report as +he had expected. He only heard Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his +figure came in view through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his +left side, while the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face +was pale. Rostov ran toward him and said something. + +"No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no, it's not +over." And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the +saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he +wiped it on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning +face was pallid and quivered. + +"Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word. + +"Please," he uttered with an effort. + +Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov +and was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov +cried: + +"To your barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by +his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to +the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself, +drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He +sucked and sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but +his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as +he mustered his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed. + +"Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated Nesvitski. + +"Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his adversary. + +Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs +helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing +Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski +closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and +Dolokhov's angry cry. + +"Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on +the snow. + +Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest, +trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words: + +"Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he repeated, puckering his face. + +Nesvitski stopped him and took him home. + +Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov. + +The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not +answer a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering +Moscow he suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort, +took Rostov, who was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostov was +struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender +expression on Dolokhov's face. + +"Well? How do you feel?" he asked. + +"Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with a gasping +voice. "Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have +killed her, killed... She won't get over it! She won't survive...." + +"Who?" asked Rostov. + +"My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother," and +Dolokhov pressed Rostov's hand and burst into tears. + +When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that +he was living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not +survive it. He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her. + +Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise +learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow +with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most +affectionate of sons and brothers. + +CHAPTER VI + +Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg +and in Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after +the duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained +in his father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died. + +He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that +had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings, +thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not +fall asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace +the room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early +days of their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid, +passionate look on her face, and then immediately he saw beside her +Dolokhov's handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen +it at the banquet, and then that same face pale, quivering, and +suffering, as it had been when he reeled and sank on the snow. + +"What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover, +yes, killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come +to do it?"- "Because you married her," answered an inner voice. + +"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her without +loving her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled +that moment after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words +he had found so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from +that! Even then I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not +so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out." + +He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection. +Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection +of how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into +his study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his +head steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and +at his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing +respectful understanding of his employer's happiness. + +"But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic +beauty and social tact," thought he; "been proud of my house, in which +she received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and +beauty. So this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did +not understand her. How often when considering her character I have +told myself that I was to blame for not understanding her, for not +understanding that constant composure and complacency and lack of +all interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the terrible +truth that she is a depraved woman. Now I have spoken that terrible +word to myself all has become clear. + +"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss +her naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself +be kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she +replied with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous: +'Let him do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I asked +her if she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed +contemptuously and said she was not a fool to want to have children, +and that she was not going to have any children by me." + +Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and +the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though +she had been brought up in the most aristocratic circles. + +"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous +promener,"~{ "You clear out of this." }~ she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with +young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not +love her. + +"Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was a +depraved woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. And +now there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and +perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!" + +Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of +what is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their +troubles. He digested his sufferings alone. + +"It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that? +Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime'~{ I love you. }~ to her, +which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must +endure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's +nonsense," he thought. "The slur on my name and honor- that's all +apart from myself. + +"Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and +a criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view +they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a +martyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a +despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive- +live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is +it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in +comparison with eternity?" + +But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such +reflections, she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments +when he had most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he +felt the blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move +about and break and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell +her that 'Je vous aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he +had said it for the tenth time, Molibre's words: "Mais que diable +alloit-il faire dans cette galere?" occurred to him, and he began to +laugh at himself. + +In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to +Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He +resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his +intention to part from her forever. + +Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee, +Pierre was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand. + +He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled +expression, unable to realize where he was. + +"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at +home," said the valet. + +But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the +countess herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with +silver and with simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round +her lovely head like a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic, +except that there was a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent +marble brow. With her imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in +front of the valet. She knew of the duel and had come to speak about +it. She waited till the valet had set down the coffee things and +left the room. Pierre looked at her timidly over his spectacles, and +like a hare surrounded by hounds who lays back her ears and +continues to crouch motionless before her enemies, he tried to +continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless and impossible, +he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down but looked at +him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to go. + +"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should +like to know?" she asked sternly. + +"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre. + +"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel +about? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you." + +Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth, +but could not reply. + +"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe +everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that +Dolokhov was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness +of speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and +you believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel +prove? That you're a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew +that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of +all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing +what you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without +cause." Helene raised her voice and became more and more excited, "A +man who's a better man than you in every way..." + +"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her, +and not moving a muscle. + +"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like +his company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should +prefer yours." + +"Don't speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely. + +"Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you +plainly that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who +would not have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so," +said she. + +Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose +strange expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He +was suffering physically at that moment, there was a weight on his +chest and he could not breathe. He knew that he must do something to +put an end to this suffering, but what he wanted to do was too +terrible. + +"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice. + +"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said +Helene. "Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!" + +Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her. + +"I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table +with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her +brandishing the slab. + +Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His +father's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and +delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down +on her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a +terrible voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows +what he would have done at that moment had Helene not fled from the +room. + +A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his +estates in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property, +and left for Petersburg alone. + +CHAPTER VII + +Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz +and the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite +of the letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his +body had not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What +was worst of all for his relations was the fact that there was still a +possibility of his having been picked up on the battlefield by the +people of the place and that he might now be lying, recovering or +dying, alone among strangers and unable to send news of himself. The +gazettes from which the old prince first heard of the defeat at +Austerlitz stated, as usual very briefly and vaguely, that after +brilliant engagements the Russians had had to retreat and had made +their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince understood from this +official report that our army had been defeated. A week after the +gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz came a letter from +Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that had befallen his son. + +"Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes, a standard in his +hand and at the head of a regiment- he fell as a hero, worthy of his +father and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the +whole army it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort +myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise +he would have been mentioned among the officers found on the field +of battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce." + +After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone +in his study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next +morning, but he was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the +architect, and though he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone. + +When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at +his lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her. + +"Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice, +throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own +impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that +wheel, which merged in her memory with what followed.) + +She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her. +Her eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father's face, not sad, +not crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging +over her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the +worst in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and +incomprehensible- the death of one she loved. + +"Father! Andrew!"- said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such +an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her +father could not bear her look but turned away with a sob. + +"Bad news! He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed! +Kutuzov writes..." and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to +drive the princess away by that scream... "Killed!" + +The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but +on hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in +her beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy- a supreme joy apart +from the joys and sorrows of this world- overflowed the great grief +within her. She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took +his hand, and drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy +neck. + +"Father" she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep together." + +"Scoundrels! Blackguards!" shrieked the old man, turning his face +away from her. "Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why? +Go, go and tell Lise." + +The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father +and wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he +took leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw +him tender and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. "Did +he believe? Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There +in the realms of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought. + +"Father, tell me how it happened," she asked through her tears. + +"Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and +Russia's glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell +Lise. I will follow." + +When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat +working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy +calm peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did +not see Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at +something joyful and mysterious taking place within her. + +"Mary," she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying +back, "give me your hand." She took her sister-in-law's hand and +held it below her waist. + +Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained +lifted in childlike happiness. + +Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of +her sister-in-law's dress. + +"There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know, +Mary, I am going to love him very much," said Lise, looking with +bright and happy eyes at her sister-in-law. + +Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping. + +"What is the matter, Mary?" + +"Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew," she said, wiping +away her tears on her sister-in-law's knee. + +Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began +trying to prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry. +Unobservant as was the little princess, these tears, the cause of +which she did not understand, agitated her. She said nothing but +looked about uneasily as if in search of something. Before dinner +the old prince, of whom she was always afraid, came into her room with +a peculiarly restless and malign expression and went out again without +saying a word. She looked at Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a +while with that expression of attention to something within her that +is only seen in pregnant women, and suddenly began to cry. + +"Has anything come from Andrew?" she asked. + +"No, you know it's too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I +feel afraid." + +"So there's nothing?" + +"Nothing," answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant +eyes at her sister-in-law. + +She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to +hide the terrible news from her till after her confinement, which +was expected within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince +each bore and hid their grief in their own way. The old prince would +not cherish any hope: he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had +been killed, and though he sent an official to Austria to seek for +traces of his son, he ordered a monument from Moscow which he intended +to erect in his own garden to his memory, and he told everybody that +his son had been killed. He tried not to change his former way of +life, but his strength failed him. He walked less, ate less, slept +less, and became weaker every day. Princess Mary hoped. She prayed for +her brother as living and was always awaiting news of his return. + +CHAPTER VIII + +"Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast on the morning +of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit, +but as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word, +and even every footstep in that house since the terrible news had +come, so now the smile of the little princess- influenced by the +general mood though without knowing its cause- was such as to remind +one still more of the general sorrow. + +"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique~{ Fruhstuck: breakfast. }~ as Foka the cook +calls it- has disagreed with me." + +"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are +very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft, +ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law. + +"Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said +one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife +from the neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last +fortnight.) + +"Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go. +Courage, my angel." She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room. + +"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on +the little princess' face, an expression of childish fear of +inevitable pain showed itself. + +"No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so, +Mary! Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a +suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some +affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary +Bogdanovna. + +"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the room. + +The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small, +plump white hands with an air of calm importance. + +"Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary +looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm. + +"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary Bogdanovna, not +hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know anything +about it." + +"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?" said the +princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's wishes they +had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at +any moment.) + +"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary Bogdanovna. +"We'll manage very well without a doctor." + +Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy +being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the +large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into the bedroom. On +their faces was a quiet and solemn look. + +Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the +house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and +watching what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with +quiet steps in and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and +turned away. She did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the +door again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now taking her +prayer book, now kneeling before the icon stand. To her surprise and +distress she found that her prayers did not calm her excitement. +Suddenly her door opened softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna, +who hardly ever came to that room as the old prince had forbidden +it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round her head. + +"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and +here I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his +saint, my angel," she said with a sigh. + +"Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!" + +"God is merciful, birdie." + +The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by +the door with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began +reading. Only when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one +another, the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging. +Everyone in the house was dominated by the same feeling that +Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing to the +superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman +in travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one +spoke of it, but apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good +manners habitual in the prince's household, a common anxiety, a +softening of the heart, and a consciousness that something great and +mysterious was being accomplished at that moment made itself felt. + +There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men servants' +hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs' +quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old +prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent +Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.- "Say only that 'the prince +told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer." + +"Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna, +giving the messenger a significant look. + +Tikhon went and told the prince. + +"Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon +did not hear the slightest sound from the study after that. + +After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and, +seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his +perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed +him on the shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles +or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world +continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of +suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable +did not lessen but increased. No one slept. + +It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume +its sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A +relay of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German +doctor from Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback +with lanterns were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the +country road with its hollows and snow-covered pools of water. + +Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her +luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of +which she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from +under the kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin. + +Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely +hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds +of times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess +Mary in Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead +of a midwife. + +"God is merciful, doctors are never needed," she said. + +Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the +window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of +the prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the +larks returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the +damask curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill, +snowy draft. Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the +stocking she was knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to +catch the open casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her +kerchief and her loose locks of gray hair. + +"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving up the avenue! " she +said, holding the casement and not closing it. "With lanterns. Most +likely the doctor." + +"Oh, my God! thank God!" said Princess Mary. "I must go and meet +him, he does not know Russian." + +Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the +newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the +window a carriage with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went +out on the stairs. On a banister post stood a tallow candle which +guttered in the draft. On the landing below, Philip, the footman, +stood looking scared and holding another candle. Still lower, beyond +the turn of the staircase, one could hear the footstep of someone in +thick felt boots, and a voice that seemed familiar to Princess Mary +was saying something. + +"Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?" + +"Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house steward, who +was downstairs. + +Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in +the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more +rapidly. + +"It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be +too extraordinary," and at the very moment she thought this, the +face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of +which covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman +stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed +and strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up +the stairs and embraced his sister. + +"You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting for a +reply- which he would not have received, for the princess was unable +to speak- he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the +doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last +post station), and again embraced his sister. + +"What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak +and felt boots, he went to the little princess' apartment. + +CHAPTER IX + +The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on +her head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair +lay round her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy +mouth with its downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince +Andrew entered and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on +which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear +and excitement, rested on him without changing their expression. "I +love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so? +Help me!" her look seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not +realize the significance of his appearance before her now. Prince +Andrew went round the sofa and kissed her forehead. + +"My darling!" he said- a word he had never used to her before. +"God is merciful...." + +She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach. + +"I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!" +said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not +realize that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her +sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary +Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room. + +The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess +Mary, again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk +broke off at every moment. They waited and listened. + +"Go, dear," said Princess Mary. + +Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room +next to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and +became confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with +his hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, +animal moans came through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to +the door, and tried to open it. Someone was holding it shut. + +"You can't come in! You can't!" said a terrified voice from within. + +He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more +seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek- it could not be +hers, she could not scream like that- came from the bedroom. Prince +Andrew ran to the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of +an infant. + +"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought Prince Andrew in +the first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or +is the baby born?" + +Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail; +tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began +to cry, sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his +shirt sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling +jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor +gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman +rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the +threshold. He went into his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the +same position he had seen her in five minutes before and, despite +the fixed eyes and the pallor of the cheeks, the same expression was +on her charming childlike face with its upper lip covered with tiny +black hair. + +"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have +you done to me?"- said her charming, pathetic, dead face. + +In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and +squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands. + +Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his +father's room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing +close to the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed +like a vise round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob +like a child. + +Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew +went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the +farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though +with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to +say, and Prince Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and +that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He +could not weep. The old man too came up and kissed the waxen little +hands that lay quietly crossed one on the other on her breast, and +to him, too, her face seemed to say: "Ah, what have you done to me, +and why?" And at the sight the old man turned angrily away. + +Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas +Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her +while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red +and wrinkled soles and palms. + +His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of +dropping him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and +handed him over to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat +in another room, faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in +the font, and awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked up +joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him and nodded +approval when she told him that the wax with the baby's hair had not +sunk in the font but had floated. + +CHAPTER X + +Rostov's share in Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the +efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks +as he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of +Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of +the family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties. +Dolokhov recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him during +his convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved him +passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond +of Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about +her son. + +"Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled for +our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like +a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it +honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him +and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg +when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it +together? And there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to +bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go +through! It's true he has been reinstated, but how could they fail +to do that? I think there were not many such gallant sons of the +fatherland out there as he. And now- this duel! Have these people no +feeling, or honor? Knowing him to be an only son, to challenge him and +shoot so straight! It's well God had mercy on us. And what was it for? +Who doesn't have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I +see things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for +months. And then to call him out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting +because he owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you +understand Fedya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond +of you. Few people do understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly +soul!" + +Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way +no one would have expected of him. + +"I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I don't +care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love +so that I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle +if they stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two +or three friends- you among them- and as for the rest I only care +about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them +are harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I +have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any +women- countesses or cooks- who were not venal. I have not yet met +that divine purity and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a +one I'd give my life for her! But those!... and he made a gesture of +contempt. "And believe me, if I still value my life it is only because +I still hope to meet such a divine creature, who will regenerate, +purify, and elevate me. But you don't understand it." + +"Oh, yes, I quite understand, "answered Rostov, who was under his +new friend's influence. + +In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter +Denisov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the +winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of +the happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas +brought many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl +of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening +flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly +amusing, now girlishly enchanting. + +At that time in the Rostovs' house there prevailed an amorous +atmosphere characteristic of homes where there are very young and very +charming girls. Every young man who came to the house- seeing those +impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own +happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the +fitful bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly +prattle of young girls ready for anything and full of hope- +experienced the same feeling; sharing with the young folk of the +Rostovs' household a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of +happiness. + +Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the first was +Dolokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She +almost quarreled with her brother about him. She insisted that he +was a bad man, and that in the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right +and Dolokhov wrong, and further that he was disagreeable and +unnatural. + +"There's nothing for me to understand," cried out with resolute +self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov +though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do +understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything +is calculated, and I don't like that. But Denisov..." + +"Oh, Denisov is quite different," replied Nicholas, implying that +even Denisov was nothing compared to Dolokhov- "you must understand +what a soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his +mother. What a heart!" + +"Well, I don't know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And +do you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?" + +"What nonsense..." + +"I'm certain of it; you'll see." + +Natasha's prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not usually care +for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the +question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon +settled. He came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never +have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time +Dolokhov appeared. + +Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs', never missed a performance +at which they were present, and went to Iogel's balls for young people +which the Rostovs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya +and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his +glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha +blushed when they saw his looks. + +It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the +irresistible influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another. + +Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov's relations with Sonya, but +he did not explain to himself what these new relations were. +"They're always in love with someone," he thought of Sonya and +Natasha. But he was not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as +before and was less frequently at home. + +In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war +with Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders +were given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the +regular army, and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the +militia. Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow +nothing but the coming war was talked of. For the Rostov family the +whole interest of these preparations for war lay in the fact that +Nicholas would not hear of remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the +termination of Denisov's furlough after Christmas to return with him +to their regiment. His approaching departure did not prevent his +amusing himself, but rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the +greater part of his time away from home, at dinners, parties, and +balls. + +CHAPTER XI + +On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing +he had rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he +and Denisov were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany. +About twenty people were present, including Dolokhov and Denisov. + +Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous +atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at +this holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! +That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the +one thing we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place. + +Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without +visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been +invited, returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he +noticed and felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also +noticed a curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sonya, +Dolokhov, and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a +lesser degree Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have +happened between Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly +sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both +at dinner. On that same evening there was to be one of the balls +that Iogel (the dancing master) gave for his pupils durings the +holidays. + +"Nicholas, will you come to Iogel's? Please do!" said Natasha. "He +asked you, and Vasili Dmitrich~{ Denisov. }~ is also going." + +"Where would I not go at the countess' command!" said Denisov, who +at the Rostovs' had jocularly assumed the role of Natasha's knight. +"I'm even weady to dance the pas de chale." + +"If I have time," answered Nicholas. "But I promised the +Arkharovs; they have a party." + +"And you?" he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had asked the +question he noticed that it should not have been put. + +"Perhaps," coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing at Sonya, +and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given +Pierre at the Club dinner. + +"There is something up," thought Nicholas, and he was further +confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left +immediately after dinner. He called Natasha and asked her what was the +matter. + +"And I was looking for you," said Natasha running out to him. "I +told you, but you would not believe it," she said triumphantly. "He +has proposed to Sonya!" + +Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of late, +something seemed to give way within him at this news. Dolokhov was a +suitable and in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless, +orphan girl. From the point of view of the old countess and of society +it was out of the question for her to refuse him. And therefore +Nicholas' first feeling on hearing the news was one of anger with +Sonya.... He tried to say, "That's capital; of course she'll forget +her childish promises and accept the offer," but before he had time to +say it Natasha began again. + +"And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!" adding, after a +pause, "she told him she loved another." + +"Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!" thought Nicholas. + +"Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won't change +once she has said..." + +"And Mamma pressed her!" said Nicholas reproachfully. + +"Yes," said Natasha. "Do you know, Nicholas- don't be angry- but I +know you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know +for certain that you won't marry her." + +"Now don't know that at all!" said Nicholas. "But I must talk to +her. What a darling Sonya is!" he added with a smile. + +"Ah, she is indeed a darling! I'll send her to you." + +And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away. + +A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared +look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the +first time since his return that they had talked alone and about their +love. + +"Sophie," he began, timidly at first and then more and more +boldly, "if you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and +advantageous match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..." + +Sonya interrupted him. + +"I have already refused," she said hurriedly. + +"If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..." + +Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look. + +"Nicholas, don't tell me that!" she said. + +"No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to +say it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole +truth. I love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else...." + +"That is enough for me," said Sonya, blushing. + +"No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in love +again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship, +confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does +not wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider +Dolokhov's offer," he said, articulating his friend's name with +difficulty. + +"Don't say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and +always shall, and I want nothing more." + +"You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of +misleading you." + +And Nicholas again kissed her hand. + +CHAPTER XII + +Iogel's were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers +as they watched their young people executing their newly learned +steps, and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced +till they were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and +women who came to these balls with an air of condescension and found +them most enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these +balls. The two pretty young Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and +were married and so further increased the fame of these dances. What +distinguished them from others was the absence of host or hostess +and the presence of the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a +feather and bowing according to the rules of his art, as he +collected the tickets from all his visitors. There was the fact that +only those came who wished to dance and amuse themselves as girls of +thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for the first +time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or seemed to be, +pretty- so rapturous were their smiles and so sparkling their eyes. +Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom Natasha, who was +exceptionally graceful, was first, even danced the pas de chale, but +at this last ball only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka, +which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a +ballroom in Bezukhov's house, and the ball, as everyone said, was a +great success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostov girls +were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay. +That evening, proud of Dolokhov's proposal, her refusal, and her +explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled about before she left home so +that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was +transparently radiant with impulsive joy. + +Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real +ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with +pink ribbons. + +Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She +was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever +person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment. + +"Oh, how delightful it is!" she kept saying, running up to Sonya. + +Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly +patronage at the dancers. + +"How sweet she is- she will be a weal beauty!" said Denisov. + +"Who?" + +"Countess Natasha," answered Denisov. + +"And how she dances! What gwace!" he said again after a pause. + +"Who are you talking about?" + +"About your sister," ejaculated Denisov testily. + +Rostov smiled. + +"My dear count, you were one of my best pupils- you must dance," +said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. "Look how many charming young +ladies-" He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a +former pupil of his. + +"No, my dear fellow, I'll be a wallflower," said Denisov. "Don't you +wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?" + +"Oh no!" said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. "You were only +inattentive, but you had talent- oh yes, you had talent!" + +The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not +refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance. Denisov sat down by the old +ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot, +told them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the +young people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best +pupil, were the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with +his little feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with +Natasha, who, though shy, went on carefully executing her steps. +Denisov did not take his eyes off her and beat time with his saber +in a way that clearly indicated that if he was not dancing it was +because he would not and not because he could not. In the middle of +a figure he beckoned to Rostov who was passing: + +"This is not at all the thing," he said. "What sort of Polish +mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly." + +Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland for the +masterly way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to +Natasha: + +"Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!" he said. + +When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and, +tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran +timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was +looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing +though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them. + +"Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!" + +"Oh no, let me off, Countess," Denisov replied. + +"Now then, Vaska," said Nicholas. + +"They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!" said Denisov jokingly. + +"I'll sing for you a whole evening," said Natasha. + +"Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!" said Denisov, and he +unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his +partner's hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot, +waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was +Denisov's short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow +he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked +sideways at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly +stamped with one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew +round the room taking his partner with him. He glided silently on +one foot half across the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs +was dashing straight at them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and +spreading out his legs, he stopped short on his heels, stood so a +second, stamped on the spot clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round, +and, striking his left heel against his right, flew round again in a +circle. Natasha guessed what he meant to do, and abandoning herself to +him followed his lead hardly knowing how. First he spun her round, +holding her now with his left, now with his right hand, then falling +on one knee he twirled her round him, and again jumping up, dashed +so impetuously forward that it seemed as if he would rush through +the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then he +suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When +at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair, +he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not +even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement, +smiling as if she did not recognize him. + +"What does this mean?" she brought out. + +Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka, +everyone was delighted with Denisov's skill, he was asked again and +again as a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about +Poland and the good old days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and +mopping himself with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not +leave her for the rest of the evening. + +CHAPTER XIII + +For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his own or at +Dolokhov's home: on the third day he received a note from him: + +As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know +of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell +supper tonight to my friends- come to the English Hotel. + +About ten o'clock Rostov went to the English Hotel straight from the +theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once +shown to the best room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening. +Some twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat +between two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper +money, and he was keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen him since +his proposal and Sonya's refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought +of how they would meet. + +Dolokhov's clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he entered the +door, as though he had long expected him. + +"It's a long time since we met," he said. "Thanks for coming. I'll +just finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come with his chorus." + +"I called once or twice at your house," said Rostov, reddening. + +Dolokhov made no reply. + +"You may punt," he said. + +Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once +had with Dolokhov. "None but fools trust to luck in play," Dolokhov +had then said. + +"Or are you afraid to play with me?" Dolokhov now asked as if +guessing Rostov's thought. + +Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had shown at the +Club dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he +had felt a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually +cruel, action. + +Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke +with which to reply to Dolokhov's words. But before he had thought +of anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and +deliberately so that everyone could hear: + +"Do you remember we had a talk about cards... 'He's a fool who +trusts to luck, one should make certain,' and I want to try." + +"To try his luck or the certainty?" Rostov asked himself. + +"Well, you'd better not play," Dolokhov added, and springing a new +pack of cards said: "Bank, gentlemen!" + +Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov sat down by his +side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept glancing at him. + +"Why don't you play?" he asked. + +And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up +a card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play. + +"I have no money with me," he said. + +"I'll trust you." + +Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and +again lost. Dolokhov "killed," that is, beat, ten cards of Rostov's +running. + +"Gentlemen," said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please +place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning." + +One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted. + +"Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I +ask you to put the money on your cards," replied Dolokhov. "Don't +stint yourself, we'll settle afterwards," he added, turning to Rostov. + +The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne. + +All Rostov's cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles +scored up against him. He wrote "800 rubles" on a card, but while +the waiter filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to +his usual stake of twenty rubles. + +"Leave it," said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking +at Rostov, "you'll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others +but win from you. Or are you afraid of me?" he asked again. + +Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a +seven of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the +floor. He well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the +seven of hearts, on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written +"800 rubles" in clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm +champagne that was handed him, smiled at Dolokhov's words, and with +a sinking heart, waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov's +hands which held the pack. Much depended on Rostov's winning or losing +on that seven of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count had +given his son two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked +speaking of money difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all +he could let him have till May, and asked him to be more economical +this time. Nicholas had replied that it would be more than enough +for him and that he gave his word of honor not to take anything more +till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left of that +money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him not only the loss of +sixteen hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his word. +With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov's hands and thought, "Now +then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap and +drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will +certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life, +jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with +his father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the +Povarskaya rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm +that it seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss, +long past. He could not conceive that a stupid chance, letting the +seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left, might deprive him +of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly illumined, and +plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined misery. That could +not be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov's +hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy wrists visible from +under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took up a glass and a +pipe that were handed him. + +"So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as +if about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in +his chair, and began deliberately with a smile: + +"Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow +that I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful." + +"Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov. + +"Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the +cards with a smile. + +"Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The +seven he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He +had lost more than he could pay. + +"Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at +Rostov as he continued to deal. + +CHAPTER XIV + +An hour and a half later most of the players were but little +interested in their own play. + +The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen +hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him, +which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he +vaguely supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it +already exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer +listening to stories or telling them, but followed every movement of +Rostov's hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against +him. He had decided to play until that score reached forty-three +thousand. He had fixed on that number because forty-three was the +sum of his and Sonya's joint ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both +hands, sat at the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with +spilled wine, and littered with cards. One tormenting impression did +not leave him: that those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy +wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he +loved and hated, held him in their power. + +"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's +impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or +quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov +pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to +accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, +and at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at +the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came +first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, +now counted the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and +tried staking the total of his losses on it, then he looked round +for aid from the other players, or peered at the now cold face of +Dolokhov and tried to read what was passing in his mind. + +"He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my +ruin. Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his +fault. What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault +either," he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I +killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a +terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago +I came to this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to +buy that casket for Mamma's name day and then going home. I was so +happy, so free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I +was! When did that end and when did this new, terrible state of things +begin? What marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place +at this table, chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned +agile hands in the same way. When did it happen and what has happened? +I am well and strong and still the same and in the same place. No, +it can't be! Surely it will all end in nothing!" + +He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not +hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its +helpless efforts to seem calm. + +The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three +thousand. Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of +which he meant to double the three thousand just put down to his +score, when Dolokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside +and began rapidly adding up the total of Rostov's debt, breaking the +chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand. + +"Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!" + +Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold +outside and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas +understood that it was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone: + +"Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready," as if it +were the fun of the game which interested him most. + +"It's all up! I'm lost!" thought he. "Now a bullet through my brain- +that's all that's left me! " And at the same time he said in a +cheerful voice: + +"Come now, just this one more little card!" + +"All right!" said Dolokhov, having finished the addition. "All +right! Twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the figure +twenty-one by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three +thousand; and taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostov +submissively unbent the corner of his card and, instead of the six +thousand he had intended, carefully wrote twenty-one. + +"It's all the same to me," he said. "I only want to see whether +you will let me win this ten, or beat it." + +Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that +moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy +wrists, which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him. + +"You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, and stretching +himself he rose from the table. "One does get tired sitting so +long," he added. + +"Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov. + +Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for +him to jest. + +"When am I to receive the money, Count?" + +Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room. + +"I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?" he said. + +"I say, Rostov," said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas +straight in the eyes, "you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at +cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know." + +"Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power," +thought Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father +and mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be +to escape it all, and felt that Dolokhov knew that he could save him +from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a +cat does with a mouse. + +"Your cousin..." Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted +him. + +"My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to +mention her!" he exclaimed fiercely. + +"Then when am I to have it?" + +"Tomorrow," replied Rostov and left the room. + +CHAPTER XV + +To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult, +but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father, +confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word +of honor, was terrible. + +At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after +returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round +the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that +poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household that +winter and, now after Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed +to have grown thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a +thunderstorm. Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had +worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing +by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing chess with +Shinshin in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return +of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old +gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and +ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short +fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with +his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called "Enchantress," +which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music: + +``` block + Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre +What magic power is this recalls me still? +What spark has set my inmost soul on fire, +What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill? +``` + +He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with gazing with his +sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha. + +"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse, she +said, without noticing Nicholas. + +"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas, +glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother +with the old lady. + +"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him. + +"Is Papa at home?" he asked. + +"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We +are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my +sake! Did you know?" + +"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya. + +"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old +countess from the drawing room. + +Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently +at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the +dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to +persuade Natasha to sing. + +"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making +excuses now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla- I entweat you!" + +The countess glanced at her silent son. + +"What is the matter?" she asked. + +"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the +same question. "Will Papa be back soon?" + +"I expect so." + +"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it! +Where am I to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing +room where the clavichord stood. + +Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to +Denisov's favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing. +Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes. + +Nicholas began pacing up and down the room. + +"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's +nothing to be happy about!" thought he. + +Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude. + +"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my +brain is the only thing left me- not singing! " his thoughts ran on. +"Go away? But where to? It's one- let them sing!" + +He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the +girls and avoiding their eyes. + +"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to +ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him. + +Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct, +had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed +it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from +sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself +as young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my +enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to +herself: "No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as +I am." + +"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room, +where she considered the resonance was best. + +Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as +ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her +toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still. + +"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with +which Denisov followed her. + +"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his +sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?" + +Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her +eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her +surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may +produce at the same intervals hold for the same time, but which +leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill +you and make you weep. + +Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing +seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She +no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing that +comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it before; +but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her +said: "It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be +trained." Only they generally said this some time after she had +finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its incorrect +breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs +said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear it again. In +her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her +own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled +with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that +voice could be altered without spoiling it. + +"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely +opened eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And +suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the +next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided +into three beats: "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one, +two, three... One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... +One. "Oh, this senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this +misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor- it's all +nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest! +Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank +God!" And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si +he sung a second, a third below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did +I really take it? How fortunate!" he thought. + +Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was +finest in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from +everything else in the world and above everything in the world. +"What were losses, and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All +nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy..." + +CHAPTER XVI + +It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from music as he +did that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than +reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and +went downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old +count came in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing +him drive up, went to meet him. + +"Well- had a good time?" said the old count, smiling gaily and +proudly at his son. + +Nicholas tried to say "Yes," but could not: and he nearly burst into +sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son's +condition. + +"Ah, it can't be avoided!" thought Nicholas, for the first and +last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him +feel ashamed feel of himself, he said, as if merely asking his +father to let him have the carriage to drive to town: + +"Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting. +I need some money." + +"Dear me!" said his father, who was in a specially good humor. "I +told you it would not be enough. How much?" + +"Very much," said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless +smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, "I have lost a +little, I mean a good deal, a great deal- forty three thousand." + +"What! To whom?... Nonsense!" cried the count, suddenly reddening +with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do. + +"I promised to pay tomorrow," said Nicholas. + +"Well!..." said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking +helplessly on the sofa. + +"It can't be helped It happens to everyone!" said the son, with a +bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as +a worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his +crime. He longed to kiss his father's hands and kneel to beg his +forgiveness, but said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it +happens to everyone! + +The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son's words and +began bustlingly searching for something. + +"Yes, yes," he muttered, "it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to +raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?" + +And with a furtive glance at his son's face, the count went out of +the room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at +all expected this. + +"Papa! Pa-pa!" he called after him, sobbing, "forgive me!" And +seizing his father's hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into +tears. + +While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and +daughter were having one not less important. Natasha came running to +her mother, quite excited. + +"Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..." + +"Made what?" + +"Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!" she exclaimed. + +The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To +whom? To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing +with dolls and who was still having lessons. + +"Don't, Natasha! What nonsense!" she said, hoping it was a joke. + +"Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact," said Natasha +indignantly. "I come to ask you what to do, and you call it +'nonsense!'" + +The countess shrugged her shoulders. + +"If it true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell +him he is a fool, that's all!" + +"No, he's not a fool!" replied Natasha indignantly and seriously. + +"Well then, what do you want? You're all in love nowadays. Well, +if you are in love, marry him!" said the countess, with a laugh of +annoyance. "Good luck to you!" + +"No, Mamma, I'm not in love with him, I suppose I'm not in love with +him." + +"Well then, tell him so." + +"Mamma, are you cross? Don't be cross, dear! Is it my fault?" + +"No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?" +said the countess smiling. + +"No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It's all very +well for you," said Natasha, with a responsive smile. "You should have +seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out +accidently." + +"Well, all the same, you must refuse him." + +"No, I mustn't. I am so sorry for him! He's so nice." + +"Well then, accept his offer. It's high time for you to be married," +answered the countess sharply and sarcastically. + +"No, Mamma, but I'm so sorry for him. I don't know how I'm to say +it." + +"And there's nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself," +said the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this +little Natasha as grown up. + +"No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you'll listen +at the door," and Natasha ran across the drawing room to the dancing +hall, where Denisov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord +with his face in his hands. + +He jumped up at the sound of her light step. + +"Nataly," he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, "decide my +fate. It is in your hands." + +"Vasili Dmitrich, I'm so sorry for you!... No, but you are so +nice... but it won't do...not that... but as a friend, I shall +always love you." + +Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did +not understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this +instant, they heard the quick rustle of the countess' dress. She +came up to them. + +"Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor," she said, with an +embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denisov- "but my +daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son's friend, you +would have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would +not have obliged me to give this refusal." + +"Countess..." said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He +tried to say more, but faltered. + +Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She +began to sob aloud. + +"Countess, I have done w'ong," Denisov went on in an unsteady voice, +"but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I +would give my life twice over..." He looked at the countess, and +seeing her severe face said: "Well, good-by, Countess," and kissing +her hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without +looking at Natasha. + +Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He not wish to stay another day +in Moscow. All Denisov's Moscow friends gave him a farewell +entertainment at the gypsies', with the result that he had no +recollection of how he was put in the sleigh or of the first three +stages of his journey. + +After Denisov's departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow, +without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could +not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls' room. + +Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she +wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her +love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of +her. + +He filled the girls' albums with verses and music, and having at +last sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and +received his receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking +leave of any of his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which +was already in Poland. + +BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07 + +CHAPTER I + +After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the +Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster +would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing, +he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big +feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect. + +"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and +tea?" asked his valet. + +Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had +begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same +question- one so important that he took no notice of what went on +around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to +Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at +this station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it +was a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours +or for the rest of his life. + +The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling +Torzhok embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without +changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his +spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could +go on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed +him. He had been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day +he returned from Sokolniki after the duel and had spent that first +agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey, +they seized him with special force. No matter what he thought about, +he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve +and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the +chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the +screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the +same place. + +The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his +excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let +his excellency have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying +and only wanted to get more money from the traveler. + +"Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad +for another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he +needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a +thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses. +But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as +possible. And I," continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I +considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they +considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who +executed him- also for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What +should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am +I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?" + +There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and +that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer +was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease +asking." But dying was also dreadful. + +The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering +her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of +rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered +cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want +the money for? As if that money could add a hair's breadth to +happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me +less a prey to evil and death?- death which ends all and must come +today or tomorrow- at any rate, in an instant as compared with +eternity." And again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread, +and again it turned uselessly in the same place. + +His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters, +by Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous +struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. "And why did she resist her +seducer when she loved him?" he thought. "God could not have put +into her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife- as she +once was- did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has +been found out, nothing discovered," Pierre again said to himself. +"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of +human wisdom." + +Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and +repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre +found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction. + +"I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this +gentleman," said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another +traveler, also detained for lack of horses. + +The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old +man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite +grayish color. + +Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a +bed that had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the +newcomer, who, with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off +his wraps with the aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With +a pair of felt boots on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn, +nankeen-covered, sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa, +leaned back his big head with its broad temples and close-cropped +hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The stern, shrewd, and penetrating +expression of that look struck Pierre. He felt a wish to speak to +the stranger, but by the time he had made up his mind to ask him a +question about the roads, the traveler had closed his eyes. His +shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of them +Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a +death's head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as +it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant +was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache, +evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never +grown. This active old servant was unpacking the traveler's canteen +and preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything +was ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled +a tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to +whom he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the +need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with +this stranger. + +The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down,~{ To indicate he did not want more tea. }~ with an +unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be +wanted. + +"No. Give me the book," said the stranger. + +The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional +work, and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him. +All at once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and +again, leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his +former position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not +time to turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady +and severe gaze straight on Pierre's face. + +Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright +old eyes attracted him irresistibly. + +CHAPTER II + +"I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I am not +mistaken," said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice. + +Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles. + +"I have heard of you, my dear sir, "continued the stranger, "and +of your misfortune." He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to +say- "Yes, misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what +happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune."- "I regret it very +much, my dear sir." + +Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed, +bent forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile. + +"I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but +for greater reasons." + +He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa +by way of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt +reluctant to enter into conversation with this old man, but, +submitting to him involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him. + +"You are unhappy, my dear sir," the stranger continued. "You are +young and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my +power." + +"Oh, yes!" said Pierre, with a forced smile. "I am very grateful +to you. Where are you traveling from?" + +The stranger's face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but +in spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were +irresistibly attractive to Pierre. + +"But if for reason you don't feel inclined to talk to me," said +the old man, "say so, my dear sir." And he suddenly smiled, in an +unexpected and tenderly paternal way. + +"Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your +acquaintance," said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger's +hands, he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull- a Masonic +sign. + +"Allow me to ask," he said, "are you a Mason?" + +"Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons," said the +stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre's eyes. "And in +their name and my own I hold out a brotherly hand to you." + +"I am afraid," said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the +confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his +own habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs- "I am afraid I am very +far from understanding- how am I to put it?- I am afraid my way of +looking at the world is so opposed to yours that we shall not +understand one another." + +"I know your outlook," said the Mason, "and the view of life you +mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts, +is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit +of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if +I had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of +life is a regrettable delusion." + +"Just as I may suppose you to be deluded," said Pierre, with a faint +smile. + +"I should never dare to say that I know the truth," said the +Mason, whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision +and firmness. "No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying +stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of +generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that +temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great +God," he added, and closed his eyes. + +"I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in God, +said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it essential to +speak the whole truth. + +The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with +millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he, +poor man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy. + +"Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir," said the Mason. "You cannot +know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy." + +"Yes, yes, I am unhappy," assented Pierre. "But what am I to do?" + +"You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You +do not know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He is +in thee, and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just +uttered!" pronounced the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice. + +He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself. + +"If He were not," he said quietly, "you and I would not be +speaking of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking? +Whom hast thou denied?" he suddenly asked with exulting austerity +and authority in his voice. "Who invented Him, if He did not exist? +Whence came thy conception of the existence of such an +incomprehensible Being? didst thou, and why did the whole world, +conceive the idea of the existence of such an incomprehensible +Being, a Being all-powerful, eternal, and infinite in all His +attributes?..." + +He stopped and remained silent for a long time. + +Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence. + +"He exists, but to understand Him is hard," the Mason began again, +looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the +leaves of his book with his old hands which from excitement he could +not keep still. "If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I +could bring him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to +thee. But how can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence, +His infinity, and all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts +his eyes that he may not see or understand Him and may not see or +understand his own vileness and sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art +thou? Thou dreamest that thou art wise because thou couldst utter +those blasphemous words," he went on, with a somber and scornful +smile. "And thou art more foolish and unreasonable than a little +child, who, playing with the parts of a skillfully made watch, dares +to say that, as he does not understand its use, he does not believe in +the master who made it. To know Him is hard.... For ages, from our +forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to attain that knowledge +and are still infinitely far from our aim; but in our lack of +understanding we see only our weakness and His greatness...." + +Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason's face +with shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but +believing with his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he +accepted the wise reasoning contained in the Mason's words, or +believed as a child believes, in the speaker's tone of conviction +and earnestness, or the tremor of the speaker's voice- which sometimes +almost broke- or those brilliant aged eyes grown old in this +conviction, or the calm firmness and certainty of his vocation, +which radiated from his whole being (and which struck Pierre +especially by contrast with his own dejection and hopelessness)- at +any rate, Pierre longed with his whole soul to believe and he did +believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort, regeneration, and +return to life. + +"He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life," said the +Mason. + +"I do not understand," said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts +reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness, +in the Mason's arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him. +"I don't understand," he said, "how it is that the mind of man +cannot attain the knowledge of which you speak." + +The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile. + +"The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish +to imbibe," he said. "Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure +vessel and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of +myself can I retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive." + +"Yes, yes, that is so," said Pierre joyfully. + +"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those +worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into +which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one. +The highest wisdom has but one science- the science of the whole- +the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it. To +receive that science it is necessary to purify and renew one's inner +self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to +perfect one's self. And to attain this end, we have the light called +conscience that God has implanted in our souls." + +"Yes, yes," assented Pierre. + +"Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask +thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained +relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich, +you are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all +these good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?" + +"No, I hate my life," Pierre muttered, wincing. + +"Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art +purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir. How +have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving +everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have +become the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you +done for your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of +thousands of slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally? +No! You have profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is +what you have done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of +service to your neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness. +Then you married, my dear sir- took on yourself responsibility for the +guidance of a young woman; and what have you done? You have not helped +her to find the way of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an +abyss of deceit and misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and +you say you do not know God and hate your life. There is nothing +strange in that, my dear sir!" + +After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse, +again leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. +Pierre looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face +and moved his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, "Yes, a +vile, idle, vicious life!" but dared not break the silence. + +The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called +his servant. + +"How about the horses?" he asked, without looking at Pierre. + +"The exchange horses have just come," answered the servant. "Will +you not rest here?" + +"No, tell them to harness." + +"Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me +all, and without promising to help me?" thought Pierre, rising with +downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at +the Mason. "Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a +contemptible and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not +want to," thought Pierre. "But this man knows the truth and, if he +wished to, could disclose it to me." + +Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The +traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began +fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and +said in a tone of indifferent politeness: + +"Where are you going to now, my dear sir?" + +"I?... I'm going to Petersburg," answered Pierre, in a childlike, +hesitating voice. "I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But do +not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what +you would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it +is I, above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me, +and perhaps I may..." + +Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away. + +The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering. + +"Help comes from God alone," he said, "but such measure of help as +our Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to +Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski" (he took out his notebook +and wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four). +"Allow me to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital, +first of all devote some time to solitude and self-examination and +do not resume your former way of life. And now I wish you a good +journey, my dear sir," he added, seeing that his servant had +entered... "and success." + +The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the +postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons +and Martinists, even in Novikov's time. For a long while after he +had gone, Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and +down the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous +sense of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful, +irreproachable, virtuous future that seemed to him so easy. It +seemed to him that he had been vicious only because he had somehow +forgotten how good it is to be virtuous. Not a trace of his former +doubts remained in his soul. He firmly believed in the possibility +of the brotherhood of men united in the aim of supporting one +another in the path of virtue, and that is how Freemasonry presented +itself to him. + +CHAPTER III + +On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his +arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a +Kempis, whose book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing +he continually realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto +unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining +perfection, and in the possibility of active brotherly love among men, +which Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to him. A week after his arrival, +the young Polish count, Willarski, whom Pierre had known slightly in +Petersburg society, came into his room one evening in the official and +ceremonious manner in which Dolokhov's second had called on him, +and, having closed the door behind him and satisfied himself that +there was nobody else in the room, addressed Pierre. + +"I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count," he said +without sitting down. "A person of very high standing in our +Brotherhood has made application for you to be received into our Order +before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I +consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person's wishes. Do you wish +to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?" + +The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always +before met at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most +brilliant women, surprised Pierre. + +"Yes, I do wish it," said he. + +Willarski bowed his head. + +"One more question, Count," he said, "which beg you to answer in all +sincerity- not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you +renounced your former convictions- do you believe in God?" + +Pierre considered. + +"Yes... yes, I believe in God," he said. + +"In that case..." began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him. + +"Yes, I do believe in God," he repeated. + +"In that case we can go," said Willarski. "My carriage is at your +service." + +Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre's inquiries +as to what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied +that brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had +only to tell the truth. + +Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had +its headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a +small well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the +aid of a servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in +strange attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him, +said something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to +a small wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never +seen before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski +bound Pierre's eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching +some hairs painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed +him, and taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the +knot hurt Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a +shamefaced smile. His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a +puckered, though smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain, +timid steps. + +Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped. + +"Whatever happens to you," he said, "you must bear it all manfully +if you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood." (Pierre nodded +affirmatively.) "When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover +your eyes," added Willarski. "I wish you courage and success," and, +pressing Pierre's hand, he went out. + +Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice he +shrugged his and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if wishing to +take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent with his +eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs +almost gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He +experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of +what would happen to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He +felt curious to know what was going to happen and what would be +revealed to him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had +come when he would at last start on that path of regeneration and on +the actively virtuous life of which he had been dreaming since he +met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took +the bandage off his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black +darkness, only a small lamp was burning inside something white. Pierre +went nearer and saw that the lamp stood on a black table on which +lay an open book. The book was the Gospel, and the white thing with +the lamp inside was a human skull with its cavities and teeth. After +reading the first words of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the +Word and the Word was with God," Pierre went round the table and saw a +large open box filled with something. It was a coffin with bones +inside. He was not at all surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on +an entirely new life quite unlike the old one, he expected +everything to be unusual, even more unusual than what he was seeing. A +skull, a coffin, the Gospel- it seemed to him that he had expected all +this and even more. Trying to stimulate his emotions he looked around. +"God, death, love, the brotherhood of man," he kept saying to himself, +associating these words with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened +and someone came in. + +By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed, +he saw rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the +darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the +table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands. + +This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his +chest and part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which +rose a high white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit +up from below. + +"For what have you come hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in +Pierre's direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have +you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not +seen the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue, +enlightenment?" + +At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre +felt a sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his +boyhood at confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially +a complete stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man. +With bated breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by +which name the brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the +Brotherhood was known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor +a man he knew, Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the +newcomer was an acquaintance- he wished him simply a brother and a +virtuous instructor. For a long time he could not utter a word, so +that the Rhetor had to repeat his question. + +"Yes... I... I... desire regeneration," Pierre uttered with +difficulty. + +"Very well," said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: "Have you any +idea of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach +your aim?" said he quietly and quickly. + +"I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration," said Pierre, +with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his +excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in +Russian. + +"What is your conception of Freemasonry?" + +"I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men +who have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the +inadequacy of his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he +spoke. "I imagine..." + +"Good!" said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with this +answer. "Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in religion?" + +"No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it," said +Pierre, so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him +what he was saying. "I have been an atheist," answered Pierre. + +"You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life, +therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?" said the +Rhetor, after a moment's pause. + +"Yes, yes," assented Pierre. + +The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his +breast, and began to speak. + +"Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order," he said, +"and if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood +with profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation +on which it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the +preservation and handing on to posterity of a certain important +mystery... which has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from +the first man- a mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind depends. +But since this mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use +it unless he be prepared by long and diligent self-purification, not +everyone can hope to attain it quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim, +that of preparing our members as much as possible to reform their +hearts, to purify and enlighten their minds, by means handed on to +us by tradition from those who have striven to attain this mystery, +and thereby to render them capable of receiving it. + +"By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to +improve the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of +piety and virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the +evil which sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you +again." + +"To combat the evil which sways the world..." Pierre repeated, and a +mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his +mind. He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and +he addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself +vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and +deed, imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the +three objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving +mankind, especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery +mentioned by the Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem +to him essential, and the second aim, that of purifying and +regenerating himself, did not much interest him because at that moment +he felt with delight that he was already perfectly cured of his former +faults and was ready for all that was good. + +Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of +the seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon's +temple, which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These +virtues were: 1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order. +2. Obedience to those of higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4. +Love of mankind. 5. Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death. + +"In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death," the +Rhetor said, "to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but +as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue +from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense +and peace." + +"Yes, that must be so," thought Pierre, when after these words the +Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. "It must be +so, but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which +is only now gradually opening before me." But five of the other +virtues which Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt +already in his soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind, +and especially obedience- which did not even seem to him a virtue, but +a joy. (He now felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to +submit his will to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot +what the seventh virtue was and could not recall it. + +The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre +whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to +all that would be required of him. + +"I am ready for everything," said Pierre. + +"I must also inform you," said the Rhetor, "that our Order +delivers its teaching not in words only but also by other means, which +may perhaps have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after +wisdom and virtue than mere words. This chamber with what you see +therein should already have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere, +more than words could do. You will perhaps also see in your further +initiation a like method of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the +ancient societies that explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A +hieroglyph," said the Rhetor, "is an emblem of something not +cognizable by the senses but which possesses qualities resembling +those of the symbol." + +Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He +listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his +ordeal was about to begin. + +"If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation," said the Rhetor +coming closer to Pierre. "In token of generosity I ask you to give +me all your valuables." + +"But I have nothing here," replied Pierre, supposing that he was +asked to give up all he possessed. + +"What you have with you: watch, money, rings...." + +Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage +for some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that +had been done, the Rhetor said: + +"In token of obedience, I ask you to undress." + +Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to +the Rhetor's instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre's +left breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his +trousers to above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his +right boot also and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save +this stranger the trouble, but the Mason told him that was not +necessary and gave him a slipper for his left foot. With a childlike +smile of embarrassment, doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on +his face against his will, Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and +legs apart, before his brother Rhetor, and awaited his further +commands. + +"And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief +passion," said the latter. + +"My passion! I have had so many," replied Pierre. + +"That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on +the path of virtue," said the Mason. + +Pierre paused, seeking a reply. + +"Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?" He +went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to +give the pre-eminence. + +"Women," he said in a low, scarcely audible voice. + +The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this +answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that +lay on the table, again bound his eyes. + +"For the last time I say to you- turn all your attention upon +yourself, put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in +passion but in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not +without us but within...." + +Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing +source of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion. + +CHAPTER IV + +Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre, +not the Rhetor but Pierre's sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized +by his voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his +resolution Pierre replied: "Yes, yes, I agree," and with a beaming, +childlike smile, his fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and +timidly in one slippered and one booted foot, he advanced, while +Willarski held a sword to his bare chest. He was conducted from that +room along passages that turned backwards and forwards and was at last +brought to the doors of the Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was +answered by the Masonic knock with mallets, the doors opened before +them. A bass voice (Pierre was still blindfold) questioned him as to +who he was, when and where he was born, and so on. Then he was again +led somewhere still blindfold, and as they went along he was told +allegories of the toils of his pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of +the Eternal Architect of the universe, and of the courage with which +he should endure toils and dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre +noticed that he was spoken of now as the "Seeker," now as the +"Sufferer," and now as the "Postulant," to the accompaniment of +various knockings with mallets and swords. As he was being led up to +some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty among his +conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of +them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet. After +that they took his right hand, placed it on something, and told him to +hold a pair of compasses to his left breast with the other hand and to +repeat after someone who read aloud an oath of fidelity to the laws of +the Order. The candles were then extinguished and some spirit lighted, +as Pierre knew by the smell, and he was told that he would now see the +lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the faint +light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several men +standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor's and holding +swords in their hands pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man +whose white shirt was stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved +forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce +it. But the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once +blindfolded again. + +"Now thou hast seen the lesser light," uttered a voice. Then the +candles were relit and he was told that he would see the full light; +the bandage was again removed and more than ten voices said +together: "Sic transit gloria mundi." + +Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the +room and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black +sat some twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some +of them Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President's chair +sat a young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from +his neck. On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at +Anna Pavlovna's two years before. There were also present a very +distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the +Kuragins'. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words +of the President, who held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was +a star-shaped light. At one side of the table was a small carpet +with various figures worked upon it, at the other was something +resembling an altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it +stood seven large candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the +brothers led Pierre up to the altar, placed his feet at right +angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he must prostrate himself +at the Gates of the Temple. + +"He must first receive the trowel," whispered one of the brothers. + +"Oh, hush, please!" said another. + +Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without +obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. "Where am I? What am I +doing? Aren't they laughing at me? Shan't I be ashamed to remember +this?" But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the +serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone +through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast at +his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling, +prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the +feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before. +When he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white +leather apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a +trowel and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master +addressed him. He told him that he should try to do nothing to stain +the whiteness of that apron, which symbolized strength and purity; +then of the unexplained trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse +his own heart from vice, and indulgently to smooth with it the heart +of his neighbor. As to the first pair of gloves, a man's, he said that +Pierre could not know their meaning but must keep them. The second +pair of man's gloves he was to wear at the meetings, and finally of +the third, a pair of women's gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these +woman's gloves are intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom +you shall honor most of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity +of heart to her whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in +Masonry." And after a pause, he added: "But beware, dear brother, that +these gloves do not deck hands that are unclean." While the Grand +Master said these last words it seemed to Pierre that he grew +embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more confused, blushed like a +child till tears came to his eyes, began looking about him uneasily, +and an awkward pause followed. + +This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to +the rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation +of all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a +trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows, +and so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs +of the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit +down. The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very +long, and Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a +state to understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the +last words of the statutes and these remained in his mind. + +"In our temples we recognize no other distinctions," read the +Grand Master, "but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any +distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother's aid +whoever he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that +falleth, never bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and +courteous. Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy +happiness with thy neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that +bliss. Forgive thy enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him +good. Thus fulfilling the highest law thou shalt regain traces of +the ancient dignity which thou hast lost." + +He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with +tears of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to +answer the congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met +him on all sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all +these men only brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work +with them. + +The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down +in their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the +necessity of humility. + +The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed, +and the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of "Collector of +Alms" went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked to +subscribe all he had, but fearing that it might look like pride +subscribed the same amount as the others. + +The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he +had returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of +years, had become completely changed, and had quite left behind his +former habits and way of life. + +CHAPTER V + +The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was +sitting at home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance +of the Square, one side of which symbolized God, another moral things, +a third physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now +and then his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he +formed in imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at +the Lodge, he had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the +Emperor and that it would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre +proposed going to his estates in the south and there attending to +the welfare of his serfs. He was joyfully planning this new life, when +Prince Vasili suddenly entered the room. + +"My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you +quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are under a delusion," said +Prince Vasili, as he entered. "I know all about it, and I can tell you +positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was +before the Jews." + +Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted him. + +"And why didn't you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I +know all about it and understand it all," he said. "You behaved as +becomes a man values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won't go +into that. But consider the position in which you are placing her +and me in the eyes of society, and even of the court," he added, +lowering his voice. "She is living in Moscow and you are here. +Remember, dear boy," and he drew Pierre's arm downwards, "it is simply +a misunderstanding. I expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her +a letter at once, and she'll come here and all will be explained, or +else, my dear boy, let me tell you it's quite likely you'll have to +suffer for it." + +Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look. + +"I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a +keen interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to +Helene." + +Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasili +did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to +speak in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he +had firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words +of the Masonic statutes, "be kindly and courteous," recurred to him. +He blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling with +himself to do what was for him the most difficult thing in life- to +say an unpleasant thing to a man's face, to say what the other, +whoever he might be, did not expect. He was so used to submitting to +Prince Vasili's tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he +would be unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that on what +he said now his future depended- whether he would follow the same +old road, or that new path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on +which he firmly believed he would be reborn to a new life. + +"Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and +I'll write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf." + +But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech, Pierre, +without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his +father, muttered in a whisper: + +"Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!" And he jumped up +and opened the door for him. + +"Go!" he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of +confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasili's face. + +"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?" + +"Go!" the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had to go +without receiving any explanation. + +A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the +Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went +away to his estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and +Odessa Masons and promised to write to him and guide him in his new +activity. + +CHAPTER VI + +The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and, in spite +of the Emperor's severity regarding duels at that time, neither the +principals nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the +duel, confirmed by Pierre's rupture with his wife, was the talk of +society. Pierre who had been regarded with patronizing condescension +when he was an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was +the best match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society +after his marriage- when the marriageable daughters and their +mothers had nothing to hope from him- especially as he did not know +how, and did not wish, to court society's favor. Now he alone was +blamed for what had happened, he was said to be insanely jealous and +subject like his father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after +Pierre's departure Helene returned to Petersburg, she was received +by all her acquaintances not only cordially, but even with a shade +of deference due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her +husband Helene assumed a dignified expression, which with +characteristic tact she had acquired though she did not understand its +significance. This expression suggested that she had resolved to +endure her troubles uncomplainingly and that her husband was a cross +laid upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion more openly. +He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was mentioned and, pointing to +his forehead, remarked: + +"A bit touched- I always said so." + +"I said from the first," declared Anna Pavlovna referring to Pierre, +"I said at the time and before anyone else" (she insisted on her +priority) "that that senseless young man was spoiled by the depraved +ideas of these days. I said so even at the time when everybody was +in raptures about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and +when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my +soirees. And how has it ended? I was against this marriage even then +and foretold all that has happened." + +Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of +soirees as before- such as she alone had the gift of arranging- at +which was to be found "the cream of really good society, the bloom +of the intellectual essence of Petersburg," as she herself put it. +Besides this refined selection of society Anna Pavlovna's receptions +were also distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new +and interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the +state of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court +society so dearly and distinctly indicated. + +Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon's +destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt and the +surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when +our troops had already entered Prussia and our second war with +Napoleon was beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The +"cream of really good society" consisted of the fascinating Helene, +forsaken by her husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte +who had just returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a +young man referred to in that drawing room as "a man of great merit" +(un homme de beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed maid of honor +and her mother, and several other less noteworthy persons. + +The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests that evening +was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from +the Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage. + +The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company +that evening was this: + +"Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to +countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance +and mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not +cease to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say +to the King Prussia and others: 'So much the worse for you. Tu l'as +voulu, George Dandin,' that's all we have to say about it!" + +When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the +drawing room, almost all the company had assembled, and the +conversation, guided by Anna Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic +relations with Austria and the hope of an alliance with her. + +Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and +self-possessed, entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the +uniform of an aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his +respects to the aunt and then brought back to the general circle. + +Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him +to several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered +description of each. +charge d'affaires from Copenhagen- a profound intellect," and +simply, "Mr. Shitov- a man of great merit"- this of the man usually so +described. + +Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna's efforts, his own tastes, and the +peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his +service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a +very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to +Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He +had become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which +he had been so pleased at Olmutz and according to which an ensign +might rank incomparably higher than a general, and according to +which what was needed for success in the service was not effort or +work, or courage, or perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to +get on with those who can grant rewards, and he was himself often +surprised at the rapidity of his success and at the inability of +others to understand these things. In consequence of this discovery +his whole manner of life, all his relations with old friends, all +his plans for his future, were completely altered. He was not rich, +but would spend his last groat to be better dressed than others, and +would rather deprive himself of many pleasures than allow himself to +be seen in a shabby equipage or appear in the streets of Petersburg in +an old uniform. He made friends with and sought the acquaintance of +only those above him in position and who could therefore be of use +to him. He liked Petersburg and despised Moscow. The remembrance of +the Rostovs' house and of his childish love for Natasha was unpleasant +to him and he had not once been to see the Rostovs since the day of +his departure for the army. To be in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room he +considered an important step up in the service, and he at once +understood his role, letting his hostess make use of whatever interest +he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned each face, appraising +the possibilities of establishing intimacy with each of those present, +and the advantages that might accrue. He took the seat indicated to +him beside the fair Helene and listened to the general conversation. + +"Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable +that not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure +them, and she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the +actual phrase used by the Vienna cabinet," said the Danish charge +d'affaires. + +"The doubt is flattering," said "the man of profound intellect," +with a subtle smile. + +"We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of +Austria," said Mortemart. "The Emperor of Austria can never have +thought of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it." + +"Ah, my dear vicomte," put in Anna Pavlovna, "L'Urope" (for some +reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined +French pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing +with a Frenchman), "L'Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere."~{ "Europe will never be our sincere ally." }~ + +After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the +King of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the conversation. + +Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his +turn, but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his +neighbor, the beautiful Helene, whose eyes several times met those +of the handsome young aide-de-camp with a smile. + +Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally +asked Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state +he found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told +them in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies +and the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of +his own about the facts he was recounting. For some time he +engrossed the general attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the +novelty she had served up was received with pleasure by all her +visitors. The greatest attention of all to Boris' narrative was +shown by Helene. She asked him several questions about his journey and +seemed greatly interested in the state of the Prussian army. As soon +as he had finished she turned to him with her usual smile. + +"You absolutely must come and see me," she said in a tone that +implied that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this +was absolutely necessary. + +"On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure." + +Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a +conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the +pretext that her aunt wished to hear him. + +"You know her husband, of course?" said Anna Pavlovna, closing her +eyes and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. "Ah, she is +such an unfortunate and charming woman! Don't mention him before +her- please don't! It is too painful for her!" + +CHAPTER VII + +When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte +had the ear of the company. + +Bending forward in his armchair he said: "Le Roi de Prusse!" and +having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him. + +"Le Roi de Prusse?" Hippolyte said interrogatively, again +laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna +Pavlovna waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to +say no more she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious +Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great. + +"It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I..." she began, but +Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: "Le Roi de Prusse..." and +again, as soon as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and +said no more. + +Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte's friend, addressed +him firmly. + +"Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?" + +Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing. + +"Oh, it's nothing. I only wished to say..." (he wanted to repeat a +joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that +evening to get in) "I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight +pour le Roi de Prusse!" + +Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or +appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody +laughed. + +"Your joke is too bad, it's witty but unjust," said Anna Pavlovna, +shaking her little shriveled finger at him. + +"We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right +principles. Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!" she said. + +The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on +the political news. It became particularly animated toward the end +of the evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were +mentioned. + +"You know N- N- received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?" +said "the man of profound intellect." "Why shouldn't S- S- get the +same distinction?" + +"Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor's portrait is a reward but +not a distinction," said the diplomatist- "a gift, rather." + +"There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg." + +"It's impossible," replied another. + +"Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...." + +When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken very little all the +evening again turned to Boris, asking him in a tone of caressing +significant command to come to her on Tuesday. + +"It is of great importance to me," she said, turning with a smile +toward Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same sad smile +with which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene's +wish. + +It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that evening +about the Prussian army, Helene had suddenly found it necessary to see +him. She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he +came on Tuesday. + +But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene's splendid salon, +Boris received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for +him to come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to +him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said +unexpectedly and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face: +"Come to dinner tomorrow... in the evening. You must come.... Come!" + +During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the +countess' house. + +CHAPTER VIII + +The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier. +Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind." +Militiamen and recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and +from the seat of war came contradictory news, false as usual and +therefore variously interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski, +Prince Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805. + +In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief +then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout +Russia. Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly +noticeable since the time when he thought his son had been killed, +he did not think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been +appointed by the Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity for +action gave him new energy and strength. He was continually +traveling through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic +in the fulfillment of his duties, severe to cruelty with his +subordinates, and went into everything down to the minutest details +himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in mathematics from +her father, and when the old prince was at home went to his study with +the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his grandfather called +him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse +Savishna in the late princess' rooms and Princess Mary spent most of +the day in the nursery, taking a mother's place to her little nephew +as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed passionately +fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself to give +her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel- as she called +her nephew- and playing with him. + +Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over +the tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble +monument brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread +wings ready to fly upwards. The angel's upper lip was slightly +raised as though about to smile, and once on coming out of the +chapel Prince Andrew and Princess Mary admitted to one another that +the angel's face reminded them strangely of the little princess. But +what was still stranger, though of this Prince Andrew said nothing +to his sister, was that in the expression the sculptor had happened to +give the angel's face, Prince Andrew read the same mild reproach he +had read on the face of his dead wife: "Ah, why have you done this +to me?" + +Soon after Prince Andrew's return the old prince made over to him +a large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald +Hills. Partly because of the depressing memories associated with +Bald Hills, partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal +to bearing with his father's peculiarities, and partly because he +needed solitude, Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building +and spent most of his time there. + +After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved +not to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and +everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the +recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his +son seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old +man, roused by activity, expected the best results from the new +campaign, while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the +war and secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side. + +On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits. +Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's +absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman +who had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and +letters for Prince Andrew. + +Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the +letters to Princess Mary's apartments, but did not find him there. +He was told that the prince had gone to the nursery. + +"If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought some +papers," said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting +on a child's little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he +poured drops from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of +water. + +"What is it?" he said crossly, and, his hand shaking +unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the +mixture onto the floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought +it. + +There were in the room a child's cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a +table, a child's table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew +was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was +burning on the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light +did not fall on the cot. + +"My dear," said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside +the cot where she was standing, "better wait a bit... later..." + +"Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things +off- and this is what comes of it!" said Prince Andrew in an +exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister. + +"My dear, really... it's better not to wake him... he's asleep," +said the princess in a tone of entreaty. + +Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed, +wineglass in hand. + +"Perhaps we'd really better not wake him," he said hesitating. + +"As you please... really... I think so... but as you please," said +Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had +prevailed. She drew her brother's attention to the maid who was +calling him in a whisper. + +It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the +boy who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their +household doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town, +they had been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by +sleeplessness and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one +another and reproached and disputed with each other. + +"Petrusha has come with papers from your father," whispered the +maid. + +Prince Andrew went out. + +"Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal +instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his +father's letter, he returned to the nursery. + +"Well?" he asked. + +"Still the same. Wait, for heaven's sake. Karl Ivanich always says +that sleep is more important than anything," whispered Princess Mary +with a sigh. + +Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot. + +"Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the +drops and again went up to the cot. + +"Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary. + +But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his +eyes, and stooped glass in hand over the infant. + +"But I wish it," he said. "I beg you- give it him!" + +Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively +and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed +hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and +sat down on a sofa in the next room. + +He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them +mechanically he began reading. The old prince, now and then using +abbreviations, wrote in his large elongated hand on blue paper as +follows: + +Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful +news- if it's not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete +victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing, +and the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a +German- I congratulate him! I can't make out what the commander at +Korchevo- a certain Khandrikov- is up to; till now the additional +men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say +I'll have his head off if everything is not here in a week. Have +received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from +Petenka- he took part in it- and it's all true. When mischief-makers +don't meddle even a German beats Buonaparte. He is said to be +fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to Korchevo without +delay and carry out instructions! + +Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It +was a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilibin. He folded +it up without reading it and reread his father's letter, ending with +the words: "Gallop off to Korchevo and carry out instructions!" + +"No, pardon me, I won't go now till the child is better," thought +he, going to the door and looking into the nursery. + +Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the +baby. + +"Ah yes, and what else did he say that's unpleasant?" thought Prince +Andrew, recalling his father's letter. "Yes, we have gained a +victory over Bonaparte, just when I'm not serving. Yes, yes, he's +always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!" And he began reading +Bilibin's letter which was written in French. He read without +understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment, +what he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of +all else. + +CHAPTER IX + +Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and +though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms, +he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and +self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation +of diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in +Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the +bile he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the +army. The letter was old, having been written before the battle at +Preussisch-Eylau. + +"Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz," wrote +Bilibin, "as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I +have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for +me; what I have seen during these last three months is incredible. + +"I begin ab ovo. 'The enemy of the human race,' as you know, attacks +the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only +betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it +turns out that 'the enemy of the human race' pays no heed to our +fine speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the +Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had +begun, and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and +installs himself in the palace at Potsdam. + +"'I most ardently desire,' writes the King of Prussia to +Bonaparte, 'that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my +palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as +circumstances allowed, I have hastened to take all steps to that +end. May I have succeeded!' The Prussian generals pride themselves +on being polite to the French and lay down their arms at the first +demand. + +"The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the +King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.... +All this is absolutely true. + +"In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude, +it turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more, +in war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have +everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely, +a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success +might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so +young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski and +Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us, +Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy +and triumph. + +"On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails +are taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything +himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those +meant for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters +addressed to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field +marshal grows impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters +from the Emperor to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts +into one of his wild furies and rages at everyone and everything, +seizes the letters, opens them, and reads those from the Emperor +addressed to others. 'Ah! So that's the way they treat me! No +confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep an eye on me! Very well then! +Get along with you!' So he writes the famous order of the day to +General Bennigsen: + +'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the +army. You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it +is exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done, +and, as you yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must +think of retreating to our frontier- which do today.' + +"'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a +saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite +prevents my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on +the command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden, +having sent him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising +him if there is a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior +of Prussia, for only one day's ration of bread remains, and in some +regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders, +Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had has been +eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I +recover. In regard to which I humbly submit my report, with the +information that if the army remains in its present bivouac another +fortnight there will not be a healthy man left in it by spring. + +"'Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is +already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great +and glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most +gracious permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play +the part of a secretary rather than commander in the army. My +removal from the army does not produce the slightest stir- a blind man +has left it. There are thousands such as I in Russia.' + +"The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all, +isn't it logical? + +"This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly +interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it +appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle. +Buxhowden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen +does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who +are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the +opportunity to fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He +does so. This is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great +victory but in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as +you know, have a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won +or lost. Those who retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say; +and according to that it is we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In +short, we retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg +with news of a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive +from Petersburg the post of commander in chief as a reward for his +victory, does not give up the command of the army to General +Buxhowden. During this interregnum we begin a very original and +interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it should +be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid General +Buxhowden who by right of seniority should be our chief. So +energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an +unfordable river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our +enemy, who at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General +Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by a superior enemy +force as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled us to +escape him. Buxhowden pursues us- we scuttle. He hardly crosses the +river to our side before we recross to the other. At last our enemy. +Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and the +result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part and an epileptic fit on +Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the +news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our +appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is +vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But +as it turns out, just at that moment a third enemy rises before us- +namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat, +biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads +impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our last +campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form bands and scour +the countryside and put everything to fire and sword. The +inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick, +and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our +headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to +disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off my empty +portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all +commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much +fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other." + +At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while, +in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust +Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When +he had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away. +It was not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life +out there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his +eyes, rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what +he had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly +he thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized +with alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he +was reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and +opened it. + +Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from +him with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the +cot. + +"My dear," he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind +him. + +As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was +seized by an unreasoning panic- it occurred to him that the child +was dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror. + +"All is over," he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his +forehead. He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find +it empty and that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the +curtain aside and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could +not find the baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about +till he lay across the bed with his head lower than the pillow, and +was smacking his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly. + +Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had +already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught +him, tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The +soft forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand; +even the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was +not dead, but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent. +Prince Andrew longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart, +this helpless little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him, +gazing at his head and at the little arms and legs which showed +under the blanket. He heard a rustle behind him and a shadow +appeared under the curtain of the cot. He did not look round, but +still gazing at the infant's face listened to his regular breathing. +The dark shadow was Princess Mary, who had come up to the cot with +noiseless steps, lifted the curtain, and dropped it again behind +her. Prince Andrew recognized her without looking and held out his +hand to her. She pressed it. + +"He has perspired," said Prince Andrew. + +"I was coming to tell you so." + +The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his +forehead against the pillow. + +Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain +her luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy +that were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him, +slightly catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a +warning gesture and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain +as if not wishing to leave that seclusion where they three were shut +off from all the world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away, +ruffling his hair against the muslin of the curtain. + +"Yes, this is the one thing left me now," he said with a sigh. + +CHAPTER X + +Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went +to the Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs, +taking with him full directions which he had written down for his +own guidance as to what he should do on his estates. + +When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office +and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that +steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs- and that till then +they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their +babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to +the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and +hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the +estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among +them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the +young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of +money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp +and the new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed +hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among them, +including the chief steward, understood from this speech how they +could best handle the master for their own ends. + +The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre's intentions, +but remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go +into the general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory. + +Despite Count Bezukhov's enormous wealth, since he had come into +an income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a +year, Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him +an allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the +following budget: + +About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank, +about 30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town +house, and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was +given in pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was +sent to the countess; about 70,00 went for interest on debts. The +building of a new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in +each of the last two years, and he did not know how the rest, about +100,000 rubles, was spent, and almost every year he was obliged to +borrow. Besides this the chief steward wrote every year telling him of +fires and bad harvests, or of the necessity of rebuilding factories +and workshops. So the first task Pierre had to face was one for +which he had very little aptitude or inclination- practical business. + +He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he +felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these +consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with +them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the +state of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the +necessity of paying off the debts and undertaking new activities +with serf labor, to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand, +Pierre demanded that steps should be taken to liberate the serfs, +which the steward met by showing the necessity of first paying off the +loans from the Land Bank, and the consequent impossibility of a speedy +emancipation. + +The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested +selling the forests in the province of Kostroma, the land lower down +the river, and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all +of which operations according to him were connected with such +complicated measures- the removal of injunctions, petitions, +permits, and so on- that Pierre became quite bewildered and only +replied: + +"Yes, yes, do so." + +Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled +him to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only +tried to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The +steward for his part tried to pretend to the count that he +considered these consultations very valuable for the proprietor and +troublesome to himself. + +In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened +to make his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer, +the largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's +greatest weakness- the one to which he had confessed when admitted +to the Lodge- were so strong that he could not resist them. Again +whole days, weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush +and were as much occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches, +and balls, giving him no time for reflection, as in Petersburg. +Instead of the new life he had hoped to lead he still lived the old +life, only in new surroundings. + +Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not +fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of +moral life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two- morality +and the love of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he +fulfilled another of the precepts- that of reforming the human race- +and had other virtues- love of his neighbor, and especially +generosity. + +In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way +he intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his +orders had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom +God had entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit. + +The chief steward, who considered the young count's attempts +almost insane- unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the +serfs- made some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation +of the serfs as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large +buildings- schools, hospitals, and asylums- on all the estates +before the master arrived. Everywhere preparations were made not for +ceremonious welcomes (which he knew Pierre would not like), but for +just such gratefully religious ones, with offerings of icons and the +bread and salt of hospitality, as, according to his understanding of +his master, would touch and delude him. + +The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna +carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on +Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more +picturesque than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and +touchingly grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere +were receptions, which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a +joyful feeling in the depth of his heart. In one place the peasants +presented him with bread and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint +Paul, asking permission, as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits +he had conferred on them, to build a new chantry to the church at +their own expense in honor of Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In +another place the women with infants in arms met him to thank him +for releasing them from hard work. On a third estate the priest, +bearing a cross, came to meet him surrounded by children whom, by +the count's generosity, he was instructing in reading, writing, and +religion. On all his estates Pierre saw with his own eyes brick +buildings erected or in course of erection, all on one plan, for +hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon to be opened. +Everywhere he saw the stewards' accounts, according to which the +serfs' manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the touching +thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue coats. + +What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him +with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter +and Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter's +day, and that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had +begun the chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in +that villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know +that since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his +land, they did still harder work on their own land. He did not know +that the priest who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by +his exactions, and that the pupils' parents wept at having to let +him take their children and secured their release by heavy payments. +He did not know that the brick buildings, built to plan, were being +built by serfs whose manorial labor was thus increased, though +lessened on paper. He did not know that where the steward had shown +him in the accounts that the serfs' payments had been diminished by +a third, their obligatory manorial work had been increased by a +half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit to his estates and +quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which he had left +Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to his "brother-instructor" +as he called the Grand Master. + +"How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good," +thought Pierre, "and how little attention we pay to it!" + +He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at +receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do +for these simple, kindly people. + +The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly +through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with +a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre, +pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above +all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it +was. + +Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be +difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would +happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though +reluctantly, on what he thought right. The steward promised to do +all in his power to carry out the count's wishes, seeing clearly +that not only would the count never be able to find out whether all +measures had been taken for the sale of the land and forests and to +release them from the Land Bank, but would probably never even inquire +and would never know that the newly erected buildings were standing +empty and that the serfs continued to give in money and work all +that other people's serfs gave- that is to say, all that could be +got out of them. + +CHAPTER XI + +Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest +state of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of +visiting his friend Bolkonski, whom he had not seen for two years. + +Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among +fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The +house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and +with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that +stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which +were a few fir trees. + +The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables, +a bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular facade +still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly +laid out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps +and a water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were +straight, the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore +an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre +met, in reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a +small newly built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked +after Prince Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage, +said that the prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little +anteroom. + +Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house +after the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend +in Petersburg. + +He quickly entered the small reception room with its +still-unplastered wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone +farther, but Anton ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door. + +"Well, what is it?" came a sharp, unpleasant voice. + +"A visitor," answered Anton. + +"Ask him to wait," and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed +back. + +Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to +face with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre +embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek +and looked at him closely. + +"Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad," said Prince Andrew. + +Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with +surprise. He was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly +and there was a smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and +lifeless and in spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give +them a joyous and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner, +paler, and more manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre +till he got used to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow +indicating prolonged concentration on some one thought. + +As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged +separation, it was long before their conversation could settle on +anything. They put questions and gave brief replies about things +they knew ought to be talked over at length. At last the +conversation gradually settled on some of the topics at first +lightly touched on: their past life, plans for the future, Pierre's +journeys and occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and +despondency which Pierre had noticed in his friend's look was now +still more clearly expressed in the smile with which he listened to +Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past +or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked to +sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter +began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms, +dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince Andrew's +presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views, which had +been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour. He +checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible +desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a +quite different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg. + +"I can't tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly +know myself again." + +"Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then," said Prince +Andrew. + +"Well, and you? What are your plans?" + +"Plans!" repeated Prince Andrew ironically. "My plans?" he said, +as if astonished at the word. "Well, you see, I'm building. I mean +to settle here altogether next year...." + +Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew's face, +which had grown much older. + +"No, I meant to ask..." Pierre began, but Prince Andrew +interrupted him. + +"But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your +travels and all you have been doing on your estates." + +Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as +far as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had +been made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre's story of what +he had been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he +listened not only without interest but even as if ashamed of what +Pierre was telling him. + +Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend's company +and at last became silent. + +"I'll tell you what, my dear fellow," said Prince Andrew, who +evidently also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, "I +am only bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am +going back to my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of +course you know her already," he said, evidently trying to entertain a +visitor with whom he now found nothing in common. "We will go after +dinner. And would you now like to look round my place?" + +They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the +political news and common acquaintances like people who do not know +each other intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and +interest only of the new homestead he was constructing and its +buildings, but even here, while on the scaffolding, in the midst of +a talk explaining the future arrangements of the house, he interrupted +himself: + +"However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and +then we'll set off." + +At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre's marriage. + +"I was very much surprised when I heard of it," said Prince Andrew. + +Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said +hurriedly: "I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you +know it is all over, and forever." + +"Forever?" said Prince Andrew. "Nothing's forever." + +"But you know how it all ended, don't you? You heard of the duel?" + +"And so you had to go through that too!" + +"One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man," said +Pierre. + +"Why so?" asked Prince Andrew. "To kill a vicious dog is a very good +thing really." + +"No, to kill a man is bad- wrong." + +"Why is it wrong?" urged Prince Andrew. "It is not given to man to +know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will +err, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong." + +"What does harm to another is wrong," said Pierre, feeling with +pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was +roused, had begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought +him to his present state. + +"And who has told you what is bad for another man?" he asked. + +"Bad! Bad!" exclaimed Pierre. "We all know what is bad for +ourselves." + +"Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is +something I cannot inflict on others," said Prince Andrew, growing +more and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new +outlook to Pierre. He spoke in French. "I only know two very real +evils in life: remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of +those evils. To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole +philosophy now." + +"And love of one's neighbor, and self-sacrifice?" began Pierre. "No, +I can't agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and not to +have to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for myself +and ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least trying" +(Pierre's modesty made him correct himself) "to live for others, +only now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I shall +not agree with you, and you do not really believe what you are +saying." Prince Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile. + +"When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you'll get on with her," +he said. "Perhaps you are right for yourself," he added after a +short pause, "but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for +yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found +happiness when you began living for others. I experienced just the +reverse. I lived for glory.- And after all what is glory? The same +love of others, a desire to do something for them, a desire for +their approval.- So I lived for others, and not almost, but quite, +ruined my life. And I have become calmer since I began to live only +for myself." + +"But what do you mean by living only for yourself?" asked Pierre, +growing excited. "What about your son, your sister, and your father?" + +"But that's just the same as myself- they are not others," explained +Prince Andrew. "The others, one's neighbors, le prochain, as you and +Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil. +Le prochain- your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good." + +And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He +evidently wished to draw him on. + +"You are joking," replied Pierre, growing more and more excited. +"What error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even +doing a little- though I did very little and did it very badly? What +evil can there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people +like ourselves, were growing up and dying with no idea of God and +truth beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed +in a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and +consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying +of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be +rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum +for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a +peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give +them rest and leisure?" said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. "And I have +done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done +something toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a +good action, and more than that, you can't make me believe that you do +not think so yourself. And the main thing is," he continued, "that I +know, and know for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is +the only sure happiness in life." + +"Yes, if you put it like that it's quite a different matter," said +Prince Andrew. "I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build +hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what's +right and what's good must be judged by one who knows all, but not +by us. Well, you want an argument," he added, come on then." + +They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which +served as a veranda. + +"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools," +he went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you +want to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking +off his cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual +needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only +happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him +of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him +my means. Then you say, 'lighten his toil.' But as I see it, +physical labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his +existence, as mental activity is to you or me. You can't help +thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I +can't sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can't help +thinking, just as he can't help plowing and mowing; if he didn't, he +would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand +his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so he +could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die. +The third thing- what else was it you talked about?" and Prince Andrew +crooked a third finger. "Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit, +he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him up. He will drag +about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years. It +would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being +born and there are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if +you grudged losing a laborer- that's how I regard him- but you want to +cure him from love of him. And he does not want that. And besides, +what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!" said +he, frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre. + +Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that +it was evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he +spoke readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long +time. His glance became more animated as his conclusions became more +hopeless. + +"Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!" said Pierre. "I don't understand +how one can live with such ideas. I had such moments myself not long +ago, in Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I collapsed so +that I don't live at all- everything seems hateful to me... myself + +most of all. Then I don't eat, don't wash... and how is it with +you?..." + +"Why not wash? That is not cleanly," said Prince Andrew; "on the +contrary one must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. +I'm alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best +I can without hurting others." + +"But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would +sit without moving, undertaking nothing...." + +"Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do +nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me +the honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to +get out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary +qualifications for it- the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness +necessary for the position. Then there's this house, which must be +built in order to have a nook of one's own in which to be quiet. And +now there's this recruiting." + +"Why aren't you serving in the army?" + +"After Austerlitz!" said Prince Andrew gloomily. "No, thank you very +much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active +Russian army. And I won't- not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolensk +threatening Bald Hills- even then I wouldn't serve in the Russian +army! Well, as I was saying," he continued, recovering his +composure, "now there's this recruiting. My father is chief in command +of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active service is +to serve under him." + +"Then you are serving?" + +"I am." + +He paused a little while. + +"And why do you serve?" + +"Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men +of his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he +has too energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited +power that he is terrible, and now he has this authority of a +commander in chief of the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had +been two hours late a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster's +clerk at Yukhnovna hanged," said Prince Andrew with a smile. "So I +am serving because I alone have any influence with my father, and +now and then can save him from actions which would torment him +afterwards." + +"Well, there you see!" + +"Yes, but it is not as you imagine," Prince Andrew continued. "I did +not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk who +had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been +very glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father- that again +is for myself." + +Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered +feverishly while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there +was no desire to do good to his neighbor. + +"There now, you wish to liberate your serfs," he continued; "that is +a very good thing, but not for you- I don't suppose you ever had +anyone flogged or sent to Siberia- and still less for your serfs. If +they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don't suppose they are +any the worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and +the stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it +is a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon +themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being +able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people +I pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You +may not have seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those +traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more +irritable, become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot +restrain themselves and grow more and more miserable." + +Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking +that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his +father's case. + +He did not reply. + +"So that's what I'm sorry for- human dignity, peace of mind, purity, +and not the serfs' backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave as you +may, always remain the same backs and foreheads." + +"No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you," said +Pierre. + +CHAPTER XII + +In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and +drove to Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the +silence now and then with remarks which showed that he was in a good +temper. + +Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making +in his husbandry. + +Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and +apparently immersed in his own thoughts. + +He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did +not see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid, +enlighten, and raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he +should say, he felt that Prince Andrew with one word, one argument, +would upset all his teaching, and he shrank from beginning, afraid +of exposing to possible ridicule what to him was precious and sacred. + +"No, but why do you think so?" Pierre suddenly began, lowering his +head and looking like a bull about to charge, "why do you think so? +You should not think so." + +"Think? What about?" asked Prince Andrew with surprise. + +"About life, about man's destiny. It can't be so. I myself thought +like that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don't +smile. Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it +was: Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal, +aspects of humanity." + +And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince +Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed +from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality, +brotherhood, and love. + +"Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the +rest is a dream," said Pierre. "Understand, my dear fellow, that +outside this union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree +with you that nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to +live out his life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But +make our fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood, +give yourself up to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once +feel yourself, as I have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible +chain the beginning of which is hidden in heaven," said Pierre. + +Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence +to Pierre's words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels +prevented his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it, +and by the peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew's eyes and by +his silence, Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that +Prince Andrew would not interrupt him or laugh at what he said. + +They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they +had to cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed +on it, they also stepped on the raft. + +Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed +silently at the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun. + +"Well, what do you think about it?" Pierre asked. "Why are you +silent?" + +"What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It's all very +well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of +life, the destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who +are we? Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see +what you see? You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I +don't see it." + +Pierre interrupted him. + +"Do you believe in a future life?" he asked. + +"A future life?" Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no +time to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as +he knew Prince Andrew's former atheistic convictions. + +"You say you can't see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor +could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the +end of everything. On earth, here on this earth" (Pierre pointed to +the fields), "there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the +universe, in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we +who are now the children of earth are- eternally- children of the +whole universe. Don't I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast +harmonious whole? Don't I feel that I form one link, one step, between +the lower and higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of +beings in whom the Deity- the Supreme Power if you prefer the term- is +manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to +man, why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go +farther and farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing +vanishes in this world, but that I shall always exist and always +have existed. I feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits, +and that in this world there is truth." + +"Yes, that is Herder's theory," said Prince Andrew, "but it is not +that which can convince me, dear friend- life and death are what +convince. What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound +up with one's own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped +to make it right" (Prince Andrew's voice trembled and he turned away), +"and suddenly that being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to +exist.... Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe +there is.... That's what convinces, that is what has convinced me," +said Prince Andrew. + +"Yes, yes, of course," said Pierre, "isn't that what I'm saying?" + +"No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the +necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with +someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, +and you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have +looked in...." + +"Well, that's it then! You know that there is a there and there is a +Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is- God." + +Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long +since been taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The +sun had sunk half below the horizon and an evening frost was +starring the puddles near the ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the +astonishment of the footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on +the raft and talked. + +"If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and +man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must +live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on +this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there, +in the Whole," said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky. + +Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening +to Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of +the sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness. +Pierre became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the +waves of the current beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew +felt as if the sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre's words, +whispering: + +"It is true, believe it." + +He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at +Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his +superior friend. + +"Yes, if it only were so!" said Prince Andrew. "However, it is +time to get on," he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at +the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since +Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on +that battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering, +something that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and +youthful, in his soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the +customary conditions of his life, but he knew that this feeling +which he did not know how to develop existed within him. His meeting +with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince Andrew's life. Though +outwardly he continued to live in the same old way, inwardly he +began a new life. + +CHAPTER XIII + +It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the +front entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the +house, Prince Andrew with asmile drew Pierre's attention to a +commotion going on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a +wallet on her back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black +garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up. +Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking round at the +carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back porch. + +"Those are Mary's 'God's folk,'" said Prince Andrew. "They have +mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter in which she +disobeys him. He orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she +receives them." + +"But what are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre. + +Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet +them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was +expected back soon. + +The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any +minute. + +Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always +kept in perfect order and readiness for him in his father's house; +he himself went to the nursery. + +"Let us go and see my sister," he said to Pierre when he returned. +"I have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her +'God's folk.' It will serve her right, she will be confused, but you +will see her 'God's folk.' It's really very curious." + +"What are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre. + +"Come, and you'll see for yourself." + +Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her +face when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before +the icon stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing +a monk's cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near +them, in an armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek +expression on her childlike face. + +"Andrew, why didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild +reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her +chickens. + +"Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir,"~{ "Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you." }~ she +said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child, +and now his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife, +and above all his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward +him. She looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to +say, "I like you very much, but please don't laugh at my people." +After exchanging the first greetings, they sat down. + +"Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!" said Prince Andrew, glancing with a +smile at the young pilgrim. + +"Andrew!" said Princess Mary, imploringly. "Il faut que vous sachiez +que c'est une femme,"~{ "You must know that this is a woman." }~ said Prince Andrew to Pierre. + +"Andrew, au nom de Dieu!"~{ "For heaven's sake." }~ Princess Mary repeated. + +It was evident that Prince Andrew's ironical tone toward the +pilgrims and Princess Mary's helpless attempts to protect them were +their customary long-established relations on the matter. + +"Mais, ma bonne amie," said Prince Andrew, "vous devriez au +contraire m'etre reconnaissante de ce que j'explique a Pierre votre +intimite avec ce jeune homme."~{ "But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to me for +explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young man." }~ + +"Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and +seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him) +into Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about, +looked round at them all with crafty eyes. + +Princess Mary's embarrassment on her people's account was quite +unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman, +lowering her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had +turned her cup upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside +it, and sat quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered +another cup of tea. Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked +with sly womanish eyes from under her brows at the young men. + +"Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman. + +"I have, good sir," she answered garrulously. "Just at Christmastime +I was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at +the shrine of the saint. And now I'm from Kolyazin, master, where a +great and wonderful blessing has been revealed." + +"And was Ivanushka with you?" + +"I go by myself, benefactor," said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a +bass voice. "I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..." + +Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell +what she had seen. + +"In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed." + +"What is it? Some new relics?" asked Prince Andrew. + +"Andrew, do leave off," said Princess Mary. "Don't tell him, +Pelageya." + +"No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he +is one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles, +I remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of +God's own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are +you not going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a +wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On +hearing those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went." + +All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones, +drawing in her breath. + +"So I come, master, and the people say to me: 'A great blessing +has been revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed +Mother, the Holy Virgin Mother of God'...." + +"All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards," said Princess +Mary, flushing. + +"Let me ask her," said Pierre. "Did you see it yourselves?" he +inquired. + +"Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the +face like the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother's cheek +it drops and drops...." + +"But, dear me, that must be a fraud!" said Pierre, naively, who +had listened attentively to the pilgrim. + +"Oh, master, what are you saying?" exclaimed the horrified Pelageya, +turning to Princess Mary for support. + +"They impose on the people," he repeated. + +"Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing +herself. "Oh, don't speak so, master! There was a general who did +not believe, and said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said +it he went blind. And he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the +Kiev catacombs came to him and said, 'Believe in me and I will make +you whole.' So he begged: 'Take me to her, take me to her.' It's the +real truth I'm telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought, +quite blind, straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and +says, 'Make me whole,' says he, 'and I'll give thee what the Tsar +bestowed on me.' I saw it myself, master, the star is fixed into the +icon. Well, and what do you think? He received his sight! It's a sin +to speak so. God will punish you," she said admonishingly, turning +to Pierre. + +"How did the star get into the icon?" Pierre asked. + +"And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?" said +Prince Andrew, with a smile. + +Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands. + +"Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!" she began, +her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. "Master, what have you +said? God forgive you!" And she crossed herself. "Lord forgive him! My +dear, what does it mean?..." she asked, turning to Princess Mary. +She got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She +evidently felt frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a +house where such things could be said, and was at the same time +sorry to have now to forgo the charity of this house. + +"Now, why need you do it?" said Princess Mary. "Why did you come +to me?..." + +"Come, Pelageya, I was joking," said Pierre. "Princesse, ma +parole, je n'ai pas voulu l'offenser.~{ "Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her." }~ I did not mean anything, I +was only joking," he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his +offense. "It was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking." + +Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre's face there was such a +look of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now +at her and now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured. + +CHAPTER XIV + +The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a +long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his +hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks +she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking +some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with +the saints. "I'd pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to +another. I'd sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and +there was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don't want +to come out, even into the light of heaven again." + +Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went +out of the room, and then, leaving "God's folk" to finish their tea, +Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room. + +"You are very kind," she said to him. + +"Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them +so well and have the greatest respect for them." + +Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately. + +"I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as +of a brother," she said. "How do you find Andrew?" she added +hurriedly, not giving him time to reply to her affectionate words. +"I am very anxious about him. His health was better in the winter, but +last spring his wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away +for a cure. And I am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He has +not a character like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our +sorrows. He keeps it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in +good spirits, but that is the effect of your visit- he is not often +like that. If you could persuade him to go abroad. He needs +activity, and this quiet regular life is very bad for him. Others +don't notice it, but I see it." + +Toward ten o'clock the men servants rushed to the front door, +hearing the bells of the old prince's carriage approaching. Prince +Andrew and Pierre also went out into the porch. + +"Who's that?" asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out +of, the carriage. + +"Ah! Very glad! Kiss me," he said, having learned who the young +stranger was. + +The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre. + +Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father's study, +found him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining +that a time would come when there would be no more wars. The old +prince disputed it chaffingly, but without getting angry. + +"Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then +there will be no more war! Old women's nonsense- old women's +nonsense!" he repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately on +the shoulder, and then went up to the table where Prince Andrew, +evidently not wishing to join in the conversation, was looking over +the papers his father had brought from town. The old prince went up to +him and began to talk business. + +"The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn't sent half his contingent. He +came to town and wanted to invite me to dinner- I gave him a pretty +dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy," the old prince +went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A +fine fellow- your friend- I like him! He stirs me up. Another says +clever things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks +rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps +I'll come and sit with you at supper. We'll have another dispute. Make +friends with my little fool, Princess Mary," he shouted after +Pierre, through the door. + +Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the +strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm +was not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his +family and with the household. With the stern old prince and the +gentle, timid Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre +at once felt like an old friend. They were all fond of him already. +Not only Princess Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the +pilgrims, gave him her most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old +"Prince Nicholas" (as his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and +let himself be taken in his arms, and Michael Ivanovich and +Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at him with pleasant smiles when he +talked to the old prince. + +The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre's +account. And during the two days of the young man's visit he was +extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again. + +When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met +together, they began to express their opinions of him as people always +do after a new acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one +said anything but what was good of him. + +CHAPTER XV + +When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first time, +how close was the bond that united him to Denisov and and the whole +regiment. + +On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when approaching his +home in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned +uniform of his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and +saw the picket ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully +shouted to his master, "The count has come!" and Denisov, who had been +asleep on his bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace +him, and the officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov +experienced the same feeling his mother, his father, and his sister +had embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not +speak. The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and +precious as his parents' house. + +When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and +had been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had +gone out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little +interests of the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and +bound in one narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense +of peace, of moral support, and the same sense being at home here in +his own place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was +none of all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not +know his right place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya +with whom he ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was +no possibility of going there or not going there; here there were +not twenty-four hours in the day which could be spent in such a +variety of ways; there was not that innumerable crowd of people of +whom not one was nearer to him or farther from him than another; there +were none of those uncertain and undefined money relations with his +father, and nothing to recall that terrible loss to Dolokhov. Here, in +the regiment, all was clear and simple. The whole world was divided +into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd regiment; the other, all +the rest. And the rest was no concern of his. In the regiment, +everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who captain, who was a +good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was a comrade. The +canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay came every four months, there +was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do nothing that +was considered bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when given an order, +to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely ordered- and all +would be well. + +Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this +regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on +lying down to rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was +all the pleasanter for him, because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for +which, in spite of all his family's efforts to console him, he could +not forgive himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his fault +by serving, not as he had done before, but really well, and by being a +perfectly first-rate comrade and officer- in a word, a splendid man +altogether, a thing which seemed so difficult out in the world, but so +possible in the regiment. + +After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his +parents in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now +resolved to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the +debt to his parents. + +Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at +Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It +was awaiting the Emperor's arrival and the beginning of a new +campaign. + +The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had +served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in +Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of +the campaign. It had been neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau +and, when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the +campaign, was attached to Platov's division. + +Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several +times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the +enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal +Oudinot's carriages. In April the Pavlograds were stationed +immovably for some weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German +village. + +A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river +broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions +for the men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no +transports could arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and +deserted villages, searching for potatoes, but found few even of +these. + +Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled- if +any remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be +taken from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead +of taking anything from them, often gave them the last of their +rations. + +The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but +had lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the +hospitals, death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or +the swelling that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and +hardly able to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the +hospitals. When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just +showing out of the ground that looked like asparagus, which, for +some reason, they called "Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter, +but they wandered about the fields seeking it and dug it out with +their sabers and ate it, though they were ordered not to do so, as +it was a noxious plant. That spring a new disease broke out broke +out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs, and face, +which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite of +all this, the soldiers of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on +"Mashka's sweet root," because it was the second week that the last of +the biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man +and the last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen. + +The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the +thatched roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with +tufts of felty winter hair. + +Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living +just as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms, +the hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed +their horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the +thatched roofs in place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the +caldrons from which they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food +and their hunger. As usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires, +steamed themselves before them naked; smoked, picked out and baked +sprouting rotten potatoes, told and listened to stories of +Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly, +or the priest's laborer Mikolka. + +The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless, +half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes +and, in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied +themselves as before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money, +though there was no food), some with more innocent games, such as +quoits and skittles. The general trend of the campaign was rarely +spoken of, partly because nothing certain was known about it, partly +because there was a vague feeling that in the main it was going badly. + +Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they +had become more friendly than ever. Denisov never spoke of Rostov's +family, but by the tender friendship his commander showed him, +Rostov felt that the elder hussar's luckless love for Natasha played a +part in strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to +expose Rostov to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action +greeted his safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging +expeditions, in a deserted and ruined village to which he had come +in search of provisions, Rostov found a family consisting of an old +Pole and his daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad, +hungry, too weak to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a +conveyance. Rostov brought them to his quarters, placed them in his +own lodging, and kept them for some weeks while the old man was +recovering. One of his comrades, talking of women, began chaffing +Rostov, saying that he was more wily than any of them and that it +would not be a bad thing if he introduced to them the pretty Polish +girl he had saved. Rostov took the joke as an insult, flared up, and +said such unpleasant things to the officer that it was all Denisov +could do to prevent a duel. When the officer had gone away, Denisov, +who did not himself know what Rostov's relations with the Polish +girl might be, began to upbraid him for his quickness of temper, and +Rostov replied: + +"Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can't +tell you how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...." + +Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room +without looking at Rostov, as was his way at moments of deep feeling. + +"Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!" he muttered, and Rostov +noticed tears in his eyes. + +CHAPTER XVI + +In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor's arrival, +but Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at +Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that +place. + +They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth +hut, dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and +turf. The hut was made in the following manner, which had then come +into vogue. A trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet +eight inches deep, and eight feet long. At one end of the trench, +steps were cut out and these formed the entrance and vestibule. The +trench itself was the room, in which the lucky ones, such as the +squadron commander, had a board, lying on piles at the end opposite +the entrance, to serve as a table. On each side of the trench, the +earth was cut out to a breadth of about two and a half feet, and +this did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof was so constructed +that one could stand up in the middle of the trench and could even sit +up on the beds if one drew close to the table. Denisov, who was living +luxuriously because the soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a +board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece of (broken but +mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold, embers from +the soldiers' campfire were placed on a bent sheet of iron on the +steps in the "reception room"- as Denisov called that part of the hut- +and it was then so warm that the officers, of whom there were always +some with Denisov and Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves. + +In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and +eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers, +changed his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got +warm, then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner, +and, his face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on +but his shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his +head. He was pleasantly considering the probability of being +promoted in a few days for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was +awaiting Denisov, who had gone out somewhere and with whom he wanted a +talk. + +Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the +hut, evidently much excited. Rostov moved to the window to see whom he +was speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko. + +"I ordered you not to let them that Mashka woot stuff!" Denisov +was shouting. "And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchuk bwought some +fwom the fields." + +"I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they +don't obey," answered the quartermaster. + +Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: "Let +him fuss and bustle now, my job's done and I'm lying down- capitally!" +He could hear that Lavrushka- that sly, bold orderly of Denisov's- was +talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying +something about loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when +he had gone out for provisions. + +Then Denisov's voice was heard shouting farther and farther away. +"Saddle! Second platoon!" + +"Where are they off to now?" thought Rostov. + +Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed with muddy +boots on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things +about, took his leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again. +In answer to Rostov's inquiry where he was going, he answered +vaguely and crossly that he had some business. + +"Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!" said Denisov +going out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing +through the mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denisov had +gone. Having got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not +leave the hut till toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The +weather had cleared up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet +were playing svayka, laughing as they threw their missiles which +buried themselves in the soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle +of the game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen +hussars on their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the +hussars drew up to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars +surrounded them. + +"There now, Denisov has been worrying," said Rostov, "and here are +the provisions." + +"So they are!" said the officers. "Won't the soldiers be glad!" + +A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied by two +infantry officers with whom he was talking. + +Rostov went to meet them. + +"I warn you, Captain," one of the officers, a short thin man, +evidently very angry, was saying. + +"Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov. + +"You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny- seizing the +transport of one's own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two +days." + +"And mine have had nothing for two weeks," said Denisov. + +"It is robbery! You'll answer for it, sir!" said the infantry +officer, raising his voice. + +"Now, what are you pestewing me for?" cried Denisov, suddenly losing +his temper. "I shall answer for it and not you, and you'd better not +buzz about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!" he shouted at the +officers. + +"Very well, then!" shouted the little officer, undaunted and not +riding away. "If you are determined to rob, I'll..." + +"Go to the devil! quick ma'ch, while you're safe and sound!" and +Denisov turned his horse on the officer. + +"Very well, very well!" muttered the officer, threateningly, and +turning his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle. + +"A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!" shouted Denisov +after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a +mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing. + +"I've taken twansports from the infantwy by force!" he said. +"After all, can't let our men starve." + +The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an +infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka that the transport +was unescorted, Denisov with his hussars had seized it by force. The +soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared +them with the other squadrons. + +The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and +holding his fingers spread out before his eyes said: + +"This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and +won't begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff +and settle the business there in the commissariat department and if +possible sign a receipt for such and such stores received. If not, +as the demand was booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a +row and the affair may end badly." + +From the regimental commander's, Denisov rode straight to the +staff with a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he +came back to his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen +him in. Denisov could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov +asked what was the matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and +threats in a hoarse, feeble voice. + +Alarmed at Denisov's condition, Rostov suggested that he should +undress, drink some water, and send for the doctor. + +"Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but +I'll always thwash scoundwels... and I'll tell the Empewo'... +Ice..." he muttered. + +The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely +necessary to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken +from his hairy arm and only then was he able to relate what had +happened to him. + +"I get there," began Denisov. "'Now then, where's your chief's +quarters?' They were pointed out. 'Please to wait.' 'I've widden +twenty miles and have duties to attend to and no time to wait. +Announce me.' Vewy well, so out comes their head chief- also took it +into his head to lecture me: 'It's wobbewy!'- 'Wobbewy,' I say, 'is +not done by man who seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him +who takes them to fill his own pockets!' 'Will you please be +silent?' 'Vewy good!' Then he says: 'Go and give a weceipt to the +commissioner, but your affair will be passed on to headquarters.' I go +to the commissioner. I enter, and at the table... who do you think? +No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that's starving us?" shouted Denisov, +hitting the table with the fist of his newly bled arm so violently +that the table nearly broke down and the tumblers on it jumped +about. "Telyanin! 'What? So it's you who's starving us to death! Is +it? Take this and this!' and I hit him so pat, stwaight on his +snout... 'Ah, what a... what...!' and I sta'ted fwashing him... +Well, I've had a bit of fun I can tell you!" cried Denisov, gleeful +and yet angry, his showing under his black mustache. "I'd have +killed him if they hadn't taken him away!" + +"But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself," said Rostov. "You've +set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again." + +Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke +calm and cheerful. + +But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and +Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully +showed them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental +commander in which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence. +The adjutant told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad +turn: that a court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the +severity with which marauding and insubordination were now regarded, +degradation to the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for. + +The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after +seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk, went to the +chief quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief, +threatened to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the +office and given two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm +of one of them. + +In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing, +that he thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed +up in it, but that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not +in the least fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels +dared attack him he would give them an answer that they would not +easily forget. + +Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostov knew +him too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart +he feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was +evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices + +from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered +to hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before +the staff of his division to explain his violence at the +commissariat office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two +Cossack regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was his +wont, rode out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A +bullet fired by a French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of +his leg. Perhaps at another time Denisov would not have left the +regiment for so slight a wound, but now he took advantage of it to +excuse himself from appearing at the staff and went into hospital. + +CHAPTER XVII + +In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the +Pavlograds did not take part, and after that an armistice was +proclaimed. Rostov, who felt his friend's absence very much, having no +news of him since he left and feeling very anxious about his wound and +the progress of his affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get +leave to visit Denisov in hospital. + +The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice +devastated by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when +it is so beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a +particularly dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its +foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken +soldiers wandering about. + +The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window +frames and panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a +wooden fence that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged +soldiers, with pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in +the sunshine in the yard. + +Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of +putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army +doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian +assistant. + +"I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to +Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there." + +The assistant asked some further questions. + +"Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed +Rostov coming upstairs. + +"What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What do you want? The +bullets having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a +pesthouse, sir." + +"How so?" asked Rostov. + +"Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and I" (he +pointed to the assistant), "keep on here. Some five of us doctors have +died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week," +said the doctor with evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been +invited here, but our allies don't like it at all." + +Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars, +who was wounded. + +"I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in +charge of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It's +well that the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of +coffee and some lint each month or we should be lost!" he laughed. +"Four hundred, sir, and they're always sending me fresh ones. There +are four hundred? Eh?" he asked, turning to the assistant. + +The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and +impatient for the talkative doctor to go. + +"Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was wounded at Molliten." + +"Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor, in a tone of +indifference. + +The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words. + +"Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor. + +Rostov described Denisov's appearance. + +"There was one like that," said the doctor, as if pleased. "That one +is dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up our list. We had a list. +Have you got it, Makeev?" + +"Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant. "But if +you'll step into the officers' wards you'll see for yourself," he +added, turning to Rostov. + +"Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor, "or you may have to +stay here yourself." + +But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the +assistant to show him the way. + +"Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after him. + +Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell +was so strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to pause and +collect his strength before he could go on. A door opened to the +right, and an emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in +underclothing, limped out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked +with glittering envious eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at +the door, Rostov saw that the sick and wounded were lying on the floor +on straw and overcoats. + +"May I go in and look?" + +"What is there to see?" said the assistant. + +But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in, +Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to which he had +already begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It +was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where +it originated. + +In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large +windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to +the walls, and leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were +unconscious and paid no attention to the newcomers. Those who were +conscious raised themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all +looked intently at Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief, +reproach, and envy of another's health. Rostov went to the middle of +the room and looking through the open doors into the two adjoining +rooms saw the same thing there. He stood still, looking silently +around. He had not at all expected such a sight. Just before him, +almost across the middle of the passage on the bare floor, lay a +sick man, probably a Cossack to judge by the cut of his hair. The +man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was +purple, his eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen, +and on his bare legs and arms which were still red, the veins stood +out like cords. He was knocking the back of his head against the +floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept repeating. Rostov +listened and made out the word. It was "drink, drink, a drink!" Rostov +glanced round, looking for someone who would put this man back in +his place and bring him water. + +"Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant. + +Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from +the next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostov. + +"Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostov and +evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities. + +"Get him to his place and give him some water," said Rostov, +pointing to the Cossack. + +"Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his +eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not +move. + +"No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought Rostov, +lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an +intense look fixed on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the +corner, on an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier +as thin as a skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently +fixed on Rostov. The man's neighbor on one side whispered something to +him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed that the old man wanted to +speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg +bent under him, the other had been amputated above the knee. His +neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless some distance from +him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with a snub nose. +His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes were rolled +back. Rostov looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran down his +back. + +"Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the assistant. + +"And how we've been begging, your honor," said the old soldier, +his jaw quivering. "He's been dead since morning. After all we're men, +not dogs." + +"I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away- taken away at +once," said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us go, your honor." + +"Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and lowering his eyes +and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of +reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the +room. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to the +officers' wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood +open. There were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers +were lying or sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in +hospital dressing gowns. The first person Rostov met in the +officers' ward was a thin little man with one arm, who was walking +about the first room in a nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with +a pipe between his teeth. Rostov looked at him, trying to remember +where he had seen him before. + +"See where we've met again!" said the little man. "Tushin, Tushin, +don't you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon Grabern? And I've had +a bit cut off, you see..." he went on with a smile, pointing to the +empty sleeve of his dressing gown. "Looking for Vasili Dmitrich +Denisov? My neighbor," he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted. +"Here, here," and Tushin led him into the next room, from whence +came sounds of several laughing voices. + +"How can they laugh, or even live at all here?" thought Rostov, +still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong +in the soldiers' ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those +envious looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face +of that young soldier with eyes rolled back. + +Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket, +though it was nearly noon. + +"Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in +the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed sadly that under +this habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling +showed itself in the expression of Denisov's face and the +intonations of his voice. + +His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six +weeks after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as +the faces of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that +struck Rostov. What struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to +see him, and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the +regiment, nor about the general state of affairs, and when Rostov +spoke of these matters did not listen. + +Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of +the regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on +outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and was +only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On +Rostov's inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced +from under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission +and the rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he +began reading his paper and specially drew Rostov's attention to the +stinging rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions, +who had gathered round Rostov- a fresh arrival from the world outside- +gradually began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his +answer. Rostov noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had +already heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only the +man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his +bed, gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin +still listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of +the reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denisov. + +"But what I say is," he said, turning to Rostov, "it would be best +simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will +now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted...." + +"Me petition the Empewo'!" exclaimed Denisov, in a voice to which he +tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like +an expression of irritable impotence. "What for? If I were a wobber +I would ask mercy, but I'm being court-martialed for bwinging +wobbers to book. Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone. I've +served the Tsar and my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I +to be degwaded?... Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight. This is +what I say: 'If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...'" + +"It's certainly well written," said Tushin, "but that's not the +point, Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostov. "One has to +submit, and Vasili Dmitrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told +you it was a bad business. + +"Well, let it be bad," said Denisov. + +"The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Tushin, "and +you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he" +(indicating Rostov) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a +better opportunity." + +"Haven't I said I'm not going to gwovel?" Denisov interrupted him, +went on reading his paper. + +Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though he +instinctively felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other +officers was the safest, and though he would have been glad to be of +service to Denisov. He knew his stubborn will and straightforward +hasty temper. + +When the reading of Denisov's virulent reply, which took more than +an hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and he spent the rest of the +day in a most dejected state of mind amid Denisov's hospital comrades, +who had round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their +stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening. + +Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he asked +Denisov whether he had no commission for him. + +"Yes, wait a bit," said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and +taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where +he had an inkpot, and sat down to write. + +"It seems it's no use knocking one's head against a wall!" he +said, coming from the window and giving Rostov a large envelope. In it +was the petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which +Denisov, without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat +officials, simply asked for pardon. + +"Hand it in. It seems..." + +He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile. + +CHAPTER XIX + +Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state +of Denisov's affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the +Emperor. + +On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in +Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on whom +he was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the +stay at Tilsit. + +"I should like to see the great man," he said, alluding to Napoleon, +whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte. + +"You are speaking of Buonaparte?" asked the general, smiling. + +Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that +he was being tested. + +"I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon," he replied. The +general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile. + +"You will go far," he said, and took him to Tilsit with him. + +Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two +Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw +Napoleon pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the +river, saw the pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in +silence in a tavern on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon's +arrival, saw both Emperors get into boats, and saw how Napoleon- +reaching the raft first- stepped quickly forward to meet Alexander and +held out his hand to him, and how they both retired into the pavilion. +Since he had begun to move in the highest circles Boris had made it +his habit to watch attentively all that went on around him and to note +it down. At the time of the meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of +those who had come with Napoleon and about the uniforms they wore, and +listened attentively to words spoken by important personages. At the +moment the Emperors went into the pavilion he looked at his watch, and +did not forget to look at it again when Alexander came out. The +interview had lasted an hour and fifty-three minutes. He noted this +down that same evening, among other facts he felt to be of historic +importance. As the Emperor's suite was a very small one, it was a +matter of great importance, for a man who valued his success in the +service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of this interview between the +two Emperors, and having succeeded in this, Boris felt that henceforth +his position was fully assured. He had not only become known, but +people had grown accustomed to him and accepted him. Twice he had +executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that the latter knew +his face, and all those at court, far from cold-shouldering him as +at first when they considered him a newcomer, would now have been +surprised had he been absent. + +Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilinski. +Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately fond +of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French +officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and +lunching with him and Boris. + +On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski +arranged a supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an +aide-de-camp of Napoleon's, there were also several French officers of +the Guard, and a page of Napoleon's, a young lad of an old +aristocratic French family. That same day, Rostov, profiting by the +darkness to avoid being recognized in civilian dress. came to Tilsit +and went to the lodging occupied by Boris and Zhilinski. + +Rostov, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far +from having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and +the French- who from being foes had suddenly become friends- that +had taken place at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte +and the French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger, +contempt, and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov's +Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken +prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal. +Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the +road, Rostov had maintained with heat that peace was impossible +between a legitimate sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov +was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of French officers +in Boris' lodging, dressed in uniforms he had been accustomed to see +from quite a different point of view from the outposts of the flank. +As soon as he noticed a French officer, who thrust his head out of the +door, that warlike feeling of hostility which he always experienced at +the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped at the +threshold and asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy lived there. +Boris, hearing a strange voice in the anteroom, came out to meet +him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face +on first recognizing Rostov. + +"Ah, it's you? Very glad, very glad to see you," he said, however, +coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had noticed his first +impulse. + +"I've come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have +business," he said coldly. + +"No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment. +Dans un moment je suis a vous,"~{ "In a minute I shall be at your disposal." }~ he said, answering someone who called +him. + +"I see I'm intruding," Rostov repeated. + +The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Boris' face: +having evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly +took both Rostov's hands and led him into the next room. His eyes, +looking serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by +something, as if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it +seemed to Rostov. + +"Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!" said Boris, +and he led him into the room where the supper table was laid and +introduced him to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian, +but an hussar officer, and an old friend of his. + +"Count Zhilinski- le Comte N. N.- le Capitaine S. S.," said he, +naming his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed +reluctantly, and remained silent. + +Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very +willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov. Boris did not +appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the +same pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with +which he had met Rostov, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the +Frenchmen, with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen, +addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter +had probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor. + +"No, I came on business," replied Rostov, briefly. + +Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look +of dissatisfaction on Boris' face, and as always happens to those in a +bad humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion +and that he was in everybody's way. He really was in their way, for he +alone took no part in the conversation which again became general. The +looks the visitors cast on him seemed to say: "And what is he +sitting here for?" He rose and went up to Boris. + +"Anyhow, I'm in your way," he said in a low tone. "Come and talk +over my business and I'll go away." + +"Oh, no, not at all," said Boris. "But if you are tired, come and +lie down in my room and have a rest." + +"Yes, really..." + +They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov, without +sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris were to blame in +some way) telling him about Denisov's affair, asking him whether, +through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor +on Denisov's behalf and get Denisov's petition handed in. When he +and Boris were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not +look Boris in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one +leg crossed over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender +fingers of his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens to the +report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight +into Rostov's eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this +happened Rostov felt uncomfortable and cast down his eyes. + +"I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe +in such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the +Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in +general, I think..." + +"So you don't want to do anything? Well then, say so!" Rostov almost +shouted, not looking Boris in the face. + +Boris smiled. + +"On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..." + +At that moment Zhilinski's voice was heard calling Boris. + +"Well then, go, go, go..." said Rostov, and refusing supper and +remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long +time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room. + +CHAPTER XX + +Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on +Denisov's behalf. He could not himself go to the general in attendance +as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission to do so, +and Boris, even had he wished to, could not have done so on the +following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were +signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the +Cross of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of +the First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening, +given by a battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk +battalion. The Emperors were to be present at that banquet. + +Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris that, when +the latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and +early next morning went away, avoiding Boris. In his civilian +clothes and a round hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the +French and their uniforms and at the streets and houses where the +Russian and French Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables +being set up and preparations made for the dinner; he saw the +Russian and French colors draped from side to side of the streets, +with hugh monograms A and N. In the windows of the houses also flags +and bunting were displayed. + +"Boris doesn't want to help me and I don't want to ask him. That's +settled," thought Nicholas. "All is over between us, but I won't leave +here without having done all I can for Denisov and certainly not +without getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is +here!" thought Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the house +where Alexander lodged. + +Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were +assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out. + +"I may see him at any moment," thought Rostov. "If only I were to +hand the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really +arrest me for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand +on whose side justice lies. He understands everything, knows +everything. Who can be more just, more magnanimous than he? And even +if they did arrest me for being here, what would it matter?" thought +he, looking at an officer who was entering the house the Emperor +occupied. "After all, people do go in.... It's all nonsense! I'll go +in and hand the letter to the Emperor myself so much the worse for +Drubetskoy who drives me to it!" And suddenly with a determination +he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for the letter in his pocket +and went straight to the house. + +"No, I won't miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz," he +thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious +of the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. "I will fall +at his feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will +even thank me. 'I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice +is the greatest happiness,'" Rostov fancied the sovereign saying. +And passing people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the +porch of the Emperor's house. + +A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right +he saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading +to the lower floor. + +"Whom do you want?" someone inquired. + +"To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty," said Nicholas, +with a tremor in his voice. + +"A petition? This way, to the officer the officer on duty" (he was +shown the door leading downstairs), "only it won't be accepted." + +On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened at what he +was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so +fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run +away, but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and +Rostov entered. + +A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high +boots and a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on, +standing in that room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of +his breeches a new pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that, +for some reason, attracted Rostov's attention. This man was was +speaking to someone in the adjoining room. + +"A good figure and in her first bloom," he was saying, but on seeing +Rostov, he stopped short and frowned. + +"What is it? A petition?" + +"What is it?" asked the person in the other room. + +"Another petitioner," answered the man with the braces. + +"Tell him to come later. He'll be coming out directly, we must go." + +"Later... later! Tomorrow. It's too late..." + +Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped +him. + +"Whom have you come from? Who are you?" + +"I come from Major Denisov," answered Rostov. + +"Are you an officer?" + +"Lieutenant Count Rostov." + +"What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with +you... go," and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed +him. + +Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there +were many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to +pass. + +Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding +himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to +shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety +of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was +making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a +familiar voice called him and a hand detained him. + +"What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?" asked a deep +voice. + +It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor's special +favor during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the +division in which Rostov was serving. + +Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the +kindly, jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an +excited voice told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for +Denisov, whom the general knew. Having heard Rostov to the end, the +general shook his head gravely. + +"I'm sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter." + +Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished explaining +Denisov's case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were +heard on the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the +porch. The gentlemen of the Emperor's suite ran down the stairs and +went to their horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at +Austerlitz, led up the Emperor's horse, and the faint creak of a +footstep Rostov knew at once was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the +danger of being recognized, Rostov went close to the porch, together +with some inquisitive civilians, and again, after two years, saw those +features he adored: that same face and same look and step, and the +same union of majesty and mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm +and love for his sovereign rose again in Rostov's soul in all its +old force. In the uniform of the Preobrazhensk regiment- white +chamois-leather breeches and high boots- and wearing a star Rostov did +not know (it was that of the Legion d'honneur), the monarch came out +into the porch, putting on his gloves and carrying his hat under his +arm. He stopped and looked about him, brightening everything around by +his glance. He spoke a few words to some of the generals, and, +recognizing the former commander of Rostov's division, smiled and +beckoned to him. + +All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for +some time to the Emperor. + +The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his +horse. Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers +(among whom was Rostov) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside +his horse, with his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the +cavalry general and said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be +heard by all: + +"I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than +I," and he raised his foot to the stirrup. + +The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and +rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm, +Rostov ran after him with the crowd. + +CHAPTER XXI + +The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a +battalion of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the right and a +battalion of the French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left. + +As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which +presented arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the +opposite flank, and at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It +could be no one else. He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue +uniform open over a white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his +shoulder. He was riding a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse +with a crimson gold-embroidered saddlecloth. On approaching +Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did so, Rostov, with his +cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon did not sit +well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions shouted "Hurrah!" and +"Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon said something to Alexander, and both +Emperors dismounted and took each other's hands. Napoleon's face +wore an unpleasant and artificial smile. Alexander was saying +something affable to him. + +In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes' horses, which +were pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes on every movement of +Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander +treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease +with the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday +matter to him. + +Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites, +approached the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came +straight up to the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly +found itself so close to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the +front row, was afraid he might be recognized. + +"Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the +bravest of your soldiers," said a sharp, precise voice, articulating +every letter. + +This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into +Alexander's eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to +him and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly. + +"To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war," +added Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and +assurance exasperating to Rostov, he ran his eyes over the Russian +ranks drawn up before him, who all presented arms with their eyes +fixed on their Emperor. + +"Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?" said +Alexander and took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the +commander of the battalion. + +Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand, +tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him +rushed forward and picked it up. + +"To whom shall it be given?" the Emperor Alexander asked +Koslovski, in Russian in a low voice. + +"To whomever Your Majesty commands." + +The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing +back, remarked: + +"But we must give him an answer." + +Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostov in his +scrutiny. + +"Can it be me?" thought Rostov. + +"Lazarev!" the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev, the +first soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward. + +"Where are you off to? Stop here!" voices whispered to Lazarev who +did not know where to go. Lazarev stopped, casting a sidelong look +at his colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to +soldiers called before the ranks. + +Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out +behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing +at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed +something from one to another, and a page- the same one Rostov had +seen the previous evening at Boris'- ran forward and, bowing +respectfully over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a +moment, laid in it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without +looking, pressed two fingers together and the badge was between +them. Then he approached Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently +gazed at his own monarch), looked round at the Emperor Alexander to +imply that what he was now doing was done for the sake of his ally, +and the small white hand holding the Order touched one of Lazarev's +buttons. It was as if Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his +hand to deign to touch that soldier's breast for the soldier to be +forever happy, rewarded, and distinguished from everyone else in the +world. Napoleon merely laid the cross on Lazarev's breast and, +dropping his hand, turned toward Alexander as though sure that the +cross would adhere there. And it really did. + +Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross +and fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced morosely at the little +man with white hands who was doing something to him and, still +standing motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into +Alexander's eyes, as if asking whether he should stand there, or go +away, or do something else. But receiving no orders, he remained for +some time in that rigid position. + +The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion, +breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the +tables prepared for them. + +Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers +embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of +officers and civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of +Russian and French voices and laughter filled the air round the tables +in the square. Two officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and +happy, passed by Rostov. + +"What d'you think of the treat? All on silver plate," one of them +was saying. "Have you seen Lazarev?" + +"I have." + +"Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner." + +"Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension +for life." + +"Here's a cap, lads!" shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier, donning a +shaggy French cap. + +"It's a fine thing! First-rate!" + +"Have you heard the password?" asked one Guards' officer of another. +"The day before yesterday it was 'Napoleon, France, bravoure'; +yesterday, 'Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.' One day our Emperor gives it +and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George's +Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He +must respond in kind." + +Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk +banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov standing by the corner +of a house. + +"Rostov! How d'you do? We missed one another," he said, and could +not refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and +troubled was Rostov's face. + +"Nothing, nothing," replied Rostov. + +"You'll call round?" + +"Yes, I will." + +Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from +a distance. a distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on +which he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in +his soul. Now he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his +submission, and the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and +its dirt and disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of +dead flesh that he looked round to see where the smell came from. Next +he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white +hand, who was now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then +why those severed arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he +thought of Lazarev rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He +caught himself harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened. + +The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating and a sense of +hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to +eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning. +There he found so many people, among them officers who, like +himself, had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in +getting a dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The +conversation naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his +comrades, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the peace +concluded after the battle of Friedland. They said that had we held +out a little longer Napoleon would have been done for, as his troops +had neither provisions nor ammunition. Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly +the latter) in silence. He finished a couple of bottles of wine by +himself. The process in his mind went on tormenting him without +reaching a conclusion. He feared to give way to his thoughts, yet +could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the officers' saying +that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began shouting +with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to the surprise of the +officers: + +"How can you judge what's best?" he cried, the blood suddenly +rushing to his face. "How can you judge the Emperor's actions? What +right have we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor's or +his actions!" + +"But I never said a word about the Emperor!" said the officer, +justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov's outburst, except +on the supposition that he was drunk. + +But Rostov did not listen to him. + +"We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more," +he went on. "If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we're punished, +it means that we have deserved it, it's not for us to judge. If the +Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an +alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If +once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred +will be left! That way we shall be saying there is no God- nothing!" +shouted Nicholas, banging the table- very little to the point as it +seemed to his listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own +thoughts. + +"Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's +all...." said he. + +"And to drink," said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel. + +"Yes, and to drink," assented Nicholas. "Hullo there! Another +bottle!" he shouted. + +In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh interview +with the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg +there was much talk of the grandeur of this important meeting. + +CHAPTER XXII + +In 1809 the intimacy between "the world's two arbiters," as Napoleon +and Alexander were called, was such that when Napoleon declared war on +Austria a Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with our +old enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and +in court circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and +one of Alexander's sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations +of foreign policy, the attention of Russian society was at that time +keenly directed on the internal changes that were being undertaken +in all the departments of government. + +Life meanwhile- real life, with its essential interests of health +and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in +thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and +passions- went on as usual, independently of and apart from +political friendship or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all +the schemes of reconstruction. + +BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10 + +CHAPTER I + +Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country. + +All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates- and constantly +changing from one thing to another had never accomplished- were +carried out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible +difficulty. + +He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre +lacked, and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going. + +On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and +became free agricultural laborers- this being one of the first +examples of the kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs' compulsory +labor was commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for +Bogucharovo at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and +writing to the children of the peasants and household serfs. + +Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father +and his son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he +spent in "Bogucharovo Cloister," as his father called Prince +Andrew's estate. Despite the indifference to the affairs of the +world he had expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went +on, received many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or +his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life, +these people lagged behind himself- who never left the country- in +knowledge of what was happening in home and foreign affairs. + +Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great +variety of books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a +critical of survey our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with +drawing up a proposal for a reform of the army rules and regulations. + +In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates which +had been inherited by his son, whose guardian he was. + +Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche looking at the +new grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of +white spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not +thinking of anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from +side to side. + +They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year +before. They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and +green fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near +the bridge, uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past +strips of stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there, +and into a birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the +forest it was almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with +their sticky green leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers +and the first blades of green grass were pushing up and lifting last +year's leaves. The coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees +scattered here and there among the birches was an unpleasant +reminder of winter. On entering the forest the horses began to snort +and sweated visibly. + +Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter +assented. But apparently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for +Peter, and he turned on the box toward his master. + +"How pleasant it is, your excellency!" he said with a respectful +smile. + +"What?" + +"It's pleasant, your excellency!" + +"What is he talking about?" thought Prince Andrew. "Oh, the +spring, I suppose," he thought as he turned round. "Yes, really +everything is green already.... How early! The birches and cherry +and alders too are coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah, +here is one oak!" + +At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of +the birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and +twice as tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as +great as a man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its +branches had been broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge +ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and +fingers, it stood an aged, stern, and scornful monster among the +smiling birch trees. Only the dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about +in the forest, and this oak, refused to yield to the charm of spring +or notice either the spring or the sunshine. + +"Spring, love, happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "Are you not +weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always +the same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! +Look at those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, +sticking out my broken and barked fingers just where they have +grown, whether from my back or my sides: as they have grown so I +stand, and I do not believe in your hopes and your lies." + +As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times +to look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak, +too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, +rigid, misshapen, and grim as ever. + +"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince +Andrew. "Let others- the young- yield afresh to that fraud, but we +know life, our life is finished!" + +A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully +pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with that tree. During this +journey he, as it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at +his old conclusion, restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for +him to begin anything anew- but that he must live out his life, +content to do no harm, and not disturbing himself or desiring +anything. + +CHAPTER II + +Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the +district in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of +which he was trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the +middle of May Prince Andrew went to visit him. + +It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already +clothed in green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water +one longed to bathe. + +Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about +which he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the +grounds of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish +cries behind some trees on the right and saw group of girls running to +cross the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran +a dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz +dress, with a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose +locks of hair escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing +that he was a stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him. + +Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so +beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that +slim pretty girl did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and +was contented and cheerful in her own separate- probably foolish- +but bright and happy life. "What is she so glad about? What is she +thinking of? Not of the military regulations or of the arrangement +of the Ryazan serfs' quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so +happy?" Prince Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity. + +In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as he had done +in former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province +with hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince +Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his +staying the night. + +During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by +his elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old +count's house was crowded on account of an approaching name day), +Prince Andrew repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among +the younger members of the company, and asked himself each time, "What +is she thinking about? Why is she so glad?" + +That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to +sleep. He read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It +was hot in the room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He +was cross with the stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had +made him stay by assuring him that some necessary documents had not +yet arrived from town, and he was vexed with himself for having +stayed. + +He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened +the shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for +this, burst into the room. He opened the casement. The night was +fresh, bright, and very still. Just before the window was a row of +pollard trees, looking black on one side and with a silvery light on +the other. Beneath the trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy +vegetation with silver-lit leaves and stems here and there. Farther +back beyond the dark trees a roof glittered with dew, to the right was +a leafy tree with brilliantly white trunk and branches, and above it +shone the moon, nearly at its full, in a pale, almost starless, spring +sky. Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the window ledge and his +eyes rested on that sky. + +His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were +also awake. He heard female voices overhead. + +"Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew +recognized at once. + +"But when are you coming to bed?" replied another voice. + +"I won't, I can't sleep, what's the use? Come now for the last +time." + +Two girlish voices sang a musical passage- the end of some song. + +"Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there's an end of it." + +"You go to sleep, but I can't," said the first voice, coming +nearer to the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the +rustle of her dress and even her breathing could be heard. +Everything was stone-still, like the moon and its light and the +shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared not stir, for fear of betraying his +unintentional presence. + +"Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you +sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up, +Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never +was such a lovely night before!" + +Sonya made some reluctant reply. + +"Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come +here.... Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like +sitting down on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this, +straining tight, as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...." + +"Take care, you'll fall out." + +He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya's disapproving voice: +"It's past one o'clock." + +"Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!" + +Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was still sitting +there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle and at times a sigh. + +"O God, O God! What does it mean?" she suddenly exclaimed. "To bed +then, if it must be!" and she slammed the casement. + +"For her I might as well not exist!" thought Prince Andrew while +he listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet fearing that +she might say something about him. "There she is again! As if it +were on purpose," thought he. + +In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of +youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his +life, that unable to explain his condition to himself he lay down +and fell asleep at once. + +CHAPTER III + +Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not +waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home. + +It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he +drove into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so +strange and memorable an impression on him. In the forest the +harness bells sounded yet more muffled than they had done six weeks +before, for now all was thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs +dotted about in the forest did not jar on the general beauty but, +lending themselves to the mood around, were delicately green with +fluffy young shoots. + +The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but +only a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling +the road and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in +the shade, the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and +scarcely swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the +nightingales trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now +far away. + +"Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed," thought +Prince Andrew. "But where is it?" he again wondered, gazing at the +left side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with +admiration at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured, +spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and +slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled +fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in +evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were +no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old +veteran could have produced. + +"Yes, it is the same oak," thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he +was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal. +All the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory. +Austerlitz with the lofty heavens, his wife's dead reproachful face, +Pierre at the ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, +and that night itself and the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly +to his mind. + +"No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew suddenly decided +finally and decisively. "It is not enough for me to know what I have +in me- everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted +to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may +not be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it, +but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live +in harmony!" + +On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that +autumn and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole +serics of sensible and logical considerations showing it to be +essential for him to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the +service, kept springing up in his mind. He could not now understand +how he could ever even have doubted the necessity of taking an +active share in life, just as a month before he had not understood how +the idea of leaving the quiet country could ever enter his head. It +now seemed clear to him that all his experience of life must be +senselessly wasted unless he applied it to some kind of work and again +played an active part in life. He did not even remember how +formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical arguments, it +had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if he now, after +the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe in the +possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness or +love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey to +Ryazan he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer +interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up, +went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he +would turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled +a la grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame. +She did not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked +simply, merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing +his arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling, +as he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as +a crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with +Pierre, with fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman's +beauty and love. And if anyone came into his room at such moments he +was particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical. + +"My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say, +"little Nicholas can't go out today, it's very cold." + +"If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly +to his sister, "he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he +must wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That +is what follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child +who needs fresh air should remain at home," he would add with +extreme logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical +emotions that stirred within him. + +At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work +dries men up. + +CHAPTER IV + +Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time +when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his +reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That +same August the Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his +leg, and remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every +day and no one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being +prepared that so agitated society- abolishing court ranks and +introducing examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate +Assessor and State Councilor- and not merely these but a whole state +constitution, intended to change the existing order of government in +Russia: legal, administrative, and financial, from the Council of +State down to the district tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams +with which the Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he +had tried to put into effect with the aid of his associates, +Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and Strogonov- whom he himself +in jest had called his Comite de salut public- were taking shape and +being realized. + +Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the civil side, +and Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew, +as a gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a +levee. The Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with +a single word. It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he +was antipathetic to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his +face and personality generally, and in the cold, repellent glance +the Emperor gave him, he now found further confirmation of this +surmise. The courtiers explained the Emperor's neglect of him by His +Majesty's displeasure at Bolkonski's not having served since 1805. + +"I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and +antipathies," thought Prince Andrew, "so it will not do to present +my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor +personally, but the project will speak for itself." + +He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend +of his father's. The field marshal made an appointment to see him, +received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few +days later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see +the Minister of War, Count Arakcheev. + +On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakcheev's waiting +room at nine in the morning. + +He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen him, and all he +had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man. + +"He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not +concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been +commissioned to consider my project, so he alone can get it +adopted," thought Prince Andrew as he waited among a number of +important and unimportant people in Count Arakcheev's waiting room. + +During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen +the anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such +rooms were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a +special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting +their turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the +faces of those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of +awkwardness, covered by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of +themselves, their situation, and the person for whom they were +waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down, others whispered and +laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname "Sila Andreevich" and the +words, "Uncle will give it to us hot," in reference to Count +Arakcheev. One general (an important personage), evidently feeling +offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing his +legs and smiling contemptuously to himself. + +But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all +faces- that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the +adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look +and was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others +had been shown in and out of the minister's room by the adjutant on +duty, an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and +frightened air was admitted at that terrible door. This officer's +audience lasted a long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a +harsh voice was heard from the other side of the door, and the +officer- with pale face and trembling lips- came out and passed +through the waiting room, clutching his head. + +After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer +on duty said in a whisper, "To the right, at the window." + +Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man +of forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep +wrinkles, scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an +overhanging red nose. Arakcheev turned his head toward him without +looking at him. + +"What is your petition?" asked Arakcheev. + +"I am not petitioning, your excellency," returned Prince Andrew +quietly. + +Arakcheev's eyes turned toward him. + +"Sit down," said he. "Prince Bolkonski?" + +"I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has +deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..." + +"You see, my dear sir, I have read your project," interrupted +Arakcheev, uttering only the first words amiably and then- again +without looking at Prince Andrew- relapsing gradually into a tone of +grumbling contempt. "You are proposing new military laws? There are +many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody +designs laws, it is easier writing than doing." + +"I came at His Majesty the Emperor's wish to learn from your +excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have +presented," said Prince Andrew politely. + +"I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to +the committee. I do not approve of it," said Arakcheev, rising and +taking a paper from his writing table. "Here!" and he handed it to +Prince Andrew. + +Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters, +misspelled, and without punctuation: "Unsoundly constructed because +resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the +Articles of War needlessly deviating." + +"To what committee has the memorandum been referred?" inquired +Prince Andrew. + +"To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that +your honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary." + +Prince Andrew smiled. + +"I don't want one." + +"A member without salary," repeated Arakcheev. "I have the +honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?" he shouted, bowing +to Prince Andrew. + +CHAPTER V + +While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the +committee Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances, +particularly those he knew to be in power and whose aid he might need. +In Petersburg he now experienced the same feeling he had had on the +eve of a battle, when troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly +attracted to the ruling circles where the future, on which the fate of +millions depended, was being shaped. From the irritation of the +older men, the curiosity of the uninitiated. the reserve of the +initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the +innumerable committees and commissions of whose existence he learned +every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast +civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was +a mysterious person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a +man of genius- Speranski. And this movement of reconstruction of which +Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski its chief promoter, +began to interest him so keenly that the question of the army +regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his consciousness. + +Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception +in the highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The +reforming party cordially welcomed and courted him, the first place +because he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly +because by liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of +being a liberal. The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured +the innovations, turned to him expecting his sympathy in their +disapproval of the reforms, simply because he was the son of his +father. The feminine society world welcomed him gladly, because he was +rich, distinguished, a good match, and almost a newcomer, with a +halo of romance on account of his supposed death and the tragic loss +of his wife. Besides this the general opinion of all who had known him +previously was that he had greatly improved during these last five +years, having softened and grown more manly, lost his former +affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony, and acquired the +serenity that comes with years. People talked about him, were +interested in him, and wanted to meet him. + +The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrew +spent the evening at Count Kochubey's. He told the count of his +interview with Sila Andreevich (Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that +nickname with the same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the +Minister of War's anteroom). + +"Mon cher, even in this case you can't do without Michael +Mikhaylovich Speranski. He manages everything. I'll speak to him. He +has promised to come this evening." + +"What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?" asked Prince +Andrew. + +Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkonski's +simplicity. + +"We were talking to him about you a few days ago," Kochubey +continued, "and about your freed plowmen." + +"Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?" said an old +man of Catherine's day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkonski. + +"It was a small estate that brought in no profit," replied Prince +Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old +man uselessly. + +"Afraid of being late..." said the old man, looking at Kochubey. + +"There's one thing I don't understand," he continued. "Who will plow +the land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but difficult +to rule.... Just the same as now- I ask you, Count- who will be +heads of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?" + +"Those who pass the examinations, I suppose," replied Kochubey, +crossing his legs and glancing round. + +"Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a +priceless man, but he's sixty. Is he to go up for examination?" + +"Yes, that's a difficulty, as education is not at all general, +but..." + +Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the +arm, and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a +large open forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness, +who was just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with +a cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It +was Speranski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a +throb within him, as happens at critical moments of life. Whether it +was from respect, envy, or anticipation, he did not know. +Speranski's whole figure was of a peculiar type that made him easily +recognizable. In the society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never +seen anyone who together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed +such calmness and self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute yet +gentle an expression as that in those half-closed, rather humid +eyes, or so firm a smile that expressed nothing; nor had he heard such +a refined, smooth, soft voice; above all he had never seen such +delicate whiteness of face or hands- hands which were broad, but +very plump, soft, and white. Such whiteness and softness Prince Andrew +had only seen on the faces of soldiers who had been long in +hospital. This was Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the +Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once met +and talked with Napoleon. + +Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as +people involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no +hurry to speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be +listened to, and he looked only at the person with whom he was +conversing. + +Prince Andrew followed Speranski's every word and movement with +particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men who +judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone new- +especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation- +expected to discover in him the perfection of human qualities. + +Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been unable to come +sooner as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that +the Emperor had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation +of modesty. When Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly +turned his eyes to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at +him in silence. + +"I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as +everyone has," he said after a pause. + +Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev had given +Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly. + +"The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend +Monsieur Magnitski," he said, fully articulating every word and +syllable, "and if you like I can put you in touch with him." He paused +at the full stop. "I hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to +co-operate in promoting all that is reasonable." + +A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man who had talked +about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him. + +Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every +movement of Speranski's: this man, not long since an insignificant +divinity student, who now, Bolkonski thought, held in his hands- those +plump white hands- the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the +extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speranski answered the +old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from an +immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud, +Speranski smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or +disadvantage of what pleased the sovereign. + +Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski +rose and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of +the room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest +himself in Bolkonski. + +"I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated +conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me," he said +with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile +that he and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the +people with whom he had just been talking. This flattered Prince +Andrew. "I have known of you for a long time: first from your action +with regard to your serfs, a first example, of which it is very +desirable that there should be more imitators; and secondly because +you are one of those gentlemen of the chamber who have not +considered themselves offended by the new decree concerning the +ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so much gossip and +tittle-tattle." + +"No," said Prince Andrew, "my father did not wish me to take +advantage of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade." + +"Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above +our contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely +reestablishes natural justice." + +"I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground," +returned Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski's influence, of +which he began to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in +everything and felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke +easily and well, he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now +while talking with Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing +the famous man's personality. + +"Grounds of personal ambition maybe," Speranski put in quietly. + +"And of state interest to some extent," said Prince Andrew. + +"What do you mean?" asked Speranski quietly, lowering his eyes. + +"I am an admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his +idea that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait +incontestable. Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me +paraissent etre des moyens de soutenir ce sentiment."~{ "The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me incontestable. +Certain rights and privileges for the aristocracy appear to me a means +of maintaining that sentiment." }~ + +The smile vanished from Speranski's white face, which was much +improved by the change. Probably Prince Andrew's thought interested +him. + +"Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,"~{ "If you regard the question from that point of view." }~ he began, +pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower +than in Russian but quite calmly. + +Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honeur, cannot be upheld by +privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either +a negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a +source of emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which +recognize it. His arguments were concise, simple, and clear. + +"An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one +similar to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not +harmful but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class +or court privilege." + +"I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court +privileges have attained the same end," returned Prince Andrew. "Every +courtier considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily." + +"Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince," +said Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably +an argument which was embarrassing for his companion. "If you will + +do me the honor of calling on me on Wednesday," he added, "I will, +after talking with Magnitski, let you know what may interest you, +and shall also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you." + +Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking leave, and +trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room. + +CHAPTER VI + +During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew +felt the whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of +seclusion quite overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed +him in that city. + +On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook +four or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The +mechanism of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time +everywhere, absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did +nothing, did not even think or find time to think, but only talked, +and talked successfully, of what he had thought while in the country. + +He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the +same remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy +for whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was +thinking of nothing. + +As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey's, Speranski +produced a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when +he received him tete-a-tate at his own house and talked to him long +and confidentially. + +To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and +insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the +living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he +readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a +perfectly rational and virtuous man. Had Speranski sprung from the +same class as himself and possessed the same breeding and +traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered his weak, human, +unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and logical turn of +mind inspired him with respect all the more because he did not quite +understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he appreciated the +other's capacity or because he considered it necessary to win him to +his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness before +Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which goes +hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption +that one's companion is the only man besides oneself capable of +understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the +reasonableness and profundity of one's own ideas. + +During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speranski +more than once remarked: "We regard everything that is above the +common level of rooted custom..." or, with a smile: "But we want the +wolves to be fed and the sheep to be safe..." or: "They cannot +understand this..." and all in a way that seemed to say: "We, you +and I, understand what they are and who we are." + +This first long conversation with Speranski only strengthened in +Prince Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first +meeting. He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast +intellect who by his energy and persistence had attained power, +which he was using solely for the welfare of Russia. In Prince +Andrew's eyes Speranski was the man he would himself have wished to +be- one who explained all the facts of life reasonably, considered +important only what was rational, and was capable of applying the +standard of reason to everything. Everything seemed so simple and +clear in Speranski's exposition that Prince Andrew involuntarily +agreed with him about everything. If he replied and argued, it was +only because he wished to maintain his independence and not submit +to Speranski's opinions entirely. Everything was right and +everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince +Andrew. This was Speranski's cold, mirrorlike look, which did not +allow one to penetrate to his soul, and his delicate white hands, +which Prince Andrew involuntarily watched as one does watch the +hands of those who possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those +delicate hands irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was +unpleasantly struck, too, by the excessive contempt for others that he +observed in Speranski, and by the diversity of lines of argument he +used to support his opinions. He made use of every kind of mental +device, except analogy, and passed too boldly, it seemed to Prince +Andrew, from one to another. Now he would take up the position of a +practical man and condemn dreamers; now that of a satirist, and +laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow severely logical, or +suddenly rise to the realm of metaphysics. (This last resource was one +he very frequently employed.) He would transfer a question to +metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time, and +thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed, would again +descend to the level of the original discussion. + +In general the trait of Speranski's mentality which struck Prince +Andrew most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and +authority of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur +to him which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is +after all impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had +never felt the doubt, "Is not all I think and believe nonsense?" And +it was just this peculiarity of Speranski's mind that particularly +attracted Prince Andrew. + +During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a +passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt +for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village +priest, and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account +of his humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to +cherish his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to +strengthen it. + +On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having mentioned the +Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speranski told him +sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and +fifty years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that +Rosenkampf had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the +different codes. + +"And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent," +said he. "We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have +no laws. That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to +serve in these times!" + +Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in +jurisprudence was needed which he did not possess. + +"But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious +circle from which we must break a way out." + +A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army +Regulations and- what he had not at all expected- was chairman of a +section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At +Speranski's request he took the first part of the Civil Code that +was being drawn up and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the +Institutes of Justinian, he worked at formulating the section on +Personal Rights. + +CHAPTER VII + +Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to +Petersburg after visiting his estates had involuntarily found +himself in a leading position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He +arranged dining and funeral lodge meetings, enrolled new members, +and busied himself uniting various lodges and acquiring authentic +charters. He gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented +as far as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the +majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost +singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in Petersburg. + +His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations +and dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he +considered it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations +of the bachelor circles in which he moved. + +Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre +at the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to +rest upon it, the more Masonic ground on which he stood gave way under +him. At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under +him the closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had +joined the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who +confidently steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his +foot down it sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness the ground, +he put his other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in +it, and involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog. + +Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg- he had of late stood +aside from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost +entirely in Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew +in ordinary life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely +as Brothers in Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D., +whom he knew in society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under +the Masonic aprons and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at +which they aimed in ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and +reckoning up twenty to thirty rubles received for the most part in +promises from a dozen members, of whom half were as well able to pay +as himself, Pierre remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother +promised to devote all his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on +which he tried not to dwell arose in his soul. + +He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first +he put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the +lodges or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the +mystical science of the order: with questions of the threefold +designation of God, the three primordial elements- sulphur, mercury, +and salt- or the meaning of the square and all the various figures +of the temple of Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to +which the elder ones chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought, +Joseph Alexeevich himself, but he did not share their interests. His +heart was not in the mystical aspect of Freemasonry. + +In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like +him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a +straight and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so. + +In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority) +who saw nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and +ceremonies, and prized the strict performance of these forms without +troubling about their purport or significance. Such were Willarski and +even the Grand Master of the principal lodge. + +Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged, +particularly those who had lately joined. These according to +Pierre's observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor +desire for anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate +with the wealthy young Brothers who were influential through their +connections or rank, and of whom there were very many in the lodge. + +Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing. +Freemasonry, at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him +based merely on externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry +itself, but suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path +and deviated from its original principles. And so toward the end of +the year he went abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the +order. + +In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our +Freemasons knew from correspondence with those abroad that Bezukhov +had obtained the confidence of many highly placed persons, had been +initiated into many mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade, +and was bringing back with him much that might conduce to the +advantage of the Masonic cause in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons +all came to see him, tried to ingratiate themselves with him, and it +seemed to them all that he was preparing something for them and +concealing it. + +A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened, +at which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers +what he had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their +order. The meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre +rose and began his address. + +"Dear Brothers," he began, blushing and stammering, with a written +speech in his hand, "it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries +in the seclusion of our lodge- we must act- act! We are drowsing, +but we must act." Pierre raised his notebook and began to read. + +"For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph of +virtue," he read, "we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse +principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the +education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the +wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity, +and folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked together by +unity of purpose and possessed of authority and power. + +"To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over +vice and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this +world, receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great +endeavors we are gravely hampered by the political institutions of +today. What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor +revolutions, overthrow everything, repel force by force?... No! We are +very far from that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it +quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also +because wisdom needs no violence. + +"The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of +preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of +conviction- aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and +patronizing talent and virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and +attaching them to our Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the +power unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of disorder +and to control them without their being aware of it. In a word, we +must found a form of government holding universal sway, which should +be diffused over the whole world without destroying the bonds of +citizenship, and beside which all other governments can continue in +their customary course and do everything except what impedes the great +aim of our order, which is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice. +This aim was that of Christianity itself. It taught men to be wise and +good and for their own benefit to follow the example and instruction +of the best and wisest men. + +"At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching +alone was of course sufficient. The novelty of Truth endowed her +with special strength, but now we need much more powerful methods. +It is now necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in +virtue a charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate +the passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it +is therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his +passions within the limits of virtue. Our order should provide means +to that end. + +"As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state, +each of them again training two others and all being closely united, +everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret +accomplished much for the welfare of mankind." + +This speech not only made a strong impression, but created +excitement in the lodge. The majority of the Brothers, seeing in it +dangerous designs of Illuminism,~{ The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for monarchical +institutions. }~ met it with a coldness that +surprised Pierre. The Grand Master began answering him, and Pierre +began developing his views with more and more warmth. It was long +since there had been so stormy a meeting. Parties were formed, some +accusing Pierre of Illuminism, others supporting him. At that +meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of +men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself +identically to two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his +side understood him in their own way with limitations and +alterations he could not agree to, as what he always wanted most was +to convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it. + +At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will +reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue +alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute. +Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would +be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for +the usual formalities he left the lodge and went home. + +CHAPTER VIII + +Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For +three days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a +sofa at home receiving no one and going nowhere. + +It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who +implored him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and +how she wished to devote her whole life to him. + +At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she +would return to Petersburg from abroad. + +Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre +respected less than the others forced his way in to see him and, +turning the conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way +of fraternal advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his +wife was wrong and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of +Freemasonry by not forgiving the penitent. + +At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili's wife, sent to +him imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a +most important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy +against him and that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and +in the mood he then was, this was not even unpleasant to him. +Nothing mattered to him. Nothing in life seemed to him of much +importance, and under the influence of the depression that possessed +him he valued neither his liberty nor his resolution to punish his +wife. + +"No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to +blame," he thought. + +If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife, +it was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to +take any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned +her away. Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of +indifference whether he lived with his wife or not? + +Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre +late one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see +Joseph Alexeevich. This is what he noted in his diary: + +Moscow, 17th November + +I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down +what I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is living poorly and has +for three years been suffering from a painful disease of the +bladder. No one has ever heard him utter a groan or a word of +complaint. From morning till late at night, except when he eats his +very plain food, he is working at science. He received me graciously +and made me sit down on the bed on which he lay. I made the sign of +the Knights of the East and of Jerusalem, and he responded in the same +manner, asking me with a mild smile what I had learned and gained in +the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I told him everything as best I +could, and told him what I had proposed to our Petersburg lodge, of +the bad reception I had encountered, and of my rupture with the +Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich, having remained silent and thoughtful for +a good while, told me his view of the matter, which at once lit up for +me my whole past and the future path I should follow. He surprised +me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of the order: +(1) The preservation and study of the mystery. (2) The purification +and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3) The +improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which +is the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and +self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently +of circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands the +greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of +this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery which in our +impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of the +human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and +profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is +attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground +Joseph Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole activity, and in +the depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs +he said to me, "the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you, +lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the +difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on +the contrary, my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares +that we can attain our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge- for man +can only know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can +only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief +virtue- love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its +vanity and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new +life." These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of +his great physical sufferings, Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of +life though he loves death, for which- in spite of the purity and +loftiness of his inner man- he does not yet feel himself +sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me fully the +meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out to me that the +numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not +to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take up only +second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while diverting the +Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path +self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for +myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that +end he gave me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which +I will in future note down all my actions. + +Petersburg, 23rd November + +I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears +and said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her; +that she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I +knew that if I once let myself see her I should not have strength to +go on refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know +whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor been here he would +have told me what to do. I went to my room and reread Joseph +Alexeevich's letters and recalled my conversations with him, and +deduced from it all that I ought not to refuse a suppliant, and +ought to reach a helping hand to everyone- especially to one so +closely bound to me- and that I must bear my cross. But if I forgive +her for the sake of doing right, then let union with her have only a +spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and what I wrote to Joseph +Alexeevich. I told my wife that I begged her to forget the past, to +forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her, and that I had +nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need not know +how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on the upper +floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of +regeneration. + +CHAPTER IX + +At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at +court and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each +with its own particular tone. The largest of these was the French +circle of the Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev +and Caulaincourt. In this group Helene, as soon as she had settled +in Petersburg with her husband, took a very prominent place. She was +visited by the members of the French embassy and by many belonging +to that circle and noted for their intellect and polished manners. + +Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the +Emperors and had brought from there these connections with the +Napoleonic notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant. +Napoleon himself had noticed her in the theater and said of her: +"C'est un superbe animal."~{ "That's a superb animal." }~ Her success as a beautiful and elegant +woman did not surprise Pierre, for she had become even handsomer +than before. What did surprise him was that during these last two +years his wife had succeeded in gaining the reputation "d' une femme +charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle."~{ "Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely." }~ The distinguished +Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page letters. Bilibin saved up his +epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova's presence. To be +received in the Countess Bezukhova's salon was regarded as a diploma +of intellect. Young men read books before attending Helene's evenings, +to have something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy, +and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a +way Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid, +sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her +evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy +were discussed. At these parties his feelings were like those of a +conjuror who always expects his trick to be found out at any moment. +But whether because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a +salon, or because those who were deceived found pleasure in the +deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene Bezukhova's +reputation as a lovely and clever woman became so firmly established +that she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and everybody +would go into raptures over every word of hers and look for a profound +meaning in it of which she herself had no conception. + +Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He +was that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no +one's way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general +impression of the drawing room, he served, by the contrast he +presented to her, as an advantageous background to his elegant and +tactful wife. Pierre during the last two years, as a result of his +continual absorption in abstract interests and his sincere contempt +for all else, had acquired in his wife's circle, which did not +interest him, that air of unconcern, indifference, and benevolence +toward all, which cannot be acquired artificially and therefore +inspires involuntary respect. He entered his wife's drawing room as +one enters a theater, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased +to see everyone, and equally indifferent to them all. Sometimes he +joined in a conversation which interested him and, regardless of +whether any "gentlemen of the embassy" were present or not, +lispingly expressed his views, which were sometimes not at all in +accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general opinion +concerning the queer husband of "the most distinguished woman in +Petersburg" was so well established that no one took his freaks +seriously. + +Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Boris +Drubetskoy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was +the most intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene's +return from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as "mon page" and treated +him like a child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but +sometimes that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris +behaved with a particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of +deference also disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three +years before from the mortification to which his wife had subjected +him that he now protected himself from the danger of its repetition, +first by not being a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing +himself to suspect. + +"No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally +renounced her former infatuations," he told himself. "There has +never been an instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs +of the heart"- a statement which, though gathered from an unknown +source, he believed implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris' presence +in his wife's drawing room (and he was almost always there) had a +physical effect upon Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed +the unconsciousness and freedom of his movements. + +"What a strange antipathy," thought Pierre, "yet I used to like +him very much." + +In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather +blind and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who +did nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured +fellow. But a complex and difficult process of internal development +was taking place all this time in Pierre's soul, revealing much to him +and causing him many spiritual doubts and joys. + +CHAPTER X + +Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it +during that time: + +24th November + +Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. [By +Joseph Alexeevich's advice Pierre had entered the service of the state +and served on one of the committees.] Returned home for dinner and +dined alone- the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and +drank moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the +Brothers. In the evening I went down to the countess and told a +funny story about B., and only remembered that I ought not to have +done so when everybody laughed loudly at it. + +I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me +to walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and +deliberation, (2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion, +(3) to withdraw from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the +state, (b) family duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the +management of my affairs. + +27th November + +I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God, +help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the +Scriptures, but without proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and we +talked about worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor's new +projects. I began to criticize them, but remembered my rules and my +benefactor's words- that a true Freemason should be a zealous worker +for the state when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker when not +called on to assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O. +visited me and we had a preliminary talk about the reception of a +new Brother. They laid on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel myself weak +and unworthy. Then our talk turned to the interpretation of the +seven pillars and steps of the Temple, the seven sciences, the seven +virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. +Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place. +The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the +magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was +admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling +agitated me all the time I was alone with him in the dark chamber. I +caught myself harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I +vainly tried to overcome. That is why I should really like to save him +from evil and lead him into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of +him did not leave me. It seemed to me that his object in entering +the Brotherhood was merely to be intimate and in favor with members of +our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had asked me several times +whether N. and S. were members of our lodge (a question to which I +could not reply) and that according to my observation he is +incapable of feeling respect for our holy order and is too preoccupied +and satisfied with the outer man to desire spiritual improvement, I +had no cause to doubt him, but he seemed to me insincere, and all +the time I stood alone with him in the dark temple it seemed to me +that he was smiling contemptuously at my words, and I wished really to +stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it. I could not be +eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the Brothers and to +the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to find the +true path out of the labyrinth of lies! + +After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then +the following was written: + +I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who +advised me to hold fast by brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was +revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim +is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name +unutterable which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen, +refresh, and support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt +has no place. The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane +science and our sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human +sciences dissect everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to +examine it. In the holy science of our order all is one, all is +known in its entirety and life. The Trinity- the three elements of +matter- are sulphur, mercury, and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and +fiery nature; in combination with salt by its fiery nature it +arouses a desire in the latter by means of which it attracts +mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination produces other +bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence. Christ, the +Holy Spirit, Him!... + +3rd December + +Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went +and paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but +instead my imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago, +when Dolokhov, meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I +was enjoying perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife's absence. At +the time I gave him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that +meeting and in my mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter +replies. I recollected myself and drove away that thought only when +I found myself glowing with anger, but I did not sufficiently +repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy came and began relating various +adventures. His coming vexed me from the first, and I said something +disagreeable to him. He replied. I flared up and said much that was +unpleasant and even rude to him. He became silent, and I recollected +myself only when it was too late. My God, I cannot get on with him +at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set myself above him and so +become much worse than he, for he is lenient to my rudeness while I on +the contrary nourish contempt for him. O God, grant that in his +presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave so that he too +may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I was drowsing off I +clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear, "Thy day!" + +I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded +by dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my +left thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it +with my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger +one, began biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the +bigger and heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking +my arm, led me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a +narrow plank. I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to +clamber up a fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After +much effort I dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one +side and my body on the other. I looked round and saw Brother A. +standing on the fence and pointing me to a broad avenue and garden, +and in the garden was a large and beautiful building. I woke up. O +Lord, great Architect of Nature, help me to tear from myself these +dogs- my passions especially the last, which unites in itself the +strength of all the former ones, and aid me to enter that temple of +virtue to a vision of which I attained in my dream. + +7th December + +I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my house, and that I +was very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered +incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this +could not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace +him. But as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and +grown young, and he was quietly telling me something about the +teaching of our order, but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it +seemed that we all left the room and something strange happened. We +were sitting or lying on the floor. He was telling me something, and I +wished to show him my sensibility, and not listening to what he was +saying I began picturing to myself the condition of my inner man and +the grace of God sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes, and I +was glad he noticed this. But be looked at me with vexation and jumped +up, breaking off his remarks. I felt abashed and asked whether what he +had been saying did not concern me; but he did not reply, gave me a +kind look, and then we suddenly found ourselves in my bedroom where +there is a double bed. He lay down on the edge of it and I burned with +longing to caress him and lie down too. And he said, "Tell me +frankly what is your chief temptation? Do you know it? I think you +know it already." Abashed by this question, I replied that sloth was +my chief temptation. He shook his head incredulously; and even more +abashed, I said that though I was living with my wife as he advised, I +was not living with her as her husband. To this he replied that one +should not deprive a wife of one's embraces and gave me to +understand that that was my duty. But I replied that I should be +ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke and +found in my mind the text from the Gospel: "The life was the light +of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness +comprehended it not." Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked young and +bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he +wrote about "conjugal duties." + +9th December + +I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw +that I was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and +Joseph Alexeevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at +once that the process of regeneration had already taken place in +him, and I rushed to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands, +and he said, "Hast thou noticed that my face is different?" I looked +at him, still holding him in my arms, and saw that his face was young, +but that he had no hair on his head and his features were quite +changed. And I said, "I should have known you had I met you by +chance," and I thought to myself, "Am I telling the truth?" And +suddenly I saw him lying like a dead body; then he gradually recovered +and went with me into my study carrying a large book of sheets of +drawing paper; I said, "I drew that," and he answered by bowing his +head. I opened the book, and on all the pages there were excellent +drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings represented the +love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on its pages I saw a +beautiful representation of a maiden in transparent garments and +with a transparent body, flying up to the clouds. And I seemed to know +that this maiden was nothing else than a representation of the Song of +Songs. And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt that I was doing +wrong, but could not tear myself away from them. Lord, help me! My +God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy will be done; but if I am +myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of my +debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me! + +CHAPTER XI + +The Rostovs' monetary affairs had not improved during the two +years they had spent in the country. + +Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was +still serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending +comparatively little, the way of life at Otradnoe- Mitenka's +management of affairs, in particular- was such that the debts +inevitably increased every year. The only resource obviously +presenting itself to the old count was to apply for an official +post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for one and also, as he +said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the last time. + +Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Vera and was +accepted. + +Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without +themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of +acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they +were provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow +without inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them. + +The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in +Moscow, and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country +neighbors from Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters, +Peronskaya a maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their +district postmaster who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the +men who very soon became frequent visitors at the Rostovs' house in +Petersburg were Boris, Pierre whom the count had met in the street and +dragged home with him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs' +and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young +man pays when he intends to propose. + +Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at +Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He +narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air +that everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he +had obtained two decorations for Austerlitz. + +In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had +picked up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp +standing near the commander in chief and had taken it to his +commander. Just as he had done after Austerlitz, he related this +occurrence at such length and so insistently that everyone again +believed it had been necessary to do this, and he received two +decorations for the Finnish war also. In 1809 he was a captain in +the Guards, wore medals, and held some special lucrative posts in +Petersburg. + +Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not +be denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent +terms with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant +career before him and an assured position in society. + +Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a +Moscow theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had +said in German, "das soll mein Weib werden,"~{ "That girl shall be my wife." }~ and from that moment had +made up his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered +the Rostovs' position and his own, he decided that the time had come +to propose. + +Berg's proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not +flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an +obscure Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess +Rostova; but Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good +natured egotism that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it +would be a good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that +it was good, indeed excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs' affairs were +seriously embarrassed, as the suitor could not but know; and above +all, Vera was twenty-four, had been taken out everywhere, and though +she was certainly good-looking and sensible, no one up to now had +proposed to her. So they gave their consent. + +"You see," said Berg to his comrade, whom he called "friend" only +because he knew that everyone has friends, "you see, I have considered +it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out or if +it were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and +mamma are now provided for- I have arranged that rent for them in +the Baltic Provinces- and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with +her fortune and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not +marrying for money- I consider that dishonorable- but a wife should +bring her share and a husband his. I have my position in the +service, she has connections and some means. In our times that is +worth something, isn't it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable +girl, and she loves me..." + +Berg blushed and smiled. + +"And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good. +Now the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite +different- an unpleasant character and has not the same +intelligence. She is so... you know?... Unpleasant... But my +fiancee!... Well, you will be coming," he was going to say, "to dine," +but changed his mind and said "to take tea with us," and quickly +doubling up his tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke, +perfectly embodying his dream of happiness. + +After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by +Berg's proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times +took possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and +insincere. In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain +awkwardness and constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not +having loved Vera sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off +their hands. The old count felt this most. He would probably have been +unable to state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from +the state of his affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what +his debts amounted to, or what dowry he could give Vera. When his +daughters were born he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an +estate with three hundred serfs; but one of these estates had +already been sold, and the other was mortgaged and the interest so +much in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it was +impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had he any money. + +Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained +before the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own +mind the question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At +one time the count thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of +selling a forest, at another time of borrowing money on a note of +hand. A few days before the wedding Berg entered the count's study +early one morning and, with a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his +future father-in-law to let him know what Vera's dowry would be. The +count was so disconcerted by this long-foreseen inquiry that without +consideration he gave the first reply that came into his head. "I like +your being businesslike about it.... I like it. You shall be +satisfied...." + +And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the +conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did +not know for certain how much Vera would have and did not receive at +least part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters +off. + +"Because, consider, Count- if I allowed myself to marry now +without having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be +acting badly...." + +The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and +to avoid further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand +for eighty thousand rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on +the shoulder, and said that he was very grateful, but that it was +impossible for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty +thousand in ready money. "Or at least twenty thousand, Count," he +added, "and then a note of hand for only sixty thousand." + +"Yes, yes, all right!" said the count hurriedly. "Only excuse me, my +dear fellow, I'll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for +eighty thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me." + +CHAPTER XII + +Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which +she had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four +years ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sonya and her +mother, if Boris happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of +that episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not +worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question +whether her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important, binding +promise tormented her. + +Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had had not seen +the Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed +near Otradnoe, but had never been to see them. + +Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he not wish to see her, and +this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders +spoke of him. + +"Nowadays old friends are not remembered," the countess would say +when Boris was mentioned. + +Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently, +seemed to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke +rapturously and gratefully of the merits of her son and the +brilliant career on which he had entered. When the Rostovs came to +Petersburg Boris called on them. + +He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natasha was +his most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of +letting her and her parents feel that the childish relations between +himself and Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He +had a brilliant position in society thanks to his intimacy with +Countess Bezukhova, a brilliant position in the service thanks to +the patronage of an important personage whose complete confidence he +enjoyed, and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the +richest heiresses in Petersburg, plans which might very easily be +realized. When he entered the Rostovs' drawing room Natasha was in her +own room. When she heard of his arrival she almost ran into the +drawing room, flushed and beaming with a more than cordial smile. + +Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining +from under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had +known her four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a +different Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous +astonishment. This expression on his face pleased Natasha. + +"Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?" asked the +countess. + +Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the +change in her. + +"How handsome you have grown!" + +"I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes. + +"And is Papa older?" she asked. + +Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with +the countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor. He +felt the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced +at her occasionally. + +Boris' uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were +all comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at +once. He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess, +arranging with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his +left hand like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined +compression of his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg +society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow +acquaintances. It was not accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded, +when speaking of the highest aristocracy, to an ambassador's ball he +had attended, and to invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S. + +All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from under +her brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris more and more. He +looked round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he +was saying. He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and +took his leave. The same inquisitive, challenging, and rather +mocking eyes still looked at him. After his first visit Boris said +to himself that Natasha attracted him just as much as ever, but that +he must not yield to that feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost +without fortune, would mean ruin to his career, while to renew their +former relations without intending to marry her would be dishonorable. +Boris made up his mind to avoid meeting Natasha, but despite that +resolution he called again a few days later and began calling often +and spending whole days at the Rostovs'. It seemed to him that he +ought to have an explanation with Natasha and tell her that the old +times must be forgotten, that in spite of everything... she could +not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never let her +marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward about entering on +such an explanation. From day to day he became more and more +entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that Natasha was in +love with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him +her album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to +the past, letting it be understood how was the present; and every +day he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant to, and +not knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would all end. +He left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes from her +every day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs. + +CHAPTER XIII + +One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket, +without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing +under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and +bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also +in a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in +curlpapers, ran in. The countess- her prayerful mood dispelled- looked +round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be +that this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager, +seeing her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down, +and unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing +that her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and, +rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her +slippers and jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might +become her grave. This couch was high, with a feather bed and five +pillows each smaller than the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank +into the feather bed, rolled over to the wall, and began snuggling +up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising her knees to her +chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now covering +herself up head and all, and now peeping at her mother. The countess +finished her prayers and came to the bed with a stern face, but +seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she smiled in her kind, +weak way. + +"Now then, now then!" said she. + +"Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?" said Natasha. "Now, just one on +your throat and another... that'll do!" And seizing her mother round +the neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her +mother Natasha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that +however she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without +hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased. + +"Well, what is it tonight?" said the mother, having arranged her +pillows and waited until Natasha, after turning over a couple of +times, had settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her +arms, and assumed a serious expression. + +These visits of Natasha's at night before the count returned from +his club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and +daughter. + +"What is it tonight?- But I have to tell you..." + +Natasha put her hand on her mother's mouth. + +"About Boris... I know," she said seriously; "that's what I have +come about. Don't say it- I know. No, do tell me!" and she removed her +hand. "Tell me, Mamma! He's nice?" + +"Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say +Boris is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what +then?... What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his +head, I can see that...." + +As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter. +Natasha was lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the +mahogany sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the +countess only saw her daughter's face in profile. That face struck her +by its peculiarly serious and concentrated expression. + +Natasha was listening and considering. + +"Well, what then?" said she. + +"You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him? +You know you can't marry him." + +"Why not?" said Natasha, without changing her position. + +"Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a +relation... and because you yourself don't love him." + +"How do you know?" + +"I know. It is not right, darling!" + +"But if I want to..." said Natasha. + +"Leave off talking nonsense," said the countess. + +"But if I want to..." + +"Natasha, I am in earnest..." + +Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess' large hand to +her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned +it over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between +the knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, "January, February, +March, April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don't you say anything? Speak!" +said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her +daughter and in that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she +had wished to say. + +"It won't do, my love! Not everyone will understand this +friendship dating from your childish days, and to see him so +intimate with you may injure you in the eyes of other young men who +visit us, and above all it torments him for nothing. He may already +have found a suitable and wealthy match, and now he's half crazy." + +"Crazy?" repeated Natasha. + +"I'll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..." + +"I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old." + +"He was not always old. But this is what I'll do, Natasha, I'll have +a talk with Boris. He need not come so often...." + +"Why not, if he likes to?" + +"Because I know it will end in nothing...." + +"How can you know? No, Mamma, don't speak to him! What nonsense!" +said Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. "Well, +I won't marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it." +Natasha smiled and looked at her mother. "Not to marry, but just +so," she added. + +"How so, my pet?" + +"Just so. There's no need for me to marry him. But... just so." + +"Just so, just so," repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she +went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh. + +"Don't laugh, stop!" cried Natasha. "You're shaking the whole bed! +You're awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait..." and she +seized the countess' hands and kissed a knuckle of the little +finger, saying, "June," and continued, kissing, "July, August," on the +other hand. "But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think? +Was anybody ever so much in love with you? And he's very nice, very, +very nice. Only not quite my taste- he is so narrow, like the +dining-room clock.... Don't you understand? Narrow, you know- gray, +light gray..." + +"What rubbish you're talking!" said the countess. + +Natasha continued: "Don't you really understand? Nicholas would +understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is +square." + +"You flirt with him too," said the countess, laughing. + +"No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue +and red.... How can I explain it to you?" + +"Little countess!" the count's voice called from behind the door. +"You're not asleep?" Natasha jumped up, snatched up her slippers, +and ran barefoot to her own room. + +It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no +one could understand all that she understood and all there was in her. + +"Sonya?" she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little +kitten with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's +virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know +anything more. Even Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how +clever I am and how... charming she is," she went on, speaking of +herself in the third person, and imagining it was some very wise +man- the wisest and best of men- who was saying it of her. "There is +everything, everything in her," continued this man. "She is +unusually intelligent, charming... and then she is pretty, +uncommonly pretty, and agile- she swims and rides splendidly... and +her voice! One can really say it's a wonderful voice!" + +She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw +herself on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would +immediately fall asleep, called Dunyasha the maid to put out the +candle, and before Dunyasha had left the room had already passed +into yet another happier world of dreams, where everything was as +light and beautiful as in reality, and even more so because it was +different. + +Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk with him, +after which he ceased coming to the Rostovs'. + +CHAPTER XIV + +On the thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, 1809 - 10 an old +grandee of Catherine's day was giving a ball and midnight supper. +The diplomatic corps and the Emperor himself were to be present. + +The grandee's well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered +with innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit +entrance which was carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but +dozens of police officers and even the police master himself stood +at the porch. Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones arriving, +with red-liveried footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the +carriages emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while +ladies in satin and ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps +which were let down for them with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly +and noiselessly over the baize at the entrance. + +Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through +the crowd and caps were doffed. + +"The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince... ambassador. Don't +you see the plumes?..." was whispered among the crowd. + +One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone +and mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day. + +A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who +were to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed. + +There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in +the Rostov family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive, +that the dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be +arranged as it should be. + +Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at +the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the +countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high +society, was to accompany them to the ball. + +They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten +o'clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were +not yet dressed. + +Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight +that morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all +day. All her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring +that they all- she herself, Mamma, and Sonya- should be as well +dressed as possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in +her hands. The countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and +the two girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their +bodices and their hair dressed a la grecque. + +Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks, +and ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the +openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were +already on; the hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing +dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about +helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before a +looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender +shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and, +pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty finger, was +fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went through it. + +"That's not the way, that's not the way, Sonya!" cried Natasha +turning her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the +maid who was dressing it had not time to release. "That bow is not +right. Come here!" + +Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently. + +"Allow me, Miss! I can't do it like that," said the maid who was +holding Natasha's hair. + +"Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That's right, Sonya." + +"Aren't you ready? It is nearly ten," came the countess' voice. + +"Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?" + +"I have only my cap to pin on." + +"Don't do it without me!" called Natasha. "You won't do it right." + +"But it's already ten." + +They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and Natasha had +still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens. + +When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under +which her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket, +ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother. +Turning her mother's head this way and that, she fastened on the cap +and, hurriedly kissing her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were +turning up the hem of her skirt. + +The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt, which was too long. +Two maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of +thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the +countess and Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer +garment up high on one uplifted hand. + +"Mavra, quicker, darling!" + +"Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..." + +"Whenever will you be ready?" asked the count coming to the door. +"Here is here is some scent. Peronskaya must be tired of waiting." + +"It's ready, Miss," said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze +dress with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as +if by this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of +what she held. + +Natasha began putting on the dress. + +"In a minute! In a minute! Don't come in, Papa!" she cried to her +father as he opened the door- speaking from under the filmy skirt +which still covered her whole face. + +Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in. +He was wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and +was perfumed and his hair pomaded. + +"Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!" cried Natasha, as she stood +in the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze. + +"If you please, Miss! allow me," said the maid, who on her knees was +pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of +her mouth to the other with her tongue. + +"Say what you like," exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing voice as she +looked at Natasha, "say what you like, it's still too long." + +Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress +was too long. + +"Really, madam, it is not at all too long," said Mavra, crawling +on her knees after her young lady. + +"Well, if it's too long we'll take it up... we'll tack it up in +one minute," said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that was stuck +on the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set +to work once more. + +At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in +her cap and velvet gown. + +"Oo-oo, my beauty!" exclaimed the count, "she looks better than +any of you!" + +He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside +fearing to be rumpled. + +"Mamma, your cap, more to this side," said Natasha. "I'll arrange +it," and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up +her skirt could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn +off. + +"Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!" + +"Never mind, I'll run it up, it won't show," said Dunyasha. + +"What a beauty- a very queen!" said the nurse as she came to the +door. "And Sonya! They are lovely!" + +At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and +started. But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens. + +Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she +had gone through the same process as the Rostovs, but with less +flurry- for to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was +washed, perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed +behind her ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing +room in her yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her +old lady's maid was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs' +servants had been. + +She praised the Rostovs' toilets. They praised her taste and toilet, +and at eleven o'clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they +settled themselves in their carriages and drove off. + +CHAPTER XV + +Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not +once had time to think of what lay before her. + +In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage, +she for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her +there at the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms- with music, +flowers, dances, the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of +Petersburg. The prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it +would come true, so out of keeping was it with the chill darkness +and closeness of the carriage. She understood all that awaited her +only when, after stepping over the red baize at the entrance, she +entered the hall, took off her fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in +front of her mother, mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between +the flowers. Only then did she remember how she must behave at a ball, +and tried to assume the majestic air she considered indispensable +for a girl on such an occasion. But, fortunately for her, she felt her +eyes growing misty, she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a +hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She +could not assume that pose, which would have made her ridiculous, +and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and trying with all +her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that became +her best. Before and behind them other visitors were entering, also +talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the +landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with +diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms. + +Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her +reflection from the others. All was blended into one brilliant +procession. On entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices, +footsteps, and greetings deafened Natasha, and the light and glitter +dazzled her still more. The host and hostess, who had already been +standing at the door for half an hour repeating the same words to +the various arrivals, "Charme de vous voir,"~{ "Delighted to see you." }~ greeted the Rostovs +and Peronskaya in the same manner. + +The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her +black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess' eye +involuntarily rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked at her and +gave her alone a special smile in addition to her usual smile as +hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled the golden, +irrecoverable days of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The +host also followed Natasha with his eyes and asked the count which was +his daughter. + +"Charming!" said he, kissing the tips of his fingers. + +In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting +the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front +rows of that crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several people were +asking about her and looking at her. She realized that those +noticing her liked her, and this observation helped to calm her. + +"There are some like ourselves and some worse," she thought. + +Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important +people at the ball. + +"That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man," +she said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray +curly hair, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he +said. + +"Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova," said +Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just entered. "How lovely! She +is quite equal to Marya Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay +court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince- is quite mad +about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even +more run after." + +She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very +plain daughter. + +"She is a splendid match, a millionairess," said Peronskaya. "And +look, here come her suitors." + +"That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating +a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head +erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies. "He's +handsome, isn't he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl. +But your cousin, Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her. They say +she has millions. Oh yes, that's the French ambassador himself!" she +replied to the countess' inquiry about Caulaincourt. "Looks as if he +were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very charming. +No one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still +the most beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna! And how simply +she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the +universal Freemason," she went on, indicating Pierre. "Put him +beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!" + +Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the +crowd and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly +as if he were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through, +evidently looking for someone. + +Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the +buffoon," as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for +them, and for her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and +introduce partners to her. + +But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome, +dark man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a +window talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at +once recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it +was Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger, +happier, and better-looking. + +"There's someone else we know- Bolkonski, do you see, Mamma?" said +Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. "You remember, he stayed a +night with us at Otradnoe." + +"Oh, you know him?" said Peronskaya. "I can't bear him. Il fait a +present la pluie et le beau temps."~{ "He is all the rage just now. }~ He's too proud for anything. +Takes after his father. And he's hand in glove with Speranski, writing +some project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies! There's one +talking to him and he has turned away," she said, pointing at him. +"I'd give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies." + +CHAPTER XVI + +Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and +then back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor +entered to the sounds of music that had immediately struck up. +Behind him walked his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing +to right and left as if anxious to get the first moments of the +reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue at that time on +account of the words that had been set to it, beginning: "Alexander, +Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish quite..." The Emperor passed on +to the drawing room, the crowd made a rush for the doors, and +several persons with excited faces hurried there and back again. +Then the crowd hastily retired from the drawing-room door, at which +the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess. A young man, looking +distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside. +Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the +rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets. +The men began to choose partners and take their places for the +polonaise. + +Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing +room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the +music. The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came +ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya +diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners and +were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the +polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother and +Sonya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not +having been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms +hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly, +and with bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight +before her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She +was not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great people +whom Peronskaya was pointing out- she had but one thought: "Is it +possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to +dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will notice me? +They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they +were saying, 'Ah, she's not the one I'm after, so it's not worth +looking at her!' No, it's impossible," she thought. "They must know +how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would +enjoy dancing with me." + +The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable +time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's ears. +She wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the +other end of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were standing by +themselves as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of +strangers, with no one interested in them and not wanted by anyone. +Prince Andrew with a lady passed by, evidently not recognizing them. +The handsome Anatole was smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and +looked at Natasha as one looks at a wall. Boris passed them twice +and each time turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing, +came up to them. + +This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha- as if there +were nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did +not listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her something about her +own green dress. + +At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced +with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the +Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they +were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the +distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The +Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had +yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went +up to Countess Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly +raised her hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at him. +The aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly +round her waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding +first round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the room +he caught Helene's left hand and turned her, the only sound audible, +apart from the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of +the spurs on his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his +partner's velvet dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled +round. Natasha gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not +she who was dancing that first turn of the waltz. + +Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing +stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in +the front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff +was talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State +to be held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with +Speranski and participating in the work of the legislative commission, +could give reliable information about that sitting, concerning which +various rumors were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was +saying, he was gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men +intending to dance who had not yet gathered courage to enter the +circle. + +Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's +presence, and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to +dance. + +Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm. + +"You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova, here. Ask +her," he said. + +"Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!" he added, turning to +the baron, "we will finish this conversation elsewhere- at a ball +one must dance." He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated. +The despairing, dejected expression of Natasha's face caught his +eye. He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her +debut, remembered her conversation at the window, and with an +expression of pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova. + +"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the countess, +with heightened color. + +"I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess +remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite +belying Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, and approaching +Natasha he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed +his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on +Natasha's face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly +brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile. + +"I have long been waiting for you," that frightened happy little +girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as +she raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder. They were the +second couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best +dancers of his day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet +in their white satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly, +and independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic +happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck were not beautiful- compared +to Helene's her shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But +Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands +of looks that had scanned her person, while Natasha was like a girl +exposed for the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed +had she not been assured that this was absolutely necessary. + +Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as +possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed +to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he +disliked, caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and had +chosen Natasha because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she +was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he +embraced that slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close +to him and smiling so near him than the wine of her charm rose to +his head, and he felt himself revived and rejuvenated when after +leaving her he stood breathing deeply and watching the other dancers. + +CHAPTER XVII + +After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for dance, and +then the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young +men, so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous +partners to Sonya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She +noticed and saw nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did +she fail to notice that the Emperor talked a long time with the French +ambassador, and how particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or +that Prince So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and +that Helene had great success and was honored was by the special +attention of So-and-so, but she did not even see the Emperor, and only +noticed that he had gone because the ball became livelier after his +departure. For one of the merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew +was again her partner. He reminded her of their first encounter in the +Otradnoe avenue, and how she had been unable to sleep that moonlight +night, and told her how he had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha +blushed at that recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if +there had been something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had +overheard. + +Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked +meeting someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And +such was Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and +even her mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special +care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest +and most unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the +middle of the cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha, +still out of breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer +chose her. She was tired and panting and evidently thought of +declining, but immediately put her hand gaily on the man's shoulder, +smiling at Prince Andrew. + +"I'd be glad to sit beside you and rest: I'm tired; but you see +how they keep asking me, and I'm glad of it, I'm happy and I love +everybody, and you and I understand it all," and much, much more was +said in her smile. When her partner left her Natasha ran across the +room to choose two ladies for the figure. + +"If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she +will be my wife," said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own +surprise, as he watched her. She did go first to her cousin. + +"What rubbish sometimes enters one's head!" thought Prince Andrew, +"but what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original, +that she won't be dancing here a month before she will be +married.... Such as she are rare here," he thought, as Natasha, +readjusting a rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled herself +beside him. + +When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up +to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and +asked his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natasha did not +answer at once but only looked up with a smile that said +reproachfully: "How can you ask such a question?" + +"I have never enjoyed myself so much before!" she said, and Prince +Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her +father and instantly dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had +ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one +becomes completely kind and good and does not believe in the +possibility of evil, unhappiness, or sorrow. + +At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the +position his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and +absent-minded. A deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing +by a window he stared over his spectacles seeing no one. + +On her way to supper Natasha passed him. + +Pierre's gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of +him. She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of +her own happiness. + +"How delightful it is, Count!" said she. "Isn't it?" + +Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said. + +"Yes, I am very glad," he said. + +"How can people be dissatisfied with anything?" thought Natasha. +"Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!" In Natasha's eyes +all the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people, +loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another- and so +they ought all to be happy. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not +dwell on it long. "Yes, it was a very brilliant ball," and then... +"Yes, that little Rostova is very charming. There's something fresh, +original, un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her." That +was all he thought about yesterday's ball, and after his morning tea +he set to work. + +But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for +work and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work, +as he often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming. + +The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees, frequented +all the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new +ideas and of Speranski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger- one of +those men who choose their opinions like their clothes according to +the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest +partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into +Prince Andrew's room with a preoccupied air and at once began talking. +He had just heard particulars of that morning's sitting of the Council +of State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically. +The Emperor's speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such +as only constitutional monarchs deliver. "The Sovereign plainly said +that the Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the +government must rest not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor +said that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the accounts +published," recounted Bitski, emphasizing certain words and opening +his eyes significantly. + +"Ah, yes! Today's events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our +history," he concluded. + +Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the +Council of State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which +he had attached such importance, and was surprised that this event, +now that it had taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite +insignificant. He listened with quiet irony to Bitski's enthusiastic +account of it. A very simple thought occurred to him: "What does it +matter to me or to Bitski what the Emperor was pleased to say at the +Council? Can all that make me any happier or better?" + +And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest +Prince Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to +dine that evening at Speranski's, "with only a few friends," as the +host had said when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the +intimate home circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested +Prince Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his +domestic surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it. + +At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house +Speranski owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room +this small house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting +that of a monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the +friendly gathering of Speranski's intimate acquaintances already +assembled at five o'clock. There were no ladies present except +Speranski's little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her +governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin. +While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a +ringing staccato laugh- a laugh such as one hears on the stage. +Someone- it sounded like Speranski- was distinctly ejaculating +ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski's famous +laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter from a statesman made a +strange impression on him. + +He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing +between two windows at a small table laid with hors-d'oeuvres. +Speranski, wearing a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast, +and evidently still the same waistcoat and high white stock he had +worn at the meeting of the Council of State, stood at the table with a +beaming countenance. His guests surrounded him. Magnitski, +addressing himself to Speranski, was relating an anecdote, and +Speranski was laughing in advance at what Magnitski was going to +say. When Prince Andrew entered the room Magnitski's words were +again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep bass guffaw as he +munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed softly with a +hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato manner. + +Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to Prince +Andrew. + +"Very pleased to see you, Prince," he said. "One moment..." he +went on, turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story. "We have +agreed that this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about +business!" and turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh. + +Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with astonishment, +regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not +Speranski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared + +mysterious and fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and +unattractive. + +At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed +to consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before +Magnitski had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate +something still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the +state service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in +this company the insignificance of those people was so definitely +accepted that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good +humored ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that morning +a deaf dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so +too. Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable +for the stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering, +broke into the conversation and began excitedly talking of the +abuses that existed under the former order of things- threatening to +give a serious turn to the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing +Stolypin about his vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and +the talk reverted to its former lively tone. + +Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find +amusement in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his +wish, tried to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety +seemed to Prince Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speranski's +high-pitched voice struck him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter +grated on him like a false note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and +feared that he would be a damper on the spirits of the company, but no +one took any notice of his being out of harmony with the general mood. +They all seemed very gay. + +He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his +remarks were tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the +water, and he could not jest with them. + +There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was +witty and might have been funny, but it lacked just that something +which is the salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a +thing existed. + +After dinner Speranski's daughter and her governess rose. He +patted the little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that +gesture, too, seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew. + +The men remained at table over their port- English fashion. In the +midst of a conversation that was started about Napoleon's Spanish +affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to +express a contrary opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish +to prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a +story that had no connection with the previous conversation. For a few +moments all were silent. + +Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine +and, remarking, "Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair," +passed it to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk +loudly went into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier +were handed to Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as +he had left the room the general merriment stopped and the guests +began to converse sensibly and quietly with one another. + +"Now for the recitation!" said Speranski on returning from his +study. "A wonderful talent!" he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnitski +immediately assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses +in French which he had composed about various well-known Petersburg +people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When the +verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his +leave. + +"Where are you off to so early?" asked Speranski. + +"I promised to go to a reception." + +They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those +mirrorlike, impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of +him to have expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own +activities connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance +to what Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang +in Prince Andrew's ears long after he had left the house. + +When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in +Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something +new. He recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of +his project of army reform, which had been accepted for +consideration and which they were trying to pass over in silence +simply because another, a very poor one, had already been prepared and +submitted to the Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a committee of +which Berg was a member. He remembered how carefully and at what +length everything relating to form and procedure was discussed at +those meetings, and how sedulously and promptly all that related to +the gist of the business was evaded. He recalled his labors on the +Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had translated the articles of +the Roman and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of +himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his +occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan; he remembered the +peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally applying to them the +Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished +that he could have spent so much time on such useless work. + +CHAPTER XIX + +Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited +before, and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed +acquaintance at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness +which demanded the call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl +who had left such a pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home. + +Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a +dark-blue house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier +than in her ball dress. She and all the Rostov family welcomed him +as an old friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he +had formerly judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of +excellent, simple, and kindly people. The old count's hospitality +and good nature, which struck one especially in Petersburg as a +pleasant surprise, were such that Prince Andrew could not refuse to +stay to dinner. "Yes," he thought, "they are capital people, who of +course have not the slightest idea what a treasure they possess in +Natasha; but they are kindly folk and form the best possible setting +for this strikingly poetic, charming girl, overflowing with life!" + +In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely +alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world, +that in the Otradnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had +already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no +longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered +it found in it a new enjoyment. + +After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew's request, went to the +clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window +talking to the ladies and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he +ceased speaking and suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had +thought impossible for him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and +something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the +same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was +ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His +disillusionments?... His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The +chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast +between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that +limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This +contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang. + +As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and asked how +he liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling +that she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and +said he liked her singing as he liked everything she did. + +Prince Andrew left the Rostovs' late in the evening. He went to +bed from habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having +lit his candle he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again +not at all troubled by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and +joyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room into God's own +fresh air. It did not enter his head that he was in love with Natasha; +he was not thinking about her, but only picturing her to himself, +and in consequence all life appeared in a new light. "Why do I strive, +why do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with +all its joys, is open to me?" said he to himself. And for the first +time for a very long while he began making happy plans for the future. +He decided that he must attend to his son's education by finding a +tutor and putting the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire +from the service and go abroad, and see England, Switzerland and +Italy. "I must use my freedom while I feel so much strength and +youth in me," he said to himself. "Pierre was right when he said one +must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and +now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one +has life one must live and be happy!" thought he. + +CHAPTER XX + +One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in +Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an +immaculate brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed +forward over his temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair. + +"I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately +she could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more +fortunate with you," he said with a smile. + +"What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service." + +"I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count" (Berg said this +with perfect conviction that this information could not but be +agreeable), "and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own +and my wife's friends." (He smiled still more pleasantly.) "I wished +to ask the countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea and to +supper." + +Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such people as +the Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an +invitation. Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at +his house a small but select company, and why this would give him +pleasure, and why though he grudged spending money on cards or +anything harmful, he was prepared to run into some expense for the +sake of good society- that Pierre could not refuse, and promised to +come. + +"But don't be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten +minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is +coming. He is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you +will do me the favor." + +Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at +the Bergs' house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight. + +Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were +really for their guests' arrival. + +In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and +pictures and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely +buttoned up in his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to +her that one always could and should be acquainted with people above +one, because only then does one get satisfaction from acquaintances. + +"You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I +managed from my first promotion." (Berg measured his life not by years +but by promotions.) "My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only +waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to +be your husband." (He rose and kissed Vera's hand, and on the way to +her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) "And how +have I obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my +aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must be conscientious +and methodical." + +Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and +paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak +woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man's dignity, +what it was ein Mann zu sein.~{ To be a man. }~ Vera at the same time smiling with a +sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the +same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men did. +Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera, +judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation, +supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are +conceited and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone. + +Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her +lace fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on +the lips. + +"The only thing is, we mustn't have children too soon," he +continued, following an unconscious sequence of ideas. + +"Yes," answered Vera, "I don't at all want that. We must live for +society." + +"Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this," said Berg, +pointing to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile. + +Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced +at one another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally +claiming the honor of this visit. + +"This is what what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances," +thought Berg. "This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself." + +"But please don't interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests," +said Vera, "because I know what interests each of them and what to say +to different people." + +Berg smiled again. + +"It can't be helped: men must sometimes have masculine +conversation," said he. + +They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room, where it +was impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry, +neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange +that Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an +armchair or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently +painfully undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor +to settle the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry +by moving a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began +their evening party, interrupting each other in their efforts to +entertain their guest. + +Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be +entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once +began accordingly. Berg, having decided that masculine conversation +was required, interrupted his wife's remarks and touched on the +question of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the +general subject to personal considerations as to the proposals made +him to take part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had +declined them. Though the conversation was very incoherent and Vera +was angry at the intrusion of the masculine element, both husband +and wife felt with satisfaction that, even if only one guest was +present, their evening had begun very well and was as like as two peas +to every other evening party with its talk, tea, and lighted candles. + +Before long Boris, Berg's old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of +condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After +Boris came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the +Rostovs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other +evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of +satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing +room, at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of +dresses, and the bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody +always has it, especially so the general, who admired the apartment, +patted Berg on the shoulder, and with parental authority superintended +the setting out of the table for boston. The general sat down by Count +Ilya Rostov, who was next to himself the most important guest. The old +people sat with the old, the young with the young, and the hostess +at the tea table, on which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a +silver cake basket as the Panins had at their party. Everything was +just as it was everywhere else. + +CHAPTER XXI + +Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston +with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At the card table +he happened to be directly facing Natasha, and was struck by a curious +change that had come over her since the ball, She was silent, and +not only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from +plainness by her look of gentle indifference to everything around. + +"What's the matter with her?" thought Pierre, glancing at her. She +was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without +looking at him, made some reply to Boris who sat down beside her. +After playing out a whole suit and to his partner's delight taking +five tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who +had entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again +at Natasha. + +"What has happened to her?" he asked himself with still greater +surprise. + +Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her +with a look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was +looking up at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid +breathing. And the bright glow of some inner fire that had been +suppressed was again alight in her. She was completely transformed and +from a plain girl had again become what she had been at the ball. + +Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and +youthful expression in his friend's face. + +Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now +with his back to Natasha and now facing her, but during the whole of +the six rubbers he watched her and his friend. + +"Something very important is happening between them," thought +Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him +and made him neglect the game. + +After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use +playing like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on one side was +talking with Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a subtle smile was +saying something to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and, +asking whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them. +Vera, having noticed Prince Andrew's attentions to Natasha, decided +that at a party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the +tender passion were absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when +Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation with him about +feelings in general and about her sister. With so intellectual a guest +as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she felt that she had to employ +her diplomatic tact. + +When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried +away by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed +embarrassed, a thing that rarely happened with him. + +"What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so +discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a +glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her +attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself), +"love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is +what I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?" + +"I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a +sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to +be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed +that the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to +be," he added, and looked up Pierre who was just approaching them. + +"Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera- mentioning +"our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, +imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of +"our days" and that human characteristics change with the times- "in +our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted +often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that +Natalie is very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie +caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about +to rise, but Vera continued with a still more subtle smile: + +"I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but +till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you +know, Count," she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who, +between ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness..." +(alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time). + +Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent. + +"You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera. + +"Yes, I know him..." + +"I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?" + +"Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew, +blushing unexpectedly. + +"Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le +cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.~{ "Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood." }~ Don't you think so?" + +"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural +liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very +careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of +these jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew +him aside. + +"Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with +surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose. + +"I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You +know that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the Masonic +gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he +loved.) "I... but no, I will talk to you later on," and with a strange +light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew +approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince +Andrew asked her something and how she flushed as she replied. + +But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he +should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on +the affairs in Spain. + +Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his +face. The party was very successful and quite like other parties he +had seen. Everything was similar: the ladies' subtle talk, the +cards, the general raising his voice at the card table, and the +samovar and the tea cakes; only one thing was lacking that he had +always seen at the evening parties he wished to imitate. They had +not yet had a loud conversation among the men and a dispute about +something important and clever. Now the general had begun such a +discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it. + +CHAPTER XXII + +Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with +the Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there. + +Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came, +and without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Not +only in the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha, +but in the whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something +important that was bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and +sternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha and +timidly started some artificial conversation about trifles as soon +as he looked her way. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid +of being in the way when she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a +panic of expectation, when she remained alone with him for a moment. +Prince Andrew surprised her by his timidity. She felt that he wanted +to say something to her but could not bring himself to do so. + +In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to +Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?" + +"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can't +talk about that," said Natasha. + +But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now +frightened, lay long time in her mother's bed gazing straight before +her. She told her how he had complimented her, how he told her he +was going abroad, asked her where they were going to spend the summer, +and then how he had asked her about Boris. + +"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said. +"Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'm +with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it's the real +thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?" + +"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Now +go!" + +"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy! +Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before," she said, +surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "And +could we ever have thought!..." + +It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince +Andrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she +feared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very +man she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and +of finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her. + +"And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg +while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that +ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this! +Already then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar." + +"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..." +said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince +Andrew had written in Natasha's album. + +"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?" + +"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'" +said her mother. + +"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha, +shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother. + +At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and +telling him of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make her +his wife. + +That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The French +ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of +late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies +and gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the +rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and +morose air. + +Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous +depression and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the +intimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly +been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had +begun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark +thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener than +before. At the same time the feeling he had noticed between his +protegee Natasha and Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by the +contrast between his own position and his friend's. He tried equally +to avoid thinking about his wife, and about Natasha and Prince Andrew; +and again everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison with +eternity; again the question: for what? presented itself; and he +forced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to +drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, after +he had left the countess' apartments, he was sitting upstairs in a +shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction of the +Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy with +tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew. + +"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air. +"And I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript book +with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy +people look at their work. + +Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life +on his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look, +smiled at him with the egotism of joy. + +"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about it +yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything +like it before. I am in love, my friend!" + +Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person +down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew. + +"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he. + +"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it, +but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and +suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in +the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live +without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why +don't you speak?" + +"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising and +beginning to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it.... +That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend, +I entreat you, don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry, +marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you." + +"But what of her?" + +"She loves you." + +"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into +Pierre's eyes. + +"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely. + +"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. "Do +you know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone." + +"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre, and his face +really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to +Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a +different, quite a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for +life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he +made up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in +his soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future, +said he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice, +and spoke of how he would either make his father consent to this +marriage and love her, or would do without his consent; then he +marveled at the feeling that had mastered him as at something strange, +apart from and independent of himself. + +"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of +such love," said Prince Andrew. "It is not at all the same feeling +that I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into +two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the +other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom +and darkness...." + +"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes, yes, I understand +that." + +"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very +happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake." + +"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched +and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lot +appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own. + +CHAPTER XXIII + +Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to +obtain this he started for the country next day. + +His father received his son's communication with external composure, +but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to +alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life +was already ending. "If only they would let me end my days as I want +to," thought the old man, "then they might do as they please." With +his son, however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for +important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole +matter. + +In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards +birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young +as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special +stress on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son +whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. "Fourthly +and finally," the father said, looking ironically at his son, "I beg +you to put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as +you wanted to for a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your +love or passion or obstinacy- as you please- is still as great, marry! +And that's my last word on it. Mind, the last..." concluded the +prince, in a tone which showed that nothing would make him alter his +decision. + +Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his +feelings, or his fiancee's, would not stand a year's test, or that +he (the old prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to +conform to his father's wish- to propose, and postpone the wedding for +a year. + +Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostovs, +Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg. + +Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski +all day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the +same. Pierre did not come either and Natasha, not knowing that +Prince Andrew had gone to see his father, could not explain his +absence to herself. + +Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to go out +anywhere and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and +listless; she wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in +the evenings. She blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed +to her that everybody knew about her disappointment and was laughing +at her and pitying her. Strong as was her inward grief, this wound +to her vanity intensified her misery. + +Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly +began to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not +know why it is being punished. + +The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to +her mother's words, suddenly interrupted her: + +"Leave off, Mamma! I don't think, and don't want to think about +it! He just came and then left off, left off..." + +Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and +went on quietly: + +"And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I +have now become quite calm, quite calm." + +The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which +she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the +mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she +had abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went +to the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud +resonance, and began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished +her first exercise she stood still in the middle of the room and +sang a musical phrase that particularly pleased her. She listened +joyfully (as though she had not expected it) to the charm of the notes +reverberating, filling the whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying +away; and all at once she felt cheerful. "What's the good of making so +much of it? Things are nice as it is," she said to herself, and she +began walking up and down the room, not stepping simply on the +resounding parquet but treading with each step from the heel to the +toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of shoes) and listening to the +regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe as gladly as she had to +the sounds of her own voice. Passing a mirror she glanced into it. +"There, that's me!" the expression of her face seemed to say as she +caught sight of herself. "Well, and very nice too! I need nobody." + +A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room +but she would not let him, and having closed the door behind him +continued her walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite +mood- love of, and delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha +is!" she said again, speaking as some third, collective, male +person. "Pretty, a good voice, young, and in nobody's way if only they +leave her in peace." But however much they left her in peace she could +not now be at peace, and immediately felt this. + +In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and +then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but +did not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When +she saw herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for +certain, though she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors. + +Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room. + +"Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is +unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I to do?..." + +Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room +with an agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha his +face brightened. He kissed the countess' hand and Natasha's, and sat +down beside the sofa. + +"It is long since we had the pleasure..." began the countess, but +Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question, +obviously in haste to say what he had to. + +"I have not been to see all this time because I have been at my +father's. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I +only got back last night," he said glancing at Natasha; "I want to +have a talk with you, Countess," he added after a moment's pause. + +The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply. + +"I am at your disposal," she murmured. + +Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so: +something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared +straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes. + +"At once? This instant!... No, it can't be!" she thought. + +Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she +was not mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be +decided. + +"Go, Natasha! I will call you," said the countess in a whisper. + +Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew +and at her mother and went out. + +"I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter's hand," said +Prince Andrew. + +The countess' face flushed hotly, but she said nothing. + +"Your offer..." she began at last sedately. He remained silent, +looking into her eyes. "Your offer..." (she grew confused) "is +agreeable to us, and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband... +I hope... but it will depend on her...." + +"I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it +to me?" said Prince Andrew. + +"Yes," replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and +with a mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips +to his forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him +as a son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man. +"I am sure my husband will consent," said the countess, "but your +father..." + +"My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express +condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a +year. And I wished to tell you of that," said Prince Andrew. + +"It is true that Natasha is still young, but- so long as that?..." + +"It is unavoidable," said Prince Andrew with a sigh. + +"I will send her to you," said the countess, and left the room. + +"Lord have mercy upon us!" she repeated while seeking her daughter. + +Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha was sitting on +the bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering +something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped +up and flew to her. + +"Well, Mamma?... Well?..." + +"Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand," said the countess, +coldly it seemed to Natasha. "Go... go," said the mother, sadly and +reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away. + +Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When +she came in and saw him she paused. "Is it possible that this stranger +has now become everything to me?" she asked herself, and immediately +answered, "Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than +everything in the world." Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast +eyes. + +"I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?" + +He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned +expression of her face. Her face said: "Why ask? Why doubt what you +cannot but know? Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?" + +She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it. + +"Do you love me?" + +"Yes, yes!" Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed +loudly and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob. + +"What is it? What's the matter?" + +"Oh, I am so happy!" she replied, smiled through her tears, bent +over closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether +she might, and then kissed him. + +Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find +in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly +changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of +desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, +fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful +sense of the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present +feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger +and more serious. + +"Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?" asked +Prince Andrew, still looking into her eyes. + +"Is it possible that I- the 'chit of a girl,' as everybody called +me," thought Natasha- "is it possible that I am now to be the wife and +the equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father +looks up to? Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no +more playing with life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies +a responsibility for my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he +ask me?" + +"No," she replied, but she had not understood his question. + +"Forgive me!" he said. "But you are so young, and I have already +been through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know +yourself." + +Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing +to take in the meaning of his words. + +"Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be," continued +Prince Andrew, "it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask +you to make me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall +remain a secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or +should you come to love..." said Prince Andrew with an unnatural +smile. + +"Why do you say that?" Natasha interrupted him. "You know that +from the very day you first came to Otradnoe I have loved you," she +cried, quite convinced that she spoke the truth. + +"In a year you will learn to know yourself...." + +"A whole year!" Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that +the marriage was to be postponed for a year. "But why a year? Why a +year?..." + +Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay. +Natasha did not hear him. + +"And can't it be helped?" she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply, +but his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision. + +"It's awful! Oh, it's awful! awful!" Natasha suddenly cried, and +again burst into sobs. "I shall die, waiting a year: it's +impossible, it's awful!" She looked into her lover's face and saw in +it a look of commiseration and perplexity. + +"No, no! I'll do anything!" she said, suddenly checking her tears. +"I am so happy." + +The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed +couple their blessing. + +From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs' as +Natasha's affianced lover. + +CHAPTER XXIV + +No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha's engagement to +Bolkonski was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said +that as he was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole +burden of it; that he had given his word and bound himself forever, +but that he did not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom. +If after six months she felt that she did not love him she would +have full right to reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her +parents wished to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came +every day to the Rostovs', but did not behave to Natasha as an +affianced lover: he did not use the familiar thou, but said you to +her, and kissed only her hand. After their engagement, quite +different, intimate, and natural relations sprang up between them. +It was as if they had not known each other till now. Both liked to +recall how they had regarded each other when as yet they were +nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite different +beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere. At first +the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince Andrew; +he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha +trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all +that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of +them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to +be. After a few days they grew accustomed to him, and without +restraint in his presence pursued their usual way of life, in which he +took his part. He could talk about rural economy with the count, +fashions with the countess and Natasha, and about albums and fancywork +with Sonya. Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his +presence expressed their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the +evident omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew's coming to Otradnoe +and their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and +Prince Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and +Andrew's encounter with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents +betokening that it had to be. + +In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always +accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting +together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and +go away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely +spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to +speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings, which +she constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his +son. Prince Andrew blushed, as he often did now- Natasha +particularly liked it in him- and said that his son would not live +with them. + +"Why not?" asked Natasha in a frightened tone. + +"I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..." + +"How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing +his thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding +fault with us." + +Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask +his advice about Petya's education or Nicholas' service. The old +countess sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting +frightened lest she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for +leaving them alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew +spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him +with pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed +attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in +perplexity: "What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover +something by looking at me! What if what he seeks in me is not there?" +Sometimes she fell into one of the mad, merry moods characteristic +of her, and then she particularly loved to hear and see how Prince +Andrew laughed. He seldom laughed, but when he did he abandoned +himself entirely to his laughter, and after such a laugh she always +felt nearer to him. Natasha would have been completely happy if the +thought of the separation awaiting her and drawing near had not +terrified her, just as the mere thought of it made him turn pale and +cold. + +On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought +with him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostovs' once since the ball. +Pierre seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the +countess, and Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya, +thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so. + +"You have known Bezukhov a long time?" he asked. "Do you like him?" + +"Yes, he's a dear, but very absurd." + +And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of +his absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him. + +"Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known +him from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie," +Prince Andrew said with sudden seriousness- "I am going away and +heaven knows what may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know +I am not to say that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when +I am not here..." + +"What can happen?" + +"Whatever trouble may come," Prince Andrew continued, "I beg you, +Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for +advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but +he has a heart of gold." + +Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince Andrew +himself could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would +act on Natasha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that +day, dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not +understanding what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking +leave, he kissed her hand for the last time. "Don't go!" she said in a +tone that made him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and +which he remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone; +but for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no +interest in anything and only saying now and then, "Oh, why did he +go away?" + +But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around +her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and +became her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy, +as a child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of +face. + +CHAPTER XXV + +During that year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas +Bolkonski's health and temper became much worse. He grew still more +irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of +his frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out +her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible. +Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys- her +nephew, little Nicholas, and religion- and these were the favorite +subjects of the prince's attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken +of he would bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or +the petting and spoiling of children. "You want to make him"- little +Nicholas- "into an old maid like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants +a son and not an old maid," he would say. Or, turning to +Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary's presence +how she liked our village priests and icons and would joke about them. + +He continually hurt Princess Mary's feelings and tormented her, +but it cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame +toward her, or could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of +it all, be unjust? And what is justice? The princess never thought +of that proud word "justice." All the complex laws of man centered for +her in one clear and simple law- the law of love and self-sacrifice +taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself +was God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other +people? She had to endure and love, and that she did. + +During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had +been gay, gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known +him for a long time past. She felt that something had happened to him, +but he said nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a +long talk with his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed +that before his departure they were dissatisfied with one another. + +Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend +Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls +dream) of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in +mourning for her own brother, killed in Turkey. + +Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie. + +Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a +special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and +your excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone, +can- I will not say comfort us- but save us from despair. Religion +alone can explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend: +why, for what cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in +life- not merely harming no one but necessary to the happiness of +others- are called away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons, +or such as are a burden to themselves and to others, are left +living. The first death I saw, and one I shall never forget- that of +my dear sister-in-law- left that impression on me. Just as you ask +destiny why your splendid brother had to die, so I asked why that +angel Lise, who not only never wronged anyone, but in whose soul there +were never any unkind thoughts, had to die. And what do you think, +dear friend? Five years have passed since then, and already I, with my +petty understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to die, and in +what way that death was but an expression of the infinite goodness +of the Creator, whose every action, though generally +incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite love +for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically +innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother's duties. As a +young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been +so as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly +Prince Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably +she will there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not +to speak of her alone, that early and terrible death has had the +most beneficent influence on me and on my brother in spite of all +our grief. Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not +occur to me; I should then have dismissed them with horror, but now +they are very clear and certain. I write all this to you, dear friend, +only to convince you of the Gospel truth which has become for me a +principle of life: not a single hair of our heads will fall without +His will. And His will is governed only by infinite love for us, and +so whatever befalls us is for our good. + +You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my +wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You +will be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte! +The case is this: my father's health is growing noticeably worse, he +cannot stand any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This +irritability is, as you know, chiefly directed to political questions. +He cannot endure the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal +terms with all the sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own, +the grandson of the Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite +indifferent to politics, but from my father's remarks and his talks +with Michael Ivanovich I know all that goes on in the world and +especially about the honors conferred on Buonaparte, who only at +Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not accepted as a great +man, still less as Emperor of France. And my father cannot stand this. +It seems to me that it is chiefly because of his political views +that my father is reluctant to speak of going to Moscow; for he +foresees the encounters that would result from his way of expressing +his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might derive +from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the disputes +about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will be +decided very shortly. + +Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother +Andrew's absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much +of late. After his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his +spirits. He has again become as I used to know him when a child: kind, +affectionate, with that heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has +realized, it seems to me, that life is not over for him. But +together with this mental change he has grown physically much +weaker. He has become thinner and more nervous. I am anxious about him +and glad he is taking this trip abroad which the doctors recommended +long ago. I hope it will cure him. You write that in Petersburg he +is spoken of as one of the most active, cultivated, and capable of the +young men. Forgive my vanity as a relation, but I never doubted it. +The good he has done to everybody here, from his peasants up to the +gentry, is incalculable. On his arrival in Petersburg he received only +his due. I always wonder at the way rumors fly from Petersburg to +Moscow, especially such false ones as that you write about- I mean the +report of my brother's betrothal to the little Rostova. I do not think +my brother will ever marry again, and certainly not her; and this is +why: first, I know that though he rarely speaks about the wife he +has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too deep in his heart for +him ever to decide to give her a successor and our little angel a +stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl is not the +kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think he would +choose her for a wife, and frankly I do not wish it. But I am +running on too long and am at the end of my second sheet. Good-by, +my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My +dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses. + +MARY + +CHAPTER XXVI + +In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected +letter from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her +strange and surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to +Natasha Rostova. The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his +betrothed and tender and confiding affection for his sister. He +wrote that he had never loved as he did now and that only now did he +understand and know what life was. He asked his sister to forgive +him for not having told her of his resolve when he had last visited +Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it to his father. He had not +done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her father to give his +consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt of his +displeasure without attaining her object. "Besides," he wrote, "the +matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father then +insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months, half of that +period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer than ever. If the +doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be back in Russia, +but as it is I have to postpone my return for three months. You know +me and my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have +been and always shall be independent; but to go against his will and +arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a +short time, would destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him +about the same question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand +him the letter and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and +whether there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four +months." + +After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave +the letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her +quietly: + +"Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won't +be long- I shall soon set him free." + +The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her +speak and, raising his voice more and more, cried: + +"Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich, +eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell +him that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little +Nicholas' stepmother and I'll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He +mustn't be without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more +women are wanted in my house- let him marry and live by himself. +Perhaps you will go and live with him too?" he added, turning to +Princess Mary. "Go in heavens name! Go out into the frost... the +frost... the frost! + +After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the +matter. But repressed vexation at his son's poor-spirited behavior +found expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former +pretexts for irony a fresh one was now added- allusions to stepmothers +and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne. + +"Why shouldn't I marry her?" he asked his daughter. "She'll make a +splendid princess!" + +And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary +noticed that her father was really associating more and more with +the Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his +letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to +the idea. + +Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and +religion were Princess Mary's joys and consolations; but besides that, +since everyone must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the +profoundest depths of her heart had a hidden dream and hope that +supplied the chief consolation of her life. This comforting dream +and hope were given her by God's folk- the half-witted and other +pilgrims who visited her without the prince's knowledge. The longer +she lived, the more experience and observation she had of life, the +greater was her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek +enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, +and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary, +sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his wife, she died, but that +was not enough: he wanted to bind his happiness to another woman. +Her father objected to this because he wanted a more distinguished and +wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled and suffered and +tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls, +for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant. Not +only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God, came +down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is +a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it. +"How is it that no one realizes this?" thought Princess Mary. "No +one except these despised God's folk who, wallet on back, come to me +by the back door, afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear +of ill-usage by him but for fear of causing him to sin. To leave +family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare, in order without +clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags from place to place +under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but praying for all- +for those who drive one away as well as for those who protect one: +higher than that life and truth there is no life or truth!" + +There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty +called Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot +and worn heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her. +Once, when in a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia +was talking of her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found +the true path of life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force +that she resolved to become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone +to sleep Princess Mary thought about this for a long time, and at last +made up her mind that, strange as it might seem, she must go on a +pilgrimage. She disclosed this thought to no one but to her confessor, +Father Akinfi, the monk, and he approved of her intention. Under guise +of a present for the pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim's +complete costume for herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough +coat, and a black kerchief. Often, approaching the chest of drawers +containing this secret treasure, Princess Mary paused, uncertain +whether the time had not already come to put her project into +execution. + +Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by +their simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep +meaning, that several times she was on the point of abandoning +everything and running away from home. In imagination she already +pictured herself by Theodosia's side, dressed in coarse rags, +walking with a staff, a wallet on her back, along the dusty road, +directing her wanderings from one saint's shrine to another, free from +envy, earthly love, or desire, and reaching at last the place where +there is no more sorrow or sighing, but eternal joy and bliss. + +"I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to +get used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on +till my legs fail, and I'll lie down and die somewhere, and shall at +last reach that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sorrow +nor sighing..." thought Princess Mary. + +But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko +(Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that +she was a sinner who loved her father and little nephew more than God. + +BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11 + +CHAPTER I + +The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor- idleness- was a +condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man +has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race +not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our +brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both +idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we +are idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though +idle he was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the +conditions of man's primitive blessedness. And such a state of +obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class- +the military. The chief attraction of military service has consisted +and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness. + +Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the full +when, after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd regiment, +in which he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from +Denisov. + +Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow +acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked +and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was +well contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters +from home more frequent complaints from his mother that their +affairs were falling into greater and greater disorder, and that it +was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort his old parents. + +Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to +take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the +entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt +that sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life, +with its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its +accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society, +and with Sonya's love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully +difficult and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold, +formal letters in French, beginning: "My dear Mamma," and ending: +"Your obedient son," which said nothing of when he would return. In +1810 he received letters from his parents, in which they told him of +Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in +a year's time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter +grieved and mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that +Natasha, for whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family, +should be lost to the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of +view, he regretted not to have been there to show that fellow +Bolkonski that connection with him was no such great honor after +all, and that if he loved Natasha he might dispense with permission +from his dotard father. For a moment he hesitated whether he should +not apply for leave in order to see Natasha before she was married, +but then came the maneuvers, and considerations about Sonya and +about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again put it off. +But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from his +mother, written without his father's knowledge, and that letter +persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take +matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and +they would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and +trusted Mitenka so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody +took advantage of him and things were going from bad to worse. "For +God's sake, I implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make +me and the whole family wretched," wrote the countess. + +This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a +matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do. + +The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any +rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but +after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely +vicious gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and +when he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka +(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who +turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was +going home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he +would go away without having heard from the staff- and this interested +him extremely- whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive +the Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to +think that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the +Polish Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had +betted he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it +seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish +Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had +given one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would +take place without him- he knew he must go away from this good, bright +world to somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week +later he obtained his leave. His hussar comrades- not only those of +his own regiment, but the whole brigade- gave Rostov a dinner to which +the subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were +two bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with +Major Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped +Rostov; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted +"hurrah!" and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as +far as the first post station. + +During the first half of the journey- from Kremenchug to Kiev- all +Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with +the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to +forget his three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to +wonder anxiously how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would +find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached +it- far stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law +by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the +square of the distance. At the last post station before Otradnoe he +gave the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran +breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home. + +After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of +unsatisfied expectation- the feeling that "everything is just the +same, so why did I hurry?"- Nicholas began to settle down in his old +home world. His father and mother were much the same, only a little +older. What was new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional +discord, which there used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found +out, was due to the bad state of their affairs. Sonya was nearly +twenty; she had stopped growing prettier and promised nothing more +than she was already, but that was enough. She exhaled happiness and +love from the time Nicholas returned, and the faithful, unalterable +love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha +surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, +merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking. +As for Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed +whenever he looked at her. + +"You're not the same at all," he said. + +"How? Am I uglier?" + +"On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!" he whispered to +her. + +"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully. + +She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit +to Otradnoe and showed him his last letter. + +"Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am so tranquil and happy +now." + +"Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent fellow.... And +are you very much in love?" + +"How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was in love with Boris, +with my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite different. I feel +at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and +I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before." + +Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the +marriage for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with +exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and +that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against the father's +will, and that she herself wished it so. + +"You don't at all understand," she said. + +Nicholas was silent and agreed with her. + +Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem +at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. +She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This +amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship +skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially +as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him +that there was something not quite right about this intended marriage. + +"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had +touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his +surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her +soul she too had doubts about this marriage. + +"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince +Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a +daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come +before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His +health is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach +importance to her being so bright: that's because she's living through +the last days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every +time we receive a letter from him! However, God grant that +everything turns out well!" (She always ended with these words.) "He +is an excellent man!" + +CHAPTER II + +After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull. +He was worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid +business matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw +off this burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his +arrival he went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as +to where he was going, to Mitenka's lodge and demanded an account of +everything. But what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew +even less than the frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation +and the examination of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long. +The village elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were +waiting in the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young +count's voice roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and +then words of abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other. + +"Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I'll hack the dog to pieces! I'm +not my father!... Robbing us!..." and so on. + +Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red +in the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff +of the neck and applied his foot and knee to him behind with great +agility at convenient moments between the words, shouting, "Be off! +Never let me see your face here again, you villain!" + +Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the +shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for +culprits at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself, returning tipsy from the +town, used to hide there, and many of the residents at Otradnoe, +hiding from Mitenka, knew of its protective qualities.) + +Mitenka's wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and +frightened faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar +was boiling and where the steward's high bedstead stood with its +patchwork quilt. + +The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by +with resolute strides and went into the house. + +The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened +at the lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would +certainly improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect +this excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his +door on tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another. + +Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed +smile, said to him: + +"But you know, my dear boy, it's a pity you got excited! Mitenka has +told me all about it." + +"I knew," thought Nicholas, "that I should never understand anything +in this crazy world." + +"You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they +were carried forward- and you did not look at the other page." + +"Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have +done, I have done; but, if you like, I won't speak to him again." + +"No, my dear boy" (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he +had mismanaged his wife's property and was to blame toward his +children, but he did not know how to remedy it). "No, I beg you to +attend to the business. I am old. I..." + +"No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I +understand it all less than you do." + +"Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings +forward from page to page," he thought. "I used to understand what a +'corner' and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to +another page I don't understand at all," said he to himself, and after +that he did not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess +called her son and informed him that she had a promissory note from +Anna Mikhaylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he +thought of doing with it. + +"This," answered Nicholas. "You say it rests with me. Well, I +don't like Anna Mikhaylovna and I don't like Boris, but they were +our friends and poor. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and +by so doing caused the old countess to weep tears of joy. After +that, young Rostov took no further part in any business affairs, but +devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new +pursuit- the chase- for which his father kept a large establishment. + +CHAPTER III + +The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts +congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had +thickened and its bright green stood out sharply against the +brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, and +against the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded +ravines and the copses, which at the end of August had still been +green islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden and +bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The hares had already +half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning to +scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best +time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young +sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but +were so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give +them a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go +on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was +an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs. + +All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the +air was sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began +to thaw. On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown, +looked out of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for +hunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth +without any wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping, +microscopic particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the +garden were hung with transparent drops which fell on the freshly +fallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and black +and glistened like poppy seed and at a short distance merged into +the dull, moist veil of mist. Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy +porch. There was a smell of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a +black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch with prominent black eyes, got +up on seeing her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down like a +hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose and +mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his master from the +garden path, arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch +with lifted tail, began rubbing himself against his legs. + +"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call +which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round +the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray, +wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian +fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence +and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his +Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This +scorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel, +disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all +the same his serf and huntsman. + +"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the +weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away +by that irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all +his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his +mistress. + +"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deep +bass, deep as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing- and two +flashing black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who +was silent. "Can you resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking. + +"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" asked +Nicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears. + +Daniel did not answer, but winked instead. + +"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after a +minute's pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure. +They were howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom +they both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small +place a mile and a half from the house.) + +"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to me +with Uvarka." + +"As you please." + +"Then put off feeding them." + +"Yes, sir." + +Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas' +big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was +like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and +surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual +stood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for +fear of breaking something in the master's apartment, and he +hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from under that +ceiling, out into the open under the sky once more. + +Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion +that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting), +Nicholas ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was +about to go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her +hair or finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrapped +round her. Petya ran in at the same time. + +"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said you +wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you +couldn't help going." + +"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as +he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and +Petya. "We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for +you." + +"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair; +you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said +nothing to us about it." + +"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'- we'll go!" shouted Petya. + +"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha. + +"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively. +"Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my +dogs," she added to the huntsman. + +It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but +to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible. +He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his +business, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on +the young lady. + +CHAPTER IV + +The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting +establishment but had now handed it all completely over to his son's +care, being in very good spirits on this fifteenth of September, +prepared to go out with the others. + +In an hour's time the whole hunting party was at the porch. +Nicholas, with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no +time for attending to trifles, went past Natasha and Petya who were +trying to tell him something. He had a look at all the details of +the hunt, sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the +quarry, mounted his chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of +borzois, set off across the threshing ground to a field leading to the +Otradnoe wood. The old count's horse, a sorrel gelding called +Viflyanka, was led by the groom in attendance on him, while the +count himself was to drive in a small trap straight to a spot reserved +for him. + +They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and +whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen and +more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash +belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and +thirty dogs and twenty horsemen. + +Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his +business. his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the +fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk, +along the road and field leading to the Otradnoe covert. + +The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and +then splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky +still seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the +air was still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a +huntsman, the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a +straggling hound could be heard. + +When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders +with dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostovs. In +front rode a fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray +mustache. + +"Good morning, Uncle!" said Nicholas, when the old man drew near. + +"That's it. Come on!... I was sure of it," began "Uncle." (He was +a distant relative of the Rostovs', a man of small means, and their +neighbor.) "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist it and it's a good +thing you're going. That's it! Come on! (This was "Uncle's" favorite +expression.) "Take the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins +are at Korniki with their hounds. That's it. Come on!... They'll +take the cubs from under your very nose." + +"That's where I'm going. Shall we join up our packs?" asked +Nicholas. + +The hounds were joined into one pack, and "Uncle" and Nicholas +rode on side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide +her eager face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed +by Petya who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and +by a groom appointed to look after her. Petya, who was laughing, +whipped and pulled at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on +her black Arabchik and reined him in without effort with a firm hand. + +"Uncle" looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha. He did not +like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting. + +"Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!" shouted Petya. + +"Good morning, good morning! But don't go overriding the hounds," +said "Uncle" sternly. + +"Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me," said Natasha, +referring to her favorite hound. + +"In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought +Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel +the distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natasha +understood it. + +"You mustn't think we'll be in anyone's way, Uncle," she said. +"We'll go to our places and won't budge." + +"A good thing too, little countess," said "Uncle," "only mind you +don't fall off your horse," he added, "because- that's it, come on!- +you've nothing to hold on to." + +The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards +off, the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally +settled with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having +shown Natasha where she was to stand- a spot where nothing could +possibly run out- went round above the ravine. + +"Well, nephew, you're going for a big wolf," said "Uncle." "Mind and +don't let her slip!" + +"That's as may happen," answered Rostov. "Karay, here!" he +shouted, answering "Uncle's" remark by this call to his borzoi. +Karay was a shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having +tackled a big wolf unaided. They all took up their places. + +The old count, knowing his son's ardor in the hunt, hurried so as +not to be late, and the hunstmen had not yet reached their places when +Count Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove +up with his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for +him, where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and +fastened on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek, +well-fed, and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray, +like himself. His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov, +though not at heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well, +and rode to the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged +his reins, settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was +ready, looked about with a smile. + +Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant, an old +horseman now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar held in leash three +formidable wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master +and his horse. Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred +paces farther along the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count's +other groom, a daring horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the +hunt, by old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled +brandy, taken a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle of his +favorite Bordeaux. + +He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were +rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his +saddle, wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out +for an outing. + +The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready, +kept glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of +terms for thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in +expected a pleasant chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through +the wood (it was plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind +the count. This person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman's +cloak, with a tall peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who +went by a woman's name, Nastasya Ivanovna. + +"Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!" whispered the count, winking at him. +"If you scare away the beast, Daniel'll give it you!" + +"I know a thing or two myself!" said Nastasya Ivanovna. + +"Hush!" whispered the count and turned to Simon. "Have you seen +the young countess?" he asked. "Where is she?" + +"With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass," answered +Simon, smiling. "Though she's a lady, she's very fond of hunting." + +"And you're surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?" said the +count. "She's as good as many a man!" + +"Of course! It's marvelous. So bold, so easy!" + +"And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn't he?" + +"Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so +well that Daniel and I are often quite astounded," said Simon, well +knowing what would please his master. + +"Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?" + +"A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the +Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight +when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand +rubles and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search +far to find another as smart." + +"To search far..." repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not +said more. "To search far," he said, turning back the skirt of his +coat to get at his snuffbox. + +"The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael +Sidorych..." Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had +distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three +hounds giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a +warning finger at his master. "They are on the scent of the cubs... +" he whispered, "straight to the Lyadov uplands." + +The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked +into the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space, +holding the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry +of the hounds came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel's +hunting horn; the pack joined the first three hounds and they could be +heard in full cry, with that peculiar lift in the note that +indicates that they are after a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on +the hounds, but changed to the cry of ulyulyu, and above the others +rose Daniel's voice, now a deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice +seemed to fill the whole wood and carried far beyond out into the open +field. + +After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his +attendant convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into +two packs: the sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue, +began to die away in the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood +past the count, and it was with this that Daniel's voice was heard +calling ulyulyu. The sounds of both packs mingled and broke apart +again, but both were becoming more distant. + +Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi +had entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in +his hand, opened it and took a pinch. "Back!" cried Simon to a +borzoi that was pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and +dropped the snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up. +The count and Simon were looking at him. + +Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly +approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were +just in front of them. + +The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at him with eyes +starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to +the other side. + +"Look out!" he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had +long fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he +galloped toward the count. + +The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a +wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet +lope farther to the left to the very place where they were standing. +The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the +horses' feet at the wolf. + +The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs +awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly +swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish +of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same +instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and +then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the +whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf +had disappeared. The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and +Daniel's chestnut horse appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back +sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless, his disheveled gray hair hanging +over his flushed, perspiring face. + +"Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!..." he cried. When he caught sight of the +count his eyes flashed lightning. + +"Blast you!" he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the +count. + +"You've let the wolf go!... What sportsmen! and as if scorning to +say more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving +flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count +had aroused and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a +punished schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win Simon's +sympathy for his plight. But Simon was no longer there. He was +galloping round by the bushes while the field was coming up on both +sides, all trying to head the wolf, but it vanished into the wood +before they could do so. + +CHAPTER V + +Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the +wolf. By the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of +the dogs whose notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of +the huntsmen approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was +happening at the copse. He knew that young and old wolves were +there, that the hounds had separated into two packs, that somewhere +a wolf was being chased, and that something had gone wrong. He +expected the wolf to come his way any moment. He made thousands of +different conjectures as to where and from what side the beast would +come and how he would set upon it. Hope alternated with despair. +Several times he addressed a prayer to God that the wolf should come +his way. He prayed with that passionate and shame-faced feeling with +which men pray at moments of great excitement arising from trivial +causes. "What would it be to Thee to do this for me?" he said to +God. "I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to ask this of Thee, +but for God's sake do let the old wolf come my way and let Karay +spring at it- in sight of 'Uncle' who is watching from over there- and +seize it by the throat in a death grip!" A thousand times during +that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over the edge of +the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen undergrowth +and the gully with its water-worn side and "Uncle's" cap just +visible above the bush on his right. + +"No, I shan't have such luck," thought Rostov, "yet what wouldn't it +be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am +always unlucky." Memories of Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed +rapidly and clearly through his mind. "Only once in my life to get +an old wolf, I want only that!" thought he, straining eyes and ears +and looking to the left and then to the right and listening to the +slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs. + +Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him +across the deserted field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a +deep breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped +for. The height of happiness was reached- and so simply, without +warning, or noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his +eyes and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and +jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her path. She was an old +animal with a gray back and big reddish belly. She ran without +hurry, evidently feeling sure that no one saw her. Rostov, holding his +breath, looked round at the borzois. They stood or lay not seeing +the wolf or understanding the situation. Old Karay had turned his head +and was angrily searching for fleas, baring his yellow teeth and +snapping at his hind legs. + +"Ulyulyulyu!" whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped +up, jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karay +finished scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up +with quivering tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down. + +"Shall I loose them or not?" Nicholas asked himself as the wolf +approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf's whole +physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never +seen before- human eyes fixed upon her- and turning her head a +little toward Rostov, she paused. + +"Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward..." the wolf seemed to +say to herself, and she moved forward without again looking round +and with a quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope. + +"Ulyulyu!" cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own +accord his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies +to head off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still. +Nicholas did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping, +nor see the borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only +the wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same +direction along the hollow. The first to come into view was Milka, +with her black markings and powerful quarters, gaining upon the +wolf. Nearer and nearer... now she was ahead of it; but the wolf +turned its head to face her, and instead of putting on speed as she +usually did Milka suddenly raised her tail and stiffened her forelegs. + +"Ulyulyulyulyu!" shouted Nicholas. + +The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka, sprang +impetuously at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but +immediately jumped aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her +teeth, and again rose and bounded forward, followed at the distance of +a couple of feet by all the borzois, who did not get any closer to +her. + +"She'll get away! No, it's impossible!" thought Nicholas, still +shouting with a hoarse voice. + +"Karay, ulyulyu!..." he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi +who was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left +him, stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf, +galloped heavily aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the +wolf's lope and the borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay +had miscalculated. Nicholas could already see not far in front of +him the wood where the wolf would certainly escape should she reach +it. But, coming toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping +almost straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish +young borzoi, one Nicholas did not know, from another leash, rushed +impetuously at the wolf from in front and almost knocked her over. But +the wolf jumped up more quickly than anyone could have expected and, +gnashing her teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a +piercing yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a +gash in its side. + +"Karay? Old fellow!..." wailed Nicholas. + +Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf's path, +the old dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within +five paces of it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her +eyes on Karay, tucked her tail yet further between her legs, and +increased her speed. But here Nicholas only saw that something +happened to Karay- the borzoi was suddenly on the wolf, and they +rolled together down into a gully just in front of them. + +That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully +with the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and +outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears +laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest +moment of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to +dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up +from among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge +of the gully. She clicked her teeth (Karay no longer had her by the +throat), leaped with a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and +having disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again, +went forward. Karay, his hair bristling, and probably bruised or +wounded, climbed with difficulty out of the gully. + +"Oh my God! Why?" Nicholas cried in despair. + +"Uncle's" huntsman was galloping from the other side across the +wolf's path and his borzois once more stopped the animal's advance. +She was again hemmed in. + +Nicholas and his attendant, with "Uncle" and his huntsman, were +all riding round the wolf, crying "ulyulyu!" shouting and preparing to +dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward +again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she +would be safe. + +Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the +ulyulyuing, had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karay seize the wolf, +and checked his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he +saw that the horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself +and ran for safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf +but straight toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the +animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just +when she had been stopped a second time by "Uncle's" borzois. + +Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand +and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip +as if it were a flail. + +Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut, +breathing heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body +and saw Daniel lying on the wolf's back among the dogs, trying to +seize her by the ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to +the wolf herself that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed +back her ears and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her. +Daniel rose a little, took a step, and with his whole weight, as if +lying down to rest, fell on the wolf, seizing her by the ears. +Nicholas was about to stab her, but Daniel whispered, "Don't! We'll +gag her!" and, changing his position, set his foot on the wolf's neck. +A stick was thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a leash, +as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and Daniel rolled her +over once or twice from side to side. + +With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a +shying and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her, +took her to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had +killed two of the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled +with their booty and their stories, and all came to look at the +wolf, which, with her broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten +stick between her jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd +of dogs and men surrounding her. When she was touched, she jerked +her bound legs and looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Old Count +Rostov also rode up and touched the wolf. + +"Oh, what a formidable one!" said he. "A formidable one, eh?" he +asked Daniel, who was standing near. + +"Yes, your excellency," answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap. + +The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with +Daniel. + +"Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!" said the count. + +For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable +smile. + +CHAPTER VI + +The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return +very soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At +midday they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with +young trees. Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his +whips. + +Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood +alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been +loosed before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at +intervals; other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving +tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a +fox had been found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along +the ravine toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas. + +He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the +ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself +at any moment on the ryefield opposite. + +The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois, +and Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going +hard across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew +close to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and +sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white +borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything was in +confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying +their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the +group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the +other, a stranger, in a green coat. + +"What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that huntsman from? He +is not 'Uncle's' man." + +The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without +strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high +saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying. The +huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from that +spot came the sound of a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of +a fight. + +"That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan," said +Nicholas' groom. + +Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and rode +at a footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds +together. Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight +was going on. + +Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden +up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would +end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and +rode toward his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. +While still at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak +respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face was angry. +One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even aware of it. + +"What has happened?" asked Nicholas. + +"A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my +gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the +fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want +a taste of this?..." said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and +probably imagining himself still speaking to his foe. + +Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and +Petya to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's, +Ilagin's, hunting party was. + +The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there, +surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits. + +The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel +and were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the +Rostovs, and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very +woods the Rostovs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs +had chased. + +Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence of +moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his +arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe. +He rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and +fully prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish +his enemy. + +Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman +in a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black +horse, accompanied by two hunt servants. + +Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and +courteous gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young +count's acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised +his beaver cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and +would have the man punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox +hunted by someone else's borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted +with the count and invited him to draw his covert. + +Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had +followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging +friendly greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver +cap still higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that +the young countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as +well as in her beauty, of which he had heard much. + +To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to +come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for +himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and +the hunt, now doubled, moved on. + +The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt +servants fell into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle," Rostov, +and Ilagin kept stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying +not to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for +rivals to their own borzois. + +Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, +pure-bred, red-spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with +muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He +had heard of the swiftness of Ilagin's borzois, and in that +beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Milka. + +In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about the +year's harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch. + +"A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless tone. "Is she +swift?" + +"That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered +Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year +before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So +in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he +went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering +it polite to return the young count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his +borzois and picked out Milka who attracted his attention by her +breadth. "That black-spotted one of yours is fine- well shaped!" +said he. + +"Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and thought: "If only +a full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort +of borzoi she is," and turning to his groom, he said he would give a +ruble to anyone who found a hare. + +"I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how some sportsmen can be +so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I +enjoy riding in company such as this... what could be better?" (he +again raised his cap to Natasha) "but as for counting skins and what +one takes, I don't care about that." + +"Of course not!" + +"Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches +something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not +so, Count? For I consider that..." + +"A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in, +who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip +aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" (This call and +the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.) + +"Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we +must ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing +in Erza and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a +chance of pitting against his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo +my Milka at once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin +toward the hare. + +"A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had +sighted the hare- and not without agitation he looked round and +whistled to Erza. + +"And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle." + +The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face. + +"How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your +borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours +against one another, you two, and I'll look on!" + +"Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!" he added, involuntarily +by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on +this red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly +men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by +it. + +The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and +the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were +far off on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but +not the gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and +sedately. + +"How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces +toward the whip who had sighted the hare. + +But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming +next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash +rushed downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the +borzois that were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare. +All the hunt, who had been moving slowly, shouted, "Stop!" calling +in the hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of "A-tu!"galloped +across the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin, +Nicholas, Natasha, and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how they +went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose +sight even for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started +was a strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at +once, but pricked his ears listening to the shouting and trampling +that resounded from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not +very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having +chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and +rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in front of +him was the autumn sowing where the ground was soft. The two borzois +of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the nearest, were the +first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin's +red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare +with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had +seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and +bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the +broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the +hare. + +"Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if +Milka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and +flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached +him, but when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the +distance, so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind +leg. + +"Erza, darling! Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did +not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have +seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between +the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast, +running like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the +hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the +borzois did not overtake him so quickly. + +"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just +then, and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught +up with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of +the terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off +the balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously, +sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was +how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of +borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the +crowd of dogs. Only the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a +pad, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously +glancing round with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He +spoke without himself knowing whom to or what about. "That's it, +come on! That's a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the +thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois. That's it, come +on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully around as if he were +abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies and had insulted him, +and only now had he at last succeeded in justifying himself. "There +are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it, come on!..." + +"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's +muddy pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!" + +"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself," +said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of +whether he were heard or not. + +"But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's +groom. + +"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take +it," Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop +and his excitement. At the same moment Natasha, without drawing +breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set +everyone's ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the +others expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that +she must herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone +else would have been amazed at it at any other time. "Uncle" himself +twisted up the hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse's +back as if by that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with +an air of not wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode +off. The others all followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much +later were they able to regain their former affectation of +indifference. For a long time they continued to look at red Rugay who, +his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash, +walked along just behind "Uncle's" horse with the serene air of a +conqueror. + +"Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a question of +coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his appearance seem to +Nicholas to be saying. + +When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and began talking to +him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened, "Uncle" +deigned to speak to him. + +CHAPTER VII + +Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they +were so far from home that he accepted "Uncle's" offer that the +hunting party should spend the night in his little village of +Mikhaylovna. + +"And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That's it, +come on!" said "Uncle." "You see it's damp weather, and you could +rest, and the little countess could be driven home in a trap." + +"Uncle's" offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for +a trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and Petya to "Uncle's" house. + +Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the +front porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and +young, as well as children, popped out from the back entrance to +have a look at the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natasha- +a woman, a lady, and on horseback- raised the curiosity of the serfs +to such a degree that many of them came up to her, stared her in the +face, and unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as though +she were some prodigy on show and not a human being able to hear or +understand what was said about her. + +"Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt +dangles.... See, she's got a little hunting horn!" + +"Goodness gracious! See her knife?..." + +"Isn't she a Tartar!" + +"How is it you didn't go head over heels?" asked the boldest of all, +addressing Natasha directly. + +"Uncle" dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which +stood in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his +retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should +take themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made +to receive the guests and the visitors. + +The serfs all dispersed. "Uncle" lifted Natasha off her horse and +taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch. +The house, with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean- it +did not seem that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless- but +neither was it noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of +fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about. + +"Uncle" led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with +a folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a +round birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room +where there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of +Suvorov, of the host's father and mother, and of himself in military +uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. "Uncle" asked +his visitors to sit down and make themselves at home, and then went +out of the room. Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and +lay down on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth. +Leading from the study was a passage in which a partition with +ragged curtains could be seen. From behind this came women's +laughter and whispers. Natasha, Nicholas, and Petya took off their +wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell +asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces +glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one another +(now that the hunt was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no +longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority over +his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long +from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a +pretext ready to account for it. + +After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and +small top boots. And Natasha felt that this costume, the very one +she had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otradnoe, was just the +right thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat. +"Uncle" too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the +brother's and sister's laughter (it could never enter his head that +they might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the +merriment. + +"That's right, young countess, that's it, come on! I never saw +anyone like her!" said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem +and, with a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another +that had been cut short. "She's ridden all day like a man, and is as +fresh as ever! + +Soon after "Uncle's" reappearance the door was opened, evidently +from the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking +woman of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered +carrying a large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality +in her glance and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and, +with a pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional +stoutness, which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and +throw back her head, this woman (who was "Uncle's" housekeeper) trod +very lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her +plump white hands deftly took from it the bottles and various hors +d'oeuvres and dishes and arranged them on the table. When she had +finished, she stepped aside and stopped at the door with a smile on +her face. "Here I am. I am she! Now do you understand 'Uncle'?" her +expression said to Rostov. How could one help understanding? Not +only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood the meaning of his puckered +brow and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips +when Anisya Fedorovna entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb +wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with +buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead, +apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards +she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey, +and preserves made with sugar. + +All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna's housekeeping, +gathered and prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a +smack of Anisya Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness, +cleanliness, whiteness, and pleasant smiles. + +"Take this, little Lady-Countess!" she kept saying, as she offered +Natasha first one thing and then another. + +Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten +such buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets, +or such a chicken anywhere. Anisya Fedorovna left the room. + +After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and "Uncle" talked of +past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs, while Natasha sat +upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried +several times to wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only +muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so +lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings that she only +feared the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause, +such as often occurs when receiving friends for the first time in +one's own house, "Uncle," answering a thought that was in his +visitors' mind, said: + +"This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come. +That's it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?" + +"Uncle's" face was very significant and even handsome as he said +this. Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good he had heard about +him from his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province +"Uncle" had the reputation of being the most honorable and +disinterested of cranks. They called him in to decide family disputes, +chose him as executor, confided secrets to him, elected him to be a +justice and to other posts; but he always persistently refused +public appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields on +his bay gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown +garden in summer. + +"Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?" + +"I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That's it, come +on! I can't make head or tail of it. That's for you- I haven't +brains enough. Now, hunting is another matter- that's it, come on! +Open the door, there!" he shouted. "Why have you shut it?" + +The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen's room, as +they called the room for the hunt servants. + +There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the +door into the huntsmen's room, from which came the clear sounds of a +balalayka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was +playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for some time and +now went out into the passage to hear better. + +"That's Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balalayka. +I'm fond of it," said "Uncle." + +It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the +huntsmen's room when "Uncle" returned from the chase. "Uncle" was fond +of such music. + +"How good! Really very good!" said Nicholas with some +unintentional superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the +sounds pleased him very much. + +"Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's +tone. "Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!" + +Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had +seemed to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that +moment, seemed to her the acme of musical delight. + +"More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the +balalayka ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the +balalayka to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle" +sat listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air +was repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several +times and the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did +not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya +Fedorovna came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost. + +"You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely +like "Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added. + +"He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an +energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out- that's it, come on!- +ought to burst out." + +"Do you play then?" asked Natasha. + +"Uncle" did not answer, but smiled. + +"Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I +haven't touched it for a long time. That's it- come on! I've given +it up." + +Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her +errand and brought back the guitar. + +Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping +the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself +in his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard, +arching his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a +wink at Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous, +and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow +time, not My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the +street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to +thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the +same kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole +being. Anisya Fedorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her +face went laughing out of the room. "Uncle" continued to play +correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with a +changed and inspired expression at the spot where Anisya Fedorovna had +just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side of +his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker +and the time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers +over the strings, something seemed to snap. + +"Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!" shouted Natasha as soon as he +had finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. "Nicholas, +Nicholas!" she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: "What +is it moves me so?" + +Nicholas too was greatly pleased by "Uncle's" playing, and "Uncle" +played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna's smiling face +reappeared in the doorway and behind hers other faces... + +``` block + Fetching water clear and sweet, +Stop, dear maiden, I entreat- +``` + +played "Uncle" once more, running his fingers skillfully over the +strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders. + +"Go on, Uncle dear," Natasha wailed in an imploring tone as if her +life depended on it. + +"Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of +them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow +struck a naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance. + +"Now then, niece!" he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had +just struck a chord. + +Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to +face "Uncle," and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with +her shoulders and struck an attitude. + +Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree +French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that +spirit and obtained that manner which the pas de chale~{ The French shawl dance. }~ would, one +would have supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the +movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that +"Uncle" had expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and +smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that +had at first seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do +the right thing was at an end, and they were already admiring her. + +She did the right thing with such precision, such complete +precision, that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the +handkerchief she needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though +she laughed as she watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in +silks and velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to +understand all that was in Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother +and aunt, and in every Russian man and woman. + +"Well, little countess; that's it- come on!" cried "Uncle," with a +joyous laugh, having finished the dance. "Well done, niece! Now a fine +young fellow must be found as husband for you. That's it- come on!" + +"He's chosen already," said Nicholas smiling. + +"Oh?" said "Uncle" in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha, +who nodded her head with a happy smile. + +"And such a one!" she said. But as soon as she had said it a new +train of thoughts and feelings arose in her. "What did Nicholas' smile +mean when he said 'chosen already'? Is he glad of it or not? It is +as if he thought my Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our +gaiety. But he would understand it all. Where is he now?" she thought, +and her face suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second. +"Don't dare to think about it," she said to herself, and sat down +again smilingly beside "Uncle," begging him to play something more. + +"Uncle" played another song and a valse; then after a pause he +cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting song: + +``` block + As 'twas growing dark last night +Fell the snow so soft and light... +``` + +"Uncle" sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that +the whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune +comes of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which +exists only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the +unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily +good. Natasha was in ecstasies over "Uncle's" singing. She resolved to +give up learning the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked +"Uncle" for his guitar and at once found the chords of the song. + +After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been +sent to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count +and countess did not know where they were and were very anxious, +said one of the men. + +Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two +traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. "Uncle" wrapped +Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness. +He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be +crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent +huntsmen to ride in front with lanterns. + +"Good-by, dear niece," his voice called out of the darkness- not the +voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas +growing dark last night. + +In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a +cheerful smell of smoke. + +"What a darling Uncle is!" said Natasha, when they had come out onto +the highroad. + +"Yes," returned Nicholas. "You're not cold?" + +"No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!" answered +Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long +while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but +only heard them splashing through the unseen mud. + +What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly +caught and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did +they all find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were +nearing home she suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark +last night- the tune of which she had all the way been trying to get +and had at last caught. + +"Got it?" said Nicholas. + +"What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha. + +They were fond of asking one another that question. + +"I?" said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I +thought that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were +a man he would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then +for his manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?... +Well, and you?" + +"I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving +along and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows +where we are really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive +and suddenly find that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And +then I thought... No, nothing else." + +"I know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as +Natasha knew by the sound of his voice. + +"No," said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about +Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would +have liked "Uncle." "And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How +well Anisya carried herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her +spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. "And do you know," she +suddenly said, "I know that I shall never again be as happy and +tranquil as I am now." + +"Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought: +"How charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her +and never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive +about together! + +"What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha. + +"Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!" she said, +pointing to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the +moist velvety darkness of the night. + +CHAPTER VIII + +Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the +Nobility because it involved him in too much expense, but still his +affairs did not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their +parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard +suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near +Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the +count had been Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in +former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of +people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were +all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as +members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live +in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife, +Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady, +an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the +girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it +preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than +at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old habits +of life without which the count and countess could not conceive of +existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting +establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty +horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive +presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days; +there were still the count's games of whist and boston, at which- +spreading out his cards so that everybody could see them- he let +himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors, +who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a +most profitable source of income. + +The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to +believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every +step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work +carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her +loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was +not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was- that +(though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the +consciousness of his own and his children's ruin, and she tried to +find means of remedying the position. From her feminine point of +view she could see only one solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry +a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last hope and that if +Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she would have to +abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match was with +Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, a girl +the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now become a wealthy +heiress through the death of the last of her brothers. + +The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow +suggesting a marriage between their children and had received a +favorable answer from her. Karagina had replied that for her part +she was agreeable, and everything depend on her daughter's +inclination. She invited Nicholas to come to Moscow. + +Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son +that now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him +married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that +were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid +girl and tried to discover what he thought about marriage. + +At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to +Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his +mother's remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations +induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of +getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie +Karagina. + +"But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you +expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of +money?" he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question +and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness. + +"No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how +to justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your +happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an +untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry. + +"Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I +will give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I +would sacrifice anything for you- even my feelings." + +But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did +not want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a +sacrifice for him. + +"No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she +replied, wiping away her tears. + +"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to +sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could +speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he +thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should +certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can +always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to +himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that +feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else." + +Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the +conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and +sometimes with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment +between her son and the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself +for it, she could not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya, +often pulling her up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my +dear," and using the formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in +speaking to her. The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with +Sonya because that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, +so devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully, +unchangingly, and unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were +no grounds for finding fault with her. + +Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter +had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he +would have been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound +unexpectedly reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to +defer his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still +as much in love with her betrothed, found the same comfort in that +love, and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures +of life as before; but at the end of the fourth month of their +separation she began to have fits of depression which she could not +master. She felt sorry for herself: sorry that she was being wasted +all this time and of no use to anyone- while she felt herself so +capable of loving and being loved. + +Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home. + +CHAPTER IX + +Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and +wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and +the new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities, +though the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine +by day, and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some +special celebration of the season. + +On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the +inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest +time of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that +morning, was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was +resting in his study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round +table, copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playing +patience. Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the +window with two old ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to +Sonya, glanced at what she was doing, and then went up to her mother +and stood without speaking. + +"Why are you wandering about like an outcast?" asked her mother. +"What do you want?" + +"Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!" said Natasha, +with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile. + +The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter. + +"Don't look at me, Mamma! Don't look; I shall cry directly." + +"Sit down with me a little," said the countess. + +"Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?" + +Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned +quickly to hide them and left the room. + +She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and +then went into the maids' room. There an old maidservant was grumbling +at a young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold +from the serfs' quarters. + +"Stop playing- there's a time for everything," said the old woman. + +"Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go." + +Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went +to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing +cards. They broke off and rose as she entered. + +"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha. + +"Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the +yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some +oats." + +"Just a few oats?" said Misha, cheerfully and readily. + +"Go, go quickly," the old man urged him. + +"And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk." + +On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a +samovar, though it was not at all the time for tea. + +Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house. +Natasha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order +and asked whether the samovar was really wanted. + +"Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown at +Natasha. + +No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble +as Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to +send them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of +them would get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no +one's orders so readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where can +I go?" thought she, as she went slowly along the passage. + +"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked +the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket. + +"Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon. + +"O Lord, O Lord, it's always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am +I to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly +upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story. + +Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which +were plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were +discussing whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha +sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, +and then got up again. + +"The island of Madagascar," she said, "Ma-da-gas-car," she repeated, +articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame +Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room. + +Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on +him he was preparing fireworks to let off that night. + +"Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs." + +Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her +arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her. + +"No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off +his back she went downstairs. + +Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made +sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was +dull, Natasha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, +sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her +fingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she +recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew. +What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for other +listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences +arose from those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes +fixed on a streak of light escaping from the pantry door and +listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding on +the past. + +Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced +at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her +that she remembered the light failing through that crack once before +and Sonya passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the +same," thought Natasha. + +"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string. + +"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and +listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of +being wrong. + +"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling +timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in +just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her." + +"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen! " and Natasha +sang the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where +were you going?" she asked. + +"To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design." + +"You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And +where's Nicholas?" + +"Asleep, I think." + +"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come +and sing." + +She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened +before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all +regretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time +when she was with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes. + +"Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be! +And, worst of all, I am growing old- that's the thing! There won't +then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will +come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing +room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose, +put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room. + +All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were +already at the tea table. The servants stood round the table- but +Prince Andrew was not there and life was going on as before. + +"Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter. +"Well, sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glanced +round as if looking for something. + +"Mamma!" she muttered, "give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly, +quickly!" and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs. + +She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between +the elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, my +God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing +in the same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of +repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they +were always the same. + +After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to +their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began. + +CHAPTER X + +Does it ever happen to you," said Natasha to her brother, when +they settled down in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you +to feel as if there were nothing more to come- nothing; that +everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?" + +"I should think so!" he replied. "I have felt like that when +everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has +come into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must +all die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where +there was music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..." + +"Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!" Natasha interrupted him. "When I +was quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I +was punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat +sobbing in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and +sorry for everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was +innocent- that was the chief thing," said Natasha. "Do you remember?" + +"I remember," answered Nicholas. "I remember that I came to you +afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt +ashamed to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and +wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?" + +"And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, "how +once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us +into the study- that was in the old house- and it was dark- we went in +and suddenly there stood..." + +"A Negro," chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. "Of course +I remember. Even now I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or +if we only dreamed it or were told about him." + +"He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and +looked at us..." + +"Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nicholas. + +"Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly. + +"You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro," said +Natasha, "and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you +remember!" + +"Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them." + +"How strange it is! It's as if it were a dream! I like that." + +"And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom, +and suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was +that real or not? Do you remember what fun it was?" + +"Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun +in the porch?" + +So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not +the sad memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones- those +impressions of one's most distant past in which dreams and realities +blend- and they laughed with quiet enjoyment. + +Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they +shared the same reminiscences. + +Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she +recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced. +She simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it. + +She only really took part when they recalled Sonya's first +arrival. She told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because +he had on a corded jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too, +would be sewn up with cords. + +"And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a +cabbage," said Natasha, and I remember that I dared not disbelieve +it then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable." + +While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other +door of the sitting room. + +"They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper. + +"It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied +Natasha. + +In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and +went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its +cloth covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound. + +"Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field," came the +old countess' voice from the drawing room. + +Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya, +remarked: "How quiet you young people are!" + +"Yes, we're philosophizing," said Natasha, glancing round for a +moment and then continuing the conversation. They were now +discussing dreams. + +Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the +table, took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself +quietly in her former place. It was dark in the room especially +where they were sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the +silvery light of the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished +the piece but still sat softly running his fingers over the strings, +evidently uncertain whether to stop or to play something else. + +"Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to +Nicholas and Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling +memories, one at last begins to remember what happened before one +was in the world..." + +"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well, +and remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have +lived in animals, and will go back into animals again." + +"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still +in a whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we +were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we +remember...." + +"May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat +down by them. + +"If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas. +"No, that can't be!" + +"Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was +before?" Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal- well +then, if I shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a +whole eternity." + +"Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked +Dimmler, who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending +smile but now spoke as quietly and seriously as they. + +"Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now +today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, +and the day before..." + +"Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the +countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?" + +"Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same +she rose. + +None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break +off their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but +Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as +usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the +resonance was best, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song. + +She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had +sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The +count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her +and, like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in +his talk while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped, +while Mitenka stood in front of him also listening and smiling. +Nicholas did not take his eyes off his sister and drew breath in +time with her. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the immense +difference there was between herself and her friend, and how +impossible it was for her to be anything like as bewitching as her +cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad smile and with +tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought of +Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural +and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha and Prince Andrew. + +Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with +closed eyes. + +"Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she +has nothing to learn- what softness, tenderness, and strength...." + +"Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!" said the countess, +not realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her +that Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she +would not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing, +fourteen-year-old Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some +mummers had arrived. + +Natasha stopped abruptly. + +"Idiot!" she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair, +threw herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop +for a long time. + +"It's nothing, Mamma, really it's nothing; only Petya startled +me," she said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs +still choked her. + +The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks, +innkeepers, and ladies- frightening and funny- bringing in with them +the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first +timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed +into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily +and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas +games. The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their +costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom, +smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had +disappeared. + +Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the +ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt- this was Nicholas. A Turkish +girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a +Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows. + +After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from +those who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided +that their costumes were so good that they ought to be shown +elsewhere. + +Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to +take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them +about a dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's." + +"No, why disturb the old fellow?" said the countess. "Besides, you +wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the +Melyukovs'" + +Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and +governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs. + +"That's right, my dear," chimed in the old count, thoroughly +aroused. "I'll dress up at once and go with them. I'll make Pashette +open her eyes." + +But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad +leg all these last days. It was decided that the count must not go, +but that if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the +young ladies might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and +shy, more urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse. + +Sonya's costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows +were extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very +handsome, and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with +her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be +decided, and in her male attire she seemed quite a different person. +Louisa Ivanovna consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka +sleighs with large and small bells, their runners squeaking and +whistling over the frozen snow, drove up to the porch. + +Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing +from one to another, grew stronger and stronger and reached its climax +when they all came out into the frost and got into the sleighs, +talking, calling to one another, laughing, and shouting. + +Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was +the old count's with a trotter from the Orlov stud as shaft horse, the +fourth was Nicholas' own with a short shaggy black shaft horse. +Nicholas, in his old lady's dress over which he had belted his +hussar overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand. + +It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the +metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked +round in alarm at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof. + +Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas' +sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the +rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs. + +"You go ahead, Zakhar!" shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman, +wishing for a chance to race past him. + +The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward, +squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its +deep-toned bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts +of the middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered +like sugar, and threw it up. + +Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the +others moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove +at a steady trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the +garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and +hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the +fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out +before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish +shadows. Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the +snow of the road, and each of the other sleighs jolted in the same +way, and rudely breaking the frost-bound stillness, the troykas +began to speed along the road, one after the other. + +"A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice +through the frost-bound air. + +"How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice. + +Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see her face +closer. Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches +peeped up at him from her sable furs- so close and yet so distant- +in the moonlight. + +"That used to be Sonya," thought he, and looked at her closer and +smiled. + +"What is it, Nicholas?" + +"Nothing," said he and turned again to the horses. + +When they came out onto the beaten highroad- polished by sleigh +runners and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were +visible in the moonlight- the horses began to tug at the reins of +their own accord and increased their pace. The near side horse, +arching his head and breaking into a short canter, tugged at his +traces. The shaft horse swayed from side to side, moving his ears as +if asking: "Isn't it time to begin now?" In front, already far ahead +the deep bell of the sleigh ringing farther and farther off, the black +horses driven by Zakhar could be clearly seen against the white +snow. From that sleigh one could hear the shouts, laughter, and voices +of the mummers. + +"Gee up, my darlings!" shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one +side and flourishing the whip. + +It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given +by the side horses who pulled harder- ever increasing their gallop- +that one noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back. +With screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft +horses to gallop- the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung +steadily beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of +slackening pace and ready to put on speed when required. + +Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and +coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river. + +"Where are we?" thought he. "It's the Kosoy meadow, I suppose. But +no- this is something new I've never seen before. This isn't the Kosoy +meadow nor the Demkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is +something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be..." And shouting +to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh. + +Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which was already +covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows. + +Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching out his +arms, clucked his tongue and let his horses go. + +"Now, look out, master!" he cried. + +Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the +feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead. +Zakhar, while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with +the reins. + +"No you won't, master!" he shouted. + +Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar. The +horses showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh- +beside them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused +glimpses of swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they +were passing. The whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the +voices of girls shrieking were heard from different sides. + +Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were +still surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled +with stars. + +"Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the +left?" thought Nicholas. "Are we getting to the Melyukovs'? Is this +Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows +what is happening to us- but it is very strange and pleasant +whatever it is." And he looked round in the sleigh. + +"Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!" said one of the +strange, pretty, unfamiliar people- the one with fine eyebrows and +mustache. + +"I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was +Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the +mustache I don't know, but I love her." + +"Aren't you cold?" he asked. + +They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh +behind shouted something- probably something funny- but they could not +make out what he said. + +"Yes, yes!" some voices answered, laughing. + +"But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a +glitter of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver +roofs of fairy buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And +if this is really Melyukovka, it is still stranger that we drove +heaven knows where and have come to Melyukovka," thought Nicholas. + +It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with merry faces +came running, out to the porch carrying candles. + +"Who is it?" asked someone in the porch. + +"The mummers from the count's. I know by the horses," replied some +voices. + +CHAPTER XI + +Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman +wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress, +surrounded by her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling +dull. They were quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at +the shadows the wax figures would throw on the wall, when they heard +the steps and voices of new arrivals in the vestibule. + +Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their +throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule, +came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The +clown- Dimmler- and the lady- Nicholas- started a dance. Surrounded by +the screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and +disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged +themselves about the room. + +"Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See whom she +looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler- isn't +he good! I didn't know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there's a +Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that? +Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanya- clear away the tables! +And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar! +Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can't look at him..." different +voices were saying. + +Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into +the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male +garments were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish +arms from behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young +Melyukovs joined the mummers. + +Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the +visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs, +went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles, +peering into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to +recognize any of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she +failed to recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters, +or her late husband's, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put +on. + +"And who is is this?" she asked her governess, peering into the face +of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. "I suppose it is one +of the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve +in?" she asked Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she +ordered the butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden +by his law." + +Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by +the dancers, who- having decided once for all that being disguised, no +one would recognize them- were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna +hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook +with irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter. + +"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said. + +After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna +made the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a +string, and a silver ruble were fetched and they all played games +together. + +In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The +corked eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring, +flushed, and merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the +mummers, admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly +how they suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for +having entertained her so well. The visitors were invited to supper in +the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to them in the +ballroom. + +"Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!" +said an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper. + +"Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl. + +"You wouldn't go, it takes courage..." + +"I'll go," said Sonya. + +"Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the second Melyukov +girl. + +"Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once went out, took a +cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After +sitting a while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh +drives up with harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in, +just in the shape of a man, like an officer- comes in and sits down to +table with her." + +"Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror. + +"Yes? And how... did he speak?" + +"Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began +persuading her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow, +but she got frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her +hands. Then he caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just +then..." + +"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna. + +"Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said her daughter. + +"And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya. + +"Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on +what you hear; hammering and knocking- that's bad; but a sound of +shifting grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too." + +"Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn." + +Pelageya Danilovna smiled. + +"Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none of you would go?" + +"Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go," said Sonya. + +"Well, why not, if you're not afraid?" + +"Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya. + +Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game +or talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side, and gazed at +her with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today, +thanks to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to +know her. And really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated, +and prettier than Nicholas had ever seen her before. + +"So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!" he thought +gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous +smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before. + +"I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May I go at once?" She +got up. + +They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and +listen, and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her +head and shoulders and glanced at Nicholas. + +"What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And what have I been +thinking of till now?" + +Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went +hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of +people really had made the house stuffy. + +Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but +even brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow +sparkled with so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the +sky and the real stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary, +while the earth was gay. + +"I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?" thought +Nicholas. and running out from the porch he went round the corner of +the house and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya +would pass that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood +and across and along them a network of shadows from the bare old +lime trees fell on the snow and on the path. This path led to the +barn. The log walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked +as if hewn out of some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A +tree in the garden snapped with the frost, and then all was again +perfectly silent. His bosom seemed to inhale not air but the +strength of eternal youth and gladness. + +From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the +bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he +heard the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight, straight, +along the path, Miss. Only, don't look back." + +"I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along the path toward +Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sonya's feet in her +thin shoes. + +Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of +paces away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas +she had known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman's dress, +with tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly +toward him. + +"Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her +face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the +cloak that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and +kissed her on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt +cork. Sonya kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little +hands pressed them to his cheeks. + +"Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They ran to the barn and +then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back +porch. + +CHAPTER XII + +When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna's, Natasha, who +always saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss +should go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and +the maids. + +On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing +and kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sonya's +face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former +and his present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be parted +again. He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new +Sonya, and being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the +sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast +and, looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling +sky, felt himself again in fairyland. + +"Sonya, is it well with thee?" he asked from time to time. + +"Yes!" she replied. "And with thee?" + +When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and +ran for a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing. + +"Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my +mind about Sonya?" + +"Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with +joy. + +"Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!... +Natasha- are you glad?" + +"I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I +did not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart +she has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be +happy while Sonya was not," continued Natasha. "Now I am so glad! +Well, run back to her." + +"No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!" cried Nicholas, peering +into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, +and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before. +"Natasha, it's magical, isn't it?" + +"Yes," she replied. "You have done splendidly." + +"Had I seen her before as she is now," thought Nicholas, "I should +long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me, +and all would have been well." + +"So you are glad and I have done right?" + +"Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it. +Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing! +I nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of +Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her." + +"Then it's all right?" said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the +expression of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then +he jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his +sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and +beaming eyes looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting +there, and that Circassian was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his +future happy and loving wife. + +When they reached home and had told their mother how they had +spent the evening at the Melyukovs', the girls went to their +bedroom. When they had undressed, but without washing off the cork +mustaches, they sat a long time talking of their happiness. They +talked of how they would live when they were married, how their +husbands would be friends, and how happy they would be. On Natasha's +table stood two looking glasses which Dunyasha had prepared +beforehand. + +"Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too +good!" said Natasha, rising and going to the looking glasses. + +"Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you'll see him," said Sonya. + +Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking +glasses, and sat down. + +"I see someone with a mustache," said Natasha, seeing her own face. + +"You mustn't laugh, Miss," said Dunyasha. + +With Sonya's help and the maid's, Natasha got the glass she held +into the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious +expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the +receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting +(from tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, +in that last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was +to take the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin, +she saw nothing. She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the +looking glasses. + +"Why is it others see things and I don't?" she said. "You sit down +now, Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I +feel so frightened!" + +Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began +looking. + +"Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something," whispered Dunyasha; +"while you do nothing but laugh." + +Sonya heard this and Natasha's whisper: + +"I know she will. She saw something last year." + +For about three minutes all were silent. + +"Of course she will!" whispered Natasha, but did not finish... +suddenly Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her +eyes with her hand. + +"Oh, Natasha!" she cried. + +"Did you see? Did you? What was it?" exclaimed Natasha, holding up +the looking glass. + +Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to +get up when she heard Natasha say, "Of course she will!" She did not +wish to disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to +sit still. She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped +her when she covered her eyes. + +"You saw him?" urged Natasha, seizing her hand. + +"Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him," Sonya could not help saying, +not yet knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew. + +"But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who +can tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sonya's mind. + +"Yes, I saw him," she said. + +"How? Standing or lying?" + +"No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying +down." + +"Andrew lying? Is he ill?" asked Natasha, her frightened eyes +fixed on her friend. + +"No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he +turned to me." And when saying this she herself fancied she had really +seen what she described. + +"Well, and then, Sonya?..." + +"After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and +red..." + +"Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how +afraid I am for him and for myself and about everything!..." Natasha +began, and without replying to Sonya's words of comfort she got into +bed, and long after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless, +gazing at the moonlight through the frosty windowpanes. + +CHAPTER XIII + +Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his +love for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who +had long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this +declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that +he might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father +would give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the +first time, felt that his mother was displeased with him and that, +despite her love for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without +looking at her son, she sent for her husband and, when he came, +tried briefly and coldly to inform him of the facts, in her son's +presence, but unable to restrain herself she burst into tears of +vexation and left the room. The old count began irresolutely to +admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his purpose. Nicholas replied +that he could not go back on his word, and his father, sighing and +evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and went in to the +countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count was always +conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the family +fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to marry +an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he +was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had +not been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya could +have been wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mitenka and +his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of the +family finances. + +The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son +again, but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a +cruelty neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to +catch Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with +downcast eyes to the countess' cruel words, without understanding what +was required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her +benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this +case she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She +could not help loving the countess and the whole Rostov family, but +neither could she help loving Nicholas and knowing that his +happiness depended on that love. She was silent and sad and did not +reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and went to +have an explanation with his mother. He first implored her to +forgive him and Sonya and consent to their marriage, then he +threatened that if she molested Sonya he would at once marry her +secretly. + +The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her +before, replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying +without his father's consent, and he could do the same, but that she +would never receive that intriguer as her daughter. + +Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told +his mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his +feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time.... +But he had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression +of his face caused his mother to await with terror, and which would +perhaps have forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had +not time to say it, for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the +room from the door at which she had been listening. + +"Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I +tell you!..." she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice. + +"Mamma darling, it's not at all so... my poor, sweet darling," she +said to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of a +rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and +excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way. + +"Nicholas, I'll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling," +said Natasha. + +Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which +she was aiming. + +The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's +breast, while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room. + +Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded +that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not +be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything +without his parents' knowledge. + +Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment, +to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious, +sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him, +passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his +regiment. + +After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more +depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation. + +Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more +so on account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting +toward her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of +his affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house +and estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they +had to go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay +their departure from day to day. + +Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her +betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and +impatient every day. The thought that her best days, which she would +have employed in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no +advantage to anyone, tormented her incessantly. His letters for the +most part irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived +only in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new +places and new people that interested him. The more interesting his +letters were the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from +giving her any comfort, seemed to her a wearisome and artificial +obligation. She could not write, because she could not conceive the +possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part +of what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him +formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no +importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the countess +corrected her mistakes in spelling. + +There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was +impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's +trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince +Andrew was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending +the winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived. + +So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya +and Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January. + +BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12 + +CHAPTER I + +After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any +apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as +before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by +his benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner +man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardor- all the zest +of such a life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and +the death of Joseph Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost +at the same time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a +brilliant wife who now enjoyed the favors of a very important +personage, acquaintance with all Petersburg, and his court service +with its dull formalities. And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre +unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping a diary, avoided the company +of the Brothers, began going to the Club again, drank a great deal, +and came once more in touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a +life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary to speak severely +to him about it. Pierre felt that she right, and to avoid compromising +her went away to Moscow. + +In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded +and fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as +soon as, driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with +innumerable tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons, +the Kremlin Square with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh +drivers and hovels of the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who +desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days +leisurely; when he saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls, +and the English Club, he felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In +Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing +gown. + +Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received +Pierre like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready +awaiting him. For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest, +most intellectual, merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a +heedless, genial nobleman of the old Russian type. His purse was +always empty because it was open to everyone. + +Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent +societies, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees, +Freemasons, churches, and books- no one and nothing met with a refusal +from him, and had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large +sums from him and taken him under their protection, he would have +given everything away. There was never a dinner or soiree at the +Club without him. As soon as he sank into his place on the sofa +after two bottles of Margaux he was surrounded, and talking, +disputing, and joking began. When there were quarrels, his kindly +smile and well-timed jests reconciled the antagonists. The Masonic +dinners were dull and dreary when he was not there. + +When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly +smile, yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive +off somewhere with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the +young men. At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies, +married and unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of +them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il +est charmant; il n'a pas de sexe,"~{ "He is charming; he has no sex." }~ they said of him. + +Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there +were hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow. + +How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first +arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him +to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally +predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in +his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one +time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then +himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a +strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the +possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the +sinful human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of +perfection? Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated +his serfs? + +But instead of all that- here he was, the wealthy husband of an +unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and +drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the +government a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal +favorite in Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile +himself to the idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow +gentlemen-in-waiting he had so despised seven years before. + +Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only +living this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought +of how many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club +temporarily, with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it +when not a single tooth or hair remained. + +In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to +him that he was quite different and distinct from those other +retired gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were +empty, stupid, contented fellows, satisfied with their position, +"while I am still discontented and want to do something for mankind. +But perhaps all these comrades of mine struggled just like me and +sought something new, a path in life of their own, and like me were +brought by force of circumstances, society, and race- by that +elemental force against which man is powerless- to the condition I +am in," said he to himself in moments of humility; and after living +some time in Moscow he no longer despised, but began to grow fond +of, to respect, and to pity his comrades in destiny, as he pitied +himself. + +Pierre longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust +with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such +acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment. +"What for? Why? What is going on in the world?" he would ask himself +in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to +reflect anew on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by +experience that there were no answers to these questions he made haste +to turn away from them, and took up a book, or hurried of to the +Club or to Apollon Nikolaevich's, to exchange the gossip of the town. + +"Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own body and is +one of the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded +by people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay +homage to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he +was great, but now that he has become a wretched comedian the +Emperor Francis wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal +marriage. The Spaniards, through the Catholic clergy, offer praise +to God for their victory over the French on the fourteenth of June, +and the French, also through the Catholic clergy, offer praise because +on that same fourteenth of June they defeated the Spaniards. My +brother Masons swear by the blood that they are ready to sacrifice +everything for their neighbor, but they do not give a ruble each to +the collections for the poor, and they intrigue, the Astraea Lodge +against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about an authentic Scotch carpet +and a charter that nobody needs, and the meaning of which the very man +who wrote it does not understand. We all profess the Christian law +of forgiveness of injuries and love of our neighbors, the law in honor +of which we have built in Moscow forty times forty churches- but +yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister of that +same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a cross +to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and the whole of +this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed as he was to +it, astonished him each time as if it were something new. "I +understand the deception and confusion," he thought, "but how am I +to tell them all that I see? I have tried, and have always found +that they too in the depths of their souls understand it as I do, +and only try not to see it. So it appears that it must be so! But I- +what is to become of me?" thought he. He had the unfortunate +capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing +in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and +falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it. +Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and +deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil +and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity. +Yet he had to live and to find occupation. It was too dreadful to be +under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned +himself to any distraction in order to forget them. He frequented +every kind of society, drank much, bought pictures, engaged in +building, and above all- read. + +He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home, +while his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book +and began to read. From reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping +to gossip in drawing rooms of the Club, from gossip to carousals and +women; from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking +became more and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though the +doctors warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for +him, he drank a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having +poured several glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he +felt a pleasant warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his +fellows, and a readiness to respond superficially to every idea +without probing it deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did +he feel dimly that the terribly tangled skein of life which previously +had terrified him was not as dreadful as he had thought. He was always +conscious of some aspect of that skein, as with a buzzing in his +head after dinner or supper he chatted or listened to conversation +or read. But under the influence of wine he said to himself: "It +doesn't matter. I'll get it unraveled. I have a solution ready, but +have no time now- I'll think it all out later on!" But the later on +never came. + +In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions +appeared as insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre hastily +picked up a book, and if anyone came to see him he was glad. + +Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when +entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try +hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To +Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: +some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in +women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in +sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is +trivial, and nothing is important, it's all the same- only to save +oneself from it as best one can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it, +that dreadful it!" + +CHAPTER II + +At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski and his +daughter moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor +Alexander's regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French +tendency prevailed there, and this, together with his past and his +intellect and his originality, at once made Prince Nicholas +Bolkonski an object of particular respect to the Moscovites and the +center of the Moscow opposition to the government. + +The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of +senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent +events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which +he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of +this the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of +respectful veneration- especially of an evening when he came in to tea +in his old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone, +told his abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and +scathing criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned +house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered +footmen, and the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past +century) with his gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who +were reverently devoted to him presented a majestic and agreeable +spectacle. But the visitors did not reflect that besides the couple of +hours during which they saw their host, there were also twenty-two +hours in the day during which the private and intimate life of the +house continued. + +Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary. +There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures- talks with +the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills- and +she had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not +go out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her +go anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going +out himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening +parties. She had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She +saw the coldness and malevolence with which the old prince received +and dismissed the young men, possible suitors, who sometimes +appeared at their house. She had no friends: during this visit to +Moscow she had been disappointed in the two who had been nearest to +her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom she had never been able to be +quite frank, had now become unpleasant to her, and for various reasons +Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with whom she had corresponded for +the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to +her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the death of her brothers +had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow, was in the full +whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young men who, she +fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth. Julie was at +that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels that her last +chance of marrying has come and that her fate must be decided now or +never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with a mournful smile +that she now had no one to write to, since Julie- whose presence +gave her no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like the old +emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his +evenings for years, she regretted Julie's presence and having no one +to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no one to talk to, no one +to whom to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just +then. The time for Prince Andrew's return and marriage was +approaching, but his request to her to prepare his father for it had +not been carried out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were quite +hopeless, for at every mention of the young Countess Rostova the old +prince (who apart from that was usually in a bad temper) lost +control of himself. Another lately added sorrow arose from the lessons +she gave her six year-old nephew. To her consternation she detected in +herself in relation to little Nicholas some symptoms of her father's +irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get +irritable when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in +hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to +pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child- who was +already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry- that at +his slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated, +raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in +the corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself begin to +cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas, following her +example, would sob, and without permission would leave his corner, +come to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and comfort her. But +what distressed the princess most of all was her father's +irritability, which was always directed against her and had of late +amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to the +ground all night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water, +it would never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but +this loving despot- the more cruel because he loved her and for that +reason tormented himself and her- knew how not merely to hurt and +humiliate her deliberately, but to show her that she was always to +blame for everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that +tormented Princess Mary more than anything else; this was his +ever-increasing intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at +the first moment of receiving the news of his son's intentions had +occurred to him in jest- that if Andrew got married he himself would +marry Bourienne- had evidently pleased him, and latterly he had +persistently, and as it seemed to Princess Mary merely to offend +her, shown special endearments to the companion and expressed his +dissatisfaction with his daughter by demonstrations of love of +Bourienne. + +One day in Moscow in Princess Mary's presence (she thought her +father did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed +Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her +affectionately. Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few +minutes later Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary's room +smiling and making cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess +Mary hastily wiped away her tears, went resolutely up to +Mademoiselle Bourienne, and evidently unconscious of what she was +doing began shouting in angry haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice +breaking: "It's horrible, vile, inhuman, to take advantage of the +weakness..." She did not finish. "Leave my room," she exclaimed, and +burst into sobs. + +Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she +noticed that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne +should be served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee +and from habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew +furious, threw his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to +have him conscripted for the army. + +"He doesn't obey... I said it twice... and he doesn't obey! She is +the first person in this house; she's my best friend," cried the +prince. "And if you allow yourself," he screamed in a fury, addressing +Princess Mary for the first time, "to forget yourself again before her +as you dared to do yesterday, I will show you who is master in this +house. Go! Don't let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!" + +Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne's pardon, and also her +father's pardon for herself and for Philip the footman, who had begged +for her intervention. + +At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice gathered in +her soul. And suddenly that father whom she had judged would look +for his spectacles in her presence, fumbling near them and not +seeing them, or would forget something that had just occurred, or take +a false step with his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had +noticed his feebleness, or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no +visitors to excite him would suddenly fall asleep, letting his +napkin drop and his shaking head sink over his plate. "He is old and +feeble, and I dare to condemn him!" she thought at such moments, +with a feeling of revulsion against herself. + +CHAPTER III + +In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor- Metivier- who +had rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome, +amiable as Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an +extraordinarily clever doctor. He was received in the best houses +not merely as a doctor, but as an equal. + +Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on +Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice had allowed this doctor to visit him +and had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about +twice a week. + +On December 6- St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day- all +Moscow came to the prince's front door but he gave orders to admit +no one and to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom +he gave to Princess Mary. + +Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered +it proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne,~{ To force the guard. }~ as he +told Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on +that morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods. +He had been going about the house all the morning finding fault with +everyone and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not +to be understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet +absorbed querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage, +and she went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and +loaded gun and awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor's +arrival the morning had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor, +Princess Mary sat down with a book in the drawing room near the door +through which she could hear all that passed in the study. + +At first she heard only Metivier's voice, then her father's, then +both voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung +open, and on the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the +terrified Metivier with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his +dressing gown and fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils +of his eyes rolled downwards. + +"You don't understand?" shouted the prince, "but I do! French spy, +slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you..." + +Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne +who at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room. + +"The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head. +Keep calm, I will call again tomorrow," said Metivier; and putting his +fingers to his lips he hastened away. + +Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry: +"Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment's peace in my +own house!" + +After Metivier's departure the old prince called his daughter in, +and the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a +spy had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a +list, and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was +that scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he +said, he could not have a moment's peace and could not die quietly. + +"No, ma'am! We must part, we must part! Understand that, +understand it! I cannot endure any more," he said, and left the +room. Then, as if afraid she might find some means of consolation, +he returned and trying to appear calm added: "And don't imagine I have +said this in a moment of anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and +it will be carried out- we must part; so find some place for +yourself...." But he could not restrain himself and with the virulence +of which only one who loves is capable, evidently suffering himself, +he shook his fists at her and screamed: + +"If only some fool would marry her!" Then he slammed the door, +sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study. + +At two o'clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner. + +These guests- the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin with +his nephew, General Chatrov an old war comrade of the prince's, and of +the younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy- awaited the prince +in the drawing room. + +Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been +anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, and had +contrived to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his +case made an exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his +house. + +The prince's house did not belong to what is known as fashionable +society, but his little circle- though not much talked about in +town- was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other. +Boris had realized this the week before when the commander in chief in +his presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas' Day, and +Rostopchin had replied that he could not come: + +"On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince +Nicholas Bolkonski." + +"Oh, yes, yes!" replied the commander in chief. "How is he?..." + +The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty +old-fashioned drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn +gathering of a court of justice. All were silent or talked in low +tones. Prince Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary +seemed even quieter and more diffident than usual. The guests were +reluctant to address her, feeling that she was in no mood for their +conversation. Count Rostopchin alone kept the conversation going, +now relating the latest town news, and now the latest political +gossip. + +Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in the +conversation. Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding judge +receives a report, only now and then, silently or by a brief word, +showing that he took heed of what was being reported to him. The +tone of the conversation was such as indicated that no one approved of +what was being done in the political world. Incidents were related +evidently confirming the opinion that everything was going from bad to +worse, but whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker +always stopped, or was stopped, at the point beyond which his +criticism might touch the sovereign himself. + +At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon's +seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and the Russian Note, +hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts. + +"Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel," said +Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times +before. "One only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the +crowned heads. Now the Pope's turn has come and Bonaparte doesn't +scruple to depose the head of the Catholic Church- yet all keep +silent! Our sovereign alone has protested against the seizure of the +Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and even..." Count Rostopchin paused, +feeling that he had reached the limit beyond which censure was +impossible. + +"Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of +Oldenburg," said Prince Bolkonski. "He shifts the Dukes about as I +might move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan +estates." + +"The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength +of character and resignation," remarked Boris, joining in +respectfully. + +He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the +honor of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkonski glanced at +the young man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his +mind, evidently considering him too young. + +"I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was +surprised how badly the Note was worded," remarked Count Rostopchin in +the casual tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him. + +Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not +understanding why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the +Note. + +"Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded," he asked, "so +long as its substance is forcible?" + +"My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should +be easy to have a good style," returned Count Rostopchin. + +Pierre now understood the count's dissatisfaction with the wording +of the Note. + +"One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up," +remarked the old prince. "There in Petersburg they are always writing- +not notes only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written a +whole volume of laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!" +and he laughed unnaturally. + +There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general +cleared his throat to draw attention. + +"Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The +figure cut by the new French ambassador." + +"Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His +Majesty's presence." + +"His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the +march past," continued the general, "and it seems the ambassador +took no notice and allowed himself to reply that: 'We in France pay no +attention to such trifles!' The Emperor did not condescend to reply. +At the next review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to +address him." + +All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it +was impossible to pass any judgment. + +"Impudent fellows!" said the prince. "You know Metivier? I turned +him out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him spite +of my request that they should let no one in," he went on, glancing +angrily at his daughter. + +And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and +the reasons that convinced him that Metivier was a spy. Though these +reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder. + +After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to +congratulate the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him. + +He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled, +clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told +her that he had not forgotten the morning's talk, that his decision +remained in force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his +speaking of it to her now. + +When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the +old men sat together. + +Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the +impending war. + +He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long +as we sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into +European affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. +"We ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political +interests are all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only +thing is to have an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will +never dare to cross the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!" + +"How can we fight the French, Prince?" said Count Rostopchin. "Can +we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our +youths, look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our +Kingdom of Heaven." + +He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone. + +"French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you +turned Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a +Frenchman and a scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their +knees. I went to a party last night, and there out of five ladies +three were Roman Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing +woolwork on Sundays. And they themselves sit there nearly naked, +like the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when +one looks at our young people, Prince, one would like to take Peter +the Great's old cudgel out of the museum and belabor them in the +Russian way till all the nonsense jumps out of them." + +All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with a smile +and wagged his head approvingly. + +"Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!" said Rostopchin, +getting up with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to +the prince. + +"Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of +hearing him!" said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and +offering his cheek to be kissed. + +Following Rostopchin's example the others also rose. + +CHAPTER IV + +Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men's talk and +faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only +wondered whether the guests had all observed her father's hostile +attitude toward her. She did not even notice the special attentions +and amiabilities shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who +was visiting them for the third time already. + +Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to +Pierre, who hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of +the guests to approach her after the old prince had gone out and +they were left alone in the drawing room. + +"May I stay a little longer?" he said, letting his stout body sink +into an armchair beside her. + +"Oh yes," she answered. "You noticed nothing?" her look asked. + +Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight +before him and smiled quietly. + +"Have you known that young man long, Princess?" he asked. + +"Who?" + +"Drubetskoy." + +"No, not long..." + +"Do you like him?" + +"Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?" said +Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning's conversation with +her father. + +"Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from +Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an +heiress." + +"You have observed that?" said Princess Mary. + +"Yes," returned Pierre with a smile, "and this young man now manages +matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I +can read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay +siege to- you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive +to her." + +"He visits them?" + +"Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?" said +Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good +humored raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his +diary. + +"No," replied Princess Mary. + +"To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is +very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina," said Pierre. + +"Really?" asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre's kindly face and +still thinking of her own sorrow. "It would be a relief," thought she, +"if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should +like to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would +be a relief. He would give me advice." + +"Would you marry him?" + +"Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!" +she cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice. +"Ah, how bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that..." +she went on in a trembling voice, "that you can do nothing for him but +grieve him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only +one thing left- to go away, but where could I go?" + +"What is wrong? What is it, Princess?" + +But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst +into tears. + +"I don't know what is the matter with me today. Don't take any +notice- forget what I have said!" + +Pierre's gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the +princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him; +but she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said, +that she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no +trouble except the one he knew of- that Prince Andrew's marriage +threatened to cause a rupture between father and son. + +"Have you any news of the Rostovs?" she asked, to change the +subject. "I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting +Andrew any day. I should like them to meet here." + +"And how does he now regard the matter?" asked Pierre, referring +to the old prince. + +Princess Mary shook her head. + +"What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The +thing is impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first +moments. I wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her. +You have known them a long time," said Princess Mary. "Tell me +honestly the whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you +think of her?- The real truth, because you know Andrew is risking so +much doing this against his father's will that I should like to +know..." + +An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and +repeated requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on +the princess' part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that +he should disapprove of Andrew's choice; but in reply he said what +he felt rather than what he thought. + +"I don't know how to answer your question," he said, blushing +without knowing why. "I really don't know what sort of girl she is; +I can't analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I +don't know. That is all one can say about her." + +Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: "Yes, +that's what I expected and feared." + +"Is she clever?" she asked. + +Pierre considered. + +"I think not," he said, "and yet- yes. She does not deign to be +clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all." + +Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly. + +"Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do." + +"I hear they are expected very soon," said Pierre. + +Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her +future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived and to try to +accustom the old prince to her. + +CHAPTER V + +Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg, +so with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered +between the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though +Princess Mary despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than +Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to +her. When they had last met on the old prince's name day, she had +answered at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently +not listening to what he was saying. + +Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a +manner peculiar to herself. + +She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become +very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself +not merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She +was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a +very wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew +the less dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could +associate with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and +the animated company that assembled at her house, without incurring +any obligation. A man who would have been afraid ten years before of +going every day to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there, +for fear of compromising her and committing himself, would now go +boldly every day and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a +sexless acquaintance. + +That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and +hospitable in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner +parties, a large company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day, +supping at midnight and staying till three in the morning. Julie never +missed a ball, a promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of +the latest fashion. But in spite of that she seemed to be +disillusioned about everything and told everyone that she did not +believe either in friendship or in love, or any of the joys of life, +and expected peace only "yonder." She adopted the tone of one who +has suffered a great disappointment, like a girl who has either lost +the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of +the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light, and had +even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life. +This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not +hinder the young people who came to her house from passing the time +pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid his tribute to +the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused himself with +society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts rimes, which +were in vogue at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young men, among +them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and with +these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of +all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with +mournful sketches, maxims, and verses. + +To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early +disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of +friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and +showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: +"Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me." + +On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote: + +``` block + La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille. +Ah! contre les douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile.~{ Death gives relief and death is peaceful. }~ +``` + +_1 Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge. + +Julia said this was charming + +"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she +said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a +book. "It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness +and despair, showing the possibility of consolation." + +In reply Boris wrote these lines: + +``` block + Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible, +Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible, +Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler, +Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite, +Et mele une douceur secrete +A ces pleurs que je sens couler.~{ Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul, }~ +``` + +_1 Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible, + +_1 Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me, + +_1 Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat, + +_1 And mingle a secret sweetness + +_1 With these tears that I feel to be flowing. + +For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris +read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the +reading because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large +gatherings Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who +understood one another in a world of indifferent people. + +Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing +cards with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry +(she was to have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests). +Anna Mikhaylovna regarded the refined sadness that united her son to +the wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will. + +"You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie," she said to +the daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose at your house. He +has suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive," said she to +the mother. "Ah, my dear, I can't tell you how fond I have grown of +Julie latterly," she said to her son. "But who could help loving +her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"- she paused. "And how +I pity her mother," she went on; "today she showed me her accounts and +letters from Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor +thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!" + +Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother. +He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had +to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and +Nizhegorod estates. + +Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy +adorer and was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of +repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for her +artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility +of real love still restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He +spent every day and whole days at the Karagins', and every day on +thinking the matter over told himself that he would propose +tomorrow. But in Julie's presence, looking at her red face and chin +(nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and her expression of +continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to an unnatural +rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the decisive words, +though in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor of +those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned the use of +the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and sometimes the +thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to him, but her +feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation, and +she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy, +however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before Boris' +departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as Boris' leave +of absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made his appearance in +Moscow, and of course in the Karagins' drawing room, and Julie, +suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive +to Kuragin. + +"My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I know from a reliable +source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to Moscow to get him +married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for +her. What do you think of it, my dear?" + +The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that +whole month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing +all the revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally +apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another, +and especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris. +He drove to the Karagins' with the firm intention of proposing. +Julie met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she had +enjoyed yesterday's ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though +Boris had come intentionally to speak of his love and therefore +meant to be tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine +inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from sadness to joy, and how +their moods depend solely on who happens to be paying court to them. +Julie was offended and replied that it was true that a woman needs +variety, and the same thing over and over again would weary anyone. + +"Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing to sting her; but +at that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have +to leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly +wasted his efforts- which was a thing he never allowed to happen. + +He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes +to avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and +said: + +"I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary..." + +He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability +had suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were +fixed on him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange so as +not to see her often," thought Boris. "The affair has been begun and +must be finished!" He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and +said: + +"You know my feelings for you!" + +There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph and +self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is said on +such occasions- that he loved her and had never loved any other +woman more than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and +Nizhegorod forests she could demand this, and she received what she +demanded. + +The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom +and melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house +in Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant +wedding. + +CHAPTER VI + +At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha +and Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it +was impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in +Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near +Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his +future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while he was in +Moscow could not be missed. The Rostovs' Moscow house had not been +heated that winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the +countess was not with them, the count decided to stay with Marya +Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality +on them. + +Late one evening the Rostovs' four sleighs drove into Marya +Dmitrievna's courtyard in the old Konyusheny street. Marya +Dmitrievna lived alone. She had already married off her daughter, +and her sons were all in the service. + +She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly, +loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach +to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation- the possibility of +which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing +jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out: +on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on +affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after +dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there +were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing +meal at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she +played a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a +new book read to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception +and went out to pay visits, and then only to the most important +persons in the town. + +She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived and the +pulley of the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the +Rostovs and their servants. Marya Dmitrievna, with her spectacles +hanging down on her nose and her head flung back, stood in the hall +doorway looking with a stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might +have thought she was angry with the travelers and would immediately +turn them out, had she not at the same time been giving careful +instructions to the servants for the accommodation of the visitors and +their belongings. + +"The count's things? Bring them here," she said, pointing to the +portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. "The young ladies'? There to the +left. Now what are you dawdling for?" she cried to the maids. "Get the +samovar ready!... You've grown plumper and prettier," she remarked, +drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her by +the hood. "Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things, quick!" she +shouted to the count who was going to kiss her hand. "You're half +frozen, I'm sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!" she +added, turning to Sonya and indicating by this French greeting her +slightly contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her. + +When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things +and tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna +kissed them all in due order. + +"I'm heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was +high time," she said, giving Natasha a significant look. "The old +man is here and his son's expected any day. You'll have to make his +aquaintance. But we'll speak of that later on," she added, glancing at +Sonya with a look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her +presence. "Now listen," she said to the count. "What do you want +tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshin?" she crooked one of her +fingers. "The sniveling Anna Mikhaylovna? That's two. She's here +with her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is +here too, with his wife. He ran away from her and she came galloping +after him. He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them"- and she +pointed to the girls- "tomorrow I'll take them first to the Iberian +shrine of the Mother of God, and then we'll drive to the +Super-Rogue's. I suppose you'll have everything new. Don't judge by +me: sleeves nowadays are this size! The other day young Princess Irina +Vasilevna came to see me; she was an awful sight- looked as if she had +put two barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now without +some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?" she asked +the count sternly. + +"One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a +purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If +you will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just +for a day, and leave my lassies with you." + +"All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in +Chancery! I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet +them a bit," said Marya Dmitrievna, touching her goddaughter and +favorite, Natasha, on the cheek with her large hand. + +Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian +shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so +afraid of Marya Dmitrievna that she always let her have costumes at +a loss merely to get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the +whole trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the +room except Nataisha, and then called her pet to her armchair. + +"Well, now we'll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed. +You've hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known +him since he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the +ground. Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now +listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's +marrying. The old fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a +child and can shift without him, but it's not nice to enter a family +against a father's will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly. +You're a clever girl and you'll know how to manage. Be kind, and use +your wits. Then all will be well." + +Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but +really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her +love of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human +affairs that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince +Andrew, he loved her only, and was to come one of these days and +take her. She wanted nothing more. + +"You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your +future sister-in-law. 'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but +this one wouldn't hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two +together. Tomorrow you'll go with your father to see her. Be very nice +and affectionate to her: you're younger than she. When he comes, he'll +find you already know his sister and father and are liked by them. +Am I right or not? Won't that be best?" + +"Yes, it will," Natasha answered reluctantly. + +CHAPTER VII + +Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna's advice, Count Rostov took Natasha to +call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The count did not set out +cheerfully on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well +remembered the last interview he had had with the old prince at the +time of the enrollment, when in reply to an invitation to dinner he +had had to listen to an angry reprimand for not having provided his +full quota of men. Natasha, on the other hand, having put on her +best gown, was in the highest spirits. "They can't help liking me," +she thought. "Everybody always has liked me, and I am so willing to do +anything they wish, so ready to be fond of him- for being his +father- and of her- for being his sister- that there is no reason +for them not to like me..." + +They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and +entered the vestibule. + +"Well, the Lord have mercy on us!" said the count, half in jest, +half in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was flurried on +entering the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the +prince and princess were at home. + +When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the +servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by +another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a +maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning +the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced +to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the +princess begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the +visitors was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and +daughter with special politeness and showed them to the princess' +room. The princess, looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in +patches, ran in to meet the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly +trying to appear cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess +Mary did not like Natasha. She thought her too fashionably dressed, +frivolously gay and vain. She did not at all realize that before +having seen her future sister-in-law she was prejudiced against her by +involuntary envy of her beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by +jealousy of her brother's love for her. Apart from this insuperable +antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just then because on +the Rostovs' being announced, the old prince had shouted that he did +not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might do so if she chose, but +they were not to be admitted to him. She had decided to receive +them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in some +freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs' visit. + +"There, my dear princess, I've brought you my songstress," said +the count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old +prince might appear. "I am so glad you should get to know one +another... very sorry the prince is still ailing," and after a few +more commonplace remarks he rose. "If you'll allow me to leave my +Natasha in your hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I'll drive +round to see Anna Semenovna, it's quite near in the Dogs' Square, +and then I'll come back for her." + +The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told +his daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk +to one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of +encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention +this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her father's nervousness and +anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still +angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold +and defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of +anybody. The princess told the count that she would be delighted, +and only begged him to stay longer at Anna Semenovna's, and he +departed. + +Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary- who +wished to have a tete-a-tete with Natasha- Mademoiselle Bourienne +remained in the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements +and theaters. Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had +noticed in the anteroom, by her father's nervousness, and by the +unnatural manner of the princess who- she thought- was making a +favor of receiving her, and so everything displeased her. She did +not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very plain, affected, and +dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an +offhand air which alienated Princess Mary still more. After five +minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they heard the sound +of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess Mary looked +frightened. + +The door opened and the old prince, in a dress, ing gown and a white +nightcap, came in. + +"Ah, madam!" he began. "Madam, Countess... Countess Rostova, if I am +not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not +know, madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with +a visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg +you to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn't know-" he repeated, +stressing the word "God" so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that +Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at +her father or at Natasha. + +Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do. +Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably. + +"I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not +know," muttered the old man, and after looking Natasha over from +head to foot he went out. + +Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this +apparition and began speaking about the prince's indisposition. +Natasha and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the +longer they did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater +grew their antipathy to one another. + +When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened +to get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who +could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an +hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin +talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought +Natasha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary. +She knew what she ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been +unable to say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and +because, without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of +the marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess +Mary went up hurriedly to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with +a deep sigh: + +"Wait, I must..." + +Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why. + +"Dear Natalie," said Princess Mary, "I want you to know that I am +glad my brother has found happiness...." + +She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natasha +noticed this and guessed its reason. + +"I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now," +she said with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears +choking her. + +"What have I said and what have I done?" thought she, as soon as she +was out of the room. + +They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner that day. +She sat in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing. +Sonya stood beside her, kissing her hair. + +"Natasha, what is it about?" she asked. "What do they matter to you? +It will all pass, Natasha." + +"But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..." + +"Don't talk about it, Natasha. It wasn't your fault so why should +you mind? Kiss me," said Sonya. + +Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed +her wet face against her. + +"I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha- +"It's my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he +come?..." + +She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew +how the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how +upset Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the +count and the other guests. + +CHAPTER VIII + +That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya +Dmitrievna had taken a box. + +Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya +Dmitrievna's kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she +came ready dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and +looking in the large mirror there saw that she was pretty, very +pretty, she felt even more sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness. + +"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but +differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply +embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those +searching inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me, +and then I would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes- how +I see those eyes!" thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister +matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those +eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not +think of him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for +the present. I can't bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!" +and she turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry. +"And how can Sonya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so +long and so patiently?" thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came +in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. "No, she's altogether +different. I can't!" + +Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not +enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at +once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words +of love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside +her father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps +flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in +love, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into +the line of carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the +theater, its wheels squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya, +holding up their dresses, jumped out quickly. The count got out helped +by the footmen, and, passing among men and women who were entering and +the program sellers, they all three went along the corridor to the +first row of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was already +audible. + +"Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya. + +An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and +opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the +door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and +shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered +before their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of +feminine envy at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the +overture was being played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with +Sonya and sat down, scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite. +A sensation she had not experienced for a long time- that of +hundreds of eyes looking at her bare arms and neck- suddenly +affected her both agreeably and disagreeably and called up a whole +crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with that feeling. + +The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count +Rostov who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted +general attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natasha's +engagement to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in +the country ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who +was making one of the best matches in Russia. + +Natasha's looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the +country, and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly +pretty. She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and +beauty, combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her +black eyes looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her +delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the +box, while, evidently unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in +time to the music, crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina," +said Sonya, "with her mother, isn't it?" + +"Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked +the count. + +"Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna- what a headdress she has on!" + +"The Karagins, Julie- and Boris with them. One can see at once +that they're engaged...." + +"Drubetskoy has proposed?" + +"Oh yes, I heard it today," said Shinshin, coming into the +Rostovs' box. + +Natasha looked in the direction in which her father's eyes were +turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on +her face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck- which +Natasha knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and +leaning over with an ear to Julie's mouth, was Boris' handsome +smoothly brushed head. He looked the Rostovs from under his brows +and said something, smiling, to his betrothed. + +"They are talking about us, about me and him!" thought Natasha. "And +he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn't trouble +themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of +them." + +Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and +with a happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their +box was pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which +Natasha knew so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly +remembered all that had been so humiliating in her morning's visit. + +"What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh, +better not think of it- not till he comes back!" she told herself, and +began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in the +stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against the +orchestra rail, stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair +brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience, +well aware that he was attracting everyone's attention, yet as much at +ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow's +most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated. + +The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her +former adorer. + +"Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?" +he asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn't he vanish somewhere?" + +"He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran away +from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling +prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah's brother. Now all the +Moscow ladies are mad about him! It's 'Dolokhov the Persian' that does +it! We never hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him, +they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov +and Anatole Kuragin have turned all our ladies' heads." + +A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed +plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string +of large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk +dress and took a long time settling into her place. + +Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and +pearls and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the +pearls. While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time +the lady looked round and, meeting the count's eyes, nodded to him and +smiled. She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's wife, and the +count, who knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her. + +"Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I'll call, I'll +call to kiss your hand. I'm here on business and have brought my girls +with me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used +to forget us. Is he here?" + +"Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced attentively +at Natasha. + +Count Rostov resumed his seat. + +"Handsome, isn't she?" he whispered to Natasha. + +"Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She's a woman one could easily +fall in love with." + +Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the +conductor tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in +the stalls, and the curtain rose. + +As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, +and all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and +all the women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole +attention with eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look +at it. + +CHAPTER IX + +The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides +was some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a +cloth stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls +in red bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk +dress sat apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of +green cardboard was glued. They all sang something. When they had +finished their song the girl in white went up to the prompter's box +and a man with tight silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding +a plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing, waving his +arms about. + +First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang, +then they both paused while the orchestra played and the man +fingered the hand of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to +start singing with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater +began clapping and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage- who +represented lovers- began smiling, spreading out their arms, and +bowing. + +After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood, +all this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow +the opera nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted +cardboard and the queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, +and sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it was +all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and +unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused +at them. She looked at the faces of the audience, seeking in them +the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but +they all seemed attentive to what was happening on the stage, and +expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I suppose it has +to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking round in turn at the +rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the seminude women +in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box, who- apparently +quite unclothed- sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking her +eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded the +whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little by +little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not +experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she +was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought, +the strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through +her mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box +and singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to +touch with her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then +to lean over to Helene and tickle her. + +At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song, +a door leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box +creaked, and the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's +Kuragin!" whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the +newcomer, and Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an +exceptionally handsome adjutant approaching their box with a +self-assured yet courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom +she had seen and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was +now in an adjutant's uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot. +He moved with a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous +had he not been so good-looking and had his handsome face not worn +such an expression of good-humored complacency and gaiety. Though +the performance was proceeding, he walked deliberately down the +carpeted gangway, his sword and spurs slightly jingling and his +handsome perfumed head held high. Having looked at Natasha he +approached his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her +box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a +motion toward Natasha. + +"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did +not exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of +his lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and +sat down beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and +offhand way that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He +winked at him gaily, smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra +screen. + +"How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And +how handsome they both are!" + +Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some +intrigue of Kuragin's in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just +because he had said she was "charmante." + +The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about, +going out and coming in. + +Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations +very simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile +conveyed to Natasha and Sonya his fiancee's invitation to her wedding, +and went away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and +congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom she +had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in, +everything seemed simple and natural. + +The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and +Natasha gave Boris a similar smile. + +Helene's box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most +distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another +in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her. + +During the whole of that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov in +front of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha +knew he was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even +turned so that he should see her profile in what she thought was its +most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act Pierre +appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since their +arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since +Natasha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing +anyone. Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at +and indicating the Rostovs' box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew +animated and, hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box. +When he got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling, talked to +her for a long time. While conversing with Pierre, Natasha heard a +man's voice in Countess Bezukhova's box and something told her it +was Kuragin. She turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed +straight into her eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that +it seemed strange to be so near him, to look at him like that, to be +so sure he admired her, and not to be acquainted with him. + +In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there +was a round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were +raised over the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep +notes while many people appeared from right and left wearing black +cloaks and holding things like daggers in their hands. They began +waving their arms. Then some other people ran in and began dragging +away the maiden who had been in white and was now in light blue. +They did not drag her away at once, but sang with her for a long +time and then at last dragged her off, and behind the scenes something +metallic was struck three times and everyone knelt down and sang a +prayer. All these things were repeatedly interrupted by the +enthusiastic shouts of the audience. + +During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she +saw Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair, +staring at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her +and it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it. + +When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to +the Rostovs' box- her whole bosom completely exposed- beckoned the old +count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had +entered her box began talking to him with an amiable smile. + +"Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she. "The +whole town is singing their praises and I don't even know then!" + +Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so +pleased by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with +pleasure. + +"I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it +you're not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?" + +Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a +fascinating woman. She could say what she did not think- especially +what was flattering- quite simply and naturally. + +"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I +am not staying here long this time- nor are you- I will try to amuse +them. I have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get +to know you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely +smile. "I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard +he is getting married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski, +Prince Andrew Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis, +implying that she knew of his relation to Natasha. To get better +acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come into her +box for the rest of the performance, and Natasha moved over to it. + +The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many +candles were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on +the walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a +queen. The king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang +something badly and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had +been first in white and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and +stood beside the throne with her hair down. She sang something +mournfully, addressing the queen, but the king waved his arm severely, +and men and women with bare legs came in from both sides and began +dancing all together. Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily +and one of the women with thick bare legs and thin arms, separating +from the others, went behind the wings, adjusted her bodice, +returned to the middle of the stage, and began jumping and striking +one foot rapidly against the other. In the stalls everyone clapped and +shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men went into a corner of the +stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra struck up more loudly, +and this man with bare legs jumped very high and waved his feet +about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles +a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and galleries +began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the man +stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men +and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the +sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm +came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the +orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number +away, and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise +and clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone +began shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought +this strange. She look about with pleasure, smiling joyfully. + +"Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her. + +"Oh, yes," replied Natasha. + +CHAPTER X + +During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the +door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush +against anyone. + +"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting +uneasily from Natasha to Anatole. + +Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young +officer and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was +as handsome at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her +and told her he had long wished to have this happiness- ever since the +Naryshkins' ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered +pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with +women than among men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha +was strangely and agreeably struck by the fact that there was +nothing formidable in this man about whom there was so much talk, +but that on the contrary his smile was most naive, cheerful, and +good-natured. + +Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a +previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage. + +"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as +an old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume +tournament; you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We +shall all meet at the Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said +he. + +While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face, +her neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was +enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel +constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt +that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his +eye so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking +into his eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that +barrier of modesty she had always felt between herself and other +men. She did not know how it was that within five minutes she had come +to feel herself terribly near to this man. When she turned away she +feared he might seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her +on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that +they were closer to one another than she had ever been to any man. +Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father, as if asking what it +all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation with a general and +did not answer her look, and her father's eyes said nothing but what +they always said: "Having a good time? Well, I'm glad of it!" + +During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's +prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to +break the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the +question and blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she +was doing something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage +her. + +"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant +ce sont les jolies femmes,~{ Are the pretty women. }~ isn't that so? But now I like it very much +indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come to the +costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand to +her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the +prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as +a pledge!" + +Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did +himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an +improper intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if +she had not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she +felt that he was there, behind, so close behind her. + +"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked +herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked +straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the +good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just +as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt +with horror that no barrier lay between him and her. + +The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay. +Natasha went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive +to the world she found herself in. All that was going on before her +now seemed quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous +thoughts of her betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country +did not once recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote +past. + +In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his +arm about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he +disappeared down below. That was the only part of the fourth act +that Natasha saw. She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of +this was Kuragin whom she could not help watching. As they were +leaving the theater Anatole came up to them, called their carriage, +and helped them in. As he was putting Natasha in he pressed her arm +above the elbow. Agitated and flushed she turned round. He was looking +at her with glittering eyes, smiling tenderly. + +Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think +over what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince +Andrew she was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after +the opera, she gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the +room. + +"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?" +She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to +realize what had happened to her, but was unable either to +understand what had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark, +obscure, and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater +where the bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped +about to the music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the +nearly naked Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried +"bravo!"- there in the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear +and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible. +"What is it? What was that terror I felt of him? What is this +gnawing of conscience I am feeling now?" she thought. + +Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all +she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple +views would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at +such a confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by +herself. + +"Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with +soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen +to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all. +Nobody will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself. +"So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to +repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why +isn't he here?" Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some +instinct told her that though all this was true, and though nothing +had happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince Andrew +had perished. And again in imagination she went over her whole +conversation with Kuragin, and again saw the face, gestures, and +tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm. + +CHAPTER XI + +Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent +him away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand +rubles a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more, +which his creditors demanded from his father. + +His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for +the last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as +adjutant to the commander in chief- a post his father had procured for +him- and would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to +him Princess Mary and Julie Karagina. + +Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre's +house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him +after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and +gave him money under the guise of loans. + +As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had +turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that +he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French +actresses- with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to +be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at +Danilov's or other Moscow revelers', drank whole nights through, +outvying everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the +best society. There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies, +and he flirted with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run +after the unmarried girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most +of them plain. There was a special reason for this, as he had got +married two years before- a fact known only to his most intimate +friends. At that time while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish +landowner of small means had forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole +had very soon abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he agreed to +send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be free to pass himself off +as a bachelor. + +Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with +others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that was +impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had +never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of +considering how his actions might affect others or what the +consequences of this or that action of his might be. He was +convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so +God had made him such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year +and always occupy a prominent position in society. He believed this so +firmly that others, looking at him, were persuaded of it too and did +not refuse him either a leading place in society or money, which he +borrowed from anyone and everyone and evidently would not repay. + +He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning. +He was not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still +less could he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed +his father by spoiling his own career, and he laughed at +distinctions of all kinds. He was not mean, and did not refuse +anyone who asked of him. All he cared about was gaiety and women, +and as according to his ideas there was nothing dishonorable in +these tastes, and he was incapable of considering what the +gratification of his tastes entailed for others, he honestly +considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues and bad +people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high. + +Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence +similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope +of forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all +will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much." + +Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and +his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling, +and dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin +and made use of him for his own ends. + +Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and +audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and +connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set, +made use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting +the other feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole, +the very process of dominating another's will was in itself a +pleasure, a habit, and a necessity to Dolokhov. + +Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after the +opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the +attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his +intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was +incapable of considering what might come of such love-making, as he +never had any notion of the outcome of any of his actions. + +"She's first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied +Dolokhov. + +"I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole. "Eh?" + +"You'd better wait till she's married...." + +"You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once," +pursued Anatole. + +"You have been caught once already by a 'little girl,'" said +Dolokhov who knew of Kuragin's marriage. "Take care!" + +"Well, that can't happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a +good-humored laugh. + +CHAPTER XII + +The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came +to see them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something +which they concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking +about the old prince and planning something, and this disquieted and +offended her. She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice +that day sent a manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he +had come. He had not arrived. She suffered more now than during her +first days in Moscow. To her impatience and pining for him were now +added the unpleasant recollection of her interview with Princess +Mary and the old prince, and a fear and anxiety of which she did not +understand the cause. She continually fancied that either he would +never come or that something would happen to her before he came. She +could no longer think of him by herself calmly and continuously as she +had done before. As soon as she began to think of him, the +recollection of the old prince, of Princess Mary, of the theater, +and of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The question again presented +itself whether she was not guilty, whether she had not already +broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found herself recalling +to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and every shade in +the play of expression on the face of the man who had been able to +arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying feeling. To +the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was far less +tranquil and happy than before. + +On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at +her parish church- the Church of the Assumption built over the +graves of victims of the plague. + +"I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently +priding herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same every +where. We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently +and with dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there +in giving concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just +self-indulgence!" + +Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her +whole house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the +servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church. +At her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had +vodka and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was +the holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna's broad, stern +face, which on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity. + +After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room +where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a +servant announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna +rose with a stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid +calls, and announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas +Bolkonski to have an explanation with him about Natasha. + +After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited +on the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having +shut herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied +herself trying on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice +without sleeves and only tacked together, and was turning her head +to see in the glass how the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room +the animated sounds of her father's voice and another's- a woman's- +that made her flush. It was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off +the bodice before the door opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a +purple velvet gown with a high collar, came into the room beaming with +good-humored amiable smiles. + +"Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha. +"Charming! No, this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said +she to Count Rostov who had followed her in. "How can you live in +Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won't let you off! Mademoiselle George +will recite at my house tonight and there'll be some people, and if +you don't bring your lovely girls- who are prettier than +Mademoiselle George- I won't know you! My husband is away in Tver or I +would send him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must! +Between eight and nine." + +She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied +respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the +looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely. +She did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually +praising Natasha's beauty. She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised +them, as well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze," +which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one +like it. + +"But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked. + +A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face. She felt happy and as +if she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess +Bezukhova who had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and +important and was now so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt +almost in love with this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind. +Helene for her part was sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to +give her a good time. Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha +together, and she was calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The +idea of throwing her brother and Natasha together amused her. + +Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha +for drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her +own way heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs +she called her protegee aside. + +"My brother dined with me yesterday- we nearly died of laughter- +he ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly, +quite madly, in love with you, my dear." + +Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this. + +"How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You +must certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a +reason to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your +fiance would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to +death." + +"So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre- that +good Pierre- have talked and laughed about this. So it's all right." +And again, under Helene's influence, what had seemed terrible now +seemed simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind, +and evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought +Natasha, gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes. + +Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having +evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's. She was still too +agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly. +In answer to the count's inquiries she replied that things were all +right and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of +Countess Bezukhova's visit and the invitation for that evening, +Marya Dmitrievna remarked: + +"I don't care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don't advise +you to; however, if you've promised- go. It will divert your +thoughts," she added, addressing Natasha. + +CHAPTER XIII + +Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova's. There were a +good many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count +Rostov was displeased to see that the company consisted almost +entirely of men and women known for the freedom of their conduct. +Mademoiselle George was standing in a corner of the drawing room +surrounded by young men. There were several Frenchmen present, among +them Metivier who from the time Helene reached Moscow had been an +intimate in her house. The count decided not to sit down to cards or +let his girls out of his sight and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle +George's performance was over. + +Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs. +Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and +followed her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same +feeling she had had at the opera- gratified vanity at his admiration +of her and fear at the absence of a moral barrier between them. + +Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of +her beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George +went out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people +began arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a +chair for Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count, +who never lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down +behind her. + +Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red +shawl draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for +her, and assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was +audible. + +Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience +and began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for +her son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered, +lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse +sounds, rolling her eyes. + +"Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side. + +Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor +understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt +herself again completely borne away into this strange senseless world- +so remote from her old world- a world in which it was impossible to +know what was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat +Anatole, and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened +sense of expectancy. + +After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded +Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm. + +"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had +also risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress. + +"I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following +Natasha. He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him. +"You are enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never +ceased..." + +"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his +daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything +stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring +eyes. + +After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and +Countess Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom. + +The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil +her improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked +Natasha for a valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand +and told her she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the +ecossaise, which she also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when +they happened to be by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha +lifted her frightened eyes to him, but there was such confident +tenderness in his affectionate look and smile that she could not, +whilst looking at him, say what she had to say. She lowered her eyes. + +"Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another," +she said rapidly.... She glanced at him. + +Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said. + +"Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I +am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are +enchanting?... It's our turn to begin." + +Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open +frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly +anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and +the Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to +remain. Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt +his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her +father to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that +Helene had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love, +and that she again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene +had disappeared leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and +said in a tender voice: + +"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never +see you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he +brought his face close to hers. + +His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she +saw nothing but them. + +"Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being +painfully pressed. "Natalie?" + +"I don't understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied. + +Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she +felt herself released, and Helene's footsteps and the rustle of her +dress were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then, +red and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and +moved toward the door. + +"One word, just one, for God's sake!" cried Anatole. + +She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to +her what had happened and to which she could find no answer. + +"Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not +knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them. + +Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went +away without staying for supper. + +After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was +tormented by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or +Prince Andrew. She loved Prince Andrew- she remembered distinctly +how deeply she loved him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there +was no doubt. "Else how could all this have happened?" thought she. +"If, after that, I could return his smile when saying good-by, if I +was able to let it come to that, it means that I loved him from the +first. It means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could +not help loving him. What am I to do if I love him and the other one +too?" she asked herself, unable to find an answer to these terrible +questions. + +CHAPTER XIV + +Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to +move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna +appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking +uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to +intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the +same as usual. + +After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat +down in her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her. + +"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is +my advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince +Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to +begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had +to say!" + +"Well, and he?" asked the count. + +"He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's the use +of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya +Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back home +to Otradnoe... and wait there." + +"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha. + +"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your +betrothed comes here now- there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but +alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to +you." + +Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its +reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better +to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the +wedding, against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe. + +"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took +her," said the old count. + +"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But +if he won't- that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for +something in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so +there is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after +you. Though I don't like letting you go, it is the best way. So go, +with God's blessing!" + +Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed +it to Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary. + +"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She's +afraid you might think that she does not like you." + +"But she doesn't like me," said Natasha. + +"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna. + +"I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me," replied +Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold +and angry resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her +more intently and to frown. + +"Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is +true! Write an answer!" Natasha did not reply and went to her own room +to read Princess Mary's letter. + +Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the +misunderstanding that had occurred between them. Whatever her father's +feelings might be, she begged Natasha to believe that she could not +help loving her as the one chosen by her brother, for whose +happiness she was ready to sacrifice everything. + +"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is +ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be +forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes +his son happy." Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time +when she could see her again. + +After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table to +answer it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and +mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all +that had happened the evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has +happened, and now all is changed," she thought as she sat with the +letter she had begun before her. "Must I break off with him? Must I +really? That's awful... and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she +went to Sonya and began sorting patterns with her. + +After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess +Mary's letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it +be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that +went before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its +former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She +vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of +happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and +at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of +yesterday's interview with Anatole. + +"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in +complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I +have to choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. Only," +she thought, "to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it +from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is +spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's +love, in which I have lived so long?" + +"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious +air. "A man told me to give you this-" and she handed Natasha a +letter. + +"Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha, without +thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from +Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only +that it was a letter from him- from the man she loved. Yes, she +loved him, or else how could that have happened which had happened? +And how could she have a love letter from him in her hand? + +With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter +which Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she +found in it an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling. + +"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you +or to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he +went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him- for +this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her- but that +if she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power +could hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her +away and carry her off to the ends of the earth. + +"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for +the twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each +word of it. + +That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and +proposed to take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache, +remained at home. + +CHAPTER XV + +On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha's room, and +to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open +on the table, beside her lay Anatole's letter. Sonya picked it up +and read it. + +As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in +her face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find +it. Her face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep +herself from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and +agitation, sat down in an armchair and burst into tears. + +"How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she +have left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go +to such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that's plain! What +will Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is +the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before +yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can't be that +she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who it +was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a +thing!" + +Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning +her face. + +"Natasha!" she said, just audibly. + +Natasha awoke and saw Sonya. + +"Ah, you're back?" + +And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment +of awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of +embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion. + +"Sonya, you've read that letter?" she demanded. + +"Yes," answered Sonya softly. + +Natasha smiled rapturously. + +"No, Sonya, I can't any longer!" she said. "I can't hide it from you +any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he +writes... Sonya..." + +Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears. + +"And Bolkonski?" she asked. + +"Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha. "You +don't know what love is...." + +"But, Natasha, can that be all over?" + +Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not +grasp the question. + +"Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya. + +"Oh, you don't understand anything! Don't talk nonsense, just +listen!" said Natasha, with momentary vexation. + +"But I can't believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don't understand. How +is it you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you +have only seen him three times! Natasha, I don't believe you, you're +joking! In three days to forget everything and so..." + +"Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I've loved him a hundred +years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can't +understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha embraced +and kissed her. + +"I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it +too, but it's only now that I feel such love. It's not the same as +before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his +slave, and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave! +Whatever he orders I shall do. You don't understand that. What can I +do? What can I do, Sonya?" cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened +expression. + +"But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can't leave it +like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so +far?" she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal. + +"I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can't you +understand? I love him!" + +"Then I won't let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya, +bursting into tears. + +"What do you mean? For God's sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!" +declared Natasha. "You want me to be miserable, you want us to be +separated...." + +When she saw Natasha's fright, Sonya shed tears of shame and pity +for her friend. + +"But what has happened between you?" she asked. "What has he said to +you? Why doesn't he come to the house?" + +Natasha did not answer her questions. + +"For God's sake, Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me," +Natasha entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such +matters! I have confided in you...." + +"But why this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?" asked +Sonya. "Why doesn't he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince +Andrew gave you complete freedom- if it is really so; but I don't +believe it! Natasha, have you considered what these secret reasons can +be?" + +Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently this question +presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know +how to answer it. + +"I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!" + +Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously. + +"If there were reasons..." she began. + +But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm. + +"Sonya, one can't doubt him! One can't, one can't! Don't you +understand?" she cried. + +"Does he love you?" + +"Does he love me?" Natasha repeated with a smile of pity at her +friend's lack of comprehension. "Why, you have read his letter and you +have seen him." + +"But if he is dishonorable?" + +"He! dishonorable? If you only knew!" exclaimed Natasha. + +"If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions +or cease seeing you; and if you won't do this, I will. I will write to +him, and I will tell Papa!" said Sonya resolutely. + +"But I can't live without him!" cried Natasha. + +"Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Think +of your father and of Nicholas." + +"I don't want anyone, I don't love anyone but him. How dare you +say he is dishonorable? Don't you know that I love him?" screamed +Natasha. "Go away, Sonya! I don't want to quarrel with you, but go, +for God's sake go! You see how I am suffering!" Natasha cried angrily, +in a voice of despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into +sobs and ran from the room. + +Natasha went to the table and without a moment's reflection wrote +that answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all +the morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their +misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the +magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her +she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her if she +had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife. At +that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha. + +On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on +Wednesday the count went with the prospective purchaser to his +estate near Moscow. + +On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big +dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there. +At that party Natasha again met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she +spoke to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through +dinner she was more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was +the first to begin the explanation Sonya expected. + +"There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him," +Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to +be praised. "We have had an explanation today." + +"Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how glad I am you're +not angry with me! Tell me everything- the whole truth. What did he +say?" + +Natasha became thoughtful. + +"Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I +had promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free to refuse him." + +Sonya sighed sorrowfully. + +"But you haven't refused Bolkonski?" said she. + +"Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkonski. Why +do you think so badly of me?" + +"I don't think anything, only I don't understand this..." + +"Wait a bit, Sonya, you'll understand everything. You'll see what +a man he is! Now don't think badly of me or of him. I don't think +badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?" + +Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used toward her. +The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha's face +became, the more serious and stern grew Sonya's. + +"Natasha," said she, "you asked me not to speak to you, and I +haven't spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don't trust him, +Natasha. Why this secrecy?" + +"Again, again!" interrupted Natasha. + +"Natasha, I am afraid for you!" + +"Afraid of what?" + +"I am afraid you're going to your ruin," said Sonya resolutely, +and was herself horrified at what she had said. + +Anger again showed in Natasha's face. + +"And I'll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It's not +your business! It won't be you, but I, who'll suffer. Leave me +alone, leave me alone! I hate you!" + +Natasha!" moaned Sonya, aghast. + +"I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy forever!" And Natasha ran +out of the room. + +Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her. With the +same expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the +house, taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once +abandoning them. + +Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did not let her +out of her sight. + +The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed that Natasha +sat by the drawingroom window all the morning as if expecting +something and that she made a sign to an officer who drove past, +whom Sonya took to be Anatole. + +Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed +that at dinner and all that evening Natasha was in a strange and +unnatural state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she +did not finish, and laughed at everything. + +After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha's door timidly +waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at +the door learned that another letter had been delivered. + +Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had some +dreadful plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha did +not let her in. + +"She will run away with him!" thought Sonya. "She is capable of +anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in +her face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle," Sonya +remembered. "Yes, that's it, she means to elope with him, but what +am I to do?" thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly +indicated that Natasha had some terrible intention. "The count is +away. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation? +But what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince +Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she +really has already refused Bolkonski- she sent a letter to Princess +Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell Marya Dmitrievna who +had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible. "Well, anyway," +thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now or never I must +prove that I remember the family's goodness to me and that I love +Nicholas. Yes! If I don't sleep for three nights I'll not leave this +passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the +family be disgraced," thought she. + +CHAPTER XVI + +Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov's. The plan for Natalie +Rostova's abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by +Dolokhov a few days before, and on the day that Sonya, after listening +at Natasha's door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been +put into execution. Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the +back porch at ten that evening. Kuragin was to put her into a troyka +he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of +Kamenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a +marriage ceremony over them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was to +wait which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they +would hasten abroad with post horses. + +Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand +rubles he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand +borrowed with Dolokhov's help. + +Two witnesses for the mock marriage- Khvostikov, a retired petty +official whom Dolokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and +Makarin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an +unbounded affection for Kuragin- were sitting at tea in Dolokhov's +front room. + +In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with +Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling +cloak and high boots, at an open desk on which lay abacus and some +bundles of paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to +and fro from the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the +study to the room behind, where his French valet and others were +packing the last of his things. Dolokhov was counting the money and +noting something down. + +"Well," he said, "Khvostikov must have two thousand." + +"Give it to him, then," said Anatole. + +"Makarka" (their name for Makarin) "will go through fire and water +for you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled," said +Dolokhov, showing him the memorandum. "Is that right?" + +"Yes, of course," returned Anatole, evidently not listening to +Dolokhov and looking straight before him with a smile that did not +leave his face. + +Dolokhov banged down the or of his and turned to Anatole with an +ironic smile: + +"Do you know? You'd really better drop it all. There's still time!" + +"Fool," retorted Anatole. "Don't talk nonsense! If you only +knew... it's the devil knows what!" + +"No, really, give it up!" said Dolokhov. "I am speaking seriously. +It's no joke, this plot you've hatched." + +"What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?" said Anatole, making a +grimace. "Really it's no time for your stupid jokes," and he left +the room. + +Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole +had gone out. + +"You wait a bit," he called after him. "I'm not joking, I'm +talking sense. Come here, come here!" + +Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give him his +attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily. + +"Now listen to me. I'm telling you this for the last time. Why +should I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything +for you? Who found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the +money? I did it all." + +"Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?" And +Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov. + +"I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a +dangerous business, and if you think about it- a stupid business. +Well, you'll carry her off- all right! Will they let it stop at +that? It will come out that you're already married. Why, they'll +have you in the criminal court...." + +"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" Anatole ejaculated and again made a +grimace. "Didn't I explain to you? What?" And Anatole, with the +partiality dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have +reached by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already +put to Dolokhov a hundred times. "Didn't I explain to you that I +have come to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid," he went +on, crooking one finger, "then I have nothing to answer for; but if it +is valid, no matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it. +Isn't that so? And don't talk to me, don't, don't." + +"Seriously, you'd better drop it! You'll only get yourself into a +mess!" + +"Go to the devil!" cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the +room, but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of +Dolokhov with his feet turned under him. "It's the very devil! What? +Feel how it beats!" He took Dolokhov's hand and put it on his heart. +"What a foot, my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!" he added in +French. "What?" + +Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes +looked at him- evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of +him. + +"Well and when the money's gone, what then?" + +"What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a +thought of the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why +talk nonsense!" He glanced at his watch. "It's time!" + +Anatole went into the back room. + +"Now then! Nearly ready? You're dawdling!" he shouted to the +servants. + +Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to +bring something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went +into the room where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting. + +Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and +smiling pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to +himself. + +"Come and eat something. Have a drink!" Dolokhov shouted to him from +the other room. + +"I don't want to," answered Anatole continuing to smile. + +"Come! Balaga is here." + +Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was a famous +troyka driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and +had given them good service with his troykas. More than once when +Anatole's regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in +the evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back +again the next night. More than once he had enabled Dolokhov to escape +when pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town +with gypsies and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes. More than +once in their service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles +in the streets of Moscow and had always been protected from the +consequences by "my gentlemen" as he called them. He had ruined more +than one horse in their service. More than once they had beaten him, +and more than once they had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira, +which he loved; and he knew more than one thing about each of them +which would long ago have sent an ordinary man to Siberia. They +often called Balaga into their orgies and made him drink and dance +at the gypsies', and more than one thousand rubles of their money +had passed through his hands. In their service he risked his skin +and his life twenty times a year, and in their service had lost more +horses than the money he had from them would buy. But he liked them; +liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked upsetting a +driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full gallop through +the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy shouts behind +him: "Get on! Get on!" when it was impossible to go any faster. He +liked giving a painful lash on the neck to some peasant who, more dead +than alive, was already hurrying out of his way. "Real gentlemen!" +he considered them. + +Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly driving and +because he liked the things they liked. With others Balaga +bargained, charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours' drive, and +rarely drove himself, generally letting his young men do so. But +with "his gentlemen" he always drove himself and never demanded +anything for his work. Only a couple of times a year- when he knew +from their valets that they had money in hand- he would turn up of a +morning quite sober and with a deep bow would ask them to help him. +The gentlemen always made him sit down. + +"Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir," or "your excellency," he +would say. "I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go +to the fair." + +And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money, would give him a +thousand or a couple of thousand rubles. + +Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about +twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck, +glittering little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine, +dark-blue, silk-lined cloth coat over a sheepskin. + +On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the +front corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a +small, black hand. + +"Theodore Ivanych!" he said, bowing. + +"How d'you do, friend? Well, here he is!" + +"Good day, your excellency!" he said, again holding out his hand +to Anatole who had just come in. + +"I say, Balaga," said Anatole, putting his hands on the man's +shoulders, "do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service.... +What horses have you come with? Eh?" + +"As your messenger ordered, your special beasts," replied Balaga. + +"Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me there +in three hours. Eh?" + +"When they are dead, what shall I drive?" said Balaga with a wink. + +"Mind, I'll smash your face in! Don't make jokes!" cried Anatole, +suddenly rolling his eyes. + +"Why joke?" said the driver, laughing. "As if I'd grudge my +gentlemen anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast +we'll go!" + +"Ah!" said Anatole. "Well, sit down." + +"Yes, sit down!" said Dolokhov. + +"I'll stand, Theodore Ivanych." + +"Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!" said Anatole, and filled a large +glass of Madeira for him. + +The driver's eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After +refusing it for manners' sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with +a red silk handkerchief he took out of his cap. + +"And when are we to start, your excellency?" + +"Well..." Anatole looked at his watch. "We'll start at once. Mind, +Balaga! You'll get there in time? Eh?" + +"That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn't we be +there in time?" replied Balaga. "Didn't we get you to Tver in seven +hours? I think you remember that, your excellency?" + +"Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver," said Anatole, +smilingly at the recollection and turning to Makarin who gazed +rapturously at him with wide-open eyes. "Will you believe it, Makarka, +it took one's breath away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of +loaded sleighs and drove right over two of them. Eh?" + +"Those were horses!" Balaga continued the tale. "That time I'd +harnessed two young side horses with the bay in the shafts," he went +on, turning to Dolokhov. "Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those +animals flew forty miles? I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew +numb in the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins- 'Catch hold +yourself, your excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom +of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn't a case of urging them +on, there was no holding them in till we reached the place. The devils +took us there in three hours! Only the near one died of it." + +CHAPTER XVII + +Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later +wearing a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily +set on one side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having +looked in a mirror, and standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he +had assumed before it, he lifted a glass of wine. + +"Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!" +said Anatole. "Well, comrades and friends..." he considered for a +moment "...of my youth, farewell!" he said, turning to Makarin and the +others. + +Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to +make something touching and solemn out of this address to his +comrades. He spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest +slightly swayed one leg. + +"All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and friends of my +youth, we've had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when +shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time- now +farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!..." he cried, and emptying +his glass flung it on the floor. + +"To your health!" said Balaga who also emptied his glass, and +wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. + +Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes. + +"Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you! + +"Let's go. Let's go!" cried Anatole. + +Balaga was about to leave the room. + +"No, stop!" said Anatole. "Shut the door; we have first to sit down. +That's the way." + +They shut the door and all sat down. + +"Now, quick march, lads!" said Anatole, rising. + +Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all +went out into the vestibule. + +"And where's the fur cloak?" asked Dolokhov. "Hey, Ignatka! Go to +Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what +elopements are like," continued Dolokhov with a wink. "Why, she'll +rush out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if +you delay at all there'll be tears and 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and she's +frozen in a minute and must go back- but you wrap the fur cloak +round her first thing and carry her to the sleigh." + +The valet brought a woman's fox-lined cloak. + +"Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!" he +shouted so that his voice rang far through the rooms. + +A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black +eyes and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a +sable mantle on her arm. + +"Here, I don't grudge it- take it!" she said, evidently afraid of +her master and yet regretful of her cloak. + +Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over +Matrena, and wrapped her up in it. + +"That's the way," said Dolokhov, "and then so!" and he turned the +collar up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered. +"And then so, do you see?" and he pushed Anatole's head forward to +meet the gap left by the collar, through which Matrena's brilliant +smile was seen. + +"Well, good-by, Matrena," said Anatole, kissing her. "Ah, my +revels here are over. Remember me to Steshka. There, good-by! Good-by, +Matrena, wish me luck!" + +"Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!" said Matrena in her +gypsy accent. + +Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers +were holding the horses. Balaga took his seat in the front one and +holding his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and +Dolokhov got in with him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated +themselves in the other sleigh. + +"Well, are you ready?" asked Balaga. + +"Go!" he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka +tore down the Nikitski Boulevard. + +"Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!..." The shouting of Balaga +and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be +heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka caught against a carriage; +something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the +Arbat Street. + +After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard, Balaga began to +rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old +Konyusheny Street. + +The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and +Anatole and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the +gate Dolokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant +ran out. + +"Come into the courtyard or you'll be seen; she'll come out +directly," said she. + +Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the +courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch. + +He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman. + +"Come to the mistress, please," said the footman in his deep bass, +intercepting any retreat. + +"To what Mistress? Who are you?" asked Anatole in a breathless +whisper. + +"Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in." + +"Kuragin! Come back!" shouted Dolokhov. "Betrayed! Back!" + +Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and +was struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With +a last desperate effort Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when +Anatole ran back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket, +and ran back with him to the troyka. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the corridor, made +her confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natasha she +read it and went into Natasha's room with it in her hand. + +"You shameless good-for-nothing!" said she. "I won't hear a word." + +Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished but +tearless eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the +yard porter to admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but +not to let them out again, and having told the footman to bring them +up to her, she seated herself in the drawing room to await the +abductors. + +When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run +away again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced +through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward +midnight she went to Natasha's room fingering the key in her pocket. +Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. "Marya Dmitrievna, for +God's sake let me in to her!" she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna +unlocked the door and went in without giving her an answer.... +"Disgusting, abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I'm only +sorry for her father!" thought she, trying to restrain her wrath. +"Hard as it may be, I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and +will hide it from the count." She entered the room with resolute +steps. Natasha lying on the sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and +she did not stir. She was in just the same position in which Marya +Dmitrievna had left her. + +"A nice girl! Very nice!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "Arranging meetings +with lovers in my house! It's no use pretending: you listen when I +speak to you!" And Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. "Listen when when +I speak! You've disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I'd +treat you differently, but I'm sorry for your father, so I will +conceal it." + +Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved +with noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna +glanced round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha. + +"It's lucky for him that he escaped me; but I'll find him!" she said +in her rough voice. "Do you hear what I am saying or not?" she added. + +She put her large hand under Natasha's face and turned it toward +her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed when they saw how +Natasha looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed, +her cheeks sunken. + +"Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!" she muttered, +wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious +effort and sinking down again into her former position. + +"Natalie!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "I wish for your good. Lie +still, stay like that then, I won't touch you. But listen. I won't +tell you how guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your +father comes back tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?" + +Again Natasha's body shook with sobs. + +"Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?" + +"I have no betrothed: I have refused him!" cried Natasha. + +"That's all the same," continued Dmitrievna. "If they hear of +this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he +challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?" + +"Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who +asked you to?" shouted Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and +looking malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna. + +"But what did you want?" cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry +again. "Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to +the house? Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing +girl?... Well, if he had carried you off... do you think they wouldn't +have found him? Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he's a +scoundrel, a wretch- that's a fact!" + +"He is better than any of you!" exclaimed Natasha getting up. "If +you hadn't interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it? +Sonya, why?... Go away!" + +And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which +people bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned. +Marya Dmitrievna was to speak again but Natasha cried out: + +"Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!" and she threw +herself back on the sofa. + +Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on +her that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that +nobody would know anything about it if only Natasha herself would +undertake to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had +happened. Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she +grew cold and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under +her head, covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some +lime-flower water, but Natasha did not respond to her. + +"Well, let her sleep," said Marya Dmitrievna as she went of the room +supposing Natasha to be asleep. + +But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open +eyes she looked straight before her. All that night she did not +sleep or weep and did not speak to Sonya who got up and went to her +several times. + +Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near Moscow in time +for lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the +affair with the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was +nothing to keep him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess +whom he missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had +been very unwell the day before and that they had sent for the doctor, +but that she was better now. Natasha had not left her room that +morning. With compressed and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she +sat at the window, uneasily watching the people who drove past and +hurriedly glancing round at anyone who entered the room. She was +evidently expecting news of him and that he would come or would +write to her. + +When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the +sound of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and +malevolent expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What +is the matter with you, my angel? Are you ill?" asked the count. + +After a moment's silence Natasha answered: "Yes, ill." + +In reply to the count's anxious inquiries as to why she was so +dejected and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she +assured him that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry. +Marya Dmitrievna confirmed Natasha's assurances that nothing had +happened. From the pretense of illness, from his daughter's +distress, and by the embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya +Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly that something had gone wrong during +his absence, but it was so terrible for him to think that anything +disgraceful had happened to his beloved daughter, and he so prized his +own cheerful tranquillity, that he avoided inquiries and tried to +assure himself that nothing particularly had happened; and he was only +dissatisfied that her indisposition delayed their return to the +country. + +CHAPTER XIX + +From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to +go away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostovs +came to Moscow the effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to +carry out his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich's +widow, who had long since promised to hand over to him some papers +of her deceased husband's. + +When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Marya +Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great +importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre +had been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling +for her was stronger than a married man's should be for his friend's +fiancee. Yet some fate constantly threw them together. + +"What can have happened? And what can they want with me?" thought he +as he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna's. "If only Prince Andrew +would hurry up and come and marry her!" thought he on his way to the +house. + +On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him. + +"Pierre! Been back long?" someone shouted. Pierre raised his head. +In a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering +the dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makarin +dashed past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of +military dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver +collar and his head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his +white-plumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded +hair besprinkled with powdery snow. + +"Yes, indeed, that's a true sage," thought Pierre. "He sees +nothing beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so +he is always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn't I give +to be like him!" he thought enviously. + +In Marya Dmitrievna's anteroom the footman who helped him off with +his fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom. + +When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha sitting at the +window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at +him, frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity. + +"What has happened?" asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna's room. + +"Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I +lived in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!" + +And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him, +Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew +without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was +Anatole Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and +with whom Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in +order to be married secretly. + +Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was +told him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince +Andrew's deeply loved affianced wife- the same Natasha Rostova who +used to be so charming- should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole +who was already secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in +love with him as to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre +could not conceive and could not imagine. + +He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha, +whom he had known from a child, with this new conception of her +baseness, folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all +alike!" he said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man +unfortunate enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied +Prince Andrew to the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded +pride, and the more he pitied his friend the more did he think with +contempt and even with disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him +in the ballroom with such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that +Natasha's soul was overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation, +and that it was not her fault that her face happened to assume an +expression of calm dignity and severity. + +"But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna. +"He could not marry- he is married!" + +"Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna. +"A nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him- expecting +him since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on +expecting him." + +After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and +giving vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya +Dmitrievna told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that +the count or Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew +of this affair (which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge +Anatole to a duel, and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his +brother-in-law in her name to leave Moscow and not dare to let her set +eyes on him again. Pierre- only now realizing the danger to the old +count, Nicholas, and Prince Andrew- promised to do as she wished. +Having briefly and exactly explained her wishes to him, she let him go +to the drawing room. + +"Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing +either," she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use +expecting him! And stay to dinner if you care to!" she called after +Pierre. + +Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning +Natasha had told him that she had rejected Bolkonski. + +"Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!" he said to Pierre. "What +troubles one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret +having come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she +has broken off her engagement without consulting anybody? It's true +this engagement never was much to my liking. Of course he is an +excellent man, but still, with his father's disapproval they +wouldn't have been happy, and Natasha won't lack suitors. Still, it +has been going on so long, and to take such a step without father's or +mother's consent! And now she's ill, and God knows what! It's hard, +Count, hard to manage daughters in their mother's absence...." + +Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the +subject, but the count returned to his troubles. + +Sonya entered the room with an agitated face. + +"Natasha is not quite well; she's in her room and would like to +see you. Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too asks you to come." + +"Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski's, no doubt she wants to +send him a message," said the count. "Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it +all was!" + +And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the +room. + +When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was married, Natasha +did not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by +Pierre himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him along the +corridor to Natasha's room. + +Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and +her eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look +the moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed +fixedly at him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or +like the others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he +evidently did not exist for her. + +"He knows all about it," said Marya Dmitrievna pointing to Pierre +and addressing Natasha. "Let him tell you whether I have told the +truth." + +Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded +animal looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen. + +"Natalya Ilynichna," Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a +feeling of pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do, +"whether it is true or not should make no difference to you, +because..." + +"Then it is not true that he's married!" + +"Yes, it is true." + +"Has he been married long?" she asked. "On your honor?..." + +Pierre gave his word of honor. + +"Is he still here?" she asked, quickly. + +"Yes, I have just seen him." + +She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands +that they should leave her alone. + +CHAPTER XX + +Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at +once. He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kuragin, at the +thought of whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a +difficulty in breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the +gypsies', nor at Komoneno's. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all +was going on as usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were +sitting about in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town +news. The footman having greeted him, knowing his habits and his +acquaintances, told him there was a place left for him in the small +dining room and that Prince Michael Zakharych was in the library, +but Paul Timofeevich had not yet arrived. One of Pierre's +acquaintances, while they were talking about the weather, asked if +he had heard of Kuragin's abduction of Rostova which was talked of +in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and said it was +nonsense for he had just come from the Rostovs'. He asked everyone +about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and another +that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this calm, +indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in his +soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come, +and as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove +home. + +Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with +Dolokhov, consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate +affair. It seemed to him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he +drove to his sister's to discuss with her how to arrange a meeting. +When Pierre returned home after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his +valet informed him that Prince Anatole was with the countess. The +countess' drawing room was full of guests. + +Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his +return- at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever- +entered the drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him. + +"Ah, Pierre," said the countess going up to her husband. "You +don't know what a plight our Anatole..." + +She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband's head, +in his glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of +that rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced +after his duel with Dolokhov. + +"Where you are, there is vice and evil!" said Pierre to his wife. +"Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you," he added in French. + +Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready +to follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward +himself and was leading him from the room. + +"If you allow yourself in my drawing room..." whispered Helene, +but Pierre did not reply and went out of the room. + +Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face +betrayed anxiety. + +Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed +Anatole without looking at him. + +"You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were about to +elope with her, is that so?" + +"Mon cher," answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in +French), "I don't consider myself bound to answer questions put to +me in that tone." + +Pierre's face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized +Anatole by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him +from side to side till Anatole's face showed a sufficient degree of +terror. + +"When I tell you that I must talk to you!..." repeated Pierre. + +"Come now, this is stupid. What?" said Anatole, fingering a button +of his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth. + +"You're a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don't know what deprives +me from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!" said Pierre, +expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French. + +He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once +put it back in its place. + +"Did you promise to marry her?" + +"I... I didn't think of it. I never promised, because..." + +Pierre interrupted him. + +"Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?" he said, moving +toward Anatole. + +Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his +pocket and drew out his pocketbook. + +Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table +that stood in his way, threw himself on the sofa. + +"I shan't be violent, don't be afraid!" said Pierre in answer to a +frightened gesture of Anatole's. "First, the letters," said he, as +if repeating a lesson to himself. "Secondly," he continued after a +short pause, again rising and again pacing the room, "tomorrow you +must get out of Moscow." + +"But how can I?..." + +"Thirdly," Pierre continued without listening to him, "you must +never breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess +Rostova. I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark +of conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times in silence. + +Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips. + +"After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there +is such a thing as other people's happiness and peace, and that you +are ruining a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse +yourself with women like my wife- with them you are within your +rights, for they know what you want of them. They are armed against +you by the same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to +marry her... to deceive, to kidnap.... Don't you understand that it is +as mean as beating an old man or a child?..." + +Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with +a questioning look. + +"I don't know about that, eh?" said Anatole, growing more +confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. "I don't know that and don't +want to," he said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of +his lower jaw, "but you have used such words to me- 'mean' and so +on- which as a man of honor I can't allow anyone to use." + +Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he +wanted. + +"Though it was tete-a-tete," Anatole continued, "still I can't..." + +"Is it satisfaction you want?" said Pierre ironically. + +"You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do +as you wish, eh?" + +"I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to +forgive me." Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. "And if +you require money for your journey..." + +Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile, +which Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him. + +"Oh, vile and heartless brood!" he exclaimed, and left the room. + +Next day Anatole left for Petersburg. + +CHAPTER XXI + +Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna's to tell her of the fulfillment of +her wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole +house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill, +having, as Marya Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the +night after she had been told that Anatole was married, with some +arsenic she had stealthily procured. After swallowing a little she had +been so frightened that she woke Sonya and told her what she had done. +The necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was +now out of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the +question to move her to the country, and so the countess had been sent +for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and Sonya, who had a +tear-stained face, but he could not see Natasha. + +Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip +about the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these +rumors, assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his +brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to +Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and +re-establish Natasha's reputation. + +He was awaiting Prince Andrew's return with dread and went every day +to the old prince's for news of him. + +Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in the town from +Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which +Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits +than usual and awaited his son with great impatience. + +Some days after Anatole's departure Pierre received a note from +Prince Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come +to see him. + +As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his +father Natasha's note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement +(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and +given it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of +Natasha's elopement, with additions. + +Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see +him next morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost +the same state as Natasha and was therefore surprised on entering +the drawing room to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated +voice about some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince's +voice and another now and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out +to meet Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the door of the room +where Prince Andrew was, evidently intending to express her sympathy +with his sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was glad both +at what had happened and at the way her brother had taken the news +of Natasha's faithlessness. + +"He says he expected it," she remarked. "I know his pride will not +let him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far +better, than I expected. Evidently it had to be...." + +"But is it possible that all is really ended?" asked Pierre. + +Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not +understand how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the +study. Prince Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health, +but with a fresh horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in +civilian dress facing his father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly +disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation was about +Speranski- the news of whose sudden exile and alleged treachery had +just reached Moscow. + +"Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about +him a month ago," Prince Andrew was saying, "and by those who were +unable to understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and +to throw on him all the blame of other men's mistakes is very easy, +but I maintain that if anything good has been accomplished in this +reign it was done by him, by him alone." + +He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and +immediately assumed a vindictive expression. + +"Posterity will do him justice," he concluded, and at once turned to +Pierre. + +"Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?" he said with +animation, but the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. "Yes, I am +well," he said in answer to Pierre's question, and smiled. + +To Pierre that smile said plainly: "I am well, but my health is +now of no use to anyone." + +After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish +frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre, +and about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his +son's tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation +about Speranski which was still going on between the two old men. + +"If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon, +they would have been made public," he said with warmth and haste. "I +do not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!" + +Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only +too familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous +matters in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too +intimate. When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took +Pierre's arm and asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A +bed had been made up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks +stood about. Prince Andrew went to one and took out a small casket, +from which he drew a packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently +and very quickly. He stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his +lips compressed. + +"Forgive me for troubling you..." + +Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his +broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated +Prince Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he +continued: + +"I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard +reports of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of +that kind. Is that true?" + +"Both true and untrue," Pierre began; but Prince Andrew +interrupted him. + +"Here are her letters and her portrait," said he. + +He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre. + +"Give this to the countess... if you see her." + +"She is very ill," said Pierre. + +"Then she is here still?" said Prince Andrew. "And Prince +Kuragin?" he added quickly. + +"He left long ago. She has been at death's door." + +"I much regret her illness," said Prince Andrew; and he smiled +like his father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly. + +"So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his +hand?" said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times. + +"He could not marry, for he was married already," said Pierre. + +Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his +father. + +"And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?" he said. + +"He has gone to Peters... But I don't know," said Pierre. + +"Well, it doesn't matter," said Prince Andrew. "Tell Countess +Rostova that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all +that is good." + +Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember +whether he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre +would say anything, looked fixedly at him. + +"I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?" asked Pierre, +"about..." + +"Yes," returned Prince Andrew hastily. "I said that a fallen woman +should be forgiven, but I didn't say I could forgive her. I can't." + +"But can this be compared...?" said Pierre. + +Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: "Yes, ask her +hand again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very +noble, but I am unable to follow in that gentleman's footsteps. If you +wish to be my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well, +good-by. So you'll give her the packet?" + +Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary. + +The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same +as always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed +her satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at +them Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the +Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to +mention the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone +else. + +At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was +becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with +his father, now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an +unnatural animation, the cause of which Pierre so well understood. + +CHAPTER XXII + +That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the +commission entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the +Club, and Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya +Dmitrievna who was interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken +the news. Ten minutes later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna. + +"Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich," said she. + +"But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not +been tidied up." + +"No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room," said Sonya. + +Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders. + +"When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind, +don't tell her everything!" said she to Pierre. "One hasn't the +heart to scold her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be +pitied." + +Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated, +with a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected +to find her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently +undecided whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up. + +Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as +usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her +arms hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she +went to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different +expression of face. + +"Peter Kirilovich," she began rapidly, "Prince Bolkonski was your +friend- is your friend," she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that +everything that had once been must now be different.) "He told me once +to apply to you..." + +Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then +he had reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he +now felt so sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for +reproach. + +"He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!" She stopped +and breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears. + +"Yes... I will tell him," answered Pierre; "but..." + +He did not know what to say. + +Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think +she had meant. + +"No, I know all is over," she said hurriedly. "No, that can never +be. I'm only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only +that I beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...." + +She trembled all over and sat down on a chair. + +A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre's heart. + +"I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more," said +Pierre. "But... I should like to know one thing...." + +"Know what?" Natasha's eyes asked. + +"I should like to know, did you love..." Pierre did not know how +to refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him- "did you love +that bad man?" + +"Don't call him bad!" said Natasha. "But I don't know, don't know at +all...." + +She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness, +and love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his +spectacles and hoped they would not be noticed. + +"We won't speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre, and his +gentle, cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natasha. + +"We won't speak of it, my dear- I'll tell him everything; but one +thing I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help, +advice, or simply to open your heart to someone- not now, but when +your mind is clearer think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it. +"I shall be happy if it's in my power..." + +Pierre grew confused. + +"Don't speak to me like that. I am not worth it!" exclaimed +Natasha and turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand. + +He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it +he was amazed at his own words. + +"Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said he to her. + +"Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with shame and +self-abasement. + +"All over?" he repeated. "If I were not myself, but the handsomest, +cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this +moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!" + +For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of gratitude and +tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room. + +Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom, +restraining tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without +finding the sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his +sleigh. + +"Where to now, your excellency?" asked the coachman. + +"Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can I go now? Surely not to +the Club or to pay calls?" All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in +comparison with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in +comparison with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him +through her tears. + +"Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost +Fahrenheit he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and +inhaled the air with joy. + +It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the +black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky +did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane +things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been +raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark +starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, +above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all +sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to +the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the +enormous and brilliant comet of 18l2- the comet which was said to +portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, +however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling +of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, +at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with +inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly- +like an arrow piercing the earth- to remain fixed in a chosen spot, +vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white +light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre +that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own +softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life. + +BOOK NINE: 1812 + +CHAPTER I + +From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating +of the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces- +millions of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army- +moved from the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which +since 1811 Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth +of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian +frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to +human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated +against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, +thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, +and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of +all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them +did not at the time regard as being crimes. + +What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? +The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the +wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the +Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of +Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on. + +Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich, +Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to +have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for +Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I +consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"- and there +would have been no war. + +We can understand that the matter seemed like that to +contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was +caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. +Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that +the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of +Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; +to businessmen that the cause of the way was the Continental System +which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the +chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them +employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of +re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that +time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between +Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed +from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. +It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of +other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points +of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to +posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and +perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem +insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of +Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon +was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was +astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what +connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter +and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men +from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk +and Moscow and were killed by them. + +To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried +away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event +with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes +present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes +the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of +causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by +its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its +impotence- apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident +causes- to occasion the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or +that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as +Napoleon's refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to +restore the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and +had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and private also +refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon's army and +the war could not have occurred. + +Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw +beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would +have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a +second term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there +have been a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of +Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been +an autocratic government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a +subsequent dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced +the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing +could have happened. So all these causes- myriads of causes- coincided +to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for that +occurrence, but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men, +renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to +east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes +of men had come from the east to the west, slaying their fellows. + +The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event +seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier +who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This +could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and +Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried +out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without +any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was +necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power- +the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns- should +consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should +have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and +complex causes. + +We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of +irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of +which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in +history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they +become to us. + +Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal +aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain +from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that +action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and +belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined +significance. + +There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, +which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his +elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for +him. + +Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious +instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of +humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in +time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic +significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more +people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the +more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every +action. + +"The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord." + +A king is history's slave. + +History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, +uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes. + +Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than +ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses +peuples~{ "To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples." }~ as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him- +he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which +compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own +volition, to perform for the hive life- that is to say, for history- +whatever had to be performed. + +The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and +by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and +co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the +nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's +wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia- undertaken (as it +seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace, +the French Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his +people's inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations, +and the expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining +advantages to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors +he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the +opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to +attain peace, but which only wounded the self-love of both sides, +and millions and millions of other causes that adapted themselves to +the event that was happening or coincided with it. + +When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of +its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it +is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes +it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it? + +Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions +in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the +botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue +decays and so forth is equally right with the child who stands under +the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and +prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon +went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander +desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill +weighing a million tons fell because the last navvy struck it for +the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great +men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but +the smallest connection with the event itself. + +Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, +is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole +course of history and predestined from eternity. + +CHAPTER II + +On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent +three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings, +and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the +emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings +and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and +diamonds of his own- that is, which he had taken from other kings- +to the Empress of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us, +tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louise- who regarded him as her +husband, though he had left another wife in Paris- left her grieved by +the parting which she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the +diplomatists still firmly believed in the possibility of peace and +worked zealously to that end, and though the Emperor Napoleon +himself wrote a letter to Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere, +and sincerely assured him that he did not want war and would always +love and honor him- yet he set off to join his army, and at every +station gave fresh orders to accelerate the movement of his troops +from west to east. He went in a traveling coach with six horses, +surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort, along the road to +Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these towns thousands +of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm. + +The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses +carried him in the same direction. On the tenth of June,~{ Old style. }~ coming up +with the army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on +the estate of a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest. + +Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the +Niemen, and, changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank +in order to select a place for the crossing. + +Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the +wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of +Moscow (Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the +Scythia into which Alexander the Great had marched- Napoleon +unexpectedly, and contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic +considerations, ordered an advance, and the next day his army began to +cross the Niemen. + +Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent, +which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and +looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out +of the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown +across the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor's presence, +were on the lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in +an overcoat and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of +his tent on the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: "Vive +l'Empereur!" and one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of +the vast forest that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and +on by the three bridges to the other side. + +"Now we'll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself, +things get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l'Empereur! So +these are the steppes of Asia! It's a nasty country all the same. Au +revoir, Beauche; I'll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au +revoir. Good luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l'Empereur!... +preur!- If they make me Governor of India, Gerard, I'll make you +Minister of Kashmir- that's settled. Vive l'Empereur! Hurrah! +hurrah! hurrah! The Cossacks- those rascals- see how they run! Vive +l'Empereur! There he is, do you see him? I've seen him twice, as I see +you now. The little corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the +veterans.... Vive l'Empereur!" came the voices of men, old and +young, of most diverse characters and social positions. On the faces +of all was one common expression of joy at the commencement of the +long-expected campaign and of rapture and devotion to the man in the +gray coat who was standing on the hill. + +On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse +was brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one +of the bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant +and rapturous acclamations which he evidently endured only because +it was impossible to forbid the soldiers to express their love of +him by such shouting, but the shouting which accompanied him +everywhere disturbed him and distracted him from the military cares +that had occupied him from the time he joined the army. He rode across +one of the swaying pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned sharply +to the left, and galloped in the direction of Kovno, preceded by +enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the Guard who, breathless with +delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for him through the troops. On +reaching the broad river Viliya, he stopped near a regiment of +Polish Uhlans stationed by the river. + +"Vivat!" shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and +pressing against one another to see him. + +Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a +log that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was +handed him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run +up to him, and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became +absorbed in a map laid out on the logs. Without lifting his head he +said something, and two of his aides-de-camp galloped off to the +Polish Uhlans. + +"What? What did he say?" was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans +when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them. + +The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel +of the Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his +speech from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be +permitted to swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford. +In evident fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on +a horse, he begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the +Emperor's eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor +would not be displeased at this excess of zeal. + +As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached +officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted +"Vivat!" and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse +and galloped into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, +which had grown restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading +for the deepest part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans +galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in +the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as +they fell off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some +of the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some +clinging to their horses' manes. They tried to make their way +forward to the opposite bank and, though there was a ford one third of +a mile away, were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this +river under the eyes of the man who sat on the log and was not even +looking at what they were doing. When the aide-de-camp, having +returned and choosing an opportune moment, ventured to draw the +Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the +little man in the gray overcoat got up and, having summoned +Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving him +instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at the +drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention. + +For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of +the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough +to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called +for his horse and rode to his quarters. + +Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were +sent to their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from +which they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and +with difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they +had got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted +"Vivat!" and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been +but where he no longer was and at that moment considered themselves +happy. + +That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian +paper money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as +quickly as possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a +letter containing information about the orders to the French army +had been found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish +colonel who had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled +in the Legion d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head. + +Quos vult perdere dementat.~{ Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad. }~ + +CHAPTER III + +The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for more than +a month. reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for +the war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor +had come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The +vacillation between the various plans that were proposed had even +increased after the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each +of the three armies had its own commander in chief, but there was no +supreme commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume +that responsibility himself. + +The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did everybody- +tired of waiting- prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who +surrounded the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend +his time pleasantly and forget that war was impending. + +In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by +the courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the +Polish aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be +given for the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly +received. The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected +money by subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to +the Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a +landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the +fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner, +regatta, and fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen's country seat. + +The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and +his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian +frontier, Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by +his aides-de-camp at Bennigsen's country house. + +It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters +declared that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one +place. Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who +had followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the +refined Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian type of +beauty. The Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance. + +Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the +present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not +an aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris +was now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought +patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of +his own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not having seen +her for a long time and did not recall the past, but as Helene was +enjoying the favors of a very important personage and Boris had only +recently married, they met as good friends of long standing. + +At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a +suitable partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Boris. +They were the third couple. Boris, coolly looking at Helene's dazzling +bare shoulders which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze +gown, talked to her of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware +of it himself and unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased +to observe the Emperor who was in the same room. The Emperor was not +dancing, he stood in the doorway, stopping now one pair and now +another with gracious words which he alone knew how to utter. + +As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General Balashev, +one of those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him +and contrary to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to +a Polish lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked +inquiringly at Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only +acted thus because there were important reasons for so doing, nodded +slightly to the lady and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to +speak before a look of amazement appeared on the Emperor's face. He +took Balashev by the arm and crossed the room with him, +unconsciously clearing a path seven yards wide as the people on both +sides made way for him. Boris noticed Arakcheev's excited face when +the sovereign went out with Balashev. Arakcheev looked at the +Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with his red nose, stepped +forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor to address him. +(Boris understood that Arakcheev envied Balashev and was displeased +that evidently important news had reached the Emperor otherwise than +through himself.) + +But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated +garden without noticing Arakcheev who, holding his sword and +glancing wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them. + +All the time Boris was going through the figures of the mazurka, +he was worried by the question of what news Balashev had brought and +how he could find it out before others. In the figure in which he +had to choose two ladies, he whispered to Helene that he meant to +choose Countess Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the +veranda, and glided over the parquet to the door opening into the +garden, where, seeing Balashev and the Emperor returning to the +veranda, he stood still. They were moving toward the door. Boris, +fluttering as if he had not had time to withdraw, respectfully pressed +close to the doorpost with bowed head. + +The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally +affronted, was finishing with these words: + +"To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as +long as a single armed enemy remains in my country!" It seemed to +Boris that it gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was +satisfied with the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but +displeased that Boris had overheard it. + +"Let no one know of it! " the Emperor added with a frown. + +Boris understood that this was meant for him and, closing his +eyes, slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and +remained there about another half-hour. + +Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French army +had crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain +important personages that much that was concealed from others was +usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their +estimation. + +The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was +particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations, +and at a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of +indignation and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased +him, fully expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On +returning home at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary, +Shishkov, and told him to write an order to the troops and a +rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the +words being inserted that he would not make peace so long as a +single armed Frenchman remained on Russian soil. + +Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon: + +Monsieur mon frere, + +Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty which I have kept my +engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian +frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in +which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression, +that Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with +me from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The reasons +on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him +would never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a +pretext for aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has +declared, was never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I +was informed of it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and +ordered him to remain at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend +to shed the blood of our peoples for such a misunderstanding, and +consents to withdraw your troops from Russian territory, I will regard +what has passed as not having occurred and an understanding between us +will be possible. In the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see +myself forced to repel an attack that nothing on my part has provoked. +It still depends on Your Majesty to preserve humanity from the +calamity of another war. I am, etc., + +(signed) Alexander + +CHAPTER IV + +At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having +sent for Balashev and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him +to take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When +dispatching Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he +would not make peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on +Russian soil and told him to transmit those words to Napoleon. +Alexander did not insert them in his letter to Napoleon, because +with his characteristic tact he felt it would be injudicious to use +them at a moment when a last attempt at reconciliation was being made, +but he definitely instructed Balashev to repeat them personally to +Napoleon. + +Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied +by a bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached the French outposts +at the village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn. +There he was stopped by French cavalry sentinels. + +A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform +and a shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashev to halt. +Balashev did not do so at once, but continued to advance along the +road at a walking pace. + +The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse, +advanced his horse's chest against Balashev, put his hand to his +saber, and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he +deaf that he did not do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was. +The noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about +regimental matters without looking at the Russian general. + +After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after +conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in +general being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the +service, Balashev found it very strange here on Russian soil to +encounter this hostile, and still more this disrespectful, application +of brute force to himself. + +The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air +was fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road +from the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one +after another, like bubbles rising in water. + +Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer +from the village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French +hussars looked silently at one another from time to time. + +A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed, +came riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse, +accompanied by two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their +horses all looked smart and well kept. + +It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full +trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of +martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit +of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign. + +The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was +polite and evidently understood Balashev's importance. He led him past +his soldiers and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to +be presented to the Emperor would most likely be satisfied +immediately, as the Emperor's quarters were, he believed, not far off. + +They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French +hussar horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and +stared with curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the +other end of the village. The colonel said that the commander of the +division was a mile and a quarter away and would receive Balashev +and conduct him to his destination. + +The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure. + +They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a +group of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a +black horse with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall +man with plumes in his hat and black hair curling down to his +shoulders. He wore a red mantle, and stretched his long legs forward +in French fashion. This man rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his +plumes flowing and his gems and gold lace glittering in the bright +June sunshine. + +Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the +bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was +galloping toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when +Julner, the French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of +Naples!" It was, in fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though +it was quite incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he +was called so, and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore +assumed a more solemn and important air than formerly. He was so +sure that he really was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of +his departure from that city, while walking through the streets with +his wife, some Italians called out to him: "Viva il re!"~{ "Long live the king." }~ he turned to +his wife with a pensive smile and said: "Poor fellows, they don't know +that I am leaving them tomorrow!" + +But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and +pitied the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly, +after he had been ordered to return to military service- and +especially since his last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when +his august brother-in-law had told him: "I made you King that you +should reign in my way, but not in yours!"- he had cheerfully taken up +his familiar business, and- like a well-fed but not overfat horse that +feels himself in harness and grows skittish between the shafts- he +dressed up in clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and +gaily and contentedly galloped along the roads of Poland, without +himself knowing why or whither. + +On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its +long hair curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner, +and looked inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully +informed His Majesty of Balashev's mission, whose name he could not +pronounce. + +"De Bal-macheve!" said the King (overcoming by his assurance the +difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). "Charmed to make +your acquaintance, General!" he added, with a gesture of kingly +condescension. + +As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity +instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his +natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the +withers of Balashev's horse and said: + +"Well, General, it all looks like war," as if regretting a +circumstance of which he was unable to judge. + +"Your Majesty," replied Balashev, "my master, the Emperor, does +not desire war and as Your Majesty sees..." said Balashev, using the +words Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation +unavoidable in frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a +novelty. + +Murat's face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to +"Monsieur de Bal-macheve." But royaute oblige!~{ "Royalty has its obligations." }~ and he felt it +incumbent on him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs +with Alexander's envoy. He dismounted, took Balashev's arm, and moving +a few steps away from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to +pace up and down with him, trying to speak significantly. He +referred to the fact that the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand +that he should withdraw his troops from Prussia, especially when +that demand became generally known and the dignity of France was +thereby offended. + +Balashev replied that there was nothing offensive in the demand, +because..." but Murat interrupted him. + +"Then you don't consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?" he +asked unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile. + +Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of +the war. + +"Oh, my dear general!" Murat again interrupted him, "with all my +heart I wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and +that the war begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as +possible!" said he, in the tone of a servant who wants to remain +good friends with another despite a quarrel between their masters. + +And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of +his health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had +spent with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal +dignity, Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which +he had stood at his coronation. and, waving his right arm, said: + +"I won't detain you longer, General. I wish success to your +mission," and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers, +and his glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were +respectfully awaiting him. + +Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat's words that he would very +soon be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the +next village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him +as the pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the +corps commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to +Marshal Davout. + +CHAPTER V + +Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to Alexander- though not a +coward like Arakcheev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to +express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty. + +In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are +necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always +appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and +their proximity to the head of the government may be. This +inevitability alone can explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore +out a grenadier's mustache with his own hands, whose weak nerves +rendered him unable to face danger, and who was neither an educated +man nor a courtier, was able to maintain his powerful position with +Alexander, whose own character was chivalrous, noble, and gentle. + +Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a +peasant's hut, writing- he was auditing accounts. Better quarters +could have been found him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who +purposely put themselves in most depressing conditions to have a +justification for being gloomy. For the same reason they are always +hard at work and in a hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of +life when, as you see, I am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty +shed?" the expression of his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure +and necessity of such men, when they encounter anyone who shows +animation, is to flaunt their own dreary, persistent activity. +Davout allowed himself that pleasure when Balashev was brought in. +He became still more absorbed in his task when the Russian general +entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at Balashev's face, +which was animated by the beauty of the morning and by his talk with +Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still more and +sneered malevolently. + +When he noticed in Balashev's face the disagreeable impression +this reception produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked +what he wanted. + +Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because +Davout did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor +Alexander and even his envoy to Napoleon, Balashev hastened to +inform him of his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation, +Davout, after hearing him, became still surlier and ruder. + +"Where is your dispatch?" he inquired. "Give it to me. I will send +it to the Emperor." + +Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to +the Emperor. + +"Your Emperor's orders are obeyed in your army, but here," said +Davout, "you must do as you're told." + +And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his +dependence on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer +on duty. + +Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor's letter and +laid it on the table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging +on it, laid across two barrels). Davout took the packet and read the +inscription. + +"You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not," +protested Balashev, "but permit me to observe that I have the honor to +be adjutant general to His Majesty...." + +Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the +signs of agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashev's face. + +"You will be treated as is fitting," said he and, putting the packet +in his pocket, left the shed. + +A minute later the marshal's adjutant, de Castres, came in and +conducted Balashev to the quarters assigned him. + +That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the +barrels. + +Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashev to come to +him, peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the +baggage train should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one +except Monsieur de Castres. + +After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his +impotence and insignificance- particularly acute by contrast with +the sphere of power in which he had so lately moved- and after several +marches with the marshal's baggage and the French army, which occupied +the whole district, Balashev was brought to Vilna- now occupied by the +French- through the very gate by which he had left it four days +previously. + +Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne, +came to Balashev and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon's wish to +honor him with an audience. + +Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk regiment had +stood in front of the house to which Balashev was conducted, and now +two French grenadiers stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front +and with shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and +Uhlans and a brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals, +who were waiting for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the porch, +round his saddle horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received +Balashev in the very house in Vilna from which Alexander had +dispatched him on his mission. + +CHAPTER VI + +Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the +luxury and magnificence of Napoleon's court. + +The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many +generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates- several of whom +Balashev had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia- were waiting. +Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before +going for his ride. + +After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came +into the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashev +to follow him. + +Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of which led +into a study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had +dispatched him on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He +heard hurried footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened +rapidly; all was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of +other steps, firm and resolute- they were those of Napoleon. He had +just finished dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform, +opening in front over a white waistcoat so long that it covered his +rotund stomach, white leather breeches tightly fitting the fat +thighs of his short legs, and Hessian boots. His short hair had +evidently just been brushed, but one lock hung down in the middle of +his broad forehead. His plump white neck stood out sharply above the +black collar of his uniform, and he smelled of Eau de Cologne. His +full face, rather young-looking, with its prominent chin, wore a +gracious and majestic expression of imperial welcome. + +He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head +slightly thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad +thick shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had +that imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live +in comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits +that day. + +He nodded in answer to Balashav's low and respectful bow, and coming +up to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of +his time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but +is sure he will always say the right thing and say it well. + +"Good day, General!" said he. "I have received the letter you +brought from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you." He +glanced with his large eyes into Balashav's face and immediately +looked past him. + +It was plain that Balashev's personality did not interest him at +all. Evidently only what took place within his own mind interested +him. Nothing outside himself had any significance for him, because +everything in the world, it seemed to him, depended entirely on his +will. + +"I do not, and did not, desire war," he continued, "but it has +been forced on me. Even now" (he emphasized the word) "I am ready to +receive any explanations you can give me." + +And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for +dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly +moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashev +was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter +into negotiations. + +When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the +Russian envoy, Balashev began a speech he had prepared long before: +"Sire! The Emperor, my master..." but the sight of the Emperor's +eyes bent on him confused him. "You are flurried- compose yourself!" +Napoleon seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked +at Balashev's uniform and sword. + +Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the +Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin's demand for his +passports a sufficient cause for war; that Kurakin had acted on his +own initiative and without his sovereign's assent, that the Emperor +Alexander did not desire war, and had no relations with England. + +"Not yet!" interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to +his feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashev +might proceed. + +After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashev added +that the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter +into negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashev hesitated: +he remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his +letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov and had +told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev remembered these +words, "So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil," but +some complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though +he wished to do so. He grew confused and said: "On condition that +the French army retires beyond the Niemen." + +Napoleon noticed Balashev's embarrassment when uttering these last +words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to +quiver rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he began +speaking in a louder tone and more hurriedly than before. During the +speech that followed, Balashev, who more than once lowered his eyes, +involuntarily noticed the quivering of Napoleon's left leg which +increased the more Napoleon raised his voice. + +"I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander," he began. +"Have I not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it? +I have waited eighteen months for explanations. But in order to +begin negotiations, what is demanded of me?" he said, frowning and +making an energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump +hand. + +"The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire," replied +Balashev. + +"The Niemen?" repeated Napoleon. "So now you want me to retire +beyond the Niemen- only the Niemen?" repeated Napoleon, looking +straight at Balashev. + +The latter bowed his head respectfully. + +Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from +Pomerania, only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded. +Napoleon turned quickly and began to pace the room. + +"You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen +before commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months +ago the demand was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the +Oder, and yet you are willing to negotiate." + +He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and +again stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev noticed that his left leg +was quivering faster than before and his face seemed petrified in +its stern expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing +Napoleon was conscious of. "The vibration of my left calf is a great +sign with me," he remarked at a later date. + +"Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be +made to a Prince of Baden, but not to me!" Napoleon almost screamed, +quite to his own surprise. "If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I +could not accept such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But +who first joined his army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer +me negotiations when I have expended millions, when you are in +alliance with England, and when your position is a bad one. You +offer me negotiations! But what is the aim of your alliance with +England? What has she given you?" he continued hurriedly, evidently no +longer trying to show the advantages of peace and discuss its +possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and power and +Alexander's errors and duplicity. + +The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the +intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position and +showing that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had +begun talking, and the more he talked the less could he control his +words. + +The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt +himself and insult Alexander- just what he had least desired at the +commencement of the interview. + +"I hear you have made peace with Turkey?" + +Balashev bowed his head affirmatively. + +"Peace has been concluded..." he began. + +But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all +the talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort of +eloquence and unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people are so +prone. + +"Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining +Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those +provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes," he went on, "I promised and +would have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now +he won't have those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united +them to his empire and in a single reign would have extended Russia +from the Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the +Great could not have done more," said Napoleon, growing more and +more excited as he paced up and down the room, repeating to Balashev +almost the very words he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. "All +that, he would have owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!" +he repeated several times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold +snuffbox, lifted it to his nose, and greedily sniffed at it. + +"What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander's might have been!" + +He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as the latter +tried to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him. + +"What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained +through my friendship?" demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders +in perplexity. "But no, he has preferred to surround himself with my +enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and +Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country; +Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French +subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but +all the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807 +and who should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander's +mind.... Granted that were they competent they might be made use +of," continued Napoleon- hardly able to keep pace in words with the +rush of thoughts that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and +strong he was (in his perception the two were one and the same)- +"but they are not even that! They are neither fit for war nor peace! +Barclay is said to be the most capable of them all, but I cannot say +so, judging by his first movements. And what are they doing, all these +courtiers? Pfuel proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and +Barclay, called on to act, does not know what to decide on, and time +passes bringing no result. Bagration alone is a military man. He's +stupid, but he has experience, a quick eye, and resolution.... And +what role is your young monarch playing in that monstrous crowd? +They compromise him and throw on him the responsibility for all that +happens. A sovereign should not be with the army unless he is a +general!" said Napoleon, evidently uttering these words as a direct +challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander desired to be a +military commander. + +"The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven't even been +able to defend Vilna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of +the Polish provinces. Your army is grumbling." + +"On the contrary, Your Majesty," said Balashev, hardly able to +remember what had been said to him and following these verbal +fireworks with difficulty, "the troops are burning with eagerness..." + +"I know everything!" Napoleon interrupted him. "I know everything. I +know the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You +have not two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number. +I give you my word of honor," said Napoleon, forgetting that his +word of honor could carry no weight- "I give you my word of honor that +I have five hundred and thirty thousand men this side of the +Vistula. The Turks will be of no use to you; they are worth nothing +and have shown it by making peace with you. As for the Swedes- it is +their fate to be governed by mad kings. Their king was insane and they +changed him for another- Bernadotte, who promptly went mad- for no +Swede would ally himself with Russia unless he were mad." + +Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his +nose. + +Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon's remarks, and +would have done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing +to say something, but Napoleon always interrupted him. To the +alleged insanity of the Swedes, Balashev wished to reply that when +Russia is on her side Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon +gave an angry exclamation to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that +state of irritability in which a man has to talk, talk, and talk, +merely to convince himself that he is in the right. Balashev began +to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared to demean his dignity and +felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man, he shrank before the +transport of groundless wrath that had evidently seized Napoleon. He +knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon had any +significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them +when he came to his senses. Balashev stood with downcast eyes, looking +at the movements of Napoleon's stout legs and trying to avoid +meeting his eyes. + +"But what do I care about your allies?" said Napoleon. "I have +allies- the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight +like lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them." + +And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered +this obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still stood silently +before him in the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon +abruptly turned round, drew close to Balashev's face, and, +gesticulating rapidly and energetically with his white hands, almost +shouted: + +"Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I'll wipe it off the +map of Europe!" he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and +he struck one of his small hands energetically with the other. "Yes, I +will throw you back beyond the Dvina and beyond the Dnieper, and +will re-erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind +of Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to +you. That is what you have gained by alienating me!" And he walked +silently several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders +twitching. + +He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again, +lifted it several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashev. +He paused, looked ironically straight into Balashev's eyes, and said +in a quiet voice: + +"And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!" + +Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the +Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon +was silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently not +listening to him. Balashev said that in Russia the best results were +expected from the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to +say, "I know it's your duty to say that, but you don't believe it +yourself. I have convinced you." + +When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox, +sniffed at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal. +The door opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully, +handed the Emperor his hat and gloves; another brought hima pocket +handkerchief. Napoleon, without giving them a glance, turned to +Balashev: + +"Assure the Emperor Alexander from me," said he, taking his hat, +"that I am as devoted to him as before: I know him thoroughly and very +highly esteem his lofty qualities. I will detain you no longer, +General; you shall receive my letter to the Emperor." + +And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception +room rushed forward and descended the staircase. + +CHAPTER VII + +After all that Napoleon had said to him- those bursts of anger and +the last dryly spoken words: "I will detain you no longer, General; +you shall receive my letter," Balashev felt convinced that Napoleon +would not wish to see him, and would even avoid another meeting with +him- an insulted envoy- especially as he had witnessed his unseemly +anger. But, to his surprise, Balashev received, through Duroc, an +invitation to dine with the Emperor that day. + +Bessieres, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner. + +Napoleon met Balashev cheerfully and amiably. He not only showed +no sign of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that +morning, but, on the contrary, tried to reassure Balashev. It was +evident that he had long been convinced that it was impossible for him +to make a mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was +right, not because it harmonized with any idea of right and wrong, but +because he did it. + +The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride through Vilna, +where crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him. +From all the windows of the streets through which he rode, rugs, +flags, and his monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies, +welcoming him, waved their handkerchiefs to him. + +At dinner, having placed Balashev beside him, Napoleon not only +treated him amiably but behaved as if Balashev were one of his own +courtiers, one of those who sympathized with his plans and ought to +rejoice at his success. In the course of conversation he mentioned +Moscow and questioned Balashev about the Russian capital, not merely +as an interested traveler asks about a new city he intends to visit, +but as if convinced that Balashev, as a Russian, must be flattered +by his curiosity. + +"How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many houses? Is it +true that Moscow is called 'Holy Moscow'? How many churches are +there in Moscow?" he asked. + +And receiving the reply that there were more than two hundred +churches, he remarked: + +"Why such a quantity of churches?" + +"The Russians are very devout," replied Balashev. + +"But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign +of the backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to +Caulaincourt for appreciation of this remark. + +Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor. + +"Every country has its own character," said he. + +"But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that," said Napoleon. + +"I beg your Majesty's pardon," returned Balashev, "besides Russia +there is Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries." + +This reply of Balashev's, which hinted at the recent defeats of +the French in Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at +Alexander's court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon's +dinner, where it passed unnoticed. + +The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that +they were puzzled as to what Balashev's tone suggested. "If there is a +point we don't see it, or it is not at all witty," their expressions +seemed to say. So little was his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon +did not notice it at all and naively asked Balashev through what towns +the direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who was on +the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as "all roads lead +to Rome," so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and +"among them the road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose." +Balashev involuntarily flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this +reply, but hardly had he uttered the word Poltava before +Caulaincourt began speaking of the badness of the road from Petersburg +to Moscow and of his Petersburg reminiscences. + +After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon's study, which +four days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander. +Napoleon sat down, toying with his Sevres coffee cup, and motioned +Balashev to a chair beside him. + +Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than +any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to +consider everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was +surrounded by men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after +his dinner, Balashev too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned +to him with a pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile. + +"They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied? +Strange, isn't it, General?" he said, evidently not doubting that this +remark would be agreeable to his hearer since it went to prove his, +Napoleon's, superiority to Alexander. + +Balashev made no reply and bowed and bowed his head in silence. + +"Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were +deliberating," continued Napoleon with the same derisive and +self-confident smile. "What I can't understand," he went on, "is +that the Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal +enemies. That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may +the same?" and he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently this +thought turned him back on to the track of his morning's anger, +which was still fresh in him. + +"And let him know that I will do so!" said Napoleon, rising and +pushing his cup away with his hand. "I'll drive all his Wurttemberg, +Baden, and Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I'll drive them +out. Let him prepare an asylum for them in Russia!" + +Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to +make his bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help +hearing what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression; +he treated Balashev not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man now +fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master's +humiliation. + +"And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What +is the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to +reign and not to command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a +responsibility?" + +Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up +and down the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, +went up to Balashev and with a slight smile, as confidently, +quickly, and simply as if he were doing something not merely +important but pleasing to Balashev, he raised his hand to the +forty-year-old Russian general's face and, taking him by the ear, +pulled it gently, smiling with his lips only. + +To have one's ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the +greatest honor and mark of favor at the French court. + +"Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don't you +say anything?" said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to +be the adorer and courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. "Are the +horses ready for the general?" he added, with a slight inclination +of his head in reply to Balashev's bow. "Let him have mine, he has a +long way to go!" + +The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon sent to +Alexander. Every detail of the interview was communicated to the +Russian monarch, and the war began... + +CHAPTER VIII + +After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to +Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet +Anatole Kuragin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching +Petersburg he inquired for Kuragin but the latter had already left the +city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on +his track. Anatole Kuragin promptly obtained an appointment from the +Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in +Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his former commander who was +always well disposed toward him, and Kutuzov suggested that he +should accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general +had been appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having +received an appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey. + +Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge +Kuragin. He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause +it might compromise the young Countess Rostova and so he wanted to +meet Kuragin personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. +But he again failed to meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after Prince +Andrew arrived, the latter returned to Russia. In a new country, +amid new conditions, Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After +his betrothed had broken faith with him- which he felt the more +acutely the more he tried to conceal its effects- the surroundings +in which he had been happy became trying to him, and the freedom and +independence he had once prized so highly were still more so. Not only +could he no longer think the thoughts that had first come to him as he +lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later +enlarged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his solitude at +Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to +recall them and them and the bright and boundless horizons they had +revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical matters +unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more +eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if +that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above +him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down, +in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious. + +Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was +the simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutuzov's +staff, he applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and +surprised Kutuzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not +having found Kuragin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it +necessary to rush back to Russia after him, but all the same he knew +that however long it might be before he met Kuragin, despite his +contempt for him and despite all the proofs he deduced to convince +himself that it was not worth stooping to a conflict with him- he knew +that when he did meet him he would not be able to resist calling him +out, any more than a ravenous man can help snatching at food. And +the consciousness that the insult was not yet avenged, that his rancor +was still unspent, weighed on his heart and poisoned the artificial +tranquillity which he managed to obtain in Turkey by means of +restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and ambitious activity. + +In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached +Bucharest- where Kutuzov had been living for two months, passing his +days and nights with a Wallachian woman- Prince Andrew asked Kutuzov +to transfer him to the Western Army. Kutuzov, who was already weary of +Bolkonski's activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness, very +readily let him go and gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly. + +Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped +at Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on +his way, being only two miles off the Smolensk highroad. During the +last three years there had been so many changes in his life, he had +thought, felt, and seen so much (having traveled both in the east +and the west), that on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange +and unexpected to find the way of life there unchanged and still the +same in every detail. He entered through the gates with their stone +pillars and drove up the avenue leading to the house as if he were +entering an enchanted, sleeping castle. The same old stateliness, +the same cleanliness, the same stillness reigned there, and inside +there was the same furniture, the same walls, sounds, and smell, and +the same timid faces, only somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the +same timid, plain maiden getting on in years, uselessly and +joylessly passing the best years of her life in fear and constant +suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was the same coquettish, +self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her existence and full +of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become more +self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had +brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and +talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same +narrowly intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old +prince had changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which +left a noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was +the same as ever, only showing still more irritability and +skepticism as to what was happening in the world. Little Nicholas +alone had changed. He had grown, become rosier, had curly dark hair, +and, when merry and laughing, quite unconsciously lifted the upper lip +of his pretty little mouth just as the little princess used to do. +He alone did not obey the law of immutability in the enchanted, +sleeping castle. But though externally all remained as of old, the +inner relations of all these people had changed since Prince Andrew +had seen them last. The household was divided into two alien and +hostile camps, who changed their habits for his sake and only met +because he was there. To the one camp belonged the old prince, +Madmoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other Princess +Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and maids. + +During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but +they were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for +whose sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them +all feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first +day, he was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became +morosely dumb and retired to his apartments directly after dinner. +In the evening, when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse +him, began to tell him of the young Count Kamensky's campaign, the old +prince began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for +her superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he +said, was the only person really attached to him. + +The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of +Princess Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated him, and +that by indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling little Prince +Nicholas. The old prince knew very well that he tormented his daughter +and that her life was very hard, but he also knew that he could not +help tormenting her and that she deserved it. "Why does Prince Andrew, +who sees this, say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me +a scoundrel, or an old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own +daughter at a distance and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He +doesn't understand, so I must explain it, and he must hear me out," +thought the old prince. And he began explaining why he could not put +up with his daughter's unreasonable character. + +"If you ask me," said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was +censuring his father for the first time in his life), "I did not +wish to speak about it, but as you ask me I will give you my frank +opinion. If there is any misunderstanding and discord between you +and Mary, I can't blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and +respects you. Since you ask me," continued Prince Andrew, becoming +irritable- as he was always liable to do of late- "I can only say that +if there are any misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless +woman, who is not fit to be my sister's companion." + +The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural +smile disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew +could not get accustomed. + +"What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You've already been talking it +over! Eh?" + +"Father, I did not want to judge," said Prince Andrew, in a hard and +bitter tone, "but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall +say, that Mary is not to blame, but those to blame- the one to +blame- is that Frenchwoman." + +"Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!" said the old man +in a low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some +embarrassment, but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: "Be off, be +off! Let not a trace of you remain here!..." + +Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded +him to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did +not leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne +and Tikhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next +day, before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son's rooms. The boy, +curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee, +and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell +into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this +pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He +sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or +regret at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms +with him, and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more +to him was that he sought and did not find in himself the former +tenderness for his son which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the +boy and taking him on his knee. + +"Well, go on!" said his son. + +Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from his knee and went +out of the room. + +As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and +especially on returning to the old conditions of life amid which he +had been happy, weariness of life overcame him with its former +intensity, and he hastened to escape from these memories and to find +some work as soon as possible. + +"So you've decided to go, Andrew?" asked his sister. + +"Thank God that I can," replied Prince Andrew. "I am very sorry +you can't." + +"Why do you say that?" replied Princess Mary. "Why do you say +that, when you are going to this terrible war, and he is so old? +Mademoiselle Bourienne says he has been asking about you...." + +As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her +tears began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the +room. + +"Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what- what trash- can +cause people misery!" he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess +Mary. + +She understood that when speaking of "trash" he referred not only to +Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man +who had ruined his own happiness. + +"Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!" she said, touching +his elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears. +"I understand you" (she looked down). "Don't imagine that sorrow is +the work of men. Men are His tools." She looked a little above +Prince Andrew's head with the confident, accustomed look with which +one looks at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. "Sorrow is +sent by Him, not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to +blame. If you think someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We +have no right to punish. And then you will know the happiness of +forgiving." + +"If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman's virtue. +But a man should not and cannot forgive and forget," he replied, and +though till that moment he had not been thinking of Kuragin, all his +unexpended anger suddenly swelled up in his heart. + +"If Mary is already persuading me forgive, it means that I ought +long ago to have punished him," he thought. And giving her no +further reply, he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he +would meet Kuragin who he knew was now in the army. + +Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she +knew how unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being +reconciled to him, but Prince Andrew replied that he would probably +soon be back again from the army and would certainly write to his +father, but that the longer he stayed now the more embittered their +differences would become. + +"Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men +are never to blame," were the last words he heard from his sister when +he took leave of her. + +"Then it must be so!" thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the +avenue from the house at Bald Hills. "She, poor innocent creature, +is left to be victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits. +The old man feels he is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is +growing up and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he +will deceive or be deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself +don't know. I want to meet that man whom I despise, so as to give +him a chance to kill and laugh at me! + +These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they +were all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only +senseless things, lacking coherence, presented themselves one after +another to Prince Andrew's mind. + +CHAPTER IX + +Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the army at the +end of June. The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied +the fortified camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying +to effect a junction with the first one from which it was said to be +cut off by large French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the +general course of affairs in the Russian army, but no one +anticipated any danger of invasion of the Russian provinces, and no +one thought the war would extend farther than the western, the Polish, +provinces. + +Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been +assigned, on the bank of the Drissa. As there was not a single town or +large village in the vicinity of the camp, the immense number of +generals and courtiers accompanying the army were living in the best +houses of the villages on both sides of the river, over a radius of +six miles. Barclay de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles from +the Emperor. He received Bolkonski stiffly and coldly and told him +in his foreign accent that he would mention him to the Emperor for a +decision as to his employment, but asked him meanwhile to remain on +his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince Andrew had hoped to find +with the army, was not there. He had gone to Petersburg, but Prince +Andrew was glad to hear this. His mind was occupied by the interests +of the center that was conducting a gigantic war, and he was glad to +be free for a while from the distraction caused by the thought of +Kuragin. During the first four days, while no duties were required +of him, Prince Andrew rode round the whole fortified camp and, by +the aid of his own knowledge and by talks with experts, tried to +form a definite opinion about it. But the question whether the camp +was advantageous or disadvantageous remained for him undecided. +Already from his military experience and what he had seen in the +Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in war the +most deeply considered plans have no significance and that all depends +on the way unexpected movements of the enemy- that cannot be foreseen- +are met, and on how and by whom the whole matter is handled. To +clear up this last point for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his +position and acquaintances, tried to fathom the character of the +control of the army and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he +deduced for himself the following of the state of affairs. + +While the Emperor had still been at Vilna, the forces had been +divided into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly, +secondly, the army under Bagration, and thirdly, the one commanded +by Tormasov. The Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander +in chief. In the orders issued it was stated, not that the Emperor +would take command, but only that he would be with the army. The +Emperor, moreover, had with him not a commander in chief's staff but +the imperial headquarters staff. In attendance on him was the head +of the imperial staff, Quartermaster General Prince Volkonski, as well +as generals, imperial aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and a large +number of foreigners, but not the army staff. Besides these, there +were in attendance on the Emperor without any definite appointments: +Arakcheev, the ex-Minister of War; Count Bennigsen, the senior general +in rank; the Grand Duke Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich; Count +Rumyantsev, the Chancellor; Stein, a former Prussian minister; +Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel, the chief author of the plan of +campaign; Paulucci, an adjutant general and Sardinian emigre; +Wolzogen- and many others. Though these men had no military +appointment in the army, their position gave them influence, and often +a corps commander, or even the commander in chief, did not know in +what capacity he was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke, +Arakcheev, or Prince Volkonski, or was given this or that advice and +did not know whether a certain order received in the form of advice +emanated from the man who gave it or from the Emperor and whether it +had to be executed or not. But this was only the external condition; +the essential significance of the presence of the Emperor and of all +these people, from a courtier's point of view (and in an Emperor's +vicinity all became courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was this: +the Emperor did not assume the title of commander in chief, but +disposed of all the armies; the men around him were his assistants. +Arakcheev was a faithful custodian to enforce order and acted as the +sovereign's bodyguard. Bennigsen was a landlord in the Vilna +province who appeared to be doing the honors of the district, but +was in reality a good general, useful as an adviser and ready at +hand to replace Barclay. The Grand Duke was there because it suited +him to be. The ex-Minister Stein was there because his advice was +useful and the Emperor Alexander held him in high esteem personally. +Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a general full of +self-confidence, a quality that always influenced Alexander. +Paulucci was there because he was bold and decided in speech. The +adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the +Emperor, and lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn +up the plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander +to believe in the efficacy of that plan, was directing the whole +business of the war. With Pfuel was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel's +thoughts in a more comprehensible way than Pfuel himself (who was a +harsh, bookish theorist, self-confident to the point of despising +everyone else) was able to do. + +Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded new and +unexpected ideas every day- especially the foreigners, who did so with +a boldness characteristic of people employed in a country not their +own- there were many secondary personages accompanying the army +because their principals were there. + +Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless, +brilliant, and proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following +sharply defined subdivisions of and parties: + +The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents- military +theorists who believed in a science of war with immutable laws- laws +of oblique movements, outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his +adherents demanded a retirement into the depths of the country in +accordance with precise laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and +they saw only barbarism, ignorance, or evil intention in every +deviation from that theory. To this party belonged the foreign nobles, +Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and others, chiefly Germans. + +The second party was directly opposed to the first; one extreme, +as always happens, was met by representatives of the other. The +members of this party were those who had demanded an advance from +Vilna into Poland and freedom from all prearranged plans. Besides +being advocates of bold action, this section also represented +nationalism, which made them still more one-sided in the dispute. They +were Russians: Bagration, Ermolov (who was beginning to come to the +front), and others. At that time a famous joke of Ermolov's was +being circulated, that as a great favor he had petitioned the +Emperor to make him a German. The men of that party, remembering +Suvorov, said that what one had to do was not to reason, or stick pins +into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep him out of Russia, and +not let the army get discouraged. + +To the third party- in which the Emperor had most confidence- +belonged the courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the +other two. The members of this party, chiefly civilians and to whom +Arakcheev belonged, thought and said what men who have no +convictions but wish to seem to have some generally say. They said +that undoubtedly war, particularly against such a genius as +Bonaparte (they called him Bonaparte now), needs most deeply devised +plans and profound scientific knowledge and in that respect Pfuel +was a genius, but at the same time it had to be acknowledged that +the theorists are often one sided, and therefore one should not +trust them absolutely, but should also listen to what Pfuel's +opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had to say, and +then choose a middle course. They insisted on the retention of the +camp at Drissa, according to Pfuel's plan, but on changing the +movements of the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim +nor the other could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents +of this third party. + +Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative was the +Tsarevich, who could not forget his disillusionment at Austerlitz, +where he had ridden out at the head of the Guards, in his casque and +cavalry uniform as to a review, expecting to crush the French +gallantly; but unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had +narrowly escaped amid the general confusion. The men of this party had +both the quality and the defect of frankness in their opinions. They +feared Napoleon, recognized his strength and their own weakness, and +frankly said so. They said: "Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin +will come of all this! We have abandoned Vilna and Vitebsk and shall +abandon Drissa. The only reasonable thing left to do is to conclude +peace as soon as possible, before we are turned out of Petersburg." + +This view was very general in the upper army circles and found +support also in Petersburg and from the chancellor, Rumyantsev, who, +for other reasons of state, was in favor of peace. + +The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of Barclay +de Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister of war and commander in +chief. "Be he what he may" (they always began like that), "he is an +honest, practical man and we have nobody better. Give him real +power, for war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of +command, and he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. If our +army is well organized and strong and has withdrawn to Drissa +without suffering any defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If +Barclay is now to be superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for +Bennigsen showed his incapacity already in 1807." + +The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary, that at +any rate there was no one more active and experienced than +Bennigsen: "and twist about as you may, you will have to come to +Bennigsen eventually. Let the others make mistakes now!" said they, +arguing that our retirement to Drissa was a most shameful reverse +and an unbroken series of blunders. "The more mistakes that are made +the better. It will at any rate be understood all the sooner that +things cannot go on like this. What is wanted is not some Barclay or +other, but a man like Bennigsen, who made his mark in 1807, and to +whom Napoleon himself did justice- a man whose authority would be +willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is the only such man." + +The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who are always +to be found, especially around young sovereigns, and of whom there +were particularly many round Alexander- generals and imperial +aides-de-camp passionately devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a +monarch but as a man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as +Rostov had done in 1805, and who saw in him not only all the virtues +but all human capabilities as well. These men, though enchanted with +the sovereign for refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for +such excessive modesty, and only desired and insisted that their +adored sovereign should abandon his diffidence and openly announce +that he would place himself at the head of the army, gather round +him a commander in chief's staff, and, consulting experienced +theoreticians and practical men where necessary, would himself lead +the troops, whose spirits would thereby be raised to the highest +pitch. + +The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to +the others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither +peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa +or anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor +Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing- as much advantage +and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters of +conflicting and intersecting intrigues that eddied about the Emperor's +headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at +other times. A man who simply wished to retain his lucrative post +would today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and the +day after, merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor, +would declare that he had no opinion at all on the matter. Another who +wished to gain some advantage would attract the Emperor's attention by +loudly advocating the very thing the Emperor had hinted at the day +before, and would dispute and shout at the council, beating his breast +and challenging those who did not agree with him to duels, thereby +proving that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the common good. +A third, in the absence of opponents, between two councils would +simply solicit a special gratuity for his faithful services, well +knowing that at that moment people would be too busy to refuse him. +A fourth while seemingly overwhelmed with work would often come +accidentally under the Emperor's eye. A fifth, to achieve his +long-cherished aim of dining with the Emperor, would stubbornly insist +on the correctness or falsity of some newly emerging opinion and for +this object would produce arguments more or less forcible and correct. + +All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations, +and promotions, and in this pursuit watched only the weathercock of +imperial favor, and directly they noticed it turning in any direction, +this whole drone population of the army began blowing hard that way, +so that it was all the harder for the Emperor to turn it elsewhere. +Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious +danger giving a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid +this vortex of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings, +and the diversity of race among these people- this eighth and +largest party of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted +great confusion and obscurity to the common task. Whatever question +arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their +buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum +drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly. + +From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached +the army, another, a ninth party, was being formed and was beginning +to raise its voice. This was the party of the elders, reasonable men +experienced and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any +of those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of +what was going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means +of escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness. + +The men of this party said and thought that what was wrong +resulted chiefly from the Emperor's presence in the army with his +military court and from the consequent presence there of an +indefinite, conditional, and unsteady fluctuation of relations, +which is in place at court but harmful in an army; that a sovereign +should reign but not command the army, and that the only way out of +the position would be for the Emperor and his court to leave the army; +that the mere presence of the Emperor paralyzed the action of fifty +thousand men required to secure his personal safety, and that the +worst commander in chief if independent would be better than the +very best one trammeled by the presence and authority of the monarch. + +Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa, +Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of the chief +representatives of this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor which +Arakcheev and Balashev agreed to sign. In this letter, availing +himself of permission given him by the Emperor to discuss the +general course of affairs, he respectfully suggested- on the plea that +it was necessary for the sovereign to arouse a warlike spirit in the +people of the capital- that the Emperor should leave the army. + +That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to +them to defend their country- the very incitement which was the +chief cause of Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the +Tsar's personal presence in Moscow- was suggested to the Emperor, +and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting the army. + +CHAPTER X + +This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor when +Barclay, one day at dinner, informed Bolkonski that the sovereign +wished to see him personally, to question him about Turkey, and that +Prince Andrew was to present himself at Bennigsen's quarters at six +that evening. + +News was received at the Emperor's quarters that very day of a fresh +movement by Napoleon which might endanger the army- news +subsequently found to be false. And that morning Colonel Michaud had +ridden round the Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had +pointed out to him that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, +and till then considered a chef-d'oeuvre of tactical science which +would ensure Napoleon's destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the +destruction of the Russian army. + +Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen's quarters- a country gentleman's +house of moderate size, situated on the very banks of the river. +Neither Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the +Emperor's aide-de-camp, received Bolkonski and informed him that the +Emperor, accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had +gone a second time that day to inspect the fortifications of the +Drissa camp, of the suitability of which serious doubts were beginning +to be felt. + +Chernyshev was sitting at a window in the first room with a French +novel in his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was +still an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one +corner stood the folding bedstead of Bennigsen's adjutant. This +adjutant was also there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding, +evidently exhausted by work or by feasting. Two doors led from the +room, one straight on into what had been the drawing room, and +another, on the right, to the study. Through the first door came the +sound of voices conversing in German and occasionally in French. In +that drawing room were gathered, by the Emperor's wish, not a military +council (the Emperor preferred indefiniteness), but certain persons +whose opinions he wished to know in view of the impending +difficulties. It was not a council of war, but, as it were, a +council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor personally. +To this semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General Armfeldt, +Adjutant General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had referred +to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein who was +not a military man at all, and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince Andrew +had heard, was the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew had +an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived soon +after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped a +minute to speak to Chernyshev. + +At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general, +which fitted him badly like a fancy costume, seemed familiar to Prince +Andrew, though he saw him now for the first time. There was about +him something of Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German +theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had seen in 1805, but he was more +typical than any of them. Prince Andrew had never yet seen a German +theorist in whom all the characteristics of those others were united +to such an extent. + +Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse, robust +build, broad in the hips, and with prominent shoulder blades. His face +was much wrinkled and his eyes deep set. His hair had evidently been +hastily brushed smooth in front of the temples, but stuck up behind in +quaint little tufts. He entered the room, looking restlessly and +angrily around, as if afraid of everything in that large apartment. +Awkwardly holding up his sword, he addressed Chernyshev and asked in +German where the Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass +through the rooms as quickly as possible, finish with the bows and +greetings, and sit down to business in front of a map, where he +would feel at home. He nodded hurriedly in reply to Chernyshev, and +smiled ironically on hearing that the sovereign was inspecting the +fortifications that he, Pfuel, had planned in accord with his +theory. He muttered something to himself abruptly and in a bass voice, +as self-assured Germans do- it might have been "stupid fellow"... or +"the whole affair will be ruined," or "something absurd will come of +it."... Prince Andrew did not catch what he said and would have passed +on, but Chernyshev introduced him to Pfuel, remarking that Prince +Andrew was just back from Turkey where the war had terminated so +fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced- not so much at Prince Andrew as +past him- and said, with a laugh: "That must have been a fine tactical +war"; and, laughing contemptuously, went on into the room from which +the sound of voices was heard. + +Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly +disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that they had dared to +inspect and criticize his camp in his absence. From this short +interview with Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to his Austerlitz +experiences, was able to form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was +one of those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men, +self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are, +because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract +notion- science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth. +A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, +both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An +Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized +state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what +he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is +undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is +excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is +self-assured just because he knows nothing does not want to know +anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The +German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive +than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth- +science- which he himself has invented but which is for him the +absolute truth. + +Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science- the theory of +oblique movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the +Great's wars, and all he came across in the history of more recent +warfare seemed to him absurd and barbarous- monstrous collisions in +which so many blunders were committed by both sides that these wars +could not be called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and +therefore could not serve as material for science. + +In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of +campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt, but he did not see the +least proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of +that war. On the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were, +in his opinion, the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with +characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark, "There, I said the +whole affair would go to the devil!" Pfuel was one of those +theoreticians who so love their theory that they lose sight of the +theory's object- its practical application. His love of theory made +him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was +even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in +practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his +theory. + +He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernyshev about the +present war, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all +will go wrong, and who is not displeased that it should be so. The +unbrushed tufts of hair sticking up behind and the hastily brushed +hair on his temples expressed this most eloquently. + +He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous sounds of +his voice were at once heard from there. + +CHAPTER XI + +Prince Andrew's eyes were still following Pfuel out of the room when +Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkonski, but not +pausing, went into the study, giving instructions to his adjutant as +he went. The Emperor was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened +on to make some preparations and to be ready to receive the sovereign. +Chernyshev and Prince Andrew went out into the porch, where the +Emperor, who looked fatigued, was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was +talking to him with particular warmth and the Emperor, with his head +bent to the left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor +moved forward evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the +flushed and excited Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed him and +continued to speak. + +"And as for the man who advised forming this camp- the Drissa camp," +said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince +Andrew scanned his unfamiliar face, "as to that person, sire..." +continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain +himself, "the man who advised the Drissa camp- I see no alternative +but the lunatic asylum or the gallows!" + +Without heeding the end of the Italian's remarks, and as though +not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkonski, addressed him +graciously. + +"I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are meeting, +and wait for me." + +The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by Prince Peter +Mikhaylovich Volkonski and Baron Stein, and the door closed behind +them. Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor's permission, +accompanied Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing +room where the council was assembled. + +Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski occupied the position, as it +were, of chief of the Emperor's staff. He came out of the study into +the drawing room with some maps which he spread on a table, and put +questions on which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen +present. What had happened was that news (which afterwards proved to +be false) had been received during the night of a movement by the +French to outflank the Drissa camp. + +The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet the +difficulty that presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a perfectly +new position away from the Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for +this was inexplicable (unless he wished to show that he, too, could +have an opinion), but he urged that at this point the army should +unite and there await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt had +thought out that plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to +answer the questions put- which, in fact, his plan did not answer- +as to avail himself of the opportunity to air it. It was one of the +millions of proposals, one as good as another, that could be made as +long as it was quite unknown what character the war would take. Some +disputed his arguments, others defended them. Young Count Toll +objected to the Swedish general's views more warmly than anyone +else, and in the course of the dispute drew from his side pocket a +well-filled notebook, which he asked permission to read to them. In +these voluminous notes Toll suggested another scheme, totally +different from Armfeldt's or Pfuel's plan of campaign. In answer to +Toll, Paulucci suggested an advance and an attack, which, he urged, +could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the +trap (as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated. + +During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter, Wolzogen +(his "bridge" in court relations), were silent. Pfuel only snorted +contemptuously and turned away, to show that he would never demean +himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when +Prince Volkonski, who was in the chair, called on him to give his +opinion, he merely said: + +"Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position +with an exposed rear, or why not this Italian gentleman's attack- very +fine, or a retreat, also good! Why ask me?" said he. "Why, you +yourselves know everything better than I do." + +But when Volkonski said, with a frown, that it was in the +Emperor's name that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and, suddenly +growing animated, began to speak: + +"Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody +thought they knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How +mend matters? There is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me +must be strictly adhered to," said he, drumming on the table with +his bony fingers. "What is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!" + +He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no +eventuality could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that +everything had been foreseen, and that if the enemy were really +going to outflank it, the enemy would inevitably be destroyed. + +Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in +French. Wolzogen came to the assistance of his chief, who spoke French +badly, and began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with +Pfuel, who was rapidly demonstrating that not only all that had +happened, but all that could happen, had been foreseen in his +scheme, and that if there were now any difficulties the whole fault +lay in the fact that his plan had not been precisely executed. He kept +laughing sarcastically, he demonstrated, and at last contemptuously +ceased to demonstrate, like a mathematician who ceases to prove in +various ways the accuracy of a problem that has already been proved. +Wolzogen took his place and continued to explain his views in +French, every now and then turning to Pfuel and saying, "Is it not so, +your excellency?" But Pfuel, like a man heated in a fight who +strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at his own supporter, +Wolzogen: + +"Well, of course, what more is there to explain?" + +Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in +French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to +Volkonski in Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence. + +Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry, +determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those +present, evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself, +nursed no hatred against anyone, and only desired that the plan, +formed on a theory arrived at by years of toil, should be carried out. +He was ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired +involuntary respect by his boundless devotion to an idea. Besides +this, the remarks of all except Pfuel had one common trait that had +not been noticeable at the council of war in 1805: there was now a +panic fear of Napoleon's genius, which, though concealed, was +noticeable in every rejoinder. Everything was assumed to be possible +for Napoleon, they expected him from every side, and invoked his +terrible name to shatter each other's proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to +consider Napoleon a barbarian like everyone else who opposed his +theory. But besides this feeling of respect, Pfuel evoked pity in +Prince Andrew. From the tone in which the courtiers addressed him +and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to speak of him to the +Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation in Pfuel's own +expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel himself +felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence and +grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly +brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he +concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was +evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his +theory by a huge experiment and proving its soundness to the whole +world was slipping away from him. + +The discussions continued a long time, and the longer they lasted +the more heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and +personalities, and the less was it possible to arrive at any general +conclusion from all that had been said. Prince Andrew, listening to +this polyglot talk and to these surmises, plans, refutations, and +shouts, felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A thought +that had long since and often occurred to him during his military +activities- the idea that there is not and cannot be any science of +war, and that therefore there can be no such thing as a military +genius- now appeared to him an obvious truth. "What theory and science +is possible about a matter the conditions and circumstances of which +are unknown and cannot be defined, especially when the strength of the +acting forces cannot be ascertained? No one was or is able to +foresee in what condition our or the enemy's armies will be in a day's +time, and no one can gauge the force of this or that detachment. +Sometimes- when there is not a coward at the front to shout, 'We are +cut off!' and start running, but a brave and jolly lad who shouts, +'Hurrah!'- a detachment of five thousand is worth thirty thousand, +as at Schon Grabern, while at times fifty thousand run from eight +thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in a matter in +which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be defined and +everything depends on innumerable conditions, the significance of +which is determined at a particular moment which arrives no one +knows when? Armfeldt says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci says +we have got the French army between two fires; Michaud says that the +worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies in having the river behind it, +and Pfuel says that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes +one plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad, and the +advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the moment of trial. +And why do they all speak of a 'military genius'? Is a man a genius +who can order bread to be brought up at the right time and say who +is to go to the right and who to the left? It is only because military +men are invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter +power, attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess. +The best generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or +absent-minded men. Bagration was the best, Napoleon himself admitted +that. And of Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied +face on the field of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander +not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence +of the highest and best human attributes- love, poetry, tenderness, +and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly +convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will +not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave +leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, +or think of what is just and unjust. It is understandable that a +theory of their 'genius' was invented for them long ago because they +have power! The success of a military action depends not on them, +but on the man in the ranks who shouts, 'We are lost!' or who +shouts, 'Hurrah!' And only in the ranks can one serve with assurance +of being useful." + +So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking, and he +roused himself only when Paulucci called him and everyone was leaving. + +At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he +would like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost his standing in court +circles forever by not asking to remain attached to the sovereign's +person, but for permission to serve in the army. + +CHAPTER XII + +Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostov had received a letter +from his parents in which they told him briefly of Natasha's illness +and the breaking off of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they +explained by Natasha's having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas +to retire from the army and return home. On receiving this letter, +Nicholas did not even make any attempt to get leave of absence or to +retire from the army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry +Natasha was ill and her engagement broken off, and that he would do +all he could to meet their wishes. To Sonya he wrote separately. + +"Adored friend of my soul!" he wrote. "Nothing but honor could +keep me from returning to the country. But now, at the commencement of +the campaign, I should feel dishonored, not only in my comrades' +eyes but in my own, if I preferred my own happiness to my love and +duty to the Fatherland. But this shall be our last separation. Believe +me, directly the war is over, if I am still alive and still loved by +you, I will throw up everything and fly to you, to press you forever +to my ardent breast." + +It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign that +prevented Rostov from returning home as he had promised and marrying +Sonya. The autumn in Otradnoe with the hunting, and the winter with +the Christmas holidays and Sonya's love, had opened out to him a vista +of tranquil rural joys and peace such as he had never known before, +and which now allured him. "A splendid wife, children, a good pack +of hounds, a dozen leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors, +service by election..." thought he. But now the campaign was +beginning, and he had to remain with his regiment. And since it had to +be so, Nicholas Rostov, as was natural to him, felt contented with the +life he led in the regiment and was able to find pleasure in that +life. + +On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been joyfully +welcomed by his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back +from the Ukraine excellent horses which pleased him and earned him +commendation from his commanders. During his absence he had been +promoted captain, and when the regiment was put on war footing with an +increase in numbers, he was again allotted his old squadron. + +The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland on double +pay, new officers arrived, new men and horses, and above all everybody +was infected with the merrily excited mood that goes with the +commencement of a war, and Rostov, conscious of his advantageous +position in the regiment, devoted himself entirely to the pleasures +and interests of military service, though he knew that sooner or later +he would have to relinquish them. + +The troops retired from Vilna for various complicated reasons of +state, political and strategic. Each step of the retreat was +accompanied by a complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and +passions at headquarters. For the Pavlograd hussars, however, the +whole of this retreat during the finest period of summer and with +sufficient supplies was a very simple and agreeable business. + +It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness, +and intriguing; in the body of the army they did not ask themselves +where they were going or why. If they regretted having to retreat, +it was only because they had to leave billets they had grown +accustomed to, or some pretty young Polish lady. If the thought that +things looked bad chanced to enter anyone's head, he tried to be as +cheerful as befits a good soldier and not to think of the general +trend of affairs, but only of the task nearest to hand. First they +camped gaily before Vilna, making acquaintance with the Polish +landowners, preparing for reviews and being reviewed by the Emperor +and other high commanders. Then came an order to retreat to Sventsyani +and destroy any provisions they could not carry away with them. +Sventsyani was remembered by the hussars only as the drunken camp, a +name the whole army gave to their encampment there, and because many +complaints were made against the troops, who, taking advantage of +the order to collect provisions, took also horses, carriages, and +carpets from the Polish proprietors. Rostov remembered Sventsyani, +because on the first day of their arrival at that small town he +changed his sergeant major and was unable to manage all the drunken +men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had appropriated five barrels +of old beer. From Sventsyani they retired farther and farther to +Drissa, and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier +of Russia proper. + +On the thirteenth of July the Pavlograds took part in a serious +action for the first time. + +On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was a heavy +storm of rain and hail. In general, the summer of 18l2 was +remarkable for its storms. + +The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field of rye, +which was already in ear but had been completely trodden down by +cattle and horses. The rain was descending in torrents, and Rostov, +with a young officer named Ilyin, his protege, was sitting in a +hastily constructed shelter. An officer of their regiment, with long +mustaches extending onto his cheeks, who after riding to the staff had +been overtaken by the rain, entered Rostov's shelter. + +"I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raevski's +exploit?" + +And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov battle, which he +had heard at the staff. + +Rostov, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water +trickled down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional +glance at Ilyin, who was pressing close to him. This officer, a lad of +sixteen who had recently joined the regiment, was now in the same +relation to Nicholas that Nicholas had been to Denisov seven years +before. Ilyin tried to imitate Rostov in everything and adored him +as a girl might have done. + +Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke +grandiloquently of the Saltanov dam being "a Russian Thermopylae," and +of how a deed worthy of antiquity had been performed by General +Raevski. He recounted how Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam +under terrific fire and had charged with them beside him. Rostov heard +the story and not only said nothing to encourage Zdrzhinski's +enthusiasm but, on the contrary, looked like a man ashamed of what +he was hearing, though with no intention of contradicting it. Since +the campaigns of Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostov knew by experience that +men always lie when describing military exploits, as he himself had +done when recounting them; besides that, he had experience enough to +know that nothing happens in war at all as we can imagine or relate +it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski's tale, nor did he like +Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches extending over his +cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was his habit, and +crowded Rostov in the narrow shanty. Rostov looked at him in +silence. "In the first place, there must have been such a confusion +and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that if Raevski did +lead his sons there, it could have had no effect except perhaps on +some dozen men nearest to him," thought he, "the rest could not have +seen how or with whom Raevski came onto the dam. And even those who +did see it would not have been much stimulated by it, for what had +they to do with Raevski's tender paternal feelings when their own +skins were in danger? And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did +not depend on whether they took the Saltanov dam or not, as we are +told was the case at Thermopylae. So why should he have made such a +sacrifice? And why expose his own children in the battle? I would +not have taken my brother Petya there, or even Ilyin, who's a stranger +to me but a nice lad, but would have tried to put them somewhere under +cover," Nicholas continued to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But +he did not express his thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had +gained experience. He knew that this tale redounded to the glory of +our arms and so one had to pretend not to doubt it. And he acted +accordingly. + +"I can't stand this any more," said Ilyin, noticing that Rostov +did not relish Zdrzhinski's conversation. "My stockings and shirt... +and the water is running on my seat! I'll go and look for shelter. The +rain seems less heavy." + +Ilyin went out and Zdrzhinski rode away. + +Five minutes later Ilyin, splashing through the mud, came running +back to the shanty. + +"Hurrah! Rostov, come quick! I've found it! About two hundred +yards away there's a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can +at least get dry there, and Mary Hendrikhovna's there." + +Mary Hendrikhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty +young German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether +from lack of means or because he did not like to part from his young +wife in the early days of their marriage, took her about with him +wherever the hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a +standing joke among the hussar officers. + +Rostov threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrushka to +follow with the things, and- now slipping in the mud, now splashing +right through it- set off with Ilyin in the lessening rain and the +darkness that was occasionally rent by distant lightning. + +"Rostov, where are you?" + +"Here. What lightning!" they called to one another. + +CHAPTER XIII + +In the tavern, before which stood the doctor's covered cart, there +were already some five officers. Mary Hendrikhovna, a plump little +blonde German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a +broad bench in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep +behind her. Rostov and Ilyin, on entering the room, were welcomed with +merry shouts and laughter. + +"Dear me, how jolly we are!" said Rostov laughing. + +"And why do you stand there gaping?" + +"What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don't +make our drawing room so wet." + +"Don't mess Mary Hendrikhovna's dress!" cried other voices. + +Rostov and Ilyin hastened to find a corner where they could change +into dry clothes without offending Mary Hendrikhovna's modesty. They +were going into a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but +found it completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards +by the light of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these +officers would on no account yield their position. Mary Hendrikhovna +obliged them with the loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and +behind that screen Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka who had +brought their kits, changed their wet things for dry ones. + +A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was +found, fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small +samovar was produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and +having asked Mary Hendrikhovna to preside, they all crowded round her. +One offered her a clean handkerchief to wipe her charming hands, +another spread a jacket under her little feet to keep them from the +damp, another hung his coat over the window to keep out the draft, and +yet another waved the flies off her husband's face, lest he should +wake up. + +"Leave him alone," said Mary Hendrikhovna, smiling timidly and +happily. "He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night." + +"Oh, no, Mary Hendrikhovna," replied the officer, "one must look +after the doctor. Perhaps he'll take pity on me someday, when it comes +to cutting off a leg or an arm for me." + +There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one +could not make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar +held only six tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter +to take turns in order of seniority to receive one's tumbler from Mary +Hendrikhovna's plump little hands with their short and not overclean +nails. All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love +with her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition +soon left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the +general mood of courting Mary Hendrikhovna. She, seeing herself +surrounded by such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with +satisfaction, try as she might to hide it, and perturbed as she +evidently was each time her husband moved in his sleep behind her. + +There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than anything +else, but it took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary +Hendrikhovna should stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostov +received his tumbler, and adding some rum to it asked Mary +Hendrikhovna to stir it. + +"But you take it without sugar?" she said, smiling all the time, +as if everything she said and everything the others said was very +amusing and had a double meaning. + +"It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand should +stir my tea." + +Mary Hendrikhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which +someone meanwhile had pounced on. + +"Use your finger, Mary Hendrikhovna, it will be still nicer," said +Rostov. + +"Too hot!" she replied, blushing with pleasure. + +Ilyin put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it +to Mary Hendrikhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger. + +"This is my cup," said he. "Only dip your finger in it and I'll +drink it all up." + +When they had emptied the samovar, Rostov took a pack of cards and +proposed that they should play "Kings" with Mary Hendrikhovna. They +drew lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostov's suggestion +it was agreed that whoever became "King" should have the right to kiss +Mary Hendrikhovna's hand, and that the "Booby" should go to refill and +reheat the samovar for the doctor when the latter awoke. + +"Well, but supposing Mary Hendrikhovna is 'King'?" asked Ilyin. + +"As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!" + +They had hardly begun to play before the doctor's disheveled head +suddenly appeared from behind Mary Hendrikhovna. He had been awake for +some time, listening to what was being said, and evidently found +nothing entertaining or amusing in what was going on. His face was sad +and depressed. Without greeting the officers, he scratched himself and +asked to be allowed to pass as they were blocking the way. As soon +as he had left the room all the officers burst into loud laughter +and Mary Hendrikhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears and +thereby became still more attractive to them. Returning from the yard, +the doctor told his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and +looked at him in alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had +ceased and they must go to sleep in their covered cart, or +everything in it would be stolen. + +"But I'll send an orderly.... Two of them!" said Rostov. "What an +idea, doctor!" + +"I'll stand guard on it myself!" said Ilyin. + +"No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not slept for +two nights," replied the doctor, and he sat down morosely beside his +wife, waiting for the game to end. + +Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers +grew still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from +laughter, for which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts. When +he had gone, taking his wife with him, and had settled down with her +in their covered cart, the officers lay down in the tavern, covering +themselves with their wet cloaks, but they did not sleep for a long +time; now they exchanged remarks, recalling the doctor's uneasiness +and his wife's delight, now they ran out into the porch and reported +what was taking place in the covered trap. Several times Rostov, +covering his head, tried to go to sleep, but some remark would +arouse him and conversation would be resumed, to the accompaniment +of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter. + +CHAPTER XIV + +It was nearly three o'clock but no one was yet asleep, when the +quartermaster appeared with an order to move on to the little town +of Ostrovna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began +hurriedly getting ready and again boiled again boiled some muddy water +in the samovar. But Rostov went off to his squadron without waiting +for tea. Day was breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were +dispersing. It felt damp and cold, especially in clothes that were +still moist. As they left the tavern in the twilight of the dawn, +Rostov and Ilyin both glanced under the wet and glistening leather +hood of the doctor's cart, from under the apron of which his feet were +sticking out, and in the middle of which his wife's nightcap was +visible and her sleepy breathing audible. + +"She really is a dear little thing," said Rostov to Ilyin, who was +following him. + +"A charming woman!" said Ilyin, with all the gravity of a boy of +sixteen. + +Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road. The +command was heard to "mount" and the soldiers crossed themselves and +mounted. Rostov riding in front gave the order "Forward!" and the +hussars, with clanking sabers and subdued talk, their horses' hoofs +splashing in the mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad +road planted with birch trees on each side, following the infantry and +a battery that had gone on in front. + +Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were scudding +before the wind. It was growing lighter and lighter. That curly +grass which always grows by country roadsides became clearly +visible, still wet with the night's rain; the drooping branches of the +birches, also wet, swayed in the wind and flung down bright drops of +water to one side. The soldiers' faces were more and more clearly +visible. Rostov, always closely followed by Ilyin, rode along the side +of the road between two rows of birch trees. + +When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the indulgence of riding +not a regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge of horses and a +sportsman, he had lately procured himself a large, fine, mettlesome, +Donets horse, dun-colored, with light mane and tail, and when he +rode it no one could outgallop him. To ride this horse was a +pleasure to him, and he thought of the horse, of the morning, of the +doctor's wife, but not once of the impending danger. + +Formerly, when going into action, Rostov had felt afraid; now he had +not the least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not because he had +grown used to being under fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but +because he had learned how to manage his thoughts when in danger. He +had grown accustomed when going into action to think about anything +but what would seem most likely to interest him- the impending danger. +During the first period of his service, hard as he tried and much as +he reproached himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do this, +but with time it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyin under +the birch trees, occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met +his hand, sometimes touching his horse's side with his foot, or, +without turning round, handing a pipe he had finished to an hussar +riding behind him, with as calm and careless an air as though he +were merely out for a ride. He glanced with pity at the excited face +of Ilyin, who talked much and in great agitation. He knew from +experience the tormenting expectation of terror and death the cornet +was suffering and knew that only time could help him. + +As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the +clouds, the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the beauty of the +summer morning after the storm; drops still continued to fall, but +vertically now, and all was still. The whole sun appeared on the +horizon and disappeared behind a long narrow cloud that hung above it. +A few minutes later it reappeared brighter still from behind the top +of the cloud, tearing its edge. Everything grew bright and +glittered. And with that light, and as if in reply to it, came the +sound of guns ahead of them. + +Before Rostov had had time to consider and determine the distance of +that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy's adjutant came galloping from +Vitebsk with orders to advance at a trot along the road. + +The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the battery- which +had also quickened their pace- rode down a hill, and passing through +an empty and deserted village again ascended. The horses began to +lather and the men to flush. + +"Halt! Dress your ranks!" the order of the regimental commander +was heard ahead. "Forward by the left. Walk, march!" came the order +from in front. + +And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the left +flank of our position, halted behind our Uhlans who were in the +front line. To the right stood our infantry in a dense column: they +were the reserve. Higher up the hill, on the very horizon, our guns +were visible through the wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated +by slanting morning sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could be +seen the enemy's columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in +action, could be heard briskly exchanging shots with the enemy in +the dale. + +At these sounds, long unheard, Rostov's spirits rose, as at the +strains of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked the shots, +now together, now several quickly one after another. Again all was +silent and then again it sounded as if someone were walking on +detonators and exploding them. + +The hussars remained in the same place for about an hour. A +cannonade began. Count Ostermann with his suite rode up behind the +squadron, halted, spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode +up the hill to the guns. + +After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the Uhlans. + +"Form column! Prepare to charge!" + +The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the +cavalry to pass. The Uhlans started, the streamers on their spears +fluttering, and trotted downhill toward the French cavalry which was +seen below to the left. + +As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars were ordered +up the hill to support the battery. As they took the places vacated by +the Uhlans, bullets came from the front, whining and whistling, but +fell spent without taking effect. + +The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an even more +pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov than the previous sounds +of firing. Drawing himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening +out before him from the hill, and with his whole soul followed the +movement of the Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French +dragoons, something confused happened there amid the smoke, and five +minutes later our Uhlans were galloping back, not to the place they +had occupied but more to the left, and among the orange-colored Uhlans +on chestnut horses and behind them, in a large group, blue French +dragoons on gray horses could be seen. + +CHAPTER XV + +Rostov, with his keen sportsman's eye, was one of the first to catch +sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing our Uhlans. Nearer and +nearer in disorderly crowds came the Uhlans and the French dragoons +pursuing them. He could already see how these men, who looked so small +at the foot of the hill, jostled and overtook one another, waving +their arms and their sabers in the air. + +Rostov gazed at what was happening before him as at a hunt. He +felt instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons +now, the latter could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be +made it must be done now, at that very moment, or it would be too +late. He looked around. A captain, standing beside him, was gazing +like himself with eyes fixed on the cavalry below them. + +"Andrew Sevastyanych!" said Rostov. "You know, we could crush +them...." + +"A fine thing too!" replied the captain, "and really..." + +Rostov, without waiting to hear him out, touched his horse, galloped +to the front of his squadron, and before he had time to finish +giving the word of command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling, +was following him. Rostov himself did not know how or why he did it. +He acted as he did when hunting, without reflecting or considering. He +saw the dragoons near and that they were galloping in disorder; he +knew they could not withstand an attack- knew there was only that +moment and that if he let it slip it would not return. The bullets +were whining and whistling so stimulatingly around him and his horse +was so eager to go that he could not restrain himself. He touched +his horse, gave the word of command, and immediately, hearing behind +him the tramp of the horses of his deployed squadron, rode at full +trot downhill toward the dragoons. Hardly had they reached the +bottom of the hill before their pace instinctively changed to a +gallop, which grew faster and faster as they drew nearer to our Uhlans +and the French dragoons who galloped after them. The dragoons were now +close at hand. On seeing the hussars, the foremost began to turn, +while those behind began to halt. With the same feeling with which +he had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostov gave rein to his +Donets horse and galloped to intersect the path of the dragoons' +disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot flung +himself to the ground to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless +horse fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were +galloping back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed +after him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared +it, and almost before he had righted himself in his saddle he saw that +he would immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That +Frenchman, by his uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching +on his gray horse and urging it on with his saber. In another moment +Rostov's horse dashed its breast against the hindquarters of the +officer's horse, almost knocking it over, and at the same instant +Rostov, without knowing why, raised his saber and struck the Frenchman +with it. + +The instant he had done this, all Rostov's animation vanished. The +officer fell, not so much from the blow- which had but slightly cut +his arm above the elbow- as from the shock to his horse and from +fright. Rostov reined in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see +whom he had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping with +one foot on the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His +eyes, screwed up with fear as if he every moment expected another +blow, gazed up at Rostov with shrinking terror. His pale and +mud-stained face- fair and young, with a dimple in the chin and +light-blue eyes- was not an enemy's face at all suited to a +battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face. Before Rostov had +decided what to do with him, the officer cried, "I surrender!" He +hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the stirrup and +did not remove his frightened blue eyes from Rostov's face. Some +hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the +saddle. On all sides, the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was +wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up his +horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with his arms round +him; a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In +front, the French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars +galloped hastily back with their prisoners. Rostov galloped back +with the rest, aware of an unpleasant feeling of depression in his +heart. Something vague and confused, which he could not at all account +for, had come over him with the capture of that officer and the blow +he had dealt him. + +Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars, sent for +Rostov, thanked him, and said he would report his gallant deed to +the Emperor and would recommend him for a St. George's Cross. When +sent for by Count Ostermann, Rostov, remembering that he had charged +without orders, felt sure his commander was sending for him to +punish him for breach of discipline. Ostermann's flattering words +and promise of a reward should therefore have struck him all the +more pleasantly, but he still felt that same vaguely disagreeable +feeling of moral nausea. "But what on earth is worrying me?" he +asked himself as he rode back from the general. "Ilyin? No, he's safe. +Have I disgraced myself in any way? No, that's not it." Something +else, resembling remorse, tormented him. "Yes, oh yes, that French +officer with the dimple. And I remember how my arm paused when I +raised it." + +Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to +have a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin. He was +sitting in his foreign uniform on an hussar packhorse and looked +anxiously about him; The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called +a wound. He glanced at Rostov with a feigned smile and waved his +hand in greeting. Rostov still had the same indefinite feeling, as +of shame. + +All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that +Rostov, without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and +preoccupied. He drank reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept +turning something over in his mind. + +Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his, +which to his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and +even given him a reputation for bravery, and there was something he +could not at all understand. "So others are even more afraid than I +am!" he thought. "So that's all there is in what is called heroism! +And heroism! And did I do it for my country's sake? And how was he +to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He +thought that I should kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand +trembled. And they have given me a St. George's Cross.... I can't make +it out at all." + +But while Nicholas was considering these questions and still could +reach no clear solution of what puzzled him so, the wheel of fortune +in the service, as often happens, turned in his favor. After the +affair at Ostrovna he was brought into notice, received command of +an hussar battalion, and when a brave officer was needed he was +chosen. + +CHAPTER XVI + +On receiving news of Natasha's illness, the countess, though not +quite well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Petya and the +rest of the household, and the whole family moved from Marya +Dmitrievna's house to their own and settled down in town. + +Natasha's illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and for +her parents, the consideration of all that had caused the illness, her +conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into the +background. She was so ill that it was impossible for them to consider +in how far she was to blame for what had happened. She could not eat +or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them +feel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but how to +help her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked +much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and +prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known +to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they +could not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease +suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his +own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, +complicated disease, unknown to medicine- not a disease of the +lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical +books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations +of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur +to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to +work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure, +and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their +lives on that business. But, above all, that thought was kept out of +their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful, as in +fact they were to the whole Rostov family. Their usefulness did not +depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part +harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they were given in +small doses), but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable +because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and of those who +loved her- and that is why there are, and always will be, +pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They +satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, +and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are +suffering. They satisfied the need seen in its most elementary form in +a child, when it wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. A +child knocks itself and runs at once to the arms of its mother or +nurse to have the aching spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better +when this is done. The child cannot believe that the strongest and +wisest of its people have no remedy for its pain, and the hope of +relief and the expression of its mother's sympathy while she rubs +the bump comforts it. The doctors were of use to Natasha because +they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her that it would soon +pass if only the coachman went to the chemist's in the Arbat and got a +powder and some pills in a pretty box of a ruble and seventy kopeks, +and if she took those powders in boiled water at intervals of +precisely two hours, neither more nor less. + +What would Sonya and the count and countess have done, how would +they have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been +those pills to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken +cutlets, and all the other details of life ordered by the doctors, the +carrying out of which supplied an occupation and consolation to the +family circle? How would the count have borne his dearly loved +daughter's illness had he not known that it was costing him a thousand +rubles, and that he would not grudge thousands more to benefit her, or +had he not known that if her illness continued he would not grudge yet +other thousands and would take her abroad for consultations there, and +had he not been able to explain the details of how Metivier and Feller +had not understood the symptoms, but Frise had, and Mudrov had +diagnosed them even better? What would the countess have done had +she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for not strictly +obeying the doctor's orders? + +"You'll never get well like that," she would say, forgetting her +grief in her vexation, "if you won't obey the doctor and take your +medicine at the right time! You mustn't trifle with it, you know, or +it may turn to pneumonia," she would go on, deriving much comfort from +the utterance of that foreign word, incomprehensible to others as well +as to herself. + +What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that she +had not undressed during the first three nights, in order to be +ready to carry out all the doctor's injunctions with precision, and +that she still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper time +when the slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be +administered? Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that so +many sacrifices were being made for her sake, and to know that she had +to take medicine at certain hours, though she declared that no +medicine would cure her and that it was all nonsense. And it was +even pleasant to be able to show, by disregarding the orders, that she +did not believe in medical treatment and did not value her life. + +The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and +regardless of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when he +had gone into another room, to which the countess hurriedly followed +him, he assumed a grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head said +that though there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of this +last medicine and one must wait and see, that the malady was chiefly +mental, but... And the countess, trying to conceal the action from +herself and from him, slipped a gold coin into his hand and always +returned to the patient with a more tranquil mind. + +The symptoms of Natasha's illness were that she ate little, slept +little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that +she could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her in +the stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostovs did not move to +the country that summer of 1812. + +In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders +out of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was +fond of such things made a large collection, and in spite of being +deprived of the country life to which she was accustomed, youth +prevailed. Natasha's grief began to be overlaid by the impressions +of daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on her heart, it +gradually faded into the past, and she began to recover physically. + +CHAPTER XVII + +Natasha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all +external forms of pleasure- balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters- +but she never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She +could not sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by +herself, tears choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection +of those pure times which could never return, tears of vexation that +she should so uselessly have ruined her young life which might have +been so happy. Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a +blasphemy, in face of her sorrow. Without any need of +self-restraint, no wish to coquet ever entered her head. She said +and felt at that time that no man was more to her than Nastasya +Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood sentinel within her and forbade +her every joy. Besides, she had lost all the old interests of her +carefree girlish life that had been so full of hope. The previous +autumn, the hunting, "Uncle," and the Christmas holidays spent with +Nicholas at Otradnoe were what she recalled oftenest and most +painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a single +day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at the +time had not deceived her- that that state of freedom and readiness +for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live +on. + +It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had +formerly imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the +world. But this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself, +"What next?" But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in +life, yet life was passing. Natasha apparently tried not to be a +burden or a hindrance to anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She +kept away from everyone in the house and felt at ease only with her +brother Petya. She liked to be with him better than with the others, +and when alone with him she sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left +the house and of those who came to see them was glad to see only one +person, Pierre. It would have been impossible to treat her with more +delicacy, greater care, and at the same time more seriously than did +Count Bezukhov. Natasha unconsciously felt this delicacy and so +found great pleasure in his society. But she was not even grateful +to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an +effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there +was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natasha noticed +embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence, +especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared +that something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her. +She noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and +shyness, which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was +to her. After those involuntary words- that if he were free he would +have asked on his knees for her hand and her love- uttered at a moment +when she was so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natasha of +his feelings; and it seemed plain to her that those words, which had +then so comforted her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words +are spoken to comfort a crying child. It was not because Pierre was +a married man, but because Natasha felt very strongly with him that +moral barrier the absence of which she had experienced with Kuragin +that it never entered her head that the relations between him and +herself could lead to love on her part, still less on his, or even +to the kind of tender, self-conscious, romantic friendship between a +man and a woman of which she had known several instances. + +Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agrafena Ivanovna Belova, a +country neighbor of the Rostovs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions +at the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natasha should +fast and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natasha gladly welcomed the +idea. Despite the doctor's orders that she should not go out early +in the morning, Natasha insisted on fasting and preparing for the +sacrament, not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostov +family by attending three services in their own house, but as Agrafena +Ivanovna did, by going to church every day for a week and not once +missing Vespers, Matins, or Mass. + +The countess was pleased with Natasha's zeal; after the poor results +of the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that +prayer might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not +without fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to +Natasha's wish and entrusted her to Belova. Agrafena Ivanovna used +to come to wake Natasha at three in the morning, but generally found +her already awake. She was afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily +washing, and meekly putting on her shabbiest dress and an old +mantilla, Natasha, shivering in the fresh air, went out into the +deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn. By Agrafena +Ivanovna's advice Natasha prepared herself not in their own parish, +but at a church where, according to the devout Agrafena Ivanovna, +the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were never +many people in the church; Natasha always stood beside Belova in the +customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the +screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her, +of humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her +when at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the +Virgin illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning +light falling from the window, she listened to the words of the +service which she tried to follow with understanding. When she +understood them her personal feeling became interwoven in the +prayers with shades of its own. When she did not understand, it was +sweeter still to think that the wish to understand everything is +pride, that it is impossible to understand all, that it is only +necessary to believe and to commit oneself to God, whom she felt +guiding her soul at those moments. She crossed herself, bowed low, and +when she did not understand, in horror at her own vileness, simply +asked God to forgive her everything, everything, to have mercy upon +her. The prayers to which she surrendered herself most of all were +those of repentance. On her way home at an early hour when she met +no one but bricklayers going to work or men sweeping the street, and +everybody within the houses was still asleep, Natasha experienced a +feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility of correcting her +faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of happiness. + +During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every +day. And the happiness of taking communion, or "communing" as Agrafena +Ivanovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natasha +so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday. + +But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when, +dressed in white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the +first time for many months she felt calm and not oppressed by the +thought of the life that lay before her. + +The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue +the powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously. + +"She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening," said he, +evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. "Only, please be +particular about it. + +"Be quite easy," he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the +gold coin in his palm. "She will soon be singing and frolicking about. +The last medicine has done her a very great deal of good. She has +freshened up very much." + +The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at +her nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing +room. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the +war began to spread in Moscow; people spoke of an appeal by the +Emperor to the people, and of his coming himself from the army to +Moscow. And as up to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had +been received, exaggerated reports became current about them and about +the position of Russia. It was said that the Emperor was leaving the +army because it was in danger, it was said that Smolensk had +surrendered, that Napoleon had an army of a million and only a miracle +could save Russia. + +On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was +received but was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was at the +Rostovs', promised to come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a +copy of the manifesto and appeal, which he would obtain from Count +Rostopchin. + +That Sunday, the Rostovs went to Mass at the Razumovskis' private +chapel as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o'clock, when +the Rostovs got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air, +the shouts of hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the +crowd, the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of +the band and the white trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the +rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot +sunshine were all full of that summer languor, that content and +discontent with the present, which is most strongly felt on a +bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow notabilities, all the Rostovs' +acquaintances, were at the Razumovskis' chapel, for, as if expecting +something to happen, many wealthy families who usually left town for +their country estates had not gone away that summer. As Natasha, at +her mother's side, passed through the crowd behind a liveried +footman who cleared the way for them, she heard a young man speaking +about her in too loud a whisper. + +"That's Rostova, the one who..." + +"She's much thinner, but all the same she's pretty!" + +She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin and Bolkonski. +But she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that +everyone who looked at her was thinking only of what had happened to +her. With a sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she +found herself in a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress trimmed with +black lace walked- as women can walk- with the more repose and +stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul. She knew for +certain that she was pretty, but this no longer gave her +satisfaction as it used to. On the contrary it tormented her more than +anything else of late, and particularly so on this bright, hot +summer day in town. "It's Sunday again- another week past," she +thought, recalling that she had been here the Sunday before, "and +always the same life that is no life, and the same surroundings in +which it used to be so easy to live. I'm pretty, I'm young, and I know +that now I am good. I used to be bad, but now I know I am good," she +thought, "but yet my best years are slipping by and are no good to +anyone." She stood by her mother's side and exchanged nods with +acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized the ladies' +dresses, condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was not +crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she +thought with vexation that she was herself being judged and was +judging others, and suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt +horrified at her own vileness, horrified that the former purity of her +soul was again lost to her. + +A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the service with that +mild solemnity which has so elevating and soothing an effect on the +souls of the worshipers. The gates of the sanctuary screen were +closed, the curtain was slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft +mysterious voice pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which +she herself did not understand, made Natasha's breast heave, and a +joyous but oppressive feeling agitated her. + +"Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I may grow good +forever, forever!" she pleaded. + +The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen +and, holding his thumb extended, drew his long hair from under his +dalmatic and, making the sign of the cross on his breast, began in a +loud and solemn voice to recite the words of the prayer... + +"In peace let us pray unto the Lord." + +"As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity, +united by brotherly love- let us pray!" thought Natasha. + +"For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our +souls." + +"For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us," +prayed Natasha. + +When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and +Denisov. When they prayed for all traveling by land and sea, she +remembered Prince Andrew, prayed for him, and asked God to forgive her +all the wrongs she had done him. When they prayed for those who love +us, she prayed for the members of her own family, her father and +mother and Sonya, realizing for the first time how wrongly she had +acted toward them, and feeling all the strength of her love for +them. When they prayed for those who hate us, she tried to think of +her enemies and people who hated her, in order to pray for them. She +included among her enemies the creditors and all who had business +dealings with her father, and always at the thought of enemies and +those who hated her she remembered Anatole who had done her so much +harm- and though he did not hate her she gladly prayed for him as +for an enemy. Only at prayer did she feel able to think clearly and +calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole, as men for whom her feelings were +as nothing compared with her awe and devotion to God. When they prayed +for the Imperial family and the Synod, she bowed very low and made the +sign of the cross, saying to herself that even if she did not +understand, still she could not doubt, and at any rate loved the +governing Synod and prayed for it. + +When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over +his breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives to +Christ the Lord!" + +"Commit ourselves to God," Natasha inwardly repeated. "Lord God, I +submit myself to Thy will!" she thought. "I want nothing, wish for +nothing; teach me what to do and how to use my will! Take me, take +me!" prayed Natasha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing +herself but letting her slender arms hang down as if expecting some +invisible power at any moment to take her and deliver her from +herself, from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins. + +The countess looked round several times at her daughter's softened +face and shining eyes and prayed God to help her. + +Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in the usual +order Natasha knew so well, the deacon brought out a small stool, +the one he knelt on when praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it +before the doors of the sanctuary screen. The priest came out with his +purple velvet biretta on his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt down +with an effort. Everybody followed his example and they looked at +one another in surprise. Then came the prayer just received from the +Synod- a prayer for the deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion. + +"Lord God of might, God of our salvation!" began the priest in +that voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in which only the +Slav clergy read and which acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart. + +"Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day in mercy and +blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously hear us, spare us, and +have mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay +waste the whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are +gathered together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear +Jerusalem, Thy beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow +Thine altars, and to desecrate our holy shrines. How long, O Lord, how +long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful +power? + +"Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen with Thy might +our most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich; +be mindful of his uprightness and meekness, reward him according to +his righteousness, and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless +his counsels, his undertakings, and his work; strengthen his kingdom +by Thine almighty hand, and give him victory over his enemy, even as +Thou gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon over Midian, and +David over Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in the hands +of those who have armed themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins +with strength for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to +help us; confound and put to shame those who have devised evil against +us, may they be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust +before the wind, and may Thy mighty Angel confound them and put them +to flight; may they be ensnared when they know it not, and may the +plots they have laid in secret be turned against them; let them fall +before Thy servants' feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou art +able to save both great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot +prevail against Thee! + +"God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy and +loving-kindness which are from of old; turn not Thy face from us, +but be gracious to our unworthiness, and in Thy great goodness and Thy +many mercies regard not our transgressions and iniquities! Create in +us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us, strengthen us all +in Thy faith, fortify our hope, inspire us with true love one for +another, arm us with unity of spirit in the righteous defense of the +heritage Thou gavest to us and to our fathers, and let not the scepter +of the wicked be exalted against the destiny of those Thou hast +sanctified. + +"O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust, +let us not be confounded in our hope of Thy mercy, and give us a token +of Thy blessing, that those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see +it and be put to shame and perish, and may all the nations know that +Thou art the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon us this +day, O Lord, and grant us Thy salvation; make the hearts of Thy +servants to rejoice in Thy mercy; smite down our enemies and destroy +them swiftly beneath the feet of Thy faithful servants! For Thou art +the defense, the succor, and the victory of them that put their +trust in Thee, and to Thee be all glory, to Father, Son, and Holy +Ghost, now and forever, world without end. Amen." + +In Natasha's receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her +strongly. She listened to every word about the victory of Moses over +Amalek, of Gideon over Midian, and of David over Goliath, and about +the destruction of "Thy Jerusalem," and she prayed to God with the +tenderness and emotion with which her heart was overflowing, but +without fully understanding what she was asking of God in that prayer. +She shared with all her heart in the prayer for the spirit of +righteousness, for the strengthening of the heart by faith and hope, +and its animation by love. But she could not pray that her enemies +might be trampled under foot when but a few minutes before she had +been wishing she had more of them that she might pray for them. But +neither could she doubt the righteousness of the prayer that was being +read on bended knees. She felt in her heart a devout and tremulous awe +at the thought of the punishment that overtakes men for their sins, +and especially of her own sins, and she prayed to God to forgive +them all, and her too, and to give them all, and her too, peace and +happiness. And it seemed to her that God heard her prayer. + +CHAPTER XIX + +From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with +Natasha's grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that +seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was +appearing on his own horizon- from that day the problem of the +vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had incessantly +tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question +"Why?" "Wherefore?" which had come to him amid every occupation, was +now replaced, not by another question or by a reply to the former +question, but by her image. When he listened to, or himself took +part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of human +baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did not ask +himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so +transient and incomprehensible- but he remembered her as he had last +seen her, and all his doubts vanished- not because she had answered +the questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of +her transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of +spiritual activity in which no one could be justified or guilty- a +realm of beauty and love which it was worth living for. Whatever +worldly baseness presented itself to him, he said to himself: + +"Well, supposing N. N. swindled the country and the Tsar, and the +country and the Tsar confer honors upon him, what does that matter? +She smiled at me yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her, +and no one will ever know it." And his soul felt calm and peaceful. + +Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same +idle and dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the +Rostovs' there were other hours he had to spend somehow, and the +habits and acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that +bore him along irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more +disquieting reports came from the seat of war and Natasha's health +began to improve and she no longer aroused in him the former feeling +of careful pity, an ever-increasing restlessness, which he could not +explain, took possession of him. He felt that the condition he was +in could not continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which +would change his whole life, and he impatiently sought everywhere +for signs of that approaching catastrophe. One of his brother Masons +had revealed to Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon, +drawn from the Revelation of St. John. + +In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said: + +Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number +of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six +hundred threescore and six. + +And in the fifth verse of the same chapter: + +And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and +blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two +months. + +The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as +the Hebrew, in which the first nine letters denote units and the +others tens, will have the following significance: + +``` block + a b c d e f g h i k + 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 + l m n o p q r s + 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 + t u v w x y + 100 110 120 130 140 150 + z + 160 +``` + +Writing the words L'Empereur Napoleon in numbers, it appears that +the sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon therefore the beast foretold +in the Apocalypse. Moreover, by applying the same system to the +words quarante-deux,~{ Forty-two. }~ which was the term allowed to the beast that +"spoke great things and blasphemies," the same number 666 was +obtained; from which it followed that the limit fixed for Napoleon's +power had come in the year 1812 when the French emperor was forty-two. +This prophecy pleased Pierre very much and he often asked himself what +would put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon, +and tried by the same system of using letters as numbers and adding +them up, to find an answer to the question that engrossed him. He +wrote the words L'Empereur Alexandre, La nation russe and added up +their numbers, but the sums were either more or less than 666. Once +when making such calculations he wrote down his own name in French, +Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the sum of the numbers did not come right. +Then he changed the spelling, substituting a z for the s and adding de +and the article le, still without obtaining the desired result. Then +it occurred to him: if the answer to the question were contained in +his name, his nationality would also be given in the answer. So he +wrote Le russe Besuhof and adding up the numbers got 671. This was +only five too much, and five was represented by e, the very letter +elided from the article le before the word Empereur. By omitting the +e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the answer he sought. L'russe +Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him. How, or by what means, +he was connected with the great event foretold in the Apocalypse he +did not know, but he did not doubt that connection for a moment. His +love for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the comet, +666, L'Empereur Napoleon, and L'russe Besuhof- all this had to +mature and culminate, to lift him out of that spellbound, petty sphere +of Moscow habits in which he felt himself held captive and lead him to +a great achievement and great happiness. + +On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was read, Pierre +had promised the Rostovs to bring them, from Count Rostopchin whom +he knew well, both the appeal to the people and the news from the +army. In the morning, when he went to call at Rostopchin's he met +there a courier fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own, who +often danced at Moscow balls. + +"Do, please, for heaven's sake, relieve me of something!" said the +courier. "I have a sackful of letters to parents." + +Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to his father. +Pierre took that letter, and Rostopchin also gave him the Emperor's +appeal to Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders, +and his own most recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders, +Pierre found in one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and +rewarded, the name of Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St. George's Cross of +the Fourth Class for courage shown in the Ostrovna affair, and in +the same order the name of Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the +command of a regiment of Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind +the Rostovs of Bolkonski, Pierre could not refrain from making them +happy by the news of their son's having received a decoration, so he +sent that printed army order and Nicholas' letter to the Rostovs, +keeping the appeal, the bulletin, and the other orders to take with +him when he went to dinner. + +His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the latter's tone of +anxious hurry, the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how +badly things were going in the army, the rumors of the discovery of +spies in Moscow and of a leaflet in circulation stating that +Napoleon promised to be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn, +and the talk of the Emperor's being expected to arrive next day- all +aroused with fresh force that feeling of agitation and expectation +in Pierre which he had been conscious of ever since the appearance +of the comet, and especially since the beginning of the war. + +He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done +so had he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society +of Freemasons to which he was bound by oath and which preached +perpetual peace and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact +that when he saw the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform +and were talking patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take the step. +But the chief reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the +army lay in the vague idea that he was L'russe Besuhof who had the +number of the beast, 666; that his part in the great affair of setting +a limit to the power of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous +things had been predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought +not to undertake anything, but wait for what was bound to come to +pass. + +CHAPTER XX + +A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs that day, as +usual on Sundays. + +Pierre came early so as to find them alone. + +He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had +he not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried +his bulk with evident ease. + +He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman +did not even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his +master was at the Rostovs' he stayed till midnight. The Rostovs' +footman rushed eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and take +his hat and stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and +stick in the anteroom. + +The first person he saw in the house was Natasha. Even before he saw +her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practicing +solfa exercises in the music room. He knew that she had not sung since +her illness, and so the sound of her voice surprised and delighted +him. He opened the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress she had +worn at church, walking about the room singing. She had her back to +him when he opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his +broad, surprised face, she blushed and came rapidly up to him. + +"I want to try to sing again," she said, adding as if by way of +excuse, "it is, at least, something to do." + +"That's capital!" + +"How glad I am you've come! I am so happy today," she said, with the +old animation Pierre had not seen in her for along time. "You know +Nicholas has received a St. George's Cross? I am so proud of him." + +"Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don't want to interrupt +you," he added, and was about to go to the drawing room. + +Natasha stopped him. + +"Count, is it wrong of me to sing?" she said blushing, and fixing +her eyes inquiringly on him. + +"No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do you ask me?" + +"I don't know myself," Natasha answered quickly, "but I should not +like to do anything you disapproved of. I believe in you completely. +You don't know how important you are to me, how much you've done for +me...." She spoke rapidly and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her +words. "I saw in that same army order that he, Bolkonski" (she +whispered the name hastily), "is in Russia, and in the army again. +What do you think?"- she was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid +her strength might fail her- "Will he ever forgive me? Will he not +always have a bitter feeling toward me? What do you think? What do you +think?" + +"I think..." Pierre replied, "that he has nothing to forgive.... +If I were in his place..." + +By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back to the +day when, trying to comfort her, he had said that if he were not +himself but the best man in the world and free, he would ask on his +knees for her hand; and the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love +took possession of him and the same words rose to his lips. But she +did not give him time to say them. + +"Yes, you... you..." she said, uttering the word you rapturously- +"that's a different thing. I know no one kinder, more generous, or +better than you; nobody could be! Had you not been there then, and now +too, I don't know what would have become of me, because..." + +Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music +before her eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and +down the room. + +Just then Petya came running in from the drawing room. + +Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips +and resembled Natasha. He was preparing to enter the university, but +he and his friend Obolenski had lately, in secret, agreed to join +the hussars. + +Petya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake about this +affair. He had asked Pierre to find out whether he would be accepted +in the hussars. + +Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what +Petya was saying. + +Petya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention. + +"Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirilych, for heaven's sake! You +are my only hope " said Petya. + +"Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I'll mention it, I'll bring +it all up today." + +"Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?" asked the old count. +"The countess has been to Mass at the Razumovskis' and heard the new +prayer. She says it's very fine." + +"Yes, I've got it," said Pierre. "The Emperor is to be here +tomorrow... there's to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility, +and they are talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me +congratulate you!" + +"Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?" + +"We are again retreating. They say we're already near Smolensk," +replied Pierre. + +"O Lord, O Lord!" exclaimed the count. "Where is the manifesto?" + +"The Emperor's appeal? Oh yes!" + +Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not +find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the +countess who entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently +expecting Natasha, who had left off singing but had not yet come +into the drawing room. + +"On my word, I don't know what I've done with it," he said. + +"There he is, always losing everything!" remarked the countess. + +Natasha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face +and sat down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered, +Pierre's features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and +while still searching for the papers he glanced at her several times. + +"No, really! I'll drive home, I must have left them there. I'll +certainly..." + +"But you'll be late for dinner." + +"Oh! And my coachman has gone." + +But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom, +had found them in Pierre's hat, where he had carefully tucked them +under the lining. Pierre was about to begin reading. + +"No, after dinner," said the old count, evidently expecting much +enjoyment from that reading. + +At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new +chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the town news, of the +illness of the old Georgian princess, of Metivier's disappearance from +Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin +and accused of being a French "spyer" (so Count Rostopchin had told +the story), and how Rostopchin let him go and assured the people +that he was "not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin." + +"People are being arrested..." said the count. "I've told the +countess she should not speak French so much. It's not the time for it +now." + +"And have you heard?" Shinshin asked. "Prince Golitsyn has engaged a +master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak +French in the streets." + +"And how about you, Count Peter Kirilych? If they call up the +militia, you too will have to mount a horse," remarked the old +count, addressing Pierre. + +Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming +not to grasp what was said. He looked at the count. + +"Oh yes, the war," he said. "No! What sort of warrior should I make? +And yet everything is so strange, so strange! I can't make it out. I +don't know, I am very far from having military tastes, but in these +times no one can answer for himself." + +After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy +chair and with a serious face asked Sonya, who was considered an +excellent reader, to read the appeal. + +"To Moscow, our ancient Capital! + +"The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He +comes to despoil our beloved country," + +Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count +listened with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages. + +Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father +and now at Pierre. + +Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The +countess shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn +expression in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that +the danger threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshin, +with a sarcastic smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make +fun of anything that gave him the opportunity: Sonya's reading, any +remark of the count's, or even the manifesto itself should no better +pretext present itself. + +After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes +the Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious +nobility, Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the +attention that was being paid to her, read the last words: + +"We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that +Capital and in others parts of our realm for consultation, and for the +direction of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy's path +and those freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the +ruin he hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may +Europe delivered from bondage glorify the name of Russia!" + +"Yes, that's it!" cried the count, opening his moist eyes and +sniffing repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his +nose; and he added, "Let the Emperor but say the word and we'll +sacrifice everything and begrudge nothing." + +Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on +the count's patriotism, Natasha jumped up from her place and ran to +her father. + +"What a darling our Papa is!" she cried, kissing him, and she +again looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned +to her with her better spirits. + +"There! Here's a patriot for you!" said Shinshin. + +"Not a patriot at all, but simply..." Natasha replied in an +injured tone. "Everything seems funny to you, but this isn't at all +a joke...." + +"A joke indeed!" put in the count. "Let him but say the word and +we'll all go.... We're not Germans!" + +"But did you notice, it says, 'for consultation'?" said Pierre. + +"Never mind what it's for...." + +At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came +up to his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking +voice that was now deep and now shrill: + +"Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it's as you +please, but I say definitely that you must let me enter the army, +because I can't... that's all...." + +The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and +turned angrily to her husband. + +"That comes of your talking!" said she. + +But the count had already recovered from his excitement. + +"Come, come!" said he. "Here's a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You +must study." + +"It's not nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolenski is younger than I, and +he's going too. Besides, all the same I can't study now when..." Petya +stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but still got out the words, +"when our Fatherland is in danger." + +"That'll do, that'll do- nonsense...." + +"But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything." + +"Petya! Be quiet, I tell you!" cried the count, with a glance at his +wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son. + +"And I tell you- Peter Kirilych here will also tell you..." + +"Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother's milk has hardly dried on your +lips and you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you," +and the count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably +to reread them in his study before having a nap. + +"Well, Peter Kirilych, let's go and have a smoke," he said. + +Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natasha's unwontedly brilliant +eyes, continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had +reduced him to this condition. + +"No, I think I'll go home." + +"Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don't +often come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine," said the count +good-naturedly, pointing to Natasha, "only brightens up when you're +here." + +"Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business..." +said Pierre hurriedly. + +"Well, then, au revoir!" said the count, and went out of the room. + +"Why are you going? Why are you upset?" asked Natasha, and she +looked challengingly into Pierre's eyes. + +"Because I love you!" was what he wanted to say, but he did not +say it, and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes. + +"Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No, +simply I have business...." + +"Why? No, tell me!" Natasha began resolutely and suddenly stopped. + +They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He +tried to smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he +silently kissed her hand and went out. + +Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostovs' any more. + +CHAPTER XXI + +After the definite refusal he had received, Petya went to his room +and there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea, +silent, morose, and with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to +notice anything. + +Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the +Rostovs' domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him. +That morning Petya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and +collar to look like a grown-up man. He frowned before his looking +glass, gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without +saying a word to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back +door, trying to avoid notice. Petya decided to go straight to where +the Emperor was and to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting +(he imagined the Emperor to be always surrounded by +gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count Rostov, in spite of his youth +wished to serve his country; that youth could be no hindrance to +loyalty, and that he was ready to... While dressing, Petya had +prepared many fine things he meant to say to the gentleman-in-waiting. + +It was on the very fact of being so young that Petya counted for +success in reaching the Emperor- he even thought how surprised +everyone would be at his youthfulness- and yet in the arrangement of +his collar and hair and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to +appear a grown-up man. But the farther he went and the more his +attention was diverted by the ever-increasing crowds moving toward the +Kremlin, the less he remembered to walk with the sedateness and +deliberation of a man. As he approached the Kremlin he even began to +avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck out his elbows in a +menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway he was so pressed to +the wall by people who probably were unaware of the patriotic +intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his +determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in, +rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Petya stood a peasant woman, a +footman, two tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing +some time in the gateway, Petya tried to move forward in front of +the others without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and he began +resolutely working his way with his elbows, but the woman just in +front of him, who was the first against whom he directed his +efforts, angrily shouted at him: + +"What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don't you see we're all +standing still? Then why push?" + +"Anybody can shove," said the footman, and also began working his +elbows to such effect that he pushed Petya into a very filthy corner +of the gateway. + +Petya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the +damp collar which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a +man's. + +He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if +he were now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he +would not be admitted to the Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten +oneself up or move to another place, because of the crowd. One of +the generals who drove past was an acquaintance of the Rostovs', and +Petya thought of asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that +would not be a manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed +in, the crowd, carrying Petya with it, streamed forward into the +Kremlin Square which was already full of people. There were people not +only in the square, but everywhere- on the slopes and on the roofs. As +soon as Petya found himself in the square he clearly heard the sound +of bells and the joyous voices of the crowd that filled the whole +Kremlin. + +For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were +bared, and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Petya was being +pressed so that he could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted, +"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" Petya stood on tiptoe and pushed and +pinched, but could see nothing except the people about him. + +All the faces bore the same expression of excitement and enthusiasm. +A tradesman's wife standing beside Petya sobbed, and the tears ran +down her cheeks. + +"Father! Angel! Dear one!" she kept repeating, wiping away her tears +with her fingers. + +"Hurrah!" was heard on all sides. + +For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush +forward. + +Quite beside himself, Petya, clinching his teeth and rolling his +eyes ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way and shouting +"hurrah!" as if he were prepared that instant to kill himself and +everyone else, but on both sides of him other people with similarly +ferocious faces pushed forward and everybody shouted "hurrah!" + +"So this is what the Emperor is!" thought Petya. "No, I can't +petition him myself- that would be too bold." But in spite of this +he continued to struggle desperately forward, and from between the +backs of those in front he caught glimpses of an open space with a +strip of red cloth spread out on it; but just then the crowd swayed +back- the police in front were pushing back those who had pressed +too close to the procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace +to the Cathedral of the Assumption- and Petya unexpectedly received +such a blow on his side and ribs and was squeezed so hard that +suddenly everything grew dim before his eyes and he lost +consciousness. When he came to himself, a man of clerical appearance +with a tuft of gray hair at the back of his head and wearing a +shabby blue cassock- probably a church clerk and chanter- was +holding him under the arm with one hand while warding off the pressure +of the crowd with the other. + +"You've crushed the young gentleman!" said the clerk. "What are +you up to? Gently!... They've crushed him, crushed him!" + +The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd +spread out again more evenly, and the clerk led Petya- pale and +breathless- to the Tsar-cannon. Several people were sorry for Petya, +and suddenly a crowd turned toward him and pressed round him. Those +who stood nearest him attended to him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him +on the raised platform of the cannon, and reproached those others +(whoever they might be) who had crushed him. + +"One might easily get killed that way! What do they mean by it? +Killing people! Poor dear, he's as white as a sheet!"- various +voices were heard saying. + +Petya soon came to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain +had passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had +obtained a place by the cannon from where he hoped to see the +Emperor who would be returning that way. Petya no longer thought of +presenting his petition. If he could only see the Emperor he would +be happy! + +While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the Assumption- +it was a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor's +arrival and of thanksgiving for the conclusion of peace with the +Turks- the crowd outside spread out and hawkers appeared, selling +kvas, gingerbread, and poppyseed sweets (of which Petya was +particularly fond), and ordinary conversation could again be heard. +A tradesman's wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling how +much the shawl had cost; another was saying that all silk goods had +now got dear. The clerk who had rescued Petya was talking to a +functionary about the priests who were officiating that day with the +bishop. The clerk several times used the word "plenary" (of the +service), a word Petya did not understand. Two young citizens were +joking with some serf girls who were cracking nuts. All these +conversations, especially the joking with the girls, were such as +might have had a particular charm for Petya at his age, but they did +not interest him now. He sat on his elevation- the pedestal of the +cannon- still agitated as before by the thought of the Emperor and +by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he had experienced +when he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still +further intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion. + +Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from the +embankment, to celebrate the signing of peace with the Turks, and +the crowd rushed impetuously toward the embankment to watch the +firing. Petya too would have run there, but the clerk who had taken +the young gentleman under his protection stopped him. The firing was +still proceeding when officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting +came running out of the cathedral, and after them others in a more +leisurely manner: caps were again raised, and those who had run to +look at the cannon ran back again. At last four men in uniforms and +sashes emerged from the cathedral doors. "Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the +crowd again. + +"Which is he? Which?" asked Petya in a tearful voice, of those +around him, but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and +Petya, fixing on one of those four men, whom he could not clearly +see for the tears of joy that filled his eyes, concentrated all his +enthusiasm on him- though it happened not to be the Emperor- +frantically shouted "Hurrah!" and resolved that tomorrow, come what +might, he would join the army. + +The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the palace, and +began to disperse. It was already late, and Petya had not eaten +anything and was drenched with perspiration, yet he did not go home +but stood with that diminishing, but still considerable, crowd +before the palace while the Emperor dined- looking in at the palace +windows, expecting he knew not what, and envying alike the notables he +saw arriving at the entrance to dine with the Emperor and the court +footmen who served at table, glimpses of whom could be seen through +the windows. + +While the Emperor was dining, Valuev, looking out of the window, +said: + +"The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again." + +The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching a biscuit, +rose and went out onto the balcony. The people, with Petya among them, +rushed toward the balcony. + +"Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!..." cried the crowd, and Petya +with it, and again the women and men of weaker mold, Petya among them, +wept with joy. + +A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand +broke off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A +coachman in a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched +it up. Several people in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this +the Emperor had a plateful of biscuits brought him and began +throwing them down from the balcony. Petya's eyes grew bloodshot, +and still more excited by the danger of being crushed, he rushed at +the biscuits. He did not know why, but he had to have a biscuit from +the Tsar's hand and he felt that he must not give way. He sprang +forward and upset an old woman who was catching at a biscuit; the +old woman did not consider herself defeated though she was lying on +the ground- she grabbed at some biscuits but her hand did not reach +them. Petya pushed her hand away with his knee, seized a biscuit, +and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted "Hurrah!" with a voice +already hoarse. + +The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of the crowd +began to disperse. + +"There! I said if only we waited- and so it was!" was being joyfully +said by various people. + +Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that +all the enjoyment of that day was over. He did not go straight home +from the Kremlin, but called on his friend Obolenski, who was +fifteen and was also entering the regiment. On returning home Petya +announced resolutely and firmly that if he was not allowed to enter +the service he would run away. And next day, Count Ilya Rostov- though +he had not yet quite yielded- went to inquire how he could arrange for +Petya to serve where there would be least danger. + +CHAPTER XXII + +Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of +carriages were standing outside the Sloboda Palace. + +The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and gentry +in their uniforms, in the second bearded merchants in full-skirted +coats of blue cloth and wearing medals. in the noblemen's hall there +was an incessant movement and buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat +on high-backed chairs at a large table under the portrait of the +Emperor, but most of the gentry were strolling about the room. + +All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the Club or in +their own houses, were in uniform- some in that of Catherine's day, +others in that of Emperor Paul, others again in the new uniforms of +Alexander's time or the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the +general characteristic of being in uniform imparted something +strange and fantastic to these diverse and familiar personalities, +both old and young. The old men, dim-eyed, toothless, bald, sallow, +and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled, were especially striking. For +the most part they sat quietly in their places and were silent, or, if +they walked about and talked, attached themselves to someone +younger. On all these faces, as on the faces of the crowd Petya had +seen in the Square, there was a striking contradiction: the general +expectation of a solemn event, and at the same time the everyday +interests in a boston card party, Peter the cook, Zinaida Dmitrievna's +health, and so on. + +Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in a +nobleman's uniform that had become too tight for him. He was agitated; +this extraordinary gathering not only of nobles but also of the +merchant-class- les etats generaux (States-General)- evoked in him a +whole series of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply +graven in his soul: thoughts of the Contrat social and the French +Revolution. The words that had struck him in the Emperor's appeal- +that the sovereign was coming to the capital for consultation with his +people- strengthened this idea. And imagining that in this direction +something important which he had long awaited was drawing near, he +strolled about watching and listening to conversations, but nowhere +finding any confirmation of the ideas that occupied him. + +The Emperor's manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm, and then all +moved about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of +conversation, Pierre heard questions of where the marshals of the +nobility were to stand when the Emperor entered, when a ball should be +given in the Emperor's honor, whether they should group themselves +by districts or by whole provinces... and so on; but as soon as the +war was touched on, or what the nobility had been convened for, the +talk became undecided and indefinite. Then all preferred listening +to speaking. + +A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a +retired naval officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small +crowd was pressing round him. Pierre went up to the circle that had +formed round the speaker and listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a +military uniform of Catherine's time, was sauntering with a pleasant +smile among the crowd, with all of whom he was acquainted. He too +approached that group and listened with a kindly smile and nods of +approval, as he always did, to what the speaker was saying. The +retired naval man was speaking very boldly, as was evident from the +expression on the faces of the listeners and from the fact that some +people Pierre knew as the meekest and quietest of men walked away +disapprovingly or expressed disagreement with him. Pierre pushed his +way into the middle of the group, listened, and convinced himself that +the man was indeed a liberal, but of views quite different from his +own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly sonorous, musical, +and aristocratic baritone voice, pleasantly swallowing his r's and +generally slurring his consonants: the voice of a man calling out to +his servant, "Heah! Bwing me my pipe!" It was indicative of +dissipation and the exercise of authority. + +"What if the Smolensk people have offahd to waise militia for the +Empewah? Ah we to take Smolensk as our patte'n? If the noble +awistocwacy of the pwovince of Moscow thinks fit, it can show its +loyalty to our sov'weign the Empewah in other ways. Have we +fo'gotten the waising of the militia in the yeah 'seven? All that +did was to enwich the pwiests' sons and thieves and wobbahs...." + +Count Ilya Rostov smiled blandly and nodded approval. + +"And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all! It only +wuined our farming! Bettah have another conscwiption... o' ou' men +will wetu'n neithah soldiers no' peasants, and we'll get only +depwavity fwom them. The nobility don't gwudge theah lives- evewy +one of us will go and bwing in more wecwuits, and the sov'weign" (that +was the way he referred to the Emperor) "need only say the word and +we'll all die fo' him!" added the orator with animation. + +Count Rostov's mouth watered with pleasure and he nudged Pierre, but +Pierre wanted to speak himself. He pushed forward, feeling stirred, +but not yet sure what stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had +he opened his mouth when one of the senators, a man without a tooth in +his head, with a shrewd though angry expression, standing near the +first speaker, interrupted him. Evidently accustomed to managing +debates and to maintaining an argument, he began in low but distinct +tones: + +"I imagine, sir," said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth, +"that we have been summoned here not to discuss whether it's best +for the empire at the present moment to adopt conscription or to +call out the militia. We have been summoned to reply to the appeal +with which our sovereign the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what +is best- conscription or the militia- we can leave to the supreme +authority...." + +Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He hardened his +heart against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow +attitude into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped +forward and interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would +say, but he began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French +or expressing himself in bookish Russian. + +"Excuse me, your excellency," he began. (He was well acquainted with +the senator, but thought it necessary on this occasion to address +him formally.) "Though I don't agree with the gentleman..." (he +hesitated: he wished to say, "Mon tres honorable preopinant"- "My very +honorable opponent") "with the gentleman... whom I have not the +honor of knowing, I suppose that the nobility have been summoned not +merely to express their sympathy and enthusiasm but also to consider +the means by which we can assist our Fatherland! I imagine," he went +on, warming to his subject, "that the Emperor himself would not be +satisfied to find in us merely owners of serfs whom we are willing +to devote to his service, and chair a canon~{ "Food for cannon." }~ we are ready to make of +ourselves- and not to obtain from us any co-co-counsel." + +Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the senator's +sarcastic smile and the freedom of Pierre's remarks. Only Count Rostov +was pleased with them as he had been pleased with those of the naval +officer, the senator, and in general with whatever speech he had +last heard. + +"I think that before discussing these questions," Pierre +continued, "we should ask the Emperor- most respectfully ask His +Majesty- to let us know the number of our troops and the position in +which our army and our forces now are, and then..." + +But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was attacked +from three sides. The most vigorous attack came from an old +acquaintance, a boston player who had always been well disposed toward +him, Stepan Stepanovich Adraksin. Adraksin was in uniform, and whether +as a result of the uniform or from some other cause Pierre saw +before him quite a different man. With a sudden expression of +malevolence on his aged face, Adraksin shouted at Pierre: + +"In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question the +Emperor about that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that +right, the Emperor could not answer such a question. The troops are +moved according to the enemy's movements and the number of men +increases and decreases..." + +Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and about forty +years of age, whom Pierre had formerly met at the gypsies' and knew as +a bad cardplayer, and who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to +Pierre, interrupted Adraksin. + +"Yes, and this is not a time for discussing," he continued, "but for +acting: there is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy +Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our +wives and children." The nobleman smote his breast. "We will all +arise, every one of us will go, for our father the Tsar!" he +shouted, rolling his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were +heard in the crowd. "We are Russians and will not grudge our blood +in defense of our faith, the throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease +raving if we are sons of our Fatherland! We will show Europe how +Russia rises to the defense of Russia!" + +Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He felt that +his words, apart from what meaning they conveyed, were less audible +than the sound of his opponent's voice. + +Count Rostov at the back of the crowd was expressing approval; +several persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the orator at the end +of a phrase, said: + +"That's right, quite right! Just so!" + +Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his money, his +serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the state of affairs in +order to be able to improve it, but he was unable to speak. Many +voices shouted and talked at the same time, so that Count Rostov had +not time to signify his approval of them all, and the group increased, +dispersed, re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the +largest hall and to the big table. Not only was Pierre's attempt to +speak unsuccessful, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed aside, and +people turned away from him as from a common enemy. This happened +not because they were displeased by the substance of his speech, which +had even been forgotten after the many subsequent speeches, but to +animate it the crowd needed a tangible object to love and a tangible +object to hate. Pierre became the latter. Many other orators spoke +after the excited nobleman, and all in the same tone. Many spoke +eloquently and with originality. + +Glinka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was recognized +(cries of "author! author!" were heard in the crowd), said that +"hell must be repulsed by hell," and that he had seen a child +smiling at lightning flashes and thunderclaps, but "we will not be +that child." + +"Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!" was repeated approvingly in the back +rows of the crowd. + +The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or +bald seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of +whom Pierre had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or +playing boston at the clubs. With an incessant hum of voices the crowd +advanced to the table. Pressed by the throng against the high backs of +the chairs, the orators spoke one after another and sometimes two +together. Those standing behind noticed what a speaker omitted to +say and hastened to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked +their brains to find some thought and hastened to utter it. The old +magnates, whom Pierre knew, sat and turned to look first at one and +then at another, and their faces for the most part only expressed +the fact that they found it very hot. Pierre, however, felt excited, +and the general desire to show that they were ready to go to all +lengths- which found expression in the tones and looks more than in +the substance of the speeches- infected him too. He did not renounce +his opinions, but felt himself in some way to blame and wished to +justify himself. + +"I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make sacrifices +when we know what is needed!" said he, trying to be heard above the +other voices. + +One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but his attention +was immediately diverted by an exclamation at the other side of the +table. + +"Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!" +shouted one man. + +"He is the enemy of mankind!" cried another. "Allow me to speak...." +"Gentlemen, you are crushing me!..." + +CHAPTER XXIII + +At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding chin and alert +eyes, wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder, +entered the room, stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of +gentry. + +"Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment," said +Rostopchin. "I am straight from the palace. Seeing the position we are +in, I think there is little need for discussion. The Emperor has +deigned to summon us and the merchants. Millions will pour forth +from there"- he pointed to the merchants' hall- "but our business is +to supply men and not spare ourselves... That is the least we can do!" + +A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the +table. The whole consultation passed more than quietly. After all +the preceding noise the sound of their old voices saying one after +another, "I agree," or for variety, "I too am of that opinion," and so +on had even a mournful effect. + +The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow +nobility and gentry, that they would furnish ten men, fully +equipped, out of every thousand serfs, as the Smolensk gentry had +done. Their chairs made a scraping noise as the gentlemen who had +conferred rose with apparent relief, and began walking up and down, +arm in arm, to stretch their legs and converse in couples. + +"The Emperor! The Emperor!" a sudden cry resounded through the halls +and the whole throng hurried to the entrance. + +The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path between two +lines of nobles. Every face expressed respectful, awe-struck +curiosity. Pierre stood rather far off and could not hear all that the +Emperor said. From what he did hear he understood that the Emperor +spoke of the danger threatening the empire and of the hopes he +placed on the Moscow nobility. He was answered by a voice which +informed him of the resolution just arrived at. + +"Gentlemen!" said the Emperor with a quivering voice. + +There was a rustling among the crowd and it again subsided, so +that Pierre distinctly heard the pleasantly human voice of the Emperor +saying with emotion: + +"I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles, but today it +has surpassed my expectations. I thank you in the name of the +Fatherland! Gentlemen, let us act! Time is most precious..." + +The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began pressing round him, and +rapturous exclamations were heard from all sides. + +"Yes, most precious... a royal word," said Count Rostov, with a sob. +He stood at the back, and, though he had heard hardly anything, +understood everything in his own way. + +From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of the +merchants. There he remained about ten minutes. Pierre was among those +who saw him come out from the merchants' hall with tears of emotion in +his eyes. As became known later, he had scarcely begun to address +the merchants before tears gushed from his eyes and he concluded in +a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the Emperor he was coming out +accompanied by two merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat +otkupshchik. The other was the mayor, a man with a thin sallow face +and narrow beard. Both were weeping. Tears filled the thin man's eyes, +and the fat otkupshchik sobbed outright like a child and kept +repeating: + +"Our lives and property- take them, Your Majesty!" + +Pierre's one feeling at the moment was a desire to show that he +was ready to go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice +everything. He now felt ashamed of his speech with its +constitutional tendency and sought an opportunity of effacing it. +Having heard that Count Mamonov was furnishing a regiment, Bezukhov at +once informed Rostopchin that he would give a thousand men and their +maintenance. + +Old Rostov could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears, +and at once consented to Petya's request and went himself to enter his +name. + +Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled nobles all took +off their uniforms and settled down again in their homes and clubs, +and not without some groans gave orders to their stewards about the +enrollment, feeling amazed themselves at what they had done. + +BOOK TEN: 1812 + +CHAPTER I + +Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could not resist going +to Dresden, could not help having his head turned by the homage he +received, could not help donning a Polish uniform and yielding to +the stimulating influence of a June morning, and could not refrain +from bursts of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then of Balashev. + +Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to be +personally insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command the army in the +best way, because he wished to fulfill his duty and earn fame as a +great commander. Rostov charged the French because he could not +restrain his wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same +way the innumerable people who took part in the war acted in accord +with their personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and +aims. They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, +reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it +of their own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of +history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible +to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher +they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free. + +The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal +interests have vanished leaving no trace, and nothing remains of +that time but its historic results. + +Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain personal +aims, to further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of +them at all expected- neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still +less any of those who did the actual fighting. + +The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear +to us now. No one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand, +its advance into the heart of Russia late in the season without any +preparation for a winter campaign and, on the other, the character +given to the war by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the +foe this aroused among the Russian people. But no one at the time +foresaw (what now seems so evident) that this was the only way an army +of eight hundred thousand men- the best in the world and led by the +best general- could be destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half +its numerical strength, and led by inexperienced commanders as the +Russian army was. Not only did no one see this, but on the Russian +side every effort was made to hinder the only thing that could save +Russia, while on the French side, despite Napoleon's experience and +so-called military genius, every effort was directed to pushing on +to Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to doing the very thing +that was bound to lead to destruction. + +In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of +saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he +sought a battle and that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolensk, +and of making similar statements to show that the danger of the +campaign was even then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of +telling us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war +plan was adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and +this plan some of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain +Frenchman, others to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself- +pointing to notes, projects, and letters which contain hints of such a +line of action. But all these hints at what happened, both from the +French side and the Russian, are advanced only because they fit in +with the event. Had that event not occurred these hints would have +been forgotten, as we have forgotten the thousands and millions of +hints and expectations to the contrary which were current then but +have now been forgotten because the event falsified them. There are +always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that however +it may end there will always be people to say: "I said then that it +would be so," quite forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures +many were to quite the contrary effect. + +Conjectures as to Napoleon's awareness of the danger of extending +his line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the +depths of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much +straining can historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and +his marshals, or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts +are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period +of the war not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw +the French into the heart of the country, but from their first entry +into Russia everything was done to stop them. And not only was +Napoleon not afraid to extend his line, but he welcomed every step +forward as a triumph and did not seek battle as eagerly as in former +campaigns, but very lazily. + +At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our +sole aim was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage +if we meant to retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the +country. Our Emperor joined the army to encourage it to defend every +inch of Russian soil and not to retreat. The enormous Drissa camp +was formed on Pfuel's plan, and there was no intention of retiring +farther. The Emperor reproached the commanders in chief for every step +they retired. He could not bear the idea of letting the enemy even +reach Smolensk, still less could he contemplate the burning of Moscow, +and when our armies did unite he was displeased that Smolensk was +abandoned and burned without a general engagement having been fought +under its walls. + +So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders and people were +still more provoked at the thought that our forces were retreating +into the depths of the country. + +Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into the country +and missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he +was at Smolensk and thought only of how to advance farther, though +as we now see that advance was evidently ruinous to him. + +The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the danger of +the advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian commanders +then think of luring Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring +of Napoleon into the depths of the country was not the result of any +plan, for no one believed it to be possible; it resulted from a most +complex interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes among those who +took part in the war and had no perception whatever of the inevitable, +or of the one way of saving Russia. Everything came about +fortuitously. The armies were divided at the commencement of the +campaign. We tried to unite them, with the evident intention of giving +battle and checking the enemy's advance, and by this effort to unite +them while avoiding battle with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily +withdrawing the armies at an acute angle- we led the French on to +Smolensk. But we withdrew at an acute angle not only because the +French advanced between our two armies; the angle became still more +acute and we withdrew still farther, because Barclay de Tolly was an +unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagration (who would come his +command), and Bagration- being in command of the second army- tried to +postpone joining up and coming under Barclay's command as long as he +could. Bagration was slow in effecting the junction- though that was +the chief aim of all at headquarters- because, as he alleged, he +exposed his army to danger on this march, and it was best for him to +retire more to the left and more to the south, worrying the enemy from +flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for his army; +and it looks as if he planned this in order not to come under the +command of the detested foreigner Barclay, whose rank was inferior +to his own. + +The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but his presence +and ignorance of what steps to take, and the enormous number of +advisers and plans, destroyed the first army's energy and it retired. + +The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp, but +Paulucci, aiming at becoming commander in chief, unexpectedly employed +his energy to influence Alexander, and Pfuel's whole plan was +abandoned and the command entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not +inspire confidence his power was limited. The armies were divided, +there was no unity of command, and Barclay was unpopular; but from +this confusion, division, and the unpopularity of the foreign +commander in chief, there resulted on the one hand indecision and +the avoidance of a battle (which we could not have refrained from +had the armies been united and had someone else, instead of Barclay, +been in command) and on the other an ever-increasing indignation +against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic zeal. + +At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and +indeed the only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was +necessary for him to inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the +nation in general to a patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor +to Moscow the strength of the Russian army was trebled. + +He left in order not to obstruct the commander in chief's +undivided control of the army, and hoping that more decisive action +would then be taken, but the command of the armies became still more +confused and enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarevich, and a swarm of +adjutants general remained with the army to keep the commander in +chief under observation and arouse his energy, and Barclay, feeling +less free than ever under the observation of all these "eyes of the +Emperor," became still more cautious of undertaking any decisive +action and avoided giving battle. + +Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarevich hinted at treachery and +demanded a general engagement. Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the +others of that group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under +pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish +adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle with +Bennigsen and the Tsarevich. + +At Smolensk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagration +disliked it. + +Bagration drove up in a carriage to to the house occupied by +Barclay. Barclay donned his sash and came out to meet and report to +his senior officer Bagration. + +Despite his seniority in rank Bagration, in this contest of +magnanimity, took his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted, +agreed with him less than ever. By the Emperor's orders Bagration +reported direct to him. He wrote to Arakcheev, the Emperor's +confidant: "It must be as my sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with +the Minister (meaning Barclay). For God's sake send me somewhere +else if only in command of a regiment. I cannot stand it here. +Headquarters are so full of Germans that a Russian cannot exist and +there is no sense in anything. I thought I was really serving my +sovereign and the Fatherland, but it turns out that I am serving +Barclay. I confess I do not want to." + +The swarm of Bronnitskis and Wintzingerodes and their like still +further embittered the relations between the commanders in chief, +and even less unity resulted. Preparations were made to fight the +French before Smolensk. A general was sent to survey the position. +This general, hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a +corps commander, and, having spent the day with him, returned to +Barclay and condemned, as unsuitable from every point of view, the +battleground he had not seen. + +While disputes and intrigues were going on about the future field of +battle, and while we were looking for the French- having lost touch +with them- the French stumbled upon Neverovski's division and +reached the walls of Smolensk. + +It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolensk to save +our lines of communication. The battle was fought and thousands were +killed on both sides. + +Smolensk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and +of the whole people. But Smolensk was burned by its own +inhabitants-who had been misled by their governor. And these ruined +inhabitants, setting an example to other Russians, went to Moscow +thinking only of their own losses but kindling hatred of the foe. +Napoleon advanced farther and we retired, thus arriving at the very +result which caused his destruction. + +CHAPTER II + +The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess +Mary to come to his study. + +"Well? Are you satisfied now?" said he. "You've made me quarrel with +my son! Satisfied, are you? That's all you wanted! Satisfied?... It +hurts me, it hurts. I'm old and weak and this is what you wanted. Well +then, gloat over it! Gloat over it!" + +After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole week. He +was ill and did not leave his study. + +Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness the +old prince not only excluded her from his room, but did not admit +Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tikhon alone attended him. + +At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his +former way of life, devoting himself with special activity to building +operations and the arrangement of the gardens and completely +breaking off his relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks +and cold tone to his daughter seemed to say: "There, you see? You +plotted against me, you lied to Prince Andrew about my relations +with that Frenchwoman and made me quarrel with him, but you see I need +neither her nor you!" + +Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching +his lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself, and talking to +Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent over her books, with her +old nurse, or with "God's folk" who sometimes came by the back door to +see her. + +Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars. She +feared for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and amazed at +the strange cruelty that impels men to kill one another, but she did +not understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her +like all previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this +war, though Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed was +passionately interested in its progress and tried to explain his own +conception of it to her, and though the "God's folk" who came to see +her reported, in their own way, the rumors current among the people of +an invasion by Antichrist, and though Julie (now Princess +Drubetskaya), who had resumed correspondence with her, wrote patriotic +letters from Moscow. + +"I write you in Russian, my good friend," wrote Julie in her +Frenchified Russian, "because I have a detestation for all the French, +and the same for their language which I cannot support to hear +spoken.... We in Moscow are elated by enthusiasm for our adored +Emperor. + +"My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but +the news which I have inspires me yet more. + +"You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski, embracing +his two sons and saying: 'I will perish with them but we will not be +shaken!' And truly though the enemy was twice stronger than we, we +were unshakable. We pass the time as we can, but in war as in war! The +princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and we, unhappy +widows of live men, make beautiful conversations over our charpie, +only you, my friend, are missing..." and so on. + +The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance +of this war was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not +recognize it, and laughed at Dessalles when he mentioned it at dinner. +The prince's tone was so calm and confident that Princess Mary +unhesitatingly believed him. + +All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even +animated. He planned another garden and began a new building for the +domestic serfs. The only thing that made Princess Mary anxious about +him was that he slept very little and, instead of sleeping in his +study as usual, changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would +order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another day he +remained on the couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing room and +dozed there without undressing, while- instead of Mademoiselle +Bourienne- a serf boy read to him. Then again he would spend a night +in the dining room. + +On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew. In his +first letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince Andrew had +dutifully asked his father's forgiveness for what he had allowed +himself to say and begged to be restored to his favor. To this +letter the old prince had replied affectionately, and from that time +had kept the Frenchwoman at at Prince Andrew's second letter, +written near Vitebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave a +brief account of the whole campaign, enclosed for them a plan he had +drawn and forecasts as to the further progress of the war. In this +letter Prince Andrew pointed out to his father the danger of staying +at Bald Hills, so near the theater of war and on the army's direct +line of march, and advised him to move to Moscow. + +At dinner that day, on Dessalles' mentioning that the French were +said to have already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered his +son's letter. + +"There was a letter from Prince Andrew today," he said to Princess +Mary- "Haven't you read it?" + +"No, Father," she replied in a frightened voice. + +She could not have read the letter as she did not even know it had +arrived. + +"He writes about this war," said the prince, with the ironic smile +that had become habitual to him in speaking of the present war. + +"That must be very interesting," said Dessalles. "Prince Andrew is +in a position to know..." + +"Oh, very interesting!" said Mademoiselle Bourienne. + +"Go and get it for me," said the old prince to Mademoiselle +Bourienne. "You know- under the paperweight on the little table." + +Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly. + +"No, don't!" he exclaimed with a frown. "You go, Michael Ivanovich." + +Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as soon as he +had left the room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down +his napkin and went himself. + +"They can't do anything... always make some muddle," he muttered. + +While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle +Bourienne, and even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The +old prince returned with quick steps, accompanied by Michael +Ivanovich, bringing the letter and a plan. These he put down beside +him- not letting anyone read them at dinner. + +On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess +Mary and, spreading out before him the plan of the new building and +fixing his eyes upon it, told her to read the letter aloud. When she +had done so Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father. He was +examining the plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas. + +"What do you think of it, Prince?" Dessalles ventured to ask. + +"I? I?..." said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and not +taking his eyes from the plan of the building. + +"Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us that..." + +"Ha ha ha! The theater of war!" said the prince. "I have said and +still say that the theater of war is Poland and the enemy will never +get beyond the Niemen." + +Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking of +the Niemen when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess +Mary, forgetting the geographical position of the Niemen, thought that +what her father was saying was correct. + +"When the snow melts they'll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they +could fail to see it," the prince continued, evidently thinking of the +campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent. "Bennigsen should have +advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have taken a different +turn..." + +"But, Prince," Dessalles began timidly, "the letter mentions +Vitebsk...." + +"Ah, the letter? Yes..." replied the prince peevishly. "Yes... +yes..." His face suddenly took on a morose expression. He paused. +"Yes, he writes that the French were beaten at... at... what river +is it?" + +Dessalles dropped his eyes. + +"The prince says nothing about that," he remarked gently. + +"Doesn't he? But I didn't invent it myself." + +No one spoke for a long time. + +"Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich," he suddenly went on, +raising his head and pointing to the plan of the building, "tell me +how you mean to alter it...." + +Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince after speaking +to him about the building looked angrily at Princess Mary and +Dessalles and went to his own room. + +Princess Mary saw Dessalles' embarrassed and astonished look fixed +on her father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the fact that +her father had forgotten his son's letter on the drawing-room table; +but she was not only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles the +reason of his confusion and silence, but was afraid even to think +about it. + +In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince, came to +Princess Mary for Prince Andrew's letter which had been forgotten in +the drawing room. She gave it to him and, unpleasant as it was to +her to do so, ventured to ask him what her father was doing. + +"Always busy," replied Michael Ivanovich with a respectfully +ironic smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale. "He's worrying +very much about the new building. He has been reading a little, but +now"- Michael Ivanovich went on, lowering his voice- "now he's at +his desk, busy with his will, I expect." (One of the prince's favorite +occupations of late had been the preparation of some papers he meant +to leave at his death and which he called his "will.") + +"And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?" asked Princess Mary. + +"Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time." + +CHAPTER III + +When Michael Ivanovich returned to the study with the letter, the +old prince, with spectacles on and a shade over his eyes, was +sitting at his open bureau with screened candles, holding a paper in +his outstretched hand, and in a somewhat dramatic attitude was reading +his manuscript- his "Remarks" as he termed it- which was to be +transmitted to the Emperor after his death. + +When Michael Ivanovich went in there were tears in the prince's eyes +evoked by the memory of the time when the paper he was now reading had +been written. He took the letter from Michael Ivanovich's hand, put it +in his pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpatych who had +long been waiting. + +The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolensk and, +walking up and down the room past Alpatych who stood by the door, he +gave his instructions. + +"First, notepaper- do you hear? Eight quires, like this sample, +gilt-edged... it must be exactly like the sample. Varnish, sealing +wax, as in Michael Ivanovich's list." + +He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his notes. + +"Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the deed." + +Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted and had to +be of a special shape the prince had himself designed, and a leather +case had to be ordered to keep the "will" in. + +The instructions to Alpatych took over two hours and still the +prince did not let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, closed +his eyes, and dozed off. Alpatych made a slight movement. + +"Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I'll send after you." + +Alpatych went out. The prince again went to his bureau, glanced into +it, fingered his papers, closed the bureau again, and sat down at +the table to write to the governor. + +It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter. He wished +to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to and that most depressing +thoughts came to him in bed. So he called Tikhon and went through +the rooms with him to show him where to set up the bed for that night. + +He went about looking at every corner. Every place seemed +unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study. +That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive +thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory +everywhere, but the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was +better than other places: he had never slept there yet. + +With the help of a footman Tikhon brought in the bedstead and +began putting it up. + +"That's not right! That's not right!" cried the prince, and +himself pushed it a few inches from the corner and then closer in +again. + +"Well, at last I've finished, now I'll rest," thought the prince, +and let Tikhon undress him. + +Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest himself +of his coat and trousers, the prince undressed, sat down heavily on +the bed, and appeared to be meditating as he looked contemptuously +at his withered yellow legs. He was not meditating, but only deferring +the moment of making the effort to lift those legs up and turn over on +the bed. "Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might end and you +would release me!" thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that +effort for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly had +he done so before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards +beneath him as if it were breathing heavily and jolting. This happened +to him almost every night. He opened his eyes as they were closing. + +"No peace, damn them!" he muttered, angry he knew not with whom. "Ah +yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was +keeping till I should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them. +No, it was something, something in the drawing room. Princess Mary +talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something. +Something in my pocket- can't remember..." + +"Tikhon, what did we talk about at dinner?" + +"About Prince Michael..." + +"Be quiet, quiet!" The prince slapped his hand on the table. "Yes, I +know, Prince Andrew's letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said +something about Vitebsk. Now I'll read it." + +He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table- on which +stood a glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle- moved close to +the bed, and putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in +the stillness of the night, reading it by the faint light under the +green shade, did he grasp its meaning for a moment. + +"The French at Vitebsk, in four days' march they may be at Smolensk; +perhaps are already there! Tikhon!" Tikhon jumped up. "No, no, I don't +want anything!" he shouted. + +He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And +there rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian +camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face, +vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin's gaily colored tent, and a +burning sense of jealousy of "the favorite" agitated him now as +strongly as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that +first meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather +sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile +and her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that +same face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zubov +over her coffin about his right to kiss her hand. + +"Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with +all the present! Quicker, quicker- and that they should leave me in +peace!" + +CHAPTER IV + +Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's estate, lay forty miles east +from Smolensk and two miles from the main road to Moscow. + +The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to +Alpatych, Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that, +as the prince was not very well and was taking no steps to secure +his safety, though from Prince Andrew's letter it was evident that +to remain at Bald Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised +her to send a letter by Alpatych to the Provincial Governor at +Smolensk, asking him to let her know the state of affairs and the +extent of the danger to which Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles +wrote this letter to the Governor for Princess Mary, she signed it, +and it was given to Alpatych with instructions to hand it to the +Governor and to come back as quickly as possible if there was danger. + +Having received all his orders Alpatych, wearing a white beaver hat- +a present from the prince- and carrying a stick as the prince did, +went out accompanied by his family. Three well-fed roans stood ready +harnessed to a small conveyance with a leather hood. + +The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness +stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive +with ringing bells; but on a long journey Alpatych liked to have them. +His satellites- the senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery +maid, a cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and +various domestic serfs- were seeing him off. + +His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for him to sit on +and behind his back. His old sister-in-law popped in a small bundle, +and one of the coachmen helped him into the vehicle. + +"There! There! Women's fuss! Women, women!" said Alpatych, puffing +and speaking rapidly just as the prince did, and he climbed into the +trap. + +After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done, Alpatych, +not trying to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat from his bald +head and crossed himself three times. + +"If there is anything... come back, Yakov Alpatych! For Christ's +sake think of us!" cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war +and the enemy. + +"Women, women! Women's fuss!" muttered Alpatych to himself and +started on his journey, looking round at the fields of yellow rye +and the still-green, thickly growing oats, and at other quite black +fields just being plowed a second time. + +As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year's splendid crop +of corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield which here and there +were already being reaped, made his calculations as to the sowing +and the harvest, and asked himself whether he had not forgotten any of +the prince's orders. + +Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at the town +toward evening on the fourth of August. + +Alpatych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on +the road. As he approached Smolensk he heard the sounds of distant +firing, but these did not impress him. What struck him most was the +sight of a splendid field of oats in which a camp had been pitched and +which was being mown down by the soldiers, evidently for fodder. +This fact impressed Alpatych, but in thinking about his own business +he soon forgot it. + +All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had been +bounded by the will of the prince, and he never went beyond that +limit. Everything not connected with the execution of the prince's +orders did not interest and did not even exist for Alpatych. + +On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of August he put +up in the Gachina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by +Ferapontov, where he had been in the habit of putting up for the +last thirty years. Some thirty years ago Ferapontov, by Alpatych's +advice, had bought a wood from the prince, had begun to trade, and now +had a house, an inn, and a corn dealer's shop in that province. He was +a stout, dark, red-faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips, a +broad knob of a nose, similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and +a round belly. + +Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapontov was standing +before his shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpatych he +went up to him. + +"You're welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folks are leaving the town, but you +have come to it," said he. + +"Why are they leaving the town?" asked Alpatych. + +"That's what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French." + +"Women's fuss, women's fuss!" said Alpatych. + +"Just what I think, Yakov Alpatych. What I say is: orders have +been given not to let them in, so that must be right. And the peasants +are asking three rubles for carting- it isn't Christian!" + +Yakov Alpatych heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar and for +hay for his horses, and when he had had his tea he went to bed. + +All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next morning +Alpatych donned a jacket he wore only in town and went out on +business. It was a sunny morning and by eight o'clock it was already +hot. "A good day for harvesting," thought Alpatych. + +From beyond the town firing had been heard since early morning. At +eight o'clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of +musketry. Many people were hurrying through the streets and there were +many soldiers, but cabs were still driving about, tradesmen stood at +their shops, and service was being held in the churches as usual. +Alpatych went to the shops, to government offices, to the post office, +and to the Governor's. In the offices and shops and at the post office +everyone was talking about the army and about the enemy who was +already attacking the town, everybody was asking what should be +done, and all were trying to calm one another. + +In front of the Governor's house Alpatych found a large number of +people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the Governor's. At the +porch he met two of the landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This +man, an ex-captain of police, was saying angrily: + +"It's no joke, you know! It's all very well if you're single. 'One +man though undone is but one,' as the proverb says, but with +thirteen in your family and all the property... They've brought us +to utter ruin! What sort of governors are they to do that? They +ought to be hanged- the brigands!..." + +"Oh come, that's enough!" said the other. + +"What do I care? Let him hear! We're not dogs," said the +ex-captain of police, and looking round he noticed Alpatych. + +"Oh, Yakov Alpatych! What have you come for?" + +"To see the Governor by his excellency's order," answered +Alpatych, lifting his head and proudly thrusting his hand into the +bosom of his coat as he always did when he mentioned the prince.... He +has ordered me to inquire into the position of affairs," he added. + +"Yes, go and find out!" shouted the angry gentleman. "They've +brought things to such a pass that there are no carts or +anything!... There it is again, do you hear?" said he, pointing in the +direction whence came the sounds of firing. + +"They've brought us all to ruin... the brigands!" he repeated, and +descended the porch steps. + +Alpatych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were +tradesmen, women, and officials, looking silently at one another. +The door of the Governor's room opened and they all rose and moved +forward. An official ran out, said some words to a merchant, called +a stout official with a cross hanging on his neck to follow him, and +vanished again, evidently wishing to avoid the inquiring looks and +questions addressed to him. Alpatych moved forward and next time the +official came out addressed him, one hand placed in the breast of +his buttoned coat, and handed him two letters. + +"To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince Bolkonski," +he announced with such solemnity and significance that the official +turned to him and took the letters. + +A few minutes later the Governor received Alpatych and hurriedly +said to him: + +"Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I acted on +the highest instructions- here..." and he handed a paper to +Alpatych. "Still, as the prince is unwell my advice is that they +should go to Moscow. I am just starting myself. Inform them..." + +But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into +the room and began to say something in French. The Governor's face +expressed terror. + +"Go," he said, nodding his head to Alpatych, and began questioning +the officer. + +Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpatych when +he came out of the Governor's room. Involuntarily listening now to the +firing, which had drawn nearer and was increasing in strength, +Alpatych hurried to his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor +said this: + +"I assure you that the town of Smolensk is not in the slightest +danger as yet and it is unlikely that it will be threatened with +any. I from the one side and Prince Bagration from the other are +marching to unite our forces before Smolensk, which junction will be +effected on the 22nd instant, and both armies with their united forces +will defend our compatriots of the province entrusted to your care +till our efforts shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland, +or till the last warrior in our valiant ranks has perished. From +this you will see that you have a perfect right to reassure the +inhabitants of Smolensk, for those defended by two such brave armies +may feel assured of victory." (Instructions from Barclay de Tolly to +Baron Asch, the civil governor of Smolensk, 1812.) + +People were anxiously roaming about the streets. + +Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and cupboards kept +emerging from the gates of the yards and moving along the streets. +Loaded carts stood at the house next to Ferapontov's and women were +wailing and lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round +barking in front of the harnessed horses. + +Alpatych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went +straight to the shed where his horses and trap were. The coachman +was asleep. He woke him up, told him to harness, and went into the +passage. From the host's room came the sounds of a child crying, the +despairing sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of +Ferapontov. The cook began running hither and thither in the passage +like a frightened hen, just as Alpatych entered. + +"He's done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged +her about so!..." + +"What for?" asked Alpatych. + +"She kept begging to go away. She's a woman! 'Take me away,' says +she, 'don't let me perish with my little children! Folks,' she says, +'are all gone, so why,' she says, 'don't we go?' And he began +beating and pulling her about so!" + +At these words Alpatych nodded as if in approval, and not wishing to +hear more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper's, where +he had left his purchases. + +"You brute, you murderer!" screamed a thin, pale woman who, with a +baby in her arms and her kerchief torn from her head, burst through +the door at that moment and down the steps into the yard. + +Ferapontov came out after her, but on seeing Alpatych adjusted his +waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpatych into the +opposite room. + +"Going already?" said he. + +Alpatych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his +packages and asked how much he owed. + +"We'll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor's?" asked +Ferapontov. "What has been decided?" + +Alpatych replied that the Governor had not told him anything +definite. + +"With our business, how can we get away?" said Ferapontov. "We'd +have to pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobuzh and I tell them +they're not Christians to ask it! Selivanov, now, did a good stroke +last Thursday- sold flour to the army at nine rubles a sack. Will +you have some tea?" he added. + +While the horses were being harnessed Alpatych and Ferapontov over +their tea talked of the price of corn, the crops, and the good weather +for harvesting. + +"Well, it seems to be getting quieter," remarked Ferapontov, +finishing his third cup of tea and getting up. "Ours must have got the +best of it. The orders were not to let them in. So we're in force, +it seems.... They say the other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove +them into the river Marina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one +day." + +Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who +had come in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels, +hoofs, and bells was heard from the gateway as a little trap passed +out. + +It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was in +shadow, the other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpatych looked out of +the window and went to the door. Suddenly the strange sound of a +far-off whistling and thud was heard, followed by a boom of cannon +blending into a dull roar that set the windows rattling. + +He went out into the street: two men were running past toward the +bridge. From different sides came whistling sounds and the thud of +cannon balls and bursting shells falling on the town. But these sounds +were hardly heard in comparison with the noise of the firing outside +the town and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The town +was being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns which Napoleon had +ordered up after four o'clock. The people did not at once realize +the meaning of this bombardment. + +At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only aroused +curiosity. Ferapontov's wife, who till then had not ceased wailing +under the shed, became quiet and with the baby in her arms went to the +gate, listening to the sounds and looking in silence at the people. + +The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With lively +curiosity everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they +flew over their heads. Several people came round the corner talking +eagerly. + +"What force!" remarked one. "Knocked the roof and ceiling all to +splinters!" + +"Routed up the earth like a pig," said another. + +"That's grand, it bucks one up!" laughed the first. "Lucky you +jumped aside, or it would have wiped you out!" + +Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had +fallen on a house close to them. Meanwhile still more projectiles, now +with the swift sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the +agreeable intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people's heads +incessantly, but not one fell close by, they all flew over. Alpatych +was getting into his trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate. + +"What are you staring at?" he shouted to the cook, who in her red +skirt, with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare elbows, had stepped +to the corner to listen to what was being said. + +"What marvels!" she exclaimed, but hearing her master's voice she +turned back. pulling down her tucked-up skirt. + +Once more something whistled, but this time quite close, swooping +downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the middle of the +street, something exploded, and the street was shrouded in smoke. + +"Scoundrel, what are you doing?" shouted the innkeeper, rushing to +the cook. + +At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard from different +sides, the frightened baby began to cry, and people crowded silently +with pale faces round the cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was +her wailing. + +"Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don't let me die! My good +souls!..." + +Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The cook, with her +thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen. +Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov's wife and children and the house +porter were all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns, +the whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook, +which rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment. The +mistress rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came into the +cellar asked in a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband +who had remained in the street. A shopman who entered told her that +her husband had gone with others to the cathedral, whence they were +fetching the wonder-working icon of Smolensk. + +Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych left the cellar +and stopped in the doorway. The evening sky that had been so clear was +clouded with smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new moon +shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a +hush seemed to reign over the town, broken only by the rustle of +footsteps, the moaning, the distant cries, and the crackle of fires +which seemed widespread everywhere. The cook's moans had now subsided. +On two sides black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread from the +fires. Through the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or +ran confusedly in different directions like ants from a ruined +ant-hill. Several of them ran into Ferapontov's yard before Alpatych's +eyes. Alpatych went out to the gate. A retreating regiment, +thronging and hurrying, blocked the street. + +Noticing him, an officer said: "The town is being abandoned. Get +away, get away!" and then, turning to the soldiers, shouted: + +"I'll teach you to run into the yards!" + +Alpatych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him +to set off. Ferapontov's whole household came out too, following +Alpatych and the coachman. The women, who had been silent till then, +suddenly began to wail as they looked at the fires- the smoke and even +the flames of which could be seen in the failing twilight- and as if +in reply the same kind of lamentation was heard from other parts of +the street. Inside the shed Alpatych and the coachman arranged the +tangled reins and traces of their horses with trembling hands. + +As Alpatych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers +in Ferapontov's open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and +knapsacks with flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapontov +returned and entered his shop. On seeing the soldiers he was about +to shout at them, but suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair, +burst into sobs and laughter: + +"Loot everything, lads! Don't let those devils get it!" he cried, +taking some bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street. + +Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others went on +filling their bags. On seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov turned to him: + +"Russia is done for!" he cried. "Alpatych, I'll set the place on +fire myself. We're done for!..." and Ferapontov ran into the yard. + +Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking +it completely, so that Alpatych could not pass out and had to wait. +Ferapontov's wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting +till it was it was possible to drive out. + +Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new moon shone +out amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the +Dnieper Alpatych's cart and that of the innkeeper's wife, which were +slowly moving amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had +to stop. In a side street near the crossroads where the vehicles had +stopped, a house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already +burning itself out. The flames now died down and were lost in the +black smoke, now suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up with +strange distinctness the faces of the people crowding at the +crossroads. Black figures flitted about before the fire, and through +the incessant crackling of the flames talking and shouting could be +heard. Seeing that his trap would not be able to move on for some +time, Alpatych got down and turned into the side street to look at the +fire. Soldiers were continually rushing backwards and forwards near +it, and he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat dragging burning +beams into another yard across the street, while others carried +bundles of hay. + +Alpatych went up to a large crowd standing before a high barn +which was blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire and the back +wall had fallen in, the wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters +were alight. The crowd was evidently watching for the roof to fall in, +and Alpatych watched for it too. + +"Alpatych!" a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man. + +"Mercy on us! Your excellency!" answered Alpatych, immediately +recognizing the voice of his young prince. + +Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was +looking at Alpatych from the back of the crowd. + +"Why are you here?" he asked. + +"Your... your excellency," stammered Alpatych and broke into sobs. +"Are we really lost? Master!..." + +"Why are you here?" Prince Andrew repeated. + +At that moment the flames flared up and showed his young master's +pale worn face. Alpatych told how he had been sent there and how +difficult it was to get away. + +"Are we really quite lost, your excellency?" he asked again. + +Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook and raising his +knee began writing in pencil on a page he tore out. He wrote to his +sister: + +"Smolensk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the +enemy within a week. Set off immediately for Moscow. Let me know at +once when you will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyazh." + +Having written this and given the paper to Alpatych, he told him how +to arrange for departure of the prince, the princess, his son, and the +boy's tutor, and how and where to let him know immediately. Before +he had had time to finish giving these instructions, a chief of +staff followed by a suite galloped up to him. + +"You are a colonel?" shouted the chief of staff with a German +accent, in a voice familiar to Prince Andrew. "Houses are set on +fire in your presence and you stand by! What does this mean? You +will answer for it!" shouted Berg, who was now assistant to the +chief of staff of the commander of the left flank of the infantry of +the first army, a place, as Berg said, "very agreeable and well en +evidence." + +Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to +Alpatych. + +"So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by +the tenth I don't receive news that they have all got away I shall +have to throw up everything and come myself to Bald Hills." + +"Prince," said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, "I only spoke +because I have to obey orders, because I always do obey exactly.... +You must please excuse me," he went on apologetically. + +Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down for a moment and +wreaths of black smoke rolled from under the roof. There was another +terrible crash and something huge collapsed. + +"Ou-rou-rou!" yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of the +collapsing roof of the barn, the burning grain in which diffused a +cakelike aroma all around. The flames flared up again, lighting the +animated, delighted, exhausted faces of the spectators. + +The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted: + +"It's fine, lads! Now it's raging... It's fine!" + +"That's the owner himself," cried several voices. + +"Well then," continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych, "report to them as +I have told you"; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute +beside him, he touched his horse and rode down the side street. + +CHAPTER V + +From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the +enemy. On the tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was +marching along the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills. +Heat and drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day +fleecy clouds floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the +sun, but toward evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in +reddish-brown mist. Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The +unreaped corn was scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up. +The cattle lowed from hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched +meadows. Only at night and in the forests while the dew lasted was +there any freshness. But on the road, the highroad along which the +troops marched, there was no such freshness even at night or when +the road passed through the forest; the dew was imperceptible on the +sandy dust churned up more than six inches deep. As soon as day dawned +the march began. The artillery and baggage wagons moved noiselessly +through the deep dust that rose to the very hubs of the wheels, and +the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft, choking, hot dust that +never cooled even at night. Some of this dust was kneaded by the +feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a cloud over the +troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and worst of all +in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along that road. +The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and +through the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked +eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded +sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless +atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied over their noses +and mouths. When they passed through a village they all rushed to +the wells and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud. + +Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of +that regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving +and giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolensk and its +abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger +against the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely +devoted to the affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to +his men and officers. In the regiment they called him "our prince," +were proud of him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only to +those of his regiment, to Timokhin and the like- people quite new to +him, belonging to a different world and who could not know and +understand his past. As soon as he came across a former acquaintance +or anyone from the staff, he bristled up immediately and grew +spiteful, ironical, and contemptuous. Everything that reminded him +of his past was repugnant to him, and so in his relations with that +former circle he confined himself to trying to do his duty and not +to be unfair. + +In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to +Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolensk on the +sixth of August (he considered that it could and should have been +defended) and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow, +abandoning to pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built +and peopled. But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew +had something to think about entirely apart from general questions. +Two days previously he had received news that his father, son, and +sister had left for Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do +at Bald Hills, Prince Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment +his own grief decided that he must ride there. + +He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on +the march, rode to his father's estate where he had been born and +spent his childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to +be dozens of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it +with wooden beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul +about and that the little washing wharf, torn from its place and +half submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He +rode to the keeper's lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of +the drive and the door stood open. Grass had already begun to grow +on the garden paths, and horses and calves were straying in the +English park. Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass +panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and +others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one replied. +Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden, +he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the +plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom +Prince Andrew in his childhood had often seen at the gate was +sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast shoe. + +He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting +on the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him +strips of bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a +magnolia. + +Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old +garden had been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were +wandering in front of the house among the rosebushes. The shutters +were all closed, except at one window which was open. A little serf +boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran into the house. Alpatych, having sent +his family away, was alone at Bald Hills and was sitting indoors +reading the Lives of the Saints. On hearing that Prince Andrew had +come, he went out with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning his coat, +and, hastily stepping up, without a word began weeping and kissing +Prince Andrew's knee. + +Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to +report on the position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable +had been removed to Bogucharovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also +been carted away. The hay and the spring corn, of which Alpatych +said there had been a remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered +by the troops and mown down while still green. The peasants were +ruined; some of them too had gone to Bogucharovo, only a few remained. + +Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked: + +"When did my father and sister leave?" meaning when did they leave +for Moscow. + +Alpatych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for +Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again +went into details concerning the estate management, asking for +instructions. + +"Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for +them? We have still six hundred quarters left," he inquired. + +"What am I to say to him?" thought Prince Andrew, looking down on +the old man's bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the +expression on his face that the old man himself understood how +untimely such questions were and only asked them to allay his grief. + +"Yes, let them have it," replied Prince Andrew. + +"If you noticed some disorder in the garden," said Alpatych, "it was +impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent the +night, dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their +commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it." + +"Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy +occupies the place?" asked Prince Andrew. + +Alpatych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and +suddenly with a solemn gesture raised his arm. + +"He is my refuge! His will be done!" he exclaimed. + +A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow +toward the prince. + +"Well, good-by!" said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpatych. +"You must go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go +to the Ryazan estate or to the one near Moscow." + +Alpatych clung to Prince Andrew's leg and burst into sobs. Gently +disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the +avenue at a gallop. + +The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly +impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last +on which he was making the bast shoe, and two little girls, running +out from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked +from the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young +master, the elder one frightened look clutched her younger companion +by the hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick +up some green plums they had dropped. + +Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them +see that they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty +frightened little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt +an irresistible desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief +came over him when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of +other human interests entirely aloof from his own and just as +legitimate as those that occupied him. Evidently these girls +passionately desired one thing- to carry away and eat those green +plums without being caught- and Prince Andrew shared their wish for +the success of their enterprise. He could not resist looking at them +once more. Believing their danger past, they sprang from their +ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill little voices and +holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned feet scampered +merrily and quickly across the meadow grass. + +Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the +dusty highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from +Bald Hills he again came out on the road and overtook his regiment +at its halting place by the dam of a small pond. It was past one +o'clock. The sun, a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his +back intolerably through his black coat. The dust always hung +motionless above the buzz of talk that came from the resting troops. +There was no wind. As he crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the +ooze and freshness of the pond. He longed to get into that water, +however dirty it might be, and he glanced round at the pool from +whence came sounds of shrieks and laughter. The small, muddy, green +pond had risen visibly more than a foot, flooding the dam, because +it was full of the naked white bodies of soldiers with brick-red +hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing about in it. All this +naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking, floundered about in +that dirty pool like carp stuffed into a watering can, and the +suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass rendered it specially +pathetic. + +One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince +Andrew knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed +himself, stepped back to get a good run, and plunged into the water; +another, a dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood +up to his waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure +and snorted with satisfaction as he poured the water over his head +with hands blackened to the wrists. There were sounds of men +slapping one another, yelling, and puffing. + +Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was +healthy, white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timokhin, with his red +little nose, standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt +confused at seeing the prince, but made up his mind to address him +nevertheless. + +"It's very nice, your excellency! Wouldn't you like to?" said he. + +"It's dirty," replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace. + +"We'll clear it out for you in a minute," said Timokhin, and, +still undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the pond. + +"The prince wants to bathe." + +"What prince? Ours?" said many voices, and the men were in such +haste to clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He +decided that he would rather himself with water in the barn. + +"Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!" he thought, and he looked at his own +naked body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust +and horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that +immense number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond. + +On the seventh of August Prince Bagration wrote as follows from +his quarters at Mikhaylovna on the Smolensk road: + +Dear Count Alexis Andreevich- (He was writing to Arakcheev but +knew that his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore +weighed every word in it to the best of his ability.) + +I expect the Minister [Barclay de Tolly] has already reported the +abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and +the whole army is in despair that this most important place has been +wantonly abandoned. I, for my part, begged him personally most +urgently and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to +consent. I swear to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix as +never before and might have lost half his army but could not have +taken Smolensk. Our troops fought, and are fighting, as never +before. With fifteen thousand men I held the enemy at bay for +thirty-five hours and beat him; but he would not hold out even for +fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain on our army, and as for +him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If he reports that our +losses were great, it is not true; perhaps about four thousand, not +more, and not even that; but even were they ten thousand, that's +war! But the enemy has lost masses... + +What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They +would have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water +for men or horses. He gave me his word he would not retreat, but +suddenly sent instructions that he was retiring that night. We +cannot fight in this way, or we may soon bring the enemy to Moscow... + +There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you +should make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats! +You would set all Russia against you and every one of us would feel +ashamed to wear the uniform. If it has come to this- we must fight +as long as Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand... + +One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may +perhaps be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad +but execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole +country.... I am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing +boldly. It is clear that the man who advocates the conclusion of a +peace, and that the Minister should command the army, does not love +our sovereign and desires the ruin of us all. So I write you +frankly: call out the militia. For the Minister is leading these +visitors after him to Moscow in a most masterly way. The whole army +feels great suspicion of the Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is +said to be more Napoleon's man than ours, and he is always advising +the Minister. I am not merely civil to him but obey him like a +corporal, though I am his senior. This is painful, but, loving my +benefactor and sovereign, I submit. Only I am sorry for the Emperor +that he entrusts our fine army to such as he. Consider that on our +retreat we have lost by fatigue and left in the hospital more than +fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would not have +happened. Tell me, for God's sake, what will Russia, our mother +Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning +our good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings +of hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and +of whom are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is +vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The +whole army bewails it and calls down curses upon him... + +CHAPTER VI + +Among the innumerable categories applicable to the phenomena of +human life one may discriminate between those in which substance +prevails and those in which form prevails. To the latter- as +distinguished from village, country, provincial, or even Moscow +life- we may allot Petersburg life, and especially the life of its +salons. That life of the salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805 +we had made peace and had again quarreled with Bonaparte and had +made constitutions and unmade them again, but the salons of Anna +Pavlovna Helene remained just as they had been- the one seven and +the other five years before. At Anna Pavlovna's they talked with +perplexity of Bonaparte's successes just as before and saw in them and +in the subservience shown to him by the European sovereigns a +malicious conspiracy, the sole object of which was to cause +unpleasantness and anxiety to the court circle of which Anna +Pavlovna was the representative. And in Helene's salon, which +Rumyantsev himself honored with his visits, regarding Helene as a +remarkably intelligent woman, they talked with the same ecstasy in +1812 as in 1808 of the "great nation" and the "great man," and +regretted our rupture with France, a rupture which, according to them, +ought to be promptly terminated by peace. + +Of late, since the Emperor's return from the army, there had been +some excitement in these conflicting salon circles and some +demonstrations of hostility to one another, but each camp retained its +own tendency. In Anna Pavlovna's circle only those Frenchmen were +admitted who were deep-rooted legitimists, and patriotic views were +expressed to the effect that one ought not to go to the French theater +and that to maintain the French troupe was costing the government as +much as a whole army corps. The progress of the war was eagerly +followed, and only the reports most flattering to our army were +circulated. In the French circle of Helene and Rumyantsev the +reports of the cruelty of the enemy and of the war were contradicted +and all Napoleon's attempts at conciliation were discussed. In that +circle they discountenanced those who advised hurried preparations for +a removal to Kazan of the court and the girls' educational +establishments under the patronage of the Dowager Empress. In Helene's +circle the war in general was regarded as a series of formal +demonstrations which would very soon end in peace, and the view +prevailed expressed by Bilibin- who now in Petersburg was quite at +home in Helene's house, which every clever man was obliged to visit- +that not by gunpowder but by those who invented it would matters be +settled. In that circle the Moscow enthusiasm- news of which had +reached Petersburg simultaneously with the Emperor's return- was +ridiculed sarcastically and very cleverly, though with much caution. + +Anna Pavlovna's circle on the contrary was enraptured by this +enthusiasm and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the +ancients. Prince Vasili, who still occupied his former important +posts, formed a connecting link between these two circles. He +visited his "good friend Anna Pavlovna" as well as his daughter's +"diplomatic salon," and often in his constant comings and goings +between the two camps became confused and said at Helene's what he +should have said at Anna Pavlovna's and vice versa. + +Soon after the Emperor's return Prince Vasili in a conversation +about the war at Anna Pavlovna's severely condemned Barclay de +Tolly, but was undecided as to who ought to be appointed commander +in chief. One of the visitors, usually spoken of as "a man of great +merit," having described how he had that day seen Kutuzov, the newly +chosen chief of the Petersburg militia, presiding over the +enrollment of recruits at the Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest +that Kutuzov would be the man to satisfy all requirements. + +Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutuzov had done +nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance. + +"I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility," Prince +Vasili interrupted, "but they did not listen to me. I told them his +election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor. They +did not listen to me. + +"It's all this mania for opposition," he went on. "And who for? It +is all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those +Muscovites," Prince Vasili continued, forgetting for a moment that +though at Helene's one had to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at +Anna Pavlovna's one had to be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved +his mistake at once. "Now, is it suitable that Count Kutuzov, the +oldest general in Russia, should preside at that tribunal? He will get +nothing for his pains! How could they make a man commander in chief +who cannot mount a horse, who drops asleep at a council, and has the +very worst morals! A good reputation he made for himself at Bucharest! +I don't speak of his capacity as a general, but at a time like this +how they appoint they appoint a decrepit, blind old man, positively +blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see anything. +To play blindman's bluff? He can't see at all!" + +No one replied to his remarks. + +This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on the +twenty-ninth of July Kutuzov received the title of Prince. This +might indicate a wish to get rid of him, and therefore Prince Vasili's +opinion continued to be correct though he was not now in any hurry +to express it. But on the eighth of August a committee, consisting +of Field Marshal Saltykov, Arakcheev, Vyazmitinov, Lopukhin, and +Kochubey met to consider the progress of the war. This committee +came to the conclusion that our failures were due to a want of unity +in the command and though the members of the committee were aware of +the Emperor's dislike of Kutuzov, after a short deliberation they +agreed to advise his appointment as commander in chief. That same +day Kutuzov was appointed commander in chief with full powers over the +armies and over the whole region occupied by them. + +On the ninth of August Prince Vasili at Anna Pavlovna's again met +the "man of great merit." The latter was very attentive to Anna +Pavlovna because he wanted to be appointed director of one of the +educational establishments for young ladies. Prince Vasili entered the +room with the air of a happy conqueror who has attained the object +of his desires. + +"Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov is field +marshal! All dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so delighted! At +last we have a man!" said he, glancing sternly and significantly round +at everyone in the drawing room. + +The "man of great merit," despite his desire to obtain the post of +director, could not refrain from reminding Prince Vasili of his former +opinion. Though this was impolite to Prince Vasili in Anna +Pavlovna's drawing room, and also to Anna Pavlovna herself who had +received the news with delight, he could not resist the temptation. + +"But, Prince, they say he is blind!" said he, reminding Prince +Vasili of his own words. + +"Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough," said Prince Vasili rapidly, +in a deep voice and with a slight cough- the voice and cough with +which he was wont to dispose of all difficulties. + +"He sees well enough," he added. "And what I am so pleased about," +he went on, "is that our sovereign has given him full powers over +all the armies and the whole region- powers no commander in chief ever +had before. He is a second autocrat," he concluded with a victorious +smile. + +"God grant it! God grant it!" said Anna Pavlovna. + +The "man of great merit," who was still a novice in court circles, +wishing to flatter Anna Pavlovna by defending her former position on +this question, observed: + +"It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutuzov those +powers. They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read, +when he said to Kutuzov: 'Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you +this honor.' + +"Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech," said Anna Pavlovna. + +"Oh, no, no!" warmly rejoined Prince Vasili, who would not now yield +Kutuzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutuzov was not only admirable +himself, but was adored by everybody. "No, that's impossible," said +he, "for our sovereign appreciated him so highly before." + +"God grant only that Prince Kutuzov assumes real power and does +not allow anyone to put a spoke in his wheel," observed Anna Pavlovna. + +Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasili said in a +whisper: + +"I know for a fact that Kutuzov made it an absolute condition that +the Tsarevich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to +the Emperor?" + +And Prince Vasili repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by +Kutuzov to the Emperor. "I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor +reward him if he does right." + +"Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutuzov! I have known him a long +time!" + +"They even say," remarked the "man of great merit" who did not yet +possess courtly tact, "that his excellency made it an express +condition that the sovereign himself should not be with the army." + +As soon as he said this both Prince Vasili and Anna Pavlovna +turned away from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at +his naivete. + +CHAPTER VII + +While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already +passed Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow. +Napoleon's historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to +justify his hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against +his will. He is as right as other historians who look for the +explanation of historic events in the will of one man; he is as +right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn +to Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here besides the law +of retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation for +events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in, +confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer having lost a game is +sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made +and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets that at each +stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none of his +moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays +attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more +complex than this is the game of war, which occurs under certain +limits of time, and where it is not one will that manipulates lifeless +objects, but everything results from innumerable conflicts of +various wills! + +After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh at Vyazma, +and then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but it happened that owing to a +conjunction of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give +battle till they reached Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow. From +Vyazma Napoleon ordered a direct advance on Moscow. + +Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacree +des peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme +de pagodes chinoises,~{ "Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the sacred +city of Alexander's people, Moscow with its innumerable churches +shaped like Chinese pagodas." }~ this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no +rest. On the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light +bay bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his +pages, and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind +to question a Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by +Lelorgne d'Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a +gallop and reined in his horse with an amused expression. + +"Well?" asked Napoleon. + +"One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is joining up +with the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander in +chief. He is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow." + +Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and +bring the man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several +adjutants galloped off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov +had handed over to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's +jacket and on a French cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face. +Napoleon told him to ride by his side and began questioning him. + +"You are a Cossack?" + +"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor." + +"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon's +plain appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental +mind the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the +incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality +Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his master +dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of +chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him +prisoner. Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who +have seen all sorts of things, consider it necessary to do +everything in a mean and cunning way, are ready to render any sort +of service to their master, and are keen at guessing their master's +baser impulses, especially those prompted by vanity and pettiness. + +Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had +easily and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed +but merely did his utmost to gain his new master's favor. + +He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence +could no more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's with +the rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant +major or Napoleon could deprive him of. + +So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the +orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the +Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed +up his eyes and considered. + +In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see +cunning in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately. + +"It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if there's a battle soon, +yours will win. That's right. But if three days pass, then after that, +well, then that same battle will not soon be over." + +Lelorgne d'Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon +thus: "If a battle takes place within the next three days the French +will win, but if later, God knows what will happen." Napoleon did +not smile, though he was evidently in high good humor, and he +ordered these words to be repeated. + +Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending +not to know who Napoleon was, added: + +"We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in +the world, but we are a different matter..."- without knowing why or +how this bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end. + +The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase, +and Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty +interlocutor smile," says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence, +Napoleon turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news +that he was talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who +had written his immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would +affect this enfant du Don.~{ "Child of the Don." }~ + +The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka. + +Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and +that Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new +masters promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his +eyes wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken +to be whipped. "As soon as Napoleon's interpreter had spoken," says +Thiers, "the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word, +but rode on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached +him across the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly +arrested and replaced by a naive and silent feeling of admiration. +Napoleon, after making the Cossack a present, had him set free like +a bird restored to its native fields." + +Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his +imagination, and "the bird restored to its native fields" galloped +to our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but +that he meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place +he did not wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth +telling. He found the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating +with Platov's detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas +Rostov, quartered at Yankovo. Rostov was just mounting to go for a +ride round the neighboring villages with Ilyin; he let Lavrushka +have another horse and took him along with him. + +CHAPTER VIII + +Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as Prince Andrew +supposed. + +After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old prince suddenly +seemed to awake as from a dream. He ordered the militiamen to be +called up from the villages and armed, and wrote a letter to the +commander in chief informing him that he had resolved to remain at +Bald Hills to the last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the +commander in chief's discretion to take measures or not for the +defense of Bald Hills, where one of Russia's oldest generals would +be captured or killed, and he announced to his household that he would +remain at Bald Hills. + +But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for the +departure of the princess and Dessalles with the little prince to +Bogucharovo and thence to Moscow. Princess Mary, alarmed by her +father's feverish and sleepless activity after his previous apathy, +could not bring herself to leave him alone and for the first time in +her life ventured to disobey him. She refused to go away and her +father's fury broke over her in a terrible storm. He repeated every +injustice he had ever inflicted on her. Trying to convict her, he told +her she had worn him out, had caused his quarrel with his son, had +harbored nasty suspicions of him, making it the object of her life +to poison his existence, and he drove her from his study telling her +that if she did not go away it was all the same to him. He declared +that he did not wish to remember her existence and warned her not to +dare to let him see her. The fact that he did not, as she had +feared, order her to be carried away by force but only told her not to +let him see her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof that in +the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at home and had +not gone away. + +The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old prince donned +his full uniform and prepared to visit the commander in chief. His +caleche was already at the door. Princess Mary saw him walk out of the +house in his uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden +to review his armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by the window +listening to his voice which reached her from the garden. Suddenly +several men came running up the avenue with frightened faces. + +Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-bordered path, +and into the avenue. A large crowd of militiamen and domestics were +moving toward her, and in their midst several men were supporting by +the armpits and dragging along a little old man in a uniform and +decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the sunlight that +fell in small round spots through the shade of the lime-tree avenue, +could not be sure what change there was in his face. All she could see +was that his former stern and determined expression had altered to one +of timidity and submission. On seeing his daughter he moved his +helpless lips and made a hoarse sound. It was impossible to make out +what he wanted. He was lifted up, carried to his study, and laid on +the very couch he had so feared of late. + +The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him and said +that the prince had had seizure a paralyzing his right side. + +It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at Bald Hills, and +next day they moved the prince to Bogucharovo, the doctor accompanying +him. + +By the time they reached Bogucharovo, Dessalles and the little +prince had already left for Moscow. + +For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis in the +new house Prince Andrew had built at Bogucharovo, ever in the same +state, getting neither better nor worse. He was unconscious and lay +like a distorted corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and +lips twitching, and it was impossible to tell whether he understood +what was going on around him or not. One thing was certain- that he +was suffering and wished to say something. But what it was, no one +could tell: it might be some caprice of a sick and half-crazy man, +or it might relate to public affairs, or possibly to family concerns. + +The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything and was +due to physical causes; but Princess Mary thought he wished to tell +her something, and the fact that her presence always increased his +restlessness confirmed her opinion. + +He was evidently suffering both physically and mentally. There was +no hope of recovery. It was impossible for him to travel, it would not +do to let him die on the road. "Would it not be better if the end +did come, the very end?" Princess Mary sometimes thought. Night and +day, hardly sleeping at all, she watched him and, terrible to say, +often watched him not with hope of finding signs of improvement but +wishing to find symptoms of the approach of the end. + +Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in herself, yet +there it was. And what seemed still more terrible to her was that +since her father's illness began (perhaps even sooner, when she stayed +with him expecting something to happen), all the personal desires +and hopes that had been forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened. +Thoughts that had not entered her mind for years- thoughts of a life +free from the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and +of family happiness- floated continually in her imagination like +temptations of the devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions +continually recurred to her as to how she would order her life now, +after that. These were temptations of the devil and Princess Mary knew +it. She knew that the sole weapon against him was prayer, and she +tried to pray. She assumed an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons, +repeated the words of a prayer, but she could not pray. She felt +that a different world had now taken possession of her- the life of +a world of strenuous and free activity, quite opposed to the spiritual +world in which till now she had been confined and in which her +greatest comfort had been prayer. She could not pray, could not +weep, and worldly cares took possession of her. + +It was becoming dangerous to remain in Bogucharovo. News of the +approach of the French came from all sides, and in one village, ten +miles from Bogucharovo, a homestead had been looted by French +marauders. + +The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the prince; the +provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an official to Princess Mary +to persuade her to get away as quickly as possible, and the head of +the rural police having come to Bogucharovo urged the same thing, +saying that the French were only some twenty-five miles away, that +French proclamations were circulating in the villages, and that if the +princess did not take her father away before the fifteenth, he could +not answer for the consequences. + +The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The cares of +preparation and giving orders, for which everyone came to her, +occupied her all day. She spent the night of the fourteenth as +usual, without undressing, in the room next to the one where the +prince lay. Several times, waking up, she heard his groans and +muttering, the creak of his bed, and the steps of Tikhon and the +doctor when they turned him over. Several times she listened at the +door, and it seemed to her that his mutterings were louder than +usual and that they turned him over oftener. She could not sleep and +several times went to the door and listened, wishing to enter but +not deciding to do so. Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw +and knew how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was to +him. She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he turned from the look +she sometimes involuntarily fixed on him. She knew that her going in +during the night at an unusual hour would irritate him. + +But never had she felt so grieved for him or so much afraid of +losing him. She recalled all her life with him and in every word and +act of his found an expression of his love of her. Occasionally amid +these memories temptations of the devil would surge into her +imagination: thoughts of how things would be after his death, and +how her new, liberated life would be ordered. But she drove these +thoughts away with disgust. Toward morning he became quiet and she +fell asleep. + +She woke late. That sincerity which often comes with waking showed +her clearly what chiefly concerned her about her father's illness. +On waking she listened to what was going on behind the door and, +hearing him groan, said to herself with a sigh that things were +still the same. + +"But what could have happened? What did I want? I want his death!" +she cried with a feeling of loathing for herself. + +She washed, dressed, said her prayers, and went out to the porch. In +front of it stood carriages without horses and things were being +packed into the vehicles. + +It was a warm, gray morning. Princess Mary stopped at the porch, +still horrified by her spiritual baseness and trying to arrange her +thoughts before going to her father. The doctor came downstairs and +went out to her. + +"He is a little better today," said he. "I was looking for you. +One can make out something of what he is saying. His head is +clearer. Come in, he is asking for you..." + +Princess Mary's heart beat so violently at this news that she grew +pale and leaned against the wall to keep from falling. To see him, +talk to him, feel his eyes on her now that her whole soul was +overflowing with those dreadful, wicked temptations, was a torment +of joy and terror. + +"Come," said the doctor. + +Princess Mary entered her father's room and went up to his bed. He +was lying on his back propped up high, and his small bony hands with +their knotted purple veins were lying on the quilt; his left eye gazed +straight before him, his right eye was awry, and his brows and lips +motionless. He seemed altogether so thin, small, and pathetic. His +face seemed to have shriveled or melted; his features had grown +smaller. Princess Mary went up and kissed his hand. His left hand +pressed hers so that she understood that he had long been waiting +for her to come. He twitched her hand, and his brows and lips quivered +angrily. + +She looked at him in dismay trying to guess what he wanted of her. +When she changed her position so that his left eye could see her +face he calmed down, not taking his eyes off her for some seconds. +Then his lips and tongue moved, sounds came, and he began to speak, +gazing timidly and imploringly at her, evidently afraid that she might +not understand. + +Straining all her faculties Princess Mary looked at him. The comic +efforts with which he moved his tongue made her drop her eyes and with +difficulty repress the sobs that rose to her throat. He said +something, repeating the same words several times. She could not +understand them, but tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly +repeated the words he uttered. + +"Mmm...ar...ate...ate..." he repeated several times. + +It was quite impossible to understand these sounds. The doctor +thought he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: "Mary, are +you afraid?" The prince shook his head, again repeated the same +sounds. + +"My mind, my mind aches?" questioned Princess Mary. + +He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this, took her hand, and +began pressing it to different parts of his breast as if trying to +find the right place for it. + +"Always thoughts... about you... thoughts..." he then uttered much +more clearly than he had done before, now that he was sure of being +understood. + +Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand, trying to hide +her sobs and tears. + +He moved his hand over her hair. + +"I have been calling you all night..." he brought out. + +"If only I had known..." she said through her tears. "I was afraid +to come in." + +He pressed her hand. + +"Weren't you asleep?" + +"No, I did not sleep," said Princess Mary, shaking her head. + +Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to express herself +as he did, as much as possible by signs, and her tongue too seemed +to move with difficulty. + +"Dear one... Dearest..." Princess Mary could not quite make out what +he had said, but from his look it was clear that he had uttered a +tender caressing word such as he had never used to her before. "Why +didn't you come in?" + +"And I was wishing for his death!" thought Princess Mary. + +He was silent awhile. + +"Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all... forgive!... +thank you!... forgive!... thank you!..." and tears began to flow +from his eyes. "Call Andrew!" he said suddenly, and a childish, +timid expression of doubt showed itself on his face as he spoke. + +He himself seemed aware that his demand was meaningless. So at least +it seemed to Princess Mary. + +"I have a letter from him," she replied. + +He glanced at her with timid surprise. + +"Where is he?" + +"He's with the army, Father, at Smolensk." + +He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then as if in +answer to his doubts and to confirm the fact that now he understood +and remembered everything, he nodded his head and reopened his eyes. + +"Yes," he said, softly and distinctly. "Russia has perished. They've +destroyed her." + +And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes. +Princess Mary could no longer restrain herself and wept while she +gazed at his face. + +Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his eyes, +and Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away the tears. + +Then he again opened his eyes and said something none of them +could understand for a long time, till at last Tikhon understood and +repeated it. Princess Mary had sought the meaning of his words in +the mood in which he had just been speaking. She thought he was +speaking of Russia, or Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson, +or of his own death, and so she could not guess his words. + +"Put on your white dress. I like it," was what he said. + +Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still louder, and the +doctor taking her arm led her out to the veranda, soothing her and +trying to persuade her to prepare for her journey. When she had left +the room the prince again began speaking about his son, about the war, +and about the Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and raising his +hoarse voice, and then he had a second and final stroke. + +Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared, it was hot +and sunny. She could understand nothing, think of nothing and feel +nothing, except passionate love for her father, love such as she +thought she had never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing +into the garden and as far as the pond, along the avenues of young +lime trees Prince Andrew had planted. + +"Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end +quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of me? +What use will peace be when he is no longer here?" Princess Mary +murmured, pacing the garden with hurried steps and pressing her +hands to her bosom which heaved with convulsive sobs. + +When she had completed the tour of the garden, which brought her +again to the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne- who had remained +at Bogucharovo and did not wish to leave it- coming toward her with +a stranger. This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district, +who had come personally to point out to the princess the necessity for +her prompt departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding +him; she led him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down with +him. Then, excusing herself, she went to the door of the old +prince's room. The doctor came out with an agitated face and said +she could not enter. + +"Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!" + +She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at the foot +of the slope by the pond, where no one could see her. She did not know +how long she had been there when she was aroused by the sound of a +woman's footsteps running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha +her maid, who was evidently looking for her, and who stopped +suddenly as if in alarm on seeing her mistress. + +"Please come, Princess... The Prince," said Dunyasha in a breaking +voice. + +"Immediately, I'm coming, I'm coming!" replied the princess +hurriedly, not giving Dunyasha time to finish what she was saying, and +trying to avoid seeing the girl she ran toward the house. + +"Princess, it's God's will! You must be prepared for everything," +said the Marshal, meeting her at the house door. + +"Let me alone; it's not true!" she cried angrily to him. + +The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and ran to her +father's door. "Why are these people with frightened faces stopping +me? I don't want any of them! And what are they doing here?" she +thought. She opened the door and the bright daylight in that +previously darkened room startled her. In the room were her nurse +and other women. They all drew back from the bed, making way for +her. He was still lying on the bed as before, but the stern expression +of his quiet face made Princess Mary stop short on the threshold. + +"No, he's not dead- it's impossible!" she told herself and +approached him, and repressing the terror that seized her, she pressed +her lips to his cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force +of the tenderness she had been feeling for him vanished instantly +and was replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay there before +her. "No, he is no more! He is not, but here where he was is something +unfamiliar and hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent +mystery!" And hiding her face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into +the arms of the doctor, who held her up. + +In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women washed what had +been the prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth +should not stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied +together the legs that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed +him in uniform with his decorations and placed his shriveled little +body on a table. Heaven only knows who arranged all this and when, but +it all got done as if of its own accord. Toward night candles were +burning round his coffin, a pall was spread over it, the floor was +strewn with sprays of juniper, a printed band was tucked in under +his shriveled head, and in a corner of the room sat a chanter +reading the psalms. + +Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse, so the +inmates of the house and strangers crowded into the drawing room round +the coffin- the Marshal, the village Elder, peasant women- and all +with fixed and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and +kissed the old prince's cold and stiffened hand. + +CHAPTER IX + +Until Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners had always +been absentees, and its peasants were of quite a different character +from those of Bald Hills. They differed from them in speech, dress, +and disposition. They were called steppe peasants. The old prince used +to approve of them for their endurance at work when they came to +Bald Hills to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches, +but he disliked them for their boorishness. + +Prince Andrew's last stay at Bogucharovo, when he introduced +hospitals and schools and reduced the quitrent the peasants had to +pay, had not softened their disposition but had on the contrary +strengthened in them the traits of character the old prince called +boorishness. Various obscure rumors were always current among them: at +one time a rumor that they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at +another of a new religion to which they were all to be converted; then +of some proclamation of the Tsar's and of an oath to the Tsar Paul +in 1797 (in connection with which it was rumored that freedom had been +granted them but the landowners had stopped it), then of Peter +Fedorovich's return to the throne in seven years' time, when +everything would be made free and so "simple" that there would be no +restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and his invasion were +connected in their minds with the same sort of vague notions of +Antichrist, the end of the world, and "pure freedom." + +In the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages belonging to +the crown or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent and could work +where they pleased. There were very few resident landlords in the +neighborhood and also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in +the lives of the peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents +in the life of the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are +so baffling to contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly +noticeable than among others. One instance, which had occurred some +twenty years before, was a movement among the peasants to emigrate +to some unknown "warm rivers." Hundreds of peasants, among them the +Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began selling their cattle and moving in +whole families toward the southeast. As birds migrate to somewhere +beyond the sea, so these men with their wives and children streamed to +the southeast, to parts where none of them had ever been. They set off +in caravans, bought their freedom one by one or ran away, and drove or +walked toward the "warm rivers." Many of them were punished, some sent +to Siberia, many died of cold and hunger on the road, many returned of +their own accord, and the movement died down of itself just as it +had sprung up, without apparent reason. But such undercurrents still +existed among the people and gathered new forces ready to manifest +themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and at the same time +simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to anyone living in +close touch with these people it was apparent that these undercurrents +were acting strongly and nearing an eruption. + +Alpatych, who had reached Bogucharovo shortly before the old +prince's death, noticed an agitation among the peasants, and that +contrary to what was happening in the Bald Hills district, where +over a radius of forty miles all the peasants were moving away and +leaving their villages to be devastated by the Cossacks, the +peasants in the steppe region round Bogucharovo were, it was +rumored, in touch with the French, received leaflets from them that +passed from hand to hand, and did not migrate. He learned from +domestic serfs loyal to him that the peasant Karp, who possessed great +influence in the village commune and had recently been away driving +a government transport, had returned with news that the Cossacks +were destroying deserted villages, but that the French did not harm +them. Alpatych also knew that on the previous day another peasant +had even brought from the village of Visloukhovo, which was occupied +by the French, a proclamation by a French general that no harm would +be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would be paid +for anything taken from them. As proof of this the peasant had brought +from Visloukhovo a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that +they were false) paid to him in advance for hay. + +More important still, Alpatych learned that on the morning of the +very day he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the +princess' luggage from Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting +at which it had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no +time to waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince's death, +the Marshal had insisted on Princess Mary's leaving at once, as it was +becoming dangerous. He had told her that after the sixteenth he +could not be responsible for what might happen. On the evening of +the day the old prince died the Marshal went away, promising to return +next day for the funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he +received tidings that the French had unexpectedly advanced, and had +barely time to remove his own family and valuables from his estate. + +For some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed by the village +Elder, Dron, whom the old prince called by the diminutive "Dronushka." + +Dron was one of those physically and mentally vigorous peasants +who grow big beards as soon as they are of age and go on unchanged +till they are sixty or seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a +tooth, as straight and strong at sixty as at thirty. + +Soon after the migration to the "warm rivers," in which he had taken +part like the rest, Dron was made village Elder and overseer of +Bogucharovo, and had since filled that post irreproachably for +twenty-three years. The peasants feared him more than they did their +master. The masters, both the old prince and the young, and the +steward respected him and jestingly called him "the Minister." +During the whole time of his service Dron had never been drunk or ill, +never after sleepless nights or the hardest tasks had he shown the +least fatigue, and though he could not read he had never forgotten a +single money account or the number of quarters of flour in any of +the endless cartloads he sold for the prince, nor a single shock of +the whole corn crop on any single acre of the Bogucharovo fields. + +Alpatych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills estate, sent for +his Dron on the day of the prince's funeral and told him to have +twelve horses got ready for the princess' carriages and eighteen carts +for the things to be removed from Bogucharovo. Though the peasants +paid quitrent, Alpatych thought no difficulty would be made about +complying with this order, for there were two hundred and thirty +households at work in Bogucharovo and the peasants were well to do. +But on hearing the order Dron lowered his eyes and remained silent. +Alpatych named certain peasants he knew, from whom he told him to take +the carts. + +Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were away carting. +Alpatych named others, but they too, according to Dron, had no +horses available: some horses were carting for the government, +others were too weak, and others had died for want of fodder. It +seemed that no horses could be had even for the carriages, much less +for the carting. + +Alpatych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a +model village Elder, so Alpatych had not managed the prince's +estates for twenty years in vain. He a model steward, possessing in +the highest degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts +of those he dealt with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood +that his answers did not express his personal views but the general +mood of the Bogucharovo commune, by which the Elder had already been +carried away. But he also knew that Dron, who had acquired property +and was hated by the commune, must be hesitating between the two +camps: the masters' and the serfs'. He noticed this hesitation in +Dron's look and therefore frowned and moved closer up to him. + +"Now just listen, Dronushka," said he. "Don't talk nonsense to me. +His excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me orders to move all the +people away and not leave them with the enemy, and there is an order +from the Tsar about it too. Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar. +Do you hear?" + +"I hear," Dron answered without lifting his eyes. + +Alpatych was not satisfied with this reply. + +"Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!" he said, shaking his head. + +"The power is in your hands," Dron rejoined sadly. + +"Eh, Dron, drop it!" Alpatych repeated, withdrawing his hand from +his bosom and solemnly pointing to the floor at Dron's feet. "I can +see through you and three yards into the ground under you," he +continued, gazing at the floor in front of Dron. + +Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpatych and again +lowered his eyes. + +"You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready to leave +their homes and go to Moscow and to get carts ready for tomorrow +morning for the princess' things. And don't go to any meeting +yourself, do you hear?" + +Dron suddenly fell on his knees. + +"Yakov Alpatych, discharge me! Take the keys from me and discharge +me, for Christ's sake!" + +"Stop that!" cried Alpatych sternly. "I see through you and three +yards under you," he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping, +his knowledge of the right time to sow the oats, and the fact that +he had been able to retain the old prince's favor for twenty years had +long since gained him the reputation of being a wizard, and that the +power of seeing three yards under a man is considered an attribute +of wizards. + +Dron got up and was about to say something, but Alpatych interrupted +him. + +"What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What are you +thinking of, eh?" + +"What am I to do with the people?" said Dron. "They're quite +beside themselves; I have already told them..." + +"'Told them,' I dare say!" said Alpatych. "Are they drinking?" he +asked abruptly. + +"Quite beside themselves, Yakov Alpatych; they've fetched another +barrel." + +"Well, then, listen! I'll go to the police officer, and you tell +them so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be got +ready." + +"I understand." + +Alpatych did not insist further. He had managed people for a long +time and knew that the chief way to make them obey is to show no +suspicion that they can possibly disobey. Having wrung a submissive "I +understand" from Dron, Alpatych contented himself with that, though he +not only doubted but felt almost certain that without the help of +troops the carts would not be forthcoming. + +And so it was, for when evening came no carts had been provided. +In the village, outside the drink shop, another meeting was being +held, which decided that the horses should be driven out into the +woods and the carts should not be provided. Without saying anything of +this to the princess, Alpatych had his own belongings taken out of the +carts which had arrived from Bald Hills and had those horses got ready +for the princess' carriages. Meanwhile he went himself to the police +authorities. + +CHAPTER X + +After her father's funeral Princess Mary shut herself up in her room +and did not admit anyone. A maid came to the door to say that Alpatych +was asking for orders about their departure. (This was before his talk +with Dron.) Princess Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she +had been lying and replied through the closed door that she did not +mean to go away and begged to be left in peace. + +The windows of the room in which she was lying looked westward. +She lay on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons +of the leather cushion and seeing nothing but that cushion, and her +confused thoughts were centered on one subject- the irrevocability +of death and her own spiritual baseness, which she had not +suspected, but which had shown itself during her father's illness. She +wished to pray but did not dare to, dared not in her present state +of mind address herself to God. She lay for a long time in that +position. + +The sun had reached the other side of the house, and its slanting +rays shone into the open window, lighting up the room and part of +the morocco cushion at which Princess Mary was looking. The flow of +her thoughts suddenly stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed +her hair, got up, and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the +freshness of the clear but windy evening. + +"Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone and no one will +hinder you," she said to herself, and sinking into a chair she let her +head fall on the window sill. + +Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden +and kissed her head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a +black dress and weepers. She softly approached Princess Mary, +sighed, kissed her, and immediately began to cry. The princess +looked up at her. All their former disharmony and her own jealousy +recurred to her mind. But she remembered too how he had changed of +late toward Mademoiselle Bourienne and could not bear to see her, +thereby showing how unjust were the reproaches Princess Mary had +mentally addressed to her. "Besides, is it for me, for me who +desired his death, to condemn anyone?" she thought. + +Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position of +Mademoiselle Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at a distance, but +who yet was dependent on her and living in her house. She felt sorry +for her and held out her hand with a glance of gentle inquiry. +Mademoiselle Bourienne at once began crying again and kissed that +hand, speaking of the princess' sorrow and making herself a partner in +it. She said her only consolation was the fact that the princess +allowed her to share her sorrow, that all the old misunderstandings +should sink into nothing but this great grief; that she felt herself +blameless in regard to everyone, and that he, from above, saw her +affection and gratitude. The princess heard her, not heeding her words +but occasionally looking up at her and listening to the sound of her +voice. + +"Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess," said Mademoiselle +Bourienne after a pause. "I understand that you could not, and cannot, +think of yourself, but with my love for you I must do so.... Has +Alpatych been to you? Has he spoken to you of going away?" she asked. + +Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand who was to go +or where to. "Is it possible to plan or think of anything now? Is it +not all the same?" she thought, and did not reply. + +"You know, chere Marie," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "that we are +in danger- are surrounded by the French. It would be dangerous to move +now. If we go we are almost sure to be taken prisoners, and God +knows..." + +Princess Mary looked at her companion without understanding what she +was talking about. + +"Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me now," she +said. "Of course I would on no account wish to go away from him.... +Alpatych did say something about going.... Speak to him; I can do +nothing, nothing, and don't want to...." + +"I've spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to get away +tomorrow, but I think it would now be better to stay here," said +Mademoiselle Bourienne. "Because, you will agree, chere Marie, to fall +into the hands of the soldiers or of riotous peasants would be +terrible." + +Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not +printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General Rameau's, telling people +not to leave their homes and that the French authorities would +afford them proper protection. She handed this to the princess. + +"I think it would be best to appeal to that general," she continued, +"and and am sure that all due respect would be shown you." + +Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to quiver with +stifled sobs. + +"From whom did you get this?" she asked. + +"They probably recognized that I am French, by my name," replied +Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing. + +Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from the window +and with a pale face went out of the room and into what had been +Prince Andrew's study. + +"Dunyasha, send Alpatych, or Dronushka, or somebody to me!" she +said, "and tell Mademoiselle Bourienne not to come to me," she +added, hearing Mademoiselle Bourienne's voice. "We must go at once, at +once!" she said, appalled at the thought of being left in the hands of +the French. + +"If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the French! +That I, the daughter of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, asked General +Rameau for protection and accepted his favor!" This idea horrified +her, made her shudder, blush, and feel such a rush of anger and +pride as she had never experienced before. All that was distressing, +and especially all that was humiliating, in her position rose +vividly to her mind. "They, the French, would settle in this house: M. +le General Rameau would occupy Prince Andrew's study and amuse himself +by looking through and reading his letters and papers. Mademoiselle +Bourienne would do the honors of Bogucharovo for him. I should be +given a small room as a favor, the soldiers would violate my +father's newly dug grave to steal his crosses and stars, they would +tell me of their victories over the Russians, and would pretend to +sympathize with my sorrow..." thought Princess Mary, not thinking +her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father and her +brother. For herself she did not care where she remained or what +happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead +father and of Prince Andrew. Involuntarily she thought their +thoughts and felt their feelings. What they would have said and what +they would have done she felt bound to say and do. She went into +Prince Andrew's study, trying to enter completely into his ideas, +and considered her position. + +The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her +father's death, all at once rose before her with a new, previously +unknown force and took possession of her. + +Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now for Michael +Ivanovich and now for Tikhon or Dron. Dunyasha, the nurse, and the +other maids could not say in how far Mademoiselle Bourienne's +statement was correct. Alpatych was not at home, he had gone to the +police. Neither could the architect Michael Ivanovich, who on being +sent for came in with sleepy eyes, tell Princess Mary anything. With +just the same smile of agreement with which for fifteen years he had +been accustomed to answer the old prince without expressing views of +his own, he now replied to Princess Mary, so that nothing definite +could be got from his answers. The old valet Tikhon, with sunken, +emaciated face that bore the stamp of inconsolable grief, replied: +"Yes, Princess" to all Princess Mary's questions and hardly +refrained from sobbing as he looked at her. + +At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and with a +deep bow to Princess Mary came to a halt by the doorpost. + +Princess Mary walked up and down the room and stopped in front of +him. + +"Dronushka," she said, regarding as a sure friend this Dronushka who +always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to +the fair at Vyazma every year and smilingly offer it to her, +"Dronushka, now since our misfortune..." she began, but could not go +on. + +"We are all in God's hands," said he, with a sigh. + +They were silent for a while. + +"Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere and I have no one to +turn to. Is true, as they tell me, that I can't even go away?" + +"Why shouldn't you go away, your excellency? You can go," said Dron. + +"I was told it would be dangerous because of the enemy. Dear friend, +I can do nothing. I understand nothing. I have nobody! I want to go +away tonight or early tomorrow morning." + +Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and said: "There are +no horses; I told Yakov Alpatych so." + +"Why are there none?" asked the princess. + +"It's all God's scourge," said Dron. "What horses we had have been +taken for the army or have died- this is such a year! It's not a +case of feeding horses- we may die of hunger ourselves! As it is, some +go three days without eating. We've nothing, we've been ruined." + +Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her. + +"The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?" she asked. + +"They're dying of hunger," said Dron. "It's not a case of carting." + +"But why didn't you tell me, Dronushka? Isn't it possible to help +them? I'll do all I can...." + +To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment when such +sorrow was filling her soul, there could be rich people and poor, +and the rich could refrain from helping the poor. She had heard +vaguely that there was such a thing as "landlord's corn" which was +sometimes given to the peasants. She also knew that neither her father +nor her brother would refuse to help the peasants in need, she only +feared to make some mistake in speaking about the distribution of +the grain she wished to give. She was glad such cares presented +themselves, enabling her without scruple to forget her own grief. +She began asking Dron about the peasants' needs and what there was +in Bogucharovo that belonged to the landlord. + +"But we have grain belonging to my brother?" she said. + +"The landlord's grain is all safe," replied Dron proudly. "Our +prince did not order it to be sold." + +"Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give you +leave in my brother's name," said she. + +Dron made no answer but sighed deeply. + +"Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute it all. +I give this order in my brother's name; and tell them that what is +ours is theirs. We do not grudge them anything. Tell them so." + +" Dron looked intently at the princess while she was speaking. + +"Discharge me, little mother, for God's sake! Order the keys to be +taken from me," said he. "I have served twenty-three years and have +done no wrong. Discharge me, for God's sake!" + +Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of her or why he was +asking to be discharged. She replied that she had never doubted his +devotion and that she was ready to do anything for him and for the +peasants. + +CHAPTER XI + +An hour later Dunyasha came to tell the princess that Dron had come, +and all the peasants had assembled at the barn by the princess' +order and wished to have word with their mistress. + +"But I never told them to come," said Princess Mary. "I only told +Dron to let them have the grain." + +"Only, for God's sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and +don't go out to them. It's all a trick," said Dunyasha, "and when +Yakov Alpatych returns let us get away... and please don't..." + +"What is a trick?" asked Princess Mary in surprise. + +"I know it is, only listen to me for God's sake! Ask nurse too. They +say they don't agree to leave Bogucharovo as you ordered." + +"You're making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away," +said Princess Mary. "Call Dronushka." + +Dron came and confirmed Dunyasha's words; the peasants had come by +the princess' order. + +"But I never sent for them," declared the princess. "You must have +given my message wrong. I only said that you were to give them the +grain." + +Dron only sighed in reply. + +"If you order it they will go away," said he. + +"No, no. I'll go out to them," said Princess Mary, and in spite of +the nurse's and Dunyasha's protests she went out into the porch; Dron, +Dunyasha, the nurse, and Michael Ivanovich following her. + +"They probably think I am offering them the grain to bribe them to +remain here, while I myself go away leaving them to the mercy of the +French," thought Princess Mary. "I will offer them monthly rations and +housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in +my place," she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the +crowd standing on the pasture by the barn. + +The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly took off their +hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt, +came close up to them. So many different eyes, old and young, were +fixed on her, and there were so many different faces, that she could +not distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them +all at once, did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she +represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she +boldly began her speech. + +"I am very glad you have come," she said without raising her eyes, +and feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. "Dronushka +tells me that the war has ruined you. That is our common misfortune, +and I shall grudge nothing to help you. I am myself going away because +it is dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am giving +you everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all +our grain, so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been +told that I am giving you the grain to keep you here- that is not +true. On the contrary, I ask you to go with all your belongings to our +estate near Moscow, and I promise you I will see to it that there +you shall want for nothing. You shall be given food and lodging." + +The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard in the crowd. + +"I am not doing this on my own account," she continued, "I do it +in the name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and of my +brother and his son." + +Again she paused. No one broke the silence. + +"Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it together. All that +is mine is yours," she concluded, scanning the faces before her. + +All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same expression. She +could not fathom whether it was curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or +apprehension and distrust- but the expression on all the faces was +identical. + +"We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won't do for us to +take the landlord's grain," said a voice at the back of the crowd. + +"But why not?" asked the princess. + +No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at the crowd, +found that every eye she met now was immediately dropped. + +"But why don't you want to take it?" she asked again. + +No one answered. + +The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried to catch +someone's eye. + +"Why don't you speak?" she inquired of a very old man who stood just +in front of her leaning on his stick. "If you think something more +is wanted, tell me! I will do anything," said she, catching his eye. + +But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low and muttered: + +"Why should we agree? We don't want the grain." + +"Why should we give up everything? We don't agree. Don't agree.... +We are sorry for you, but we're not willing. Go away yourself, +alone..." came from various sides of the crowd. + +And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical +expression, though now it was certainly not an expression of curiosity +or gratitude, but of angry resolve. + +"But you can't have understood me," said Princess Mary with a sad +smile. "Why don't you want to go? I promise to house and feed you, +while here the enemy would ruin you..." + +But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd. + +"We're not willing. Let them ruin us! We won't take your grain. We +don't agree." + +Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone's eye, but not a single +eye in the crowd was turned to her; evidently they were all trying +to avoid her look. She felt strange and awkward. + +"Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull down your +houses and go into bondage! I dare say! 'I'll give you grain, indeed!' +she says," voices in the crowd were heard saying. + +With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and went back to the +house. Having repeated her order to Dron to have horses ready for +her departure next morning, she went to her room and remained alone +with her own thoughts. + +CHAPTER XII + +For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of +her room hearing the sound of the peasants' voices that reached her +from the village, but it was not of them she was thinking. She felt +that she could not understand them however much she might think +about them. She thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after +the break caused by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to +the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray. + +After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh. +Toward midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full +moon began to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist +began to rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house. + +Pictures of the near past- her father's illness and last moments- +rose one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now +lingered over these images, repelling with horror only the last one, +the picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate +even in imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And +these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and in such +detail that they seemed now present, now past, and now future. + +She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was +being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills, +muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray +eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her. + +"Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died," +she thought. "He had always thought what he said then." And she +recalled in all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the +last stroke, when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at +home against his will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs +on tiptoe, and going to the door of the conservatory where he slept +that night had listened at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he +was saying something to Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm +nights and of the Empress. Evidently he had wanted to talk. "And why +didn't he call me? Why didn't he let me be there instead of Tikhon?" +Princess Mary had thought and thought again now. "Now he will never +tell anyone what he had in his soul. Never will that moment return for +him or for me when he might have said all he longed to say, and not +Tikhon but I might have heard and understood him. Why didn't I enter +the room?" she thought. "Perhaps he would then have said to me what he +said the day he died. While talking to Tikhon he asked about me twice. +He wanted to see me, and I was standing close by, outside the door. It +was sad and painful for him to talk to Tikhon who did not understand +him. I remember how he began speaking to him about Lise as if she were +alive- he had forgotten she was dead- and Tikhon reminded him that she +was no more, and he shouted, 'Fool!' He was greatly depressed. From +behind the door I heard how he lay down on his bed groaning and loudly +exclaimed, 'My God!' Why didn't I go in then? What could he have +done to me? What could I have lost? And perhaps he would then have +been comforted and would have said that word to me." And Princess Mary +uttered aloud the caressing word he had said to her on the day of +his death. "Dear-est!" she repeated, and began sobbing, with tears +that relieved her soul. She now saw his face before her. And not the +face she had known ever since she could remember and had always seen +at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen for the first +time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details, when she +stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said. + +"Dear-est!" she repeated again. + +"What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking +now?" This question suddenly presented itself to her, and in answer +she saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as +he lay in his coffin with his chin bound up with a white handkerchief. +And the horror that had seized her when she touched him and +convinced herself that that was not he, but something mysterious and +horrible, seized her again. She tried to think of something else and +to pray, but could do neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the +moonlight and the shadows, expecting every moment to see his dead +face, and she felt that the silence brooding over the house and within +it held her fast. + +"Dunyasha," she whispered. "Dunyasha!" she screamed wildly, and +tearing herself out of this silence she ran to the servants' +quarters to meet her old nurse and the maidservants who came running +toward her. + +CHAPTER XIII + +On the seventeenth of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by +Lavrushka who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar +orderly, left their quarters at Yankovo, ten miles from Bogucharovo, +and went for a ride- to try a new horse Ilyin had bought and to find +out whether there was any hay to be had in the villages. + +For the last three days Bogucharovo had lain between the two hostile +armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian rearguard to get to +it as for the French vanguard; Rostov, as a careful squadron +commander, wished to take such provisions as remained at Bogucharovo +before the French could get them. + +Rostov and Ilyin were in the merriest of moods. On the way to +Bogucharovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where +they hoped to find many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they +questioned Lavrushka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and +raced one another to try Ilyin's horse. + +Rostov had no idea that the village he was entering was the property +of that very Bolkonski who had been engaged to his sister. + +Rostov and Ilyin gave rein to their horses for a last race along the +incline before reaching Bogucharovo, and Rostov, outstripping Ilyin, +was the first to gallop into the village street. + +"You're first!" cried Ilyin, flushed. + +"Yes, always first both on the grassland and here," answered Rostov, +stroking his heated Donets horse. + +"And I'd have won on my Frenchy, your excellency," said Lavrushka +from behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse, "only I didn't wish to +mortify you. + +They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd of peasants +was standing. + +Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals +without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled +faces and scanty beards emerged from the tavern, smiling, +staggering, and singing some incoherent song, and approached the +officers. + +"Fine fellows!" said Rostov laughing. "Is there any hay here?" + +"And how like one another," said Ilyin. + +"A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!" sang one of the peasants with a +blissful smile. + +One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to Rostov. + +"Who do you belong to?" he asked. + +"The French," replied Ilyin jestingly, "and here is Napoleon +himself"- and he pointed to Lavrushka. + +"Then you are Russians?" the peasant asked again. + +"And is there a large force of you here?" said another, a short man, +coming up. + +"Very large," answered Rostov. "But why have you collected here?" he +added. "Is it a holiday?" + +"The old men have met to talk over the business of the commune," +replied the peasant, moving away. + +At that moment, on the road leading from the big house, two women +and a man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers. + +"The one in pink is mine, so keep off!" said Ilyin on seeing +Dunyasha running resolutely toward him. + +"She'll be ours!" said Lavrushka to Ilyin, winking. + +"What do you want, my pretty?" said Ilyin with a smile. + +"The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name." + +"This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am your humble +servant." + +"Co-o-om-pa-ny!" roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as +he looked at Ilyin talking to the girl. Following Dunyasha, Alpatych +advanced to Rostov, having bared his head while still at a distance. + +"May I make bold to trouble your honor?" said he respectfully, but +with a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of this officer and with +a hand thrust into his bosom. "My mistress, daughter of General in +Chief Prince Nicholas Bolkonski who died on the fifteenth of this +month, finding herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of +these people"- he pointed to the peasants- "asks you to come up to the +house.... Won't you, please, ride on a little farther," said +Alpatych with a melancholy smile, "as it is not convenient in the +presence of...?" He pointed to the two peasants who kept as close to +him as horseflies to a horse. + +"Ah!... Alpatych... Ah, Yakov Alpatych... Grand! Forgive us for +Christ's sake, eh?" said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him. + +Rostov looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled. + +"Or perhaps they amuse your honor?" remarked Alpatych with a staid +air, as he pointed at the old men with his free hand. + +"No, there's not much to be amused at here," said Rostov, and rode +on a little way. "What's the matter?" he asked. + +"I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here +don't wish to let the mistress leave the estate, and threaten to +unharness her horses, so that though everything has been packed up +since morning, her excellency cannot get away." + +"Impossible!" exclaimed Rostov. + +"I have the honor to report to you the actual truth," said Alpatych. + +Rostov dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed +Alpatych to the house, questioning him as to the state of affairs. +It appeared that the princess' offer of corn to the peasants the +previous day, and her talk with Dron and at the meeting, had +actually had so bad an effect that Dron had finally given up the +keys and joined the peasants and had not appeared when Alpatych sent +for him; and that in the morning when the princess gave orders to +harness for her journey, the peasants had come in a large crowd to the +barn and sent word that they would not let her leave the village: that +there was an order not to move, and that they would unharness the +horses. Alpatych had gone out to admonish them, but was told (it was +chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing himself in the +crowd) that they could not let the princess go, that there was an +order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would serve her +as before and obey her in everything. + +At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the road, +Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpatych, her nurse, and the +maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the +cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran +away, and the women in the house began to wail. + +"Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!" exclaimed deeply moved +voices as Rostov passed through the anteroom. + +Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large +sitting room, when Rostov was shown in. She could not grasp who he was +and why he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his +Russian face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered +recognized him as a man of her own class, she glanced at him with +her deep radiant look and began speaking in a voice that faltered +and trembled with emotion. This meeting immediately struck Rostov as a +romantic event. "A helpless girl overwhelmed with grief, left to the +mercy of coarse, rioting peasants! And what a strange fate sent me +here! What gentleness and nobility there are in her features and +expression!" thought he as he looked at her and listened to her +timid story. + +When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day +after her father's funeral, her voiced trembled. She turned away, +and then, as if fearing he might take her words as meant to move him +to pity, looked at him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There +were tears in Rostov's eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced +gratefully at him with that radiant look which caused the plainness of +her face to be forgotten. + +"I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride +here and am able to show my readiness to serve you," said Rostov, +rising. "Go when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no +one shall dare to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act +as your escort." And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal +blood, he moved toward the door. + +Rostov's deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would +consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to +take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her. + +Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy. + +"I am very, very grateful to you," she said in French, "but I hope +it was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it." She +suddenly began to cry. + +"Excuse me!" she said. + +Rostov, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow. + +CHAPTER XIV + +Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend- my pink one is delicious; her +name is Dunyasha...." + +But on glancing at Rostov's face Ilyin stopped short. He saw that +his hero and commander was following quite a different train of +thought. + +Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying strode off with +rapid steps to the village. + +"I'll show them; I'll give it to them, the brigands!" said he to +himself. + +Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up +with him with difficulty. + +"What decision have you been pleased to come to?" said he. + +Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned +on Alpatych. + +"Decision? What decision? Old dotard!..." cried he. "What have you +been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can't manage them? +You're a traitor youself! I know you. I'll flay you all alive!..." And +as if afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpatych and +went rapidly forward. Alpatych, mastering his offended feelings, +kept pace with Rostov at a gliding gait and continued to impart his +views. He said the peasants were obdurate and that at the present +moment it would be imprudent to "overresist" them without an armed +force, and would it not be better first to send for the military? + +"I'll give them armed force... I'll 'overresist' them!" uttered +Rostov meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the +need to vent it. + +Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with +quick, resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it +the more Alpatych felt that this unreasonable action might produce +good results. The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed +when they saw Rostov's rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face. + +After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov had gone to see +the princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among +the crowd. Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were +Russians and might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained. +Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and +others attacked their ex-Elder. + +"How many years have you been fattening on the commune?" Karp +shouted at him. "It's all one to you! You'll dig up your pot of +money and take it away with you.... What does it matter to you whether +our homes are ruined or not?" + +"We've been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their +homes or take away a single grain, and that's all about it!" cried +another. + +"It was your son's turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You +begrudged your lump of a son," a little old man suddenly began +attacking Dron- "and so they took my Vanka to be shaved for a soldier! +But we all have to die." + +"To be sure, we all have to die. I'm not against the commune," +said Dron. + +"That's it- not against it! You've filled your belly...." + +The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov, followed +by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the crowd, Karp, +thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to +the front. Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew +closer together. + +"Who is your Elder here? Hey?" shouted Rostov, coming up to the +crowd with quick steps. + +"The Elder? What do you want with him?..." asked Karp. + +But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off +and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side. + +"Caps off, traitors!" shouted Rostov in a wrathful voice. "Where's +the Elder?" he cried furiously. + +"The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych, you!" meek and +flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to +come off their heads. + +"We don't riot, we're following the orders," declared Karp, and at +that moment several voices began speaking together. + +"It's as the old men have decided- there's too many of you giving +orders." + +"Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!" cried Rostov unmeaningly +in a voice not his own, gripping Karp by the collar. "Bind him, bind +him!" he shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrushka +and Alpatych. + +Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by the arms from +behind. + +"Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?" he called out. + +Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by name to +come and bind Karp. The men obediently came out of the crowd and began +taking off their belts. + +"Where's the Elder?" demanded Rostov in a loud voice. + +With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd. + +"Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!" shouted Rostov, as if that +order, too, could not possibly meet with any opposition. + +And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took off his +own belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them. + +"And you all listen to me!" said Rostov to the peasants. "Be off +to your houses at once, and don't let one of your voices be heard!" + +"Why, we've not done any harm! We did it just out of foolishness. +It's all nonsense... I said then that it was not in order," voices +were heard bickering with one another. + +"There! What did I say?" said Alpatych, coming into his own again. +"It's wrong, lads!" + +"All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych," came the answers, and the +crowd began at once to disperse through the village. + +The two bound men were led off to the master's house. The two +drunken peasants followed them. + +"Aye, when I look at you!..." said one of them to Karp. + +"How can one talk to the masters like that? What were you thinking +of, you fool?" added the other- "A real fool!" + +Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of the +Bogucharovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out the +proprietor's goods and packing them on the carts, and Dron, +liberated at Princess Mary's wish from the cupboard where he had +been confined, was standing in the yard directing the men. + +"Don't put it in so carelessly," said one of the peasants, a man +with a round smiling face, taking a casket from a housemaid. "You know +it has cost money! How can you chuck it in like that or shove it under +the cord where it'll get rubbed? I don't like that way of doing +things. Let it all be done properly, according to rule. Look here, put +it under the bast matting and cover it with hay- that's the way!" + +"Eh, books, books!" said another peasant, bringing out Prince +Andrew's library cupboards. "Don't catch up against it! It's heavy, +lads- solid books." + +"Yes, they worked all day and didn't play!" remarked the tall, +round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant wink at the +dictionaries that were on the top. + +Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov did not go back +to the house but remained in the village awaiting her departure. +When her carriage drove out of the house, he mounted and accompanied +her eight miles from Bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our +troops. At the inn at Yankovo he respectfully took leave of her, for +the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand. + +"How can you speak so!" he blushingly replied to Princess Mary's +expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as she termed what had +occurred. "Any police officer would have done as much! If we had had +only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy come so far," +said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. "I am +only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance. +Good-by, Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to +meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don't want to make +me blush, please don't thank me!" + +But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words, thanked +him with the whole expression of her face, radiant with gratitude +and tenderness. She could not believe that there was nothing to +thank him for. On the contrary, it seemed to her certain that had he +not been there she would have perished at the hands of the mutineers +and of the French, and that he had exposed himself to terrible and +obvious danger to save her, and even more certain was it that he was a +man of lofty and noble soul, able to understand her position and her +sorrow. His kind, honest eyes, with the tears rising in them when +she herself had begun to cry as she spoke of her loss, did leave her +memory. + +When she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly felt +her eyes filling with tears, and then not for the first time the +strange question presented itself to her: did she love him? + +On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess' position +was not a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went with her in the carriage, +more than once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window +and smiled at something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow. + +"Well, supposing I do love him?" thought Princess Mary. + +Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had fallen +in love with a man who would perhaps never love her, she comforted +herself with the thought that no one would ever know it and that she +would not be to blame if, without ever speaking of it to anyone, she +continued to the end of her life to love the man with whom she had +fallen in love for the first and last time in her life. + +Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his +words, happiness did not appear impossible to her. It was at those +moments that Dunyasha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the +carriage window. + +"Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and at that very +moment?" thought Princess Mary. "And that caused his sister to +refuse my brother?" And in all this Princess Mary saw the hand of +Providence. + +The impression the princess made on Rostov was a very agreeable one. +To remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades, hearing of +his adventure at Bogucharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for +hay and having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in Russia, he +grew angry. It made him angry just because the idea of marrying the +gentle Princess Mary, who was attractive to him and had an enormous +fortune, had against his will more than once entered his head. For +himself personally Nicholas could not wish for a better wife: by +marrying her he would make the countess his mother happy, would be +able to put his father's affairs in order, and would even- he felt it- +ensure Princess Mary's happiness. + +But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostov grew angry +when he was rallied about Princess Bolkonskaya. + +CHAPTER XV + +On receiving command of the armies Kutuzov remembered Prince +Andrew and sent an order for him to report at headquarters. + +Prince Andrew arrived at Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the very day and at +the very hour that Kutuzov was reviewing the troops for the first +time. He stopped in the village at the priest's house in front of +which stood the commander in chief's carriage, and he sat down on +the bench at the gate awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now +called Kutuzov. From the field beyond the village came now sounds of +regimental music and now the roar of many voices shouting "Hurrah!" to +the new commander in chief. Two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo, +stood near by, some ten paces from Prince Andrew, availing +themselves of Kutuzov's absence and of the fine weather. A short, +swarthy lieutenant colonel of hussars with thick mustaches and +whiskers rode up to the gate and, glancing at Prince Andrew, +inquired whether his Serene Highness was putting up there and +whether he would soon be back. + +Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene Highness' +staff but was himself a new arrival. The lieutenant colonel turned +to a smart orderly, who, with the peculiar contempt with which a +commander in chief's orderly speaks to officers, replied: + +"What? His Serene Highness? I expect he'll be here soon. What do you +want?" + +The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his mustache at the +orderly's tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a dispatch runner, and +approached Bolkonski with a slight bow. Bolkonski made room for him on +the bench and the lieutenant colonel sat down beside him. + +"You're also waiting for the commander in chief?" said he. "They say +he weceives evewyone, thank God!... It's awful with those sausage +eaters! Ermolov had weason to ask to be pwomoted to be a German! Now +p'waps Wussians will get a look in. As it was, devil only knows what +was happening. We kept wetweating and wetweating. Did you take part in +the campaign?" he asked. + +"I had the pleasure," replied Prince Andrew, "not only of taking +part in the retreat but of losing in that retreat all I held dear- not +to mention the estate and home of my birth- my father, who died of +grief. I belong to the province of Smolensk." + +"Ah? You're Pwince Bolkonski? Vewy glad to make your acquaintance! +I'm Lieutenant Colonel Denisov, better known as 'Vaska,'" said +Denisov, pressing Prince Andrew's hand and looking into his face +with a particularly kindly attention. "Yes, I heard," said he +sympathetically, and after a short pause added: "Yes, it's Scythian +warfare. It's all vewy well- only not for those who get it in the +neck. So you are Pwince Andwew Bolkonski?" He swayed his head. "Vewy +pleased, Pwince, to make your acquaintance!" he repeated again, +smiling sadly, and he again pressed Prince Andrew's hand. + +Prince Andrew knew Denisov from what Natasha had told him of her +first suitor. This memory carried him sadly and sweetly back to +those painful feelings of which he had not thought lately, but which +still found place in his soul. Of late he had received so many new and +very serious impressions- such as the retreat from Smolensk, his visit +to Bald Hills, and the recent news of his father's death- and had +experienced so many emotions, that for a long time past those memories +had not entered his mind, and now that they did, they did not act on +him with nearly their former strength. For Denisov, too, the +memories awakened by the name of Bolkonski belonged to a distant, +romantic past, when after supper and after Natasha's singing he had +proposed to a little girl of fifteen without realizing what he was +doing. He smiled at the recollection of that time and of his love +for Natasha, and passed at once to what now interested him +passionately and exclusively. This was a plan of campaign he had +devised while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had +proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now wished to propose it to +Kutuzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line of +operation was to extended, and it proposed that instead of, or +concurrently with, action on the front to bar the advance of the +French, we should attack their line of communication. He began +explaining his plan to Prince Andrew. + +"They can't hold all that line. It's impossible. I will undertake to +bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men and I will bweak the line, +that's certain! There's only one way- guewilla warfare!" + +Denisov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his plan to +Bolkonski. In the midst of his explanation shouts were heard from +the army, growing more incoherent and more diffused, mingling with +music and songs and coming from the field where the review was held. +Sounds of hoofs and shouts were nearing the village. + +"He's coming! He's coming!" shouted a Cossack standing at the gate. + +Bolkonski and Denisov moved to the gate, at which a knot of soldiers +(a guard of honor) was standing, and they saw Kutuzov coming down +the street mounted on a rather small sorrel horse. A huge suite of +generals rode behind him. Barclay was riding almost beside him, and +a crowd of officers ran after and around them shouting, "Hurrah!" + +His adjutants galloped into the yard before him. Kutuzov was +impatiently urging on his horse, which ambled smoothly under his +weight, and he raised his hand to his white Horse Guard's cap with a +red band and no peak, nodding his head continually. When he came up to +the guard of honor, a fine set of Grenadiers mostly wearing +decorations, who were giving him the salute, he looked at them +silently and attentively for nearly a minute with the steady gaze of a +commander and then turned to the crowd of generals and officers +surrounding him. Suddenly his face assumed a subtle expression, he +shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity. + +"And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat! Well, good-by, +General," he added, and rode into the yard past Prince Andrew and +Denisov. + +"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" shouted those behind him. + +Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutuzov had grown still more +corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the bleached eyeball, the scar, and +the familiar weariness of his expression were still the same. He was +wearing the white Horse Guard's cap and a military overcoat with a +whip hanging over his shoulder by a thin strap. He sat heavily and +swayed limply on his brisk little horse. + +"Whew... whew... whew!" he whistled just audibly as he rode into the +yard. His face expressed the relief of relaxed strain felt by a man +who means to rest after a ceremony. He drew his left foot out of the +stirrup and, lurching with his whole body and puckering his face +with the effort, raised it with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned +on his knee, groaned, and slipped down into the arms of the Cossacks +and adjutants who stood ready to assist him. + +He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up his eyes, +glanced at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not recognizing him, moved +with his waddling gait to the porch. "Whew... whew... whew!" he +whistled, and again glanced at Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old +men, it was only after some seconds that the impression produced by +Prince Andrew's face linked itself up with Kutuzov's remembrance of +his personality. + +"Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do, my dear boy? Come +along..." said he, glancing wearily round, and he stepped onto the +porch which creaked under his weight. + +He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the porch. + +"And how's your father?" + +"I received news of his death, yesterday," replied Prince Andrew +abruptly. + +Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide open with dismay and then +took off his cap and crossed himself: + +"May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God's will be done to us all!" He +sighed deeply, his whole chest heaving, and was silent for a while. "I +loved him and respected him, and sympathize with you with all my +heart." + +He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat breast, and for +some time did not let him go. When he released him Prince Andrew saw +that Kutuzov's flabby lips were trembling and that tears were in his +eyes. He sighed and pressed on the bench with both hands to raise +himself. + +"Come! Come with me, we'll have a talk," said he. + +But at that moment Denisov, no more intimidated by his superiors +than by the enemy, came with jingling spurs up the steps of the porch, +despite the angry whispers of the adjutants who tried to stop him. +Kutuzov, his hands still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly. +Denisov, having given his name, announced that he had to communicate +to his Serene Highness a matter of great importance for their +country's welfare. Kutuzov looked wearily at him and, lifting his +hands with a gesture of annoyance, folded them across his stomach, +repeating the words: "For our country's welfare? Well, what is it? +Speak!" Denisov blushed like a girl (it was strange to see the color +rise in that shaggy, bibulous, time-worn face) and boldly began to +expound his plan of cutting the enemy's lines of communication between +Smolensk and Vyazma. Denisov came from those parts and knew the +country well. His plan seemed decidedly a good one, especially from +the strength of conviction with which he spoke. Kutuzov looked down at +his own legs, occasionally glancing at the door of the adjoining hut +as if expecting something unpleasant to emerge from it. And from +that hut, while Denisov was speaking, a general with a portfolio under +his arm really did appear. + +"What?" said Kutuzov, in the midst of Denisov's explanations, "are +you ready so soon?" + +"Ready, your Serene Highness," replied the general. + +Kutuzov swayed his head, as much as to say: "How is one man to +deal with it all?" and again listened to Denisov. + +"I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer," said Denisov, +"that I can bweak Napoleon's line of communication!" + +"What relation are you to Intendant General Kiril Andreevich +Denisov?" asked Kutuzov, interrupting him. + +"He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness." + +"Ah, we were friends," said Kutuzov cheerfully. "All right, all +right, friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we'll have a talk." + +With a nod to Denisov he turned away and put out his hand for the +papers Konovnitsyn had brought him. + +"Would not your Serene Highness like to come inside?" said the +general on duty in a discontented voice, "the plans must be examined +and several papers have to be signed." + +An adjutant came out and announced that everything was in +readiness within. But Kutuzov evidently did not wish to enter that +room till he was disengaged. He made a grimace... + +"No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear boy. I'll +look at them here," said he. "Don't go away," he added, turning to +Prince Andrew, who remained in the porch and listened to the general's +report. + +While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the whisper of a +woman's voice and the rustle of a silk dress behind the door. +Several times on glancing that way he noticed behind that door a +plump, rosy, handsome woman in a pink dress with a lilac silk kerchief +on her head, holding a dish and evidently awaiting the entrance of the +commander in chief. Kutiizov's adjutant whispered to Prince Andrew +that this was the wife of the priest whose home it was, and that she +intended to offer his Serene Highness bread and salt. "Her husband has +welcomed his Serene Highness with the cross at the church, and she +intends to welcome him in the house.... She's very pretty," added +the adjutant with a smile. At those words Kutuzov looked round. He was +listening to the general's report- which consisted chiefly of a +criticism of the position at Tsarevo-Zaymishche- as he had listened to +Denisov, and seven years previously had listened to the discussion +at the Austerlitz council of war. He evidently listened only because +he had ears which, though there was a piece of tow in one of them, +could not help hearing; but it was evident that nothing the general +could say would surprise or even interest him, that he knew all that +would be said beforehand, and heard it all only because he had to, +as one has to listen to the chanting of a service of prayer. All +that Denisov had said was clever and to the point. What the general +was saying was even more clever and to the point, but it was evident +that Kutuzov despised knowledge and cleverness, and knew of +something else that would decide the matter- something independent +of clever. ness and knowledge. Prince Andrew watched the commander +in chief's face attentively, and the only expression he could see +there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the meaning of the +feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire to observe +propriety. It was evident that Kutuzov despised cleverness and +learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by Denisov, but despised +them not because of his own intellect, feelings, or knowledge- he +did not try to display any of these- but because of something else. He +despised them because of his old age and experience of life. The +only instruction Kutuzov gave of his own accord during that report +referred to looting by the Russian troops. At the end of the report +the general put before him for signature a paper relating to the +recovery of payment from army commanders for green oats mown down by +the soldiers, when landowners lodged petitions for compensation. + +After hearing the matter, Kutuzov smacked his lips together and +shook his head. + +"Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all, +my dear fellow," said he, "into the fire with all such things! Let +them cut the crops and burn wood to their hearts' content. I don't +order it or allow it, but I don't exact compensation either. One can't +get on without it. 'When wood is chopped the chips will fly.'" He +looked at the paper again. "Oh, this German precision!" he muttered, +shaking his head. + +CHAPTER XVI + +"Well, that's all!" said Kutuzov as he signed the last of the +documents, and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds in his fat +white neck he moved toward the door with a more cheerful expression. + +The priest's wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish she had +after all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had +so long been preparing for it, and with a low bow offered it to +Kutuzov. + +He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his hand, and +said: + +"Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!" + +He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the +dish for her. "Well, my dear, and how are we getting on?" he asked, +moving to the door of the room assigned to him. The priest's wife +smiled, and with dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the +room. The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to +lunch with him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again called to +Kutuzov. He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same +unbuttoned overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he +closed as Prince Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife. +Prince Andrew saw by the cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne +by Madame de Genlis. + +"Well, sit down, sit down here. Let's have a talk," said Kutuzov. +"It's sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a +father to you, a second father...." + +Prince Andrew told Kutuzov all he knew of his father's death, and +what he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed through it. + +"What... what they have brought us to!" Kutuzov suddenly cried in an +agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to himself from Prince +Andrew's story the condition Russia was in. "But give me time, give me +time!" he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to continue +this agitating conversation, and added: "I sent for you to keep you +with me." + +"I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am longer fit for the +staff," replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutuzov noticed. + +Kutuzov glanced inquiringly at him. + +"But above all," added Prince Andrew, "I have grown used to my +regiment, am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I +should be sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being +with you, believe me..." + +A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up Kutuzov's +podgy face. He cut Bolkonski short. + +"I am sorry, for I need you. But you're right, you're right! It's +not here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men +are not. The regiments would not be what they are if the would-be +advisers served there as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I +remember, yes, I remember you with the standard!" said Kutuzov, and +a flush of pleasure suffused Prince Andrew's face at this +recollection. + +Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutuzov offered his cheek +to be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man's +eyes. Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutuzov's tears came easily, +and that he was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a +wish to show sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz +was both pleasant and flattering to him. + +"Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is the path of +honor!" He paused. "I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to +send." And changing the subject, Kutuzov began to speak of the Turkish +war and the peace that had been concluded. "Yes, I have been much +blamed," he said, "both for that war and the peace... but everything +came at the right time. Tout vient a point a celui qui sait attendre.~{ "Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait." }~ +And there were as many advisers there as here..." he went on, +returning to the subject of "advisers" which evidently occupied him. +"Ah, those advisers!" said he. "If we had listened to them all we +should not have made peace with Turkey and should not have been +through with that war. Everything in haste, but more haste, less +speed. Kamenski would have been lost if he had not died. He stormed +fortresses with thirty thousand men. It is not difficult to capture +a fortress but it is difficult to win a campaign. For that, storming +and attacking but patience and time are wanted. Kamenski sent soldiers +to Rustchuk, but I only employed these two things and took more +fortresses than Kamenski and made the but eat horseflesh!" He swayed +his head. "And the French shall too, believe me," he went on, +growing warmer and beating his chest, "I'll make them eat horseflesh!" +And tears again dimmed his eyes. + +"But shan't we have to accept battle?" remarked Prince Andrew. + +"We shall if everybody wants it; it can't be helped.... But +believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: +patience and time, they will do it all. But the advisers n'entendent +pas de cette oreille, voila le mal.~{ "Don't see it that way, that's the trouble." }~ Some want a thing- others +don't. What's one to do?" he asked, evidently expecting an answer. +"Well, what do you want us to do?" he repeated and his eye shone +with a deep, shrewd look. "I'll tell you what to do," he continued, as +Prince Andrew still did not reply: "I will tell you what to do, and +what I do. Dans le doute, mon cher," he paused, "abstiens-toi"~{ "When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing." }~ he +articulated the French proverb deliberately. + +"Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I +share your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor +a prince, nor a commander in chief, but a father! If you want anything +come straight to me. Good-by, my dear boy." + +Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter +had left the room Kutuzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his +unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis. + +Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but +after that interview with Kutuzov he went back to his regiment +reassured as to the general course of affairs and as to the man to +whom it had been entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all +personal motive in that old man- in whom there seemed to remain only +the habit of passions, and in place of an intellect (grouping events +and drawing conclusions) only the capacity calmly to contemplate the +course of events- the more reassured he was that everything would be +as it should. "He will not bring in any plan of his own. He will not +devise or undertake anything," thought Prince Andrew, "but he will +hear everything, remember everything, and put everything in its place. +He will not hinder anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He +understands that there is something stronger and more important than +his own will- the inevitable course of events, and he can see them and +grasp their significance, and seeing that significance can refrain +from meddling and renounce his personal wish directed to something +else. And above all," thought Prince Andrew, "one believes in him +because he's Russian, despite the novel by Genlis and the French +proverbs, and because his voice shook when he said: 'What they have +brought us to!' and had a sob in it when he said he would 'make them +eat horseflesh!'" + +On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity +and general approval were founded with which, despite court +influences, the popular choice of Kutuzov as commander in chief was +received. + +CHAPTER XVII + +After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual +course, and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to +remember the recent days of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to +believe that Russia was really in danger and that the members of the +English Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice +everything for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor +everyone had displayed during the Emperor's stay was the call for +contributions of men and money, a necessity that as soon as the +promises had been made assumed a legal, official form and became +unavoidable. + +With the enemy's approach to Moscow, the Moscovites' view of their +situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even +more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger +approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices +that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably +tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of +escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too +depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in +man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of +events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till +it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man +generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second. So +it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people +had been as gay in Moscow as that year. + +Rostopchin's broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a +potman, and a Moscow burgher called Karpushka Chigirin, "who- having +been a militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub- heard +that Napoleon wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the +French in very bad language, came out of the drink shop, and, under +the sign of the eagle, began to address the assembled people," were +read and discussed, together with the latest of Vasili Lvovich +Pushkin's bouts rimes. + +In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these +broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpushka jeered at the French, +saying: "They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our +buckwheat porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They are +all dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a +hayfork." Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and +vulgar. It was said that Rostopchin had expelled all Frenchmen and +even all foreigners from Moscow, and that there had been some spies +and agents of Napoleon among them; but this was told chiefly to +introduce Rostopchin's witty remark on that occasion. The foreigners +were deported to Nizhni by boat, and Rostopchin had said to them in +French: "Rentrez en vousmemes; entrez dans la barque, et n'en faites +pas une barque de Charon."~{ "Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to make it a +barque of Charon." }~ There was talk of all the government +offices having been already removed from Moscow, and to this +Shinshin's witticism was added- that for that alone Moscow ought to be +grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamonov's regiment would cost +him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezukhov had spent even +more on his, but that the best thing about Bezukhov's action was +that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the head of his +regiment without charging anything for the show. + +"You don't spare anyone," said Julie Drubetskaya as she collected +and pressed together a bunch of raveled lint with her thin, beringed +fingers. + +Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was giving a +farewell soiree. + +"Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What +pleasure is there to be so caustique?" + +"A forfeit!" cried a young man in militia uniform whom Julie +called "mon chevalier," and who was going with her to Nizhni. + +In Julie's set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had been +agreed that they would speak nothing but Russian and that those who +made a slip and spoke French should pay fines to the Committee of +Voluntary Contributions. + +"Another forfeit for a Gallicism," said a Russian writer who was +present. "'What pleasure is there to be' is not Russian!" + +"You spare no one," continued Julie to the young man without heeding +the author's remark. + +"For caustique- I am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay +again for the pleasure of telling you the truth. For Gallicisms I +won't be responsible," she remarked, turning to the author: "I have +neither the money nor the time, like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a +master to teach me Russian!" + +"Ah, here he is!" she added. "Quand on... No, no," she said to the +militia officer, "you won't catch me. Speak of the sun and you see its +rays!" and she smiled amiably at Pierre. "We were just talking of +you," she said with the facility in lying natural to a society +woman. "We were saying that your regiment would be sure to be better +than Mamonov's." + +"Oh, don't talk to me of my regiment," replied Pierre, kissing his +hostess' hand and taking a seat beside her. "I am so sick of it." + +"You will, of course, command it yourself?" said Julie, directing +a sly, sarcastic glance toward the militia officer. + +The latter in Pierre's presence had ceased to be caustic, and his +face expressed perplexity as to what Julie's smile might mean. In +spite of his absent-mindedness and good nature, Pierre's personality +immediately checked any attempt to ridicule him to his face. + +"No," said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout body. "I +should make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I +should hardly be able to climb onto a horse." + +Among those whom Julie's guests happened to choose to gossip about +were the Rostovs. + +"I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way," said Julie. +"And he is so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The +Razumovskis wanted to buy his house and his estate near Moscow, but it +drags on and on. He asks too much." + +"No, I think the sale will come off in a few days," said someone. +"Though it is madness to buy anything in Moscow now." + +"Why?" asked Julie. "You don't think Moscow is in danger?" + +"Then why are you leaving?" + +"I? What a question! I am going because... well, because everyone is +going: and besides- I am not Joan of Arc or an Amazon." + +"Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips of linen." + +"If he manages the business properly he will be able to pay off +all his debts," said the militia officer, speaking of Rostov. + +"A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they stay on so +long in Moscow? They meant to leave for the country long ago. +Natalie is quite well again now, isn't she?" Julie asked Pierre with a +knowing smile. + +"They are waiting for their younger son," Pierre replied. "He joined +Obolenski's Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov where the regiment +is being formed. But now they have had him transferred to my +regiment and are expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave +long ago, but the countess won't on any account leave Moscow till +her son returns." + +"I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs'. Natalie +has recovered her looks and is brighter. She sang a song. How easily +some people get over everything!" + +"Get over what?" inquired Pierre, looking displeased. + +Julie smiled. + +"You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de +Souza's novels." + +"What knights? What do you mean?" demanded Pierre, blushing. + +"Oh, come, my dear count! C'est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous +admire, ma parole d'honneur!"~{ "It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!" }~ + +"Forfeit, forfeit!" cried the militia officer. + +"All right, one can't talk- how tiresome!" + +"What is 'the talk of all Moscow'?" Pierre asked angrily, rising +to his feet. + +"Come now, Count, you know!" + +"I don't know anything about it," said Pierre. + +"I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I was always +more friendly with Vera- that dear Vera." + +"No, madame!" Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure, "I have not +taken on myself the role of Natalie Rostova's knight at all, and +have not been their house for nearly a month. But I cannot +understand the cruelty..." + +"Qui s'excuse s'accuse,"~{ "Who excuses himself, accuses himself." }~ said Julie, smiling and waving the lint +triumphantly, and to have the last word she promptly changed the +subject. "Do you know what I heard today? Poor Mary Bolkonskaya +arrived in Moscow yesterday. Do you know that she has lost her +father?" + +"Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her," said +Pierre. + +"I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to their +estate near Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew." + +"Well, and how is she?" asked Pierre. + +"She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her? It is +quite a romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was surrounded, and they +wanted to kill her and had wounded some of her people. He rushed in +and saved her...." + +"Another romance," said the militia officer. "Really, this general +flight has been arranged to get all the old maids married off. Catiche +is one and Princess Bolkonskaya another." + +"Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu amoureuse du +jeune homme."~{ "A little bit in love with the young man." }~ + +"Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit!" + +"But how could one say that in Russian?" + +CHAPTER XVIII + +When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchin's +broadsheets that had been brought that day. + +The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchin had +forbidden people to leave Moscow was false; on the contrary he was +glad that ladies and tradesmen's wives were leaving the city. "There +will be less panic and less gossip," ran the broadsheet "but I will +stake my life on it that that will not enter Moscow." These words +showed Pierre clearly for the first time that the French would enter +Moscow. The second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at +Vyazma, that Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as +many of the inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were +ready for them at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which +could be had at a low price. The tone of the proclamation was not as +jocose as in the former Chigirin talks. Pierre pondered over these +broadsheets. Evidently the terrible stormcloud he had desired with the +whole strength of his soul but which yet aroused involuntary horror in +him was drawing near. + +"Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?" he asked +himself for the hundredth time. He took a pack of cards that lay on +the table and began to lay them out for a game of patience. + +"If this patience comes out," he said to himself after shuffling the +cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, "if it comes +out, it means... what does it mean?" + +He had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of +the eldest princess at the door asking whether she might come in. + +"Then it will mean that I must go to the army," said Pierre to +himself. "Come in, come in!" he added to the princess. + +Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and long +waist, was still living in Pierre's house. The two younger ones had +both married. + +"Excuse my coming to you, cousin," she said in a reproachful and +agitated voice. "You know some decision must be come to. What is going +to happen? Everyone has left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is +it that we are staying on?" + +"On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine," said Pierre +in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling +uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor. + +"Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivanovna told me +today how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly +does them credit! And the people too are quite mutinous- they no +longer obey, even my maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they +will soon begin beating us. One can't walk in the streets. But, +above all, the French will be here any day now, so what are we waiting +for? I ask just one thing of you, cousin," she went on, "arrange for +me to be taken to Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can't live under +Bonaparte's rule." + +"Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your information from? On +the contrary..." + +"I won't submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they please.... If +you don't want to do this..." + +"But I will, I'll give the order at once." + +The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry +with. Muttering to herself, she sat down on a chair. + +"But you have been misinformed," said Pierre. "Everything is quiet +in the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I've just been +reading..." He showed her the broadsheet. "Count Rostopchin writes +that he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter +Moscow." + +"Oh, that count of yours!" said the princess malevolently. "He is +a hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot. +Didn't he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, 'whoever +it might be, should be dragged to the lockup by his hair'? (How +silly!) 'And honor and glory to whoever captures him,' he says. This +is what his cajolery has brought us to! Barbara Ivanovna told me the +mob near killed her because she said something in French." + +"Oh, but it's so... You take everything so to heart," said Pierre, +and began laying out his cards for patience. + +Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join the army, +but remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same state of agitation, +irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same time joyfully expecting +something terrible. + +Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre's head +steward came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment +of his regiment could not be found without selling one of the estates. +In general the head steward made out to Pierre that his project of +raising a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely +able to repress a smile. + +"Well then, sell it," said he. "What's to be done? I can't draw back +now!" + +The worse everything became, especially his own affairs, the +better was Pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the +catastrophe he expected was approaching. Hardly anyone he knew was +left in town. Julie had gone, and so had Princess Mary. Of his +intimate friends only the Rostovs remained, but he did not go to see +them. + +To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of +Vorontsovo to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to +destroy the foe, and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The +balloon was not yet ready, but Pierre learned that it was being +constructed by the Emperor's desire. The Emperor had written to +Count Rostopchin as follows: + +As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and +intelligent men for his car and send a courier to General Kutuzov to +let him know. I have informed him of the matter. + +Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where he descends for +the first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the +enemy's hands. It is essential for him to combine his movements with +those of the commander in chief. + +On his way home from Vorontsovo, as he was passing the Bolotnoe +Place Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lobnoe Place, stopped and +got out of his trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being +flogged. The flogging was only just over, and the executioner was +releasing from the flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers, in +blue stockings and a green jacket, who was moaning piteously. +Another criminal, thin and pale, stood near. Judging by their faces +they were both Frenchmen. With a frightened and suffering look +resembling that on the thin Frenchman's face, Pierre pushed his way in +through the crowd. + +"What is it? Who is it? What is it for?" he kept asking. + +But the attention of the crowd- officials, burghers, shopkeepers, +peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses- was so eagerly centered +on what was passing in Lobnoe Place that no one answered him. The +stout man rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently +trying to appear firm began to pull on his jacket without looking +about him, but suddenly his lips trembled and he began to cry, in +the way full-blooded grown-up men cry, though angry with himself for +doing so. In the crowd people began talking loudly, to stifle their +feelings of pity as it seemed to Pierre. + +"He's cook to some prince." + +"Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets +his teeth on edge!" said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind +Pierre, when the Frenchman began to cry. + +The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be +appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch +in dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man. + +Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went +back to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took +his seat. As they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times +so audibly that the coachman asked him: + +"What is your pleasure?" + +"Where are you going?" shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to +Lubyanka Street. + +"To the Governor's, as you ordered," answered the coachman. + +"Fool! Idiot!" shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman- a thing he +rarely did. "Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!" "I must +get away this very day," he murmured to himself. + +At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the +Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he +could no longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that +very day that it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman +this or that the man ought to have known it for himself. + +On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafey- his head coachman +who knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow- +that he would leave that night for the army at Mozhaysk, and that +his saddle horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged +that day, so on Evstafey's representation Pierre had to put off his +departure till next day to allow time for the relay horses to be +sent on in advance. + +On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain, +and after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night +in Perkhushkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that +evening. (This was the battle of Shevardino.) He was told that there +in Perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could +answer his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was +approaching Mozhaysk. + +Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the +hostel where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no +room to be had. It was full of officers. + +Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on +the march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and +cannon were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and +the farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into +that sea of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation +and a new and joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a +feeling akin to what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the +Emperor's visit- a sense of the necessity of undertaking something and +sacrificing something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that +everything that constitutes men's happiness- the comforts of life, +wealth, even life itself- is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, +compared with something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did +not try to determine for whom and for what he felt such particular +delight in sacrificing everything. He was not occupied with the +question of what to sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself +afforded him a new and joyous sensation. + +CHAPTER XIX + +On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevardino +Redoubt was fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either +side, and on the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodino itself took +place. + +Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino given and +accepted? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not the +least sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate +result for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought +nearer to the destruction of Moscow- which we feared more than +anything in the world; and for the French its immediate result was +that they were brought nearer to the destruction of their whole +army- which they feared more than anything in the world. What the +result must be was quite obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov +accepted that battle. + +If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it +must have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen +hundred miles and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter +of his army, he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have +been equally clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and risking the +loss of a quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For +Kutuzov this was mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing +draughts I have one man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly +lose, and therefore should not exchange. When my opponent has +sixteen men and I have fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than +he, but when I have exchanged thirteen more men he will be three times +as strong as I am. + +Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to the +French was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little +more than one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a +hundred and twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty +thousand against a hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced +Kutuzov accepted the battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be a +commander of genius, gave it, losing a quarter of his army and +lengthening his lines of communication still more. If it is said +that he expected to end the campaign by occupying Moscow as he had +ended a previous campaign by occupying Vienna, there is much +evidence to the contrary. Napoleon's historians themselves tell us +that from Smolensk onwards he wished to stop, knew the danger of his +extended position, and knew that the occupation of Moscow would not be +the end of the campaign, for he had seen at Smolensk the state in +which Russian towns were left to him, and had not received a single +reply to his repeated announcements of his wish to negotiate. + +In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov acted +involuntarily and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had +occurred, the historians provided cunningly devised evidence of the +foresight and genius the generals who, of all the blind tools of +history were the most enslaved and involuntary. + +The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes +furnish the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to +accustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that +kind are meaningless. + +On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and the +preceding battle of Shevardino were fought, there also exists a +definite and well-known, but quite false, conception. All the +historians describe the affair as follows: + +The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk sought +out for itself the best position for a general engagement and found +such a position at Borodino. + +The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the +left of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and almost at a right +angle to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where the +battle was fought. + +In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set +up on the Shevardino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth, +we are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on +the twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was in +position on the field of Borodino. + +So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares +to look into the matter can easily convince himself. + +The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the +contrary, during the retreat passed many positions better than +Borodino. They did not stop at any one of these positions because +Kutuzov did not wish to occupy a position he had not himself chosen, +because the popular demand for a battle had not yet expressed itself +strongly enough, and because Miloradovich had not yet arrived with the +militia, and for many other reasons. The fact is that other +positions they had passed were stronger, and that the position at +Borodino (the one where the battle was fought), far from being strong, +was no more a position than any other spot one might find in the +Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at hazard. + +Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of +Borodino to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that +is, the position on which the battle took place), but never till the +twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might be +fought there. This was shown first by the fact that there were no +entrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the +twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the +position of the Shevardino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless +in front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was it +more strongly fortified than any other post? And why were all +efforts exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till +late at night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have +sufficed to observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position +on which the battle was fought had not been foreseen and that the +Shevardino Redoubt was not an advanced post of that position, we +have the fact that up to the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and +Bagration were convinced that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left +flank of the position, and that Kutuzov himself in his report, written +in hot haste after the battle, speaks of the Shevardino Redoubt as the +left flank of the position. It was much later, when reports on the +battle of Borodino were written at leisure, that the incorrect and +extraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify the mistakes +of a commander in chief who had to be represented as infallible) +that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced post- whereas in reality +it was simply a fortified point on the left flank- and that the battle +of Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position previously +selected, where as it was fought on a quite unexpected spot which +was almost unentrenched. + +The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river +Kolocha- which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an +acute angle- so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right flank +near the village of Novoe, and the center at Borodino at the +confluence of the rivers Kolocha and Voyna. + +To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of how +the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the +river Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was +to prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow. + +Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as +the history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utitsa +to Borodino (he could not have seen that position because it did not +exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while +pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the +Russian position- at the Shevardino Redoubt- and unexpectedly for +the Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And the Russians, +not having time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left +wing from the position they had intended to occupy and took up a new +position which had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By +crossing to the other side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad, +Napoleon shifted the whole forthcoming battle from right to left +(looking from the Russian side) and transferred it to the plain +between Utitsa, Semenovsk, and Borodino- a plain no more +advantageous as a position than any other plain in Russia- and there +the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took place. + +Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to +the Kolocha, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the +redoubt but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have +doubted that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our and +the battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case +we should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubt- our left +flank- still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the +center or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on +the twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But +as the attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the +retreat of our rea guard (that is, immediately after the fight at +Gridneva), and as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not +in time, to begin a general engagement then on the evening of the +twenty-fourth, the first and chief action of the battle of Borodino +was already lost on the twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss +of the one fought on the twenty-sixth. + +After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found ourselves on +the morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank, +and were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where it +chanced to be. + +Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by +weak, unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that +position was increased by the fact that the Russian commanders- not +having fully realized what had happened, namely the loss of our +position on the left flank and the shifting of the whole field of +the forthcoming battle from right to left- maintained their extended +position from the village of Novoe to Utitsa, and consequently had +to move their forces from right to left during the battle. So it +happened that throughout the whole battle the Russians opposed the +entire French army launched against our left flank with but half as +many men. (Poniatowski's action against Utitsa, and Uvarov's on the +right flank against the French, were actions distinct from the main +course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodino did not take place at +all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders' mistakes even at the +cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian army and people) it +has been described. The battle of Borodino was not fought on a +chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly weaker than +those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the Shevardino +Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodino on an open and +almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous as the +French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not merely +unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive result, +but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete disintegration +and flight. + +CHAPTER XX + +On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving Mozhaysk. At +the descent of the high steep hill, down which a winding road led +out of the town past the cathedral on the right, where a service was +being held and the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle +and proceeded on foot. Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down +the hill preceded by its singers. Coming up toward him was a train +of carts carrying men who had been wounded in the engagement the day +before. The peasant drivers, shouting and lashing their horses, kept +crossing from side to side. The carts, in each of which three or +four wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, jolted over the stones +that had been thrown on the steep incline to make it something like +a road. The wounded, bandaged with rags, with pale cheeks, +compressed lips, and knitted brows, held on to the sides of the +carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost all of them +stared with naive, childlike curiosity at Pierre's white hat and green +swallow-tail coat. + +Pierre's coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of wounded to keep +to one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the +hill with its singers, surrounded Pierre's carriage and blocked the +road. Pierre stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in +which the road ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did not +penetrate into the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but above +Pierre's head was the bright August sunshine and the bells sounded +merrily. One of the carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road +close to Pierre. The driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it, +placed a stone under one of its tireless hind wheels, and began +arranging the breech-band on his little horse. + +One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm who was +following the cart on foot, caught hold of it with his sound hand +and turned to look at Pierre. + +"I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or take us +on to Moscow?" he asked. + +Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question. +He was looking now at the cavalry regiment that had met the convoy +of wounded, now at the cart by which he was standing, in which two +wounded men were sitting and one was lying. One of those sitting up in +the cart had probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was +wrapped in rags and one cheek was swollen to the size of a baby's +head. His nose and mouth were twisted to one side. This soldier was +looking at the cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a +fair-haired recruit as white as though there was no blood in his +thin face, looked at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third +lay prone so that his face was not visible. The cavalry singers were +passing close by: + +``` block + Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen, +Living in a foreign land. +``` + +they sang their soldiers' dance song. + +As if responding to them but with a different sort of merriment, the +metallic sound of the bells reverberated high above and the hot rays +of the sun bathed the top of the opposite slope with yet another +sort of merriment. But beneath the slope, by the cart with the wounded +near the panting little nag where Pierre stood, it was damp, somber, +and sad. + +The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at the cavalry +singers. + +"Oh, the coxcombs!" he muttered reproachfully. + +"It's not the soldiers only, but I've seen peasants today, too.... +The peasants- even they have to go," said the soldier behind the cart, +addressing Pierre with a sad smile. "No distinctions made nowadays.... +They want the whole nation to fall on them- in a word, it's Moscow! +They want to make an end of it." + +In spite of the obscurity of the soldier's words Pierre understood +what he wanted to say and nodded approval. + +The road was clear again; Pierre descended the hill and drove on. + +He kept looking to either side of the road for familiar faces, but +only saw everywhere the unfamiliar faces of various military men of +different branches of the service, who all looked with astonishment at +his white hat and green tail coat. + +Having gone nearly three miles he at last met an acquaintance and +eagerly addressed him. This was one of the head army doctors. He was +driving toward Pierre in a covered gig, sitting beside a young +surgeon, and on recognizing Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied +the driver's seat to pull up. + +"Count! Your excellency, how come you to be here?" asked the doctor. + +"Well, you know, I wanted to see..." + +"Yes, yes, there will be something to see...." + +Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his intention of +taking part in a battle. + +The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutuzov. + +"Why should you be God knows where out of sight, during the battle?" +he said, exchanging glances with his young companion. "Anyhow his +Serene Highness knows you and will receive you graciously. That's what +you must do." + +The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry. + +"You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where our position is +exactly?" said Pierre. + +"The position?" repeated the doctor. "Well, that's not my line. +Drive past Tatarinova, a lot of digging is going on there. Go up the +hillock and you'll see." + +"Can one see from there?... If you would..." + +But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his gig. + +"I would go with you but on my honor I'm up to here"- and he pointed +to his throat. "I'm galloping to the commander of the corps. How do +matters stand?... You know, Count, there'll be a battle tomorrow. +Out of an army of a hundred thousand we must expect at least twenty +thousand wounded, and we haven't stretchers, or bunks, or dressers, or +doctors enough for six thousand. We have ten thousand carts, but we +need other things as well- we must manage as best we can!" + +The strange thought that of the thousands of men, young and old, who +had stared with merry surprise at his hat (perhaps the very men he had +noticed), twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death +amazed Pierre. + +"They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of anything but +death?" And by some latent sequence of thought the descent of the +Mozhaysk hill, the carts with the wounded, the ringing bells, the +slanting rays of the sun, and the songs of the cavalrymen vividly +recurred to his mind. + +"The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do not for a +moment think of what awaits them, but pass by, winking at the wounded. +Yet from among these men twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they +wonder at my hat! Strange!" thought Pierre, continuing his way to +Tatarinova. + +In front of a landowner's house to the left of the road stood +carriages, wagons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels. The +commander in chief was putting up there, but just when Pierre +arrived he was not in and hardly any of the staff were there- they had +gone to the church service. Pierre drove on toward Gorki. + +When he had ascended the hill and reached the little village street, +he saw for the first time peasant militiamen in their white shirts and +with crosses on their caps, who, talking and laughing loudly, animated +and perspiring, were at work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to +the right of the road. + +Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth +along planks, while others stood about doing nothing. + +Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the men. On +seeing these peasants, who were evidently still amused by the +novelty of their position as soldiers, Pierre once more thought of the +wounded men at Mozhaysk and understood what the soldier had meant when +he said: "They want the whole nation to fall on them." The sight of +these bearded peasants at work on the battlefield, with their queer, +clumsy boots and perspiring necks, and their shirts opening from the +left toward the middle, unfastened, exposing their sunburned +collarbones, impressed Pierre more strongly with the solemnity and +importance of the moment than anything he had yet seen or heard. + +CHAPTER XXI + +Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling +militiamen, ascended the knoll from which, according to the doctor, +the battlefield could be seen. + +It was about eleven o'clock. The sun shone somewhat to the left +and behind him and brightly lit up the enormous panorama which, rising +like an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied +atmosphere. + +From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater, wound the +Smolensk highroad, passing through a village with a white church +some five hundred paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was +Borodino. Below the village the road crossed the river by a bridge +and, winding down and up, rose higher and higher to the village of +Valuevo visible about four miles away, where Napoleon was then +stationed. Beyond Valuevo the road disappeared into a yellowing forest +on the horizon. Far in the distance in that birch and fir forest to +the right of the road, the cross and belfry of the Kolocha Monastery +gleamed in the sun. Here and there over the whole of that blue +expanse, to right and left of the forest and the road, smoking +campfires could be seen and indefinite masses of troops- ours and +the enemy's. The ground to the right- along the course of the +Kolocha and Moskva rivers- was broken and hilly. Between the hollows +the villages of Bezubova and Zakharino showed in the distance. On +the left the ground was more level; there were fields of grain, and +the smoking ruins of Semenovsk, which had been burned down, could be +seen. + +All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the left nor +the right side of the field fully satisfied his expectations. +Nowhere could he see the battlefield he had expected to find, but only +fields, meadows, troops, woods, the smoke of campfires, villages, +mounds, and streams; and try as he would he could descry no military +"position" in this place which teemed with life, nor could he even +distinguish our troops from the enemy's. + +"I must ask someone who knows," he thought, and addressed an officer +who was looking with curiosity at his huge unmilitary figure. + +"May I ask you," said Pierre, "what village that is in front?" + +"Burdino, isn't it?" said the officer, turning to his companion. + +"Borodino," the other corrected him. + +The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk, moved up +to Pierre. + +"Are those our men there?" Pierre inquired. + +"Yes, and there, further on, are the French," said the officer. +"There they are, there... you can see them." + +"Where? Where?" asked Pierre. + +"One can see them with the naked eye... Why, there!" + +The officer pointed with his hand to the smoke visible on the left +beyond the river, and the same stern and serious expression that +Pierre had noticed on many of the faces he had met came into his face. + +"Ah, those are the French! And over there?..." Pierre pointed to a +knoll on the left, near which some troops could be seen. + +"Those are ours." + +"Ah, ours! And there?..." Pierre pointed to another knoll in the +distance with a big tree on it, near a village that lay in a hollow +where also some campfires were smoking and something black was +visible. + +"That's his again," said the officer. (It was the Shevardino +Redoubt.) "It was ours yesterday, but now it is his." + +"Then how about our position?" + +"Our position?" replied the officer with a smile of satisfaction. "I +can tell you quite clearly, because I constructed nearly all our +entrenchments. There, you see? There's our center, at Borodino, just +there," and he pointed to the village in front of them with the +white church. "That's where one crosses the Kolocha. You see down +there where the rows of hay are lying in the hollow, there's the +bridge. That's our center. Our right flank is over there"- he +pointed sharply to the right, far away in the broken ground- "That's +where the Moskva River is, and we have thrown up three redoubts there, +very strong ones. The left flank..." here the officer paused. "Well, +you see, that's difficult to explain.... Yesterday our left flank +was there at Shevardino, you see, where the oak is, but now we have +withdrawn our left wing- now it is over there, do you see that village +and the smoke? That's Semenovsk, yes, there," he pointed to +Raevski's knoll. "But the battle will hardly be there. His having +moved his troops there is only a ruse; he will probably pass round +to the right of the Moskva. But wherever it may be, many a man will be +missing tomorrow!" he remarked. + +An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer while he was +giving these explanations had waited in silence for him to finish +speaking, but at this point, evidently not liking the officer's +remark, interrupted him. + +"Gabions must be sent for," said he sternly. + +The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood that one might +think of how many men would be missing tomorrow but ought not to speak +to speak of it. + +"Well, send number three company again," the officer replied +hurriedly. + +"And you, are you one of the doctors?" + +"No, I've come on my own," answered Pierre, and he went down the +hill again, passing the militiamen. + +"Oh, those damned fellows!" muttered the officer who followed him, +holding his nose as he ran past the men at work. + +"There they are... bringing her, coming... There they are... They'll +be here in a minute..." voices were suddenly heard saying; and +officers, soldiers, and militiamen began running forward along the +road. + +A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodino. First +along the dusty road came the infantry in ranks, bareheaded and with +arms reversed. From behind them came the sound of church singing. + +Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre toward the +procession. + +"They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian Mother of +God!" someone cried. + +"The Smolensk Mother of God," another corrected him. + +The militiamen, both those who had been in the village and those who +had been at work on the battery, threw down their spades and ran to +meet the church procession. Following the battalion that marched along +the dusty road came priests in their vestments- one little old man +in a hood with attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers and +officers bore a large, dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover. +This was the icon that had been brought from and had since accompanied +the army. Behind, before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen with +bared heads walked, ran, and bowed to the ground. + +At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon; the men who +had been holding it up by the linen bands attached to it were relieved +by others, the chanters relit their censers, and service began. The +hot rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind +played with the hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons +decorating the icon. The singing did not sound loud under the open +sky. An immense crowd of bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen +surrounded the icon. Behind the priest and a chanter stood the +notabilities on a spot reserved for them. A bald general with +general with a St. George's Cross on his neck stood just behind the +priest's back, and without crossing himself (he was evidently a +German) patiently awaited the end of the service, which he +considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to arouse the +patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a martial +pose, crossing himself by shaking his hand in front of his chest while +looking about him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre +recognized several acquaintances among these notables, but did not +look at them- his whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious +expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who +were all gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon as the tired chanters, +who were singing the service for the twentieth time that day, began +lazily and mechanically to sing: "Save from calamity Thy servants, O +Mother of God," and the priest and deacon chimed in: "For to Thee +under God we all flee as to an inviolable bulwark and protection," +there again kindled in all those faces the same expression of +consciousness of the solemnity of the impending moment that Pierre had +seen on the faces at the foot of the hill at Mozhaysk and +momentarily on many and many faces he had met that morning; and +heads were bowed more frequently and hair tossed back, and sighs and +the sound men made as they crossed themselves were heard. + +The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed against Pierre. +Someone, a very important personage judging by the haste with which +way was made for him, was approaching the icon. + +It was Kutuzov, who had been riding round the position and on his +way back to Tatarinova had stopped where the service was being held. +Pierre recognized him at once by his peculiar figure, which +distinguished him from everybody else. + +With a long overcoat on his his exceedingly stout, +round-shouldered body, with uncovered white head and puffy face +showing the white ball of the eye he had lost, Kutuzov walked with +plunging, swaying gait into the crowd and stopped behind the priest. +He crossed himself with an accustomed movement, bent till he touched +the ground with his hand, and bowed his white head with a deep sigh. +Behind Kutuzov was Bennigsen and the suite. Despite the presence of +the commander in chief, who attracted the attention of all the +superior officers, the militiamen and soldiers continued their prayers +without looking at him. + +When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the icon, sank +heavily to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried +vainly to rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and +weight. His white head twitched with the effort. At last he rose, +kissed the icon as a child does with naively pouting lips, and again +bowed till he touched the ground with his hand. The other generals +followed his example, then the officers, and after them with excited +faces, pressing on one another, crowding, panting, and pushing, +scrambled the soldiers and militiamen. + +CHAPTER XXII + +Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him. + +"Count Peter Kirilovich! How did you get here?" said a voice. + +Pierre looked round. Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his knees with his +hand (he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the +icon), came up to him smiling. Boris was elegantly dressed, with a +slightly martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long +coat and like Kutuzov had a whip slung across his shoulder. + +Meanwhile Kutuzov had reached the village and seated himself in +the shade of the nearest house, on a bench which one Cossack had run +to fetch and another had hastily covered with a rug. An immense and +brilliant suite surrounded him. + +The icon was carried further, accompanied by the throng. Pierre +stopped some thirty paces from Kutuzov, talking to Boris. + +He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to see the +position. + +"This is what you must do," said Boris. "I will do the honors of the +camp to you. You will see everything best from where Count Bennigsen +will be. I am in attendance on him, you know; I'll mention it to +him. But if you want to ride round the position, come along with us. +We are just going to the left flank. Then when we get back, do spend +the night with me and we'll arrange a game of cards. Of course you +know Dmitri Sergeevich? Those are his quarters," and he pointed to the +third house in the village of Gorki. + +"But I should like to see the right flank. They say it's very +strong," said Pierre. "I should like to start from the Moskva River +and ride round the whole position." + +"Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the left +flank." + +"Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkonski's regiment? Can you point +it out to me?" + +"Prince Andrew's? We shall pass it and I'll take you to him." + +What about the left flank?" asked Pierre + +"To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only knows what state +our left flank is in," said Boris confidentially lowering his voice. +"It is not at all what Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify +that knoll quite differently, but..." Boris shrugged his shoulders, +"his Serene Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded him. +You see..." but Boris did not finish, for at that moment Kaysarov, +Kutuzov's adjutant, came up to Pierre. "Ah, Kaysarov!" said Boris, +addressing him with an unembarrassed smile, "I was just trying to +explain our position to the count. It is amazing how his Serene +Highness could so the intentions of the French!" + +"You mean the left flank?" asked Kaysarov. + +"Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong." + +Though Kutuzov had dismissed all unnecessary men from the staff, +Boris had contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He +had established himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom +Boris had been in attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskoy an +invaluable man. + +In the higher command there were two sharply defined parties: +Kutuzov's party and that of Bennigsen, the chief of staff. Boris +belonged to the latter and no one else, while showing servile +respect to Kutuzov, could so create an impression that the old +fellow was not much good and that Bennigsen managed everything. Now +the decisive moment of battle had come when Kutuzov would be destroyed +and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even if Kutuzov won the battle +it would be felt that everything was done by Bennigsen. In any case +many great rewards would have to be given for tomorrow's action, and +new men would come to the front. So Boris was full of nervous vivacity +all day. + +After Kaysarov, others whom Pierre knew came up to him, and he had +not time to reply to all the questions about Moscow that were showered +upon him, or to listen to all that was told him. The faces all +expressed animation and apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the +cause of the excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in +questions of personal success; his mind, however, was occupied by +the different expression he saw on other faces- an expression that +spoke not of personal matters but of the universal questions of life +and death. Kutuzov noticed Pierre's figure and the group gathered +round him. + +"Call him to me," said Kutuzov. + +An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness' wish, and Pierre +went toward Kutuzov's bench. But a militiaman got there before him. It +was Dolokhov. + +"How did that fellow get here?" asked Pierre. + +"He's a creature that wriggles in anywhere!" was the answer. "He has +been degraded, you know. Now he wants to bob up again. He's been +proposing some scheme or other and has crawled into the enemy's picket +line at night.... He's a brave fellow." + +Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to Kutuzov. + +"I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness you might +send me away or say that you knew what I was reporting, but then I +shouldn't lose anything..." Dolokhov was saying. + +"Yes, yes." + +"But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my +Fatherland for which I am ready to die." + +"Yes, yes." + +"And should your Serene Highness require a man who will not spare +his skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may prove useful to your +Serene Highness." + +"Yes... Yes..." Kutuzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more +and more as he looked at Pierre. + +Just then Boris, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to +Pierre's side near Kutuzov and in a most natural manner, without +raising his voice, said to Pierre, as though continuing an interrupted +conversation: + +"The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to die. What +heroism, Count!" + +Boris evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by +his Serene Highness. He knew Kutuzov's attention would be caught by +those words, and so it was. + +"What are you saying about the militia?" he asked Boris. + +"Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness- for death- they +have put on clean shirts." + +"Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!" said Kutuzov; and he closed +his eyes and swayed his head. "A matchless people!" he repeated with a +sigh. + +"So you want to smell gunpowder?" he said to Pierre. "Yes, it's a +pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife's adorers. +Is she well? My quarters are at your service." + +And as often happens with old people, Kutuzov began looking about +absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do. + +Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew +Kaysarov, his adjutant's brother. + +"Those verses... those verses of Marin's... how do they go, eh? +Those he wrote about Gerakov: 'Lectures for the corps inditing'... +Recite them, recite them!" said he, evidently preparing to laugh. + +Kaysarov recited.... Kutuzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm +of the verses. + +When Pierre had left Kutuzov, Dolokhov came up to him and took his +hand. + +"I am very glad to meet you here, Count," he said aloud, +regardless of the presence of strangers and in a particularly resolute +and solemn tone. "On the eve of a day when God alone knows who of us +is fated to survive, I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that +I regret the misunderstandings that occurred between us and should +wish you not to have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me." + +Pierre looked at Dolokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to +him. With tears in his eyes Dolokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him. + +Boris said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to +Pierre and proposed that he should ride with him along the line. + +"It will interest you," said he. + +"Yes, very much," replied Pierre. + +Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and Bennigsen and +his suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the +line. + +CHAPTER XXIII + +From Gorki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which, +when they had looked it from the hill, the officer had pointed out +as being the center of our position and where rows of fragrant +new-mown hay lay by the riverside. They rode across that bridge into +the village of Borodino and thence turned to the left, passing an +enormous number of troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where +militiamen were digging. This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed, which +afterwards became known as the Raevski Redoubt, or the Knoll +Battery, but Pierre paid no special attention to it. He did not know +that it would become more memorable to him than any other spot on +the plain of Borodino. + +They then crossed the hollow to Semenovsk, where the soldiers were +dragging away the last logs from the huts and barns. Then they rode +downhill and uphill, across a ryefield trodden and beaten down as if +by hail, following a track freshly made by the artillery over the +furrows of the plowed land, and reached some fleches~{ A kind of entrenchment. }~ which were still +being dug. + +At the fleches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevardino +Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day before and where several +horsemen could be descried. The officers said that either Napoleon +or Murat was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of +horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the +scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted men +rode away from the mound and disappeared. + +Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and began +explaining the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him, +straining each faculty to understand the essential points of the +impending battle, but was mortified to feel that his mental capacity +was inadequate for the task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen +stopped speaking and, noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly +said to him: + +"I don't think this interests you?" + +"On the contrary it's very interesting!" replied Pierre not quite +truthfully. + +From the fleches they rode still farther to the left, along a road +winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In the middle of +the wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the +tramp of the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the +road in front of them for some time, arousing general attention and +laughter, and only when several voices shouted at it did it dart to +one side and disappear in the thicket. After going through the wood +for about a mile and a half they came out on a glade where troops of +Tuchkov's corps were stationed to defend the left flank. + +Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great deal and +with much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave orders of great +military importance. In front of Tuchkov's troops was some high ground +not occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake, +saying that it was madness to leave a height which commanded the +country around unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of the +generals expressed the same opinion. One in particular declared with +martial heat that they were put there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen +on his own authority ordered the troops to occupy the high ground. +This disposition on the left flank increased Pierre's doubt of his own +capacity to understand military matters. Listening to Bennigsen and +the generals criticizing the position of the troops behind the hill, +he quite understood them and shared their opinion, but for that very +reason he could not understand how the man who put them there behind +the hill could have made so gross and palpable a blunder. + +Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as Bennigsen +supposed, put there to defend the position, but were in a concealed +position as an ambush, that they should not be seen and might be +able to strike an approaching enemy unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not +know this and moved the troops forward according to his own ideas +without mentioning the matter to the commander in chief. + +CHAPTER XXIV + +On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay leaning on +his elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkovo at the +further end of his regiment's encampment. Through a gap in the +broken wall he could see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty +year-old birches with their lower branches lopped off, a field on +which shocks of oats were standing, and some bushes near which rose +the smoke of campfires- the soldiers' kitchens. + +Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seemed +to him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable +as he had done seven years before at Austerlitz. + +He had received and given the orders for next day's battle and had +nothing more to do. But his thoughts- the simplest, clearest, and +therefore most terrible thoughts- would give him no peace. He knew +that tomorrow's battle would be the most terrible of all he had +taken part in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of +death presented itself to him- not in relation to any worldly matter +or with reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to +himself, to his own soul- vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as +a certainty. And from the height of this perception all that had +previously tormented and preoccupied him suddenly became illumined +by a cold white light without shadows, without perspective, without +distinction of outline. All life appeared to him like magic-lantern +pictures at which he had long been gazing by artificial light +through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those badly daubed pictures in +clear daylight and without a glass. "Yes, yes! There they are, those +false images that agitated, enraptured, and tormented me," said he +to himself, passing in review the principal pictures of the magic +lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold white daylight of +his clear perception of death. "There they are, those rudely painted +figures that once seemed splendid and mysterious. Glory, the good of +society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself- how important these +pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning they seemed to +be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the cold +white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me." The three +great sorrows of his life held his attention in particular: his love +for a woman, his father's death, and the French invasion which had +overrun half Russia. "Love... that little girl who seemed to me +brimming over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made +romantic plans of love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I +was!" he said aloud bitterly. "Ah me! I believed in some ideal love +which was to keep her faithful to me for the whole year of my absence! +Like the gentle dove in the fable she was to pine apart from me.... +But it was much simpler really.... It was all very simple and +horrible." + +"When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his +land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came and swept him aside, +unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his +path, and his Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess +Mary says it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when +he is not here and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is +the trial intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And +tomorrow I shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one +of our own men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as +one of them did yesterday, and the French will come and take me by +head and heels and fling me into a hole that I may not stink under +their noses, and new conditions of life will arise, which will seem +quite ordinary to others and about which I shall know nothing. I shall +not exist..." + +He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with +their motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. "To die... +to be killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this +should still be, but no me...." + +And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the +smoke of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed +terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose +quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about. + +After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. "Who's +that?" he cried. + +The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, formerly Dolokhov's squadron +commander, but now from lack of officers a battalion commander, +shyly entered the shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental +paymaster. + +Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they had come +about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss +them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed. + +"Devil take it!" said the voice of a man stumbling over something. + +Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre, who had tripped +over a pole on the ground and had nearly fallen, coming his way. It +was unpleasant to Prince Andrew to meet people of his own set in +general, and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful +moments of his last visit to Moscow. + +"You? What a surprise!" said he. "What brings you here? This is +unexpected!" + +As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than coldness- they +expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached +the shed full of animation, but on seeing Prince Andrew's face he felt +constrained and ill at ease. + +"I have come... simply... you know... come... it interests me," said +Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word +"interesting." "I wish to see the battle." + +"Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about war? How would +they stop it?" said Prince Andrew sarcastically. "Well, and how's +Moscow? And my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?" he asked +seriously. + +"Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went to see them, +but missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow." + +CHAPTER XXV + +The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew, apparently +reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and +have tea. Seats were brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed +with surprise at Pierre's huge stout figure and listened to his talk +of Moscow and the position of our army, round which he had ridden. +Prince Andrew remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding +that Pierre addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured +battalion commander. + +"So you understand the whole position of our troops?" Prince +Andrew interrupted him. + +"Yes- that is, how do you mean?" said Pierre. "Not being a +military man I can't say I have understood it fully, but I +understand the general position." + +"Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it may," said +Prince Andrew. + +"Oh!" said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at +Prince Andrew. "Well, and what do think of Kutuzov's appointment?" +he asked. + +"I was very glad of his appointment, that's all I know," replied +Prince Andrew. + +"And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are +saying heaven knows what about him.... What do you think of him?" + +"Ask them," replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers. + +Pierre looked at Timokhin with the condescendingly interrogative +smile with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer. + +"We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your +excellency," said Timokhin timidly, and continually turning to +glance at his colonel. + +"Why so?" asked Pierre. + +"Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you. +Why, when we were retreating from Sventsyani we dare not touch a stick +or a wisp of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would +get it all; wasn't it so, your excellency?" and again Timokhin +turned to the prince. "But we daren't. In our regiment two officers +were court-martialed for that kind of thing. But when his Serenity +took command everything became straight forward. Now we see light..." + +"Then why was it forbidden?" + +Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to +answer such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew. + +"Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the +enemy," said Prince Andrew with venomous irony. "It is very sound: one +can't permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to +marauding. At Smolensk too he judged correctly that the French might +outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand +this," cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him +involuntarily: "he could not understand that there, for the first +time, we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit +in the men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the +French for two days, and that that success had increased our +strength tenfold. He ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and +losses went for nothing. He had no thought of betraying us, he tried +to do the best he could, he thought out everything, and that is why he +is unsuitable. He is unsuitable now, just because he plans out +everything very thoroughly and accurately as every German has to. +How can I explain?... Well, say your father has a German valet, and he +is a splendid valet and satisfies your father's requirements better +than you could, then it's all right to let him serve. But if your +father is mortally sick you'll send the valet away and attend to +your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands, and will +soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could. So it +has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could +serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in +danger she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club they have been +making him out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the +only result will be that afterwards, ashamed of their false +accusations, they will make him out a hero or a genius instead of a +traitor, and that will be still more unjust. He is an honest and +very punctilious German." + +"And they say he's a skillful commander," rejoined Pierre. + +"I don't understand what is meant by 'a skillful commander,'" +replied Prince Andrew ironically. + +"A skillful commander?" replied Pierre. "Why, one who foresees all +contingencies... and foresees the adversary's intentions." + +"But that's impossible," said Prince Andrew as if it were a matter +settled long ago. + +Pierre looked at him in surprise. + +"And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?" he remarked. + +"Yes," replied Prince Andrew, "but with this little difference, that +in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are +not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is +always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than +one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division +and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies +of troops can never be known to anyone. Believe me," he went on, "if +things depended on arrangements made by the staff, I should be there +making arrangements, but instead of that I have the honor to serve +here in the regiment with these gentlemen, and I consider that on us +tomorrow's battle will depend and not on those others.... Success +never depends, and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or +even on numbers, and least of all on position." + +"But on what then?" + +"On the feeling that is in me and in him," he pointed to Timokhin, +"and in each soldier." + +Prince Andrew glanced at Timokhin, who looked at his commander in +alarm and bewilderment. In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity +Prince Andrew now seemed excited. He could apparently not refrain from +expressing the thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him. + +"A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it! Why did we +lose the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses were almost equal +to ours, but very early we said to ourselves that we were losing the +battle, and we did lose it. And we said so because we had nothing to +fight for there, we wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as +we could. 'We've lost, so let us run,' and we ran. If we had not +said that till the evening, heaven knows what might not have happened. +But tomorrow we shan't say it! You talk about our position, the left +flank weak and the right flank too extended," he went on. "That's +all nonsense, there's nothing of the kind. But what awaits us +tomorrow? A hundred million most diverse chances which will be decided +on the instant by the fact that our men or theirs run or do not run, +and that this man or that man is killed, but all that is being done at +present is only play. The fact is that those men with whom you have +ridden round the position not only do not help matters, but hinder. +They are only concerned with their own petty interests." + +"At such a moment?" said Pierre reproachfully. + +"At such a moment!" Prince Andrew repeated. "To them it is only a +moment affording opportunities to undermine a rival and obtain an +extra cross or ribbon. For me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a +hundred thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have met to +fight, and the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight +and the side that fights more fiercely and spares itself least will +win. And if you like I will tell you that whatever happens and +whatever muddles those at the top may make, we shall win tomorrow's +battle. Tomorrow, happen what may, we shall win!" + +"There now, your excellency! That's the truth, the real truth," said +Timokhin. "Who would spare himself now? The soldiers in my +battalion, believe me, wouldn't drink their vodka! 'It's not the day +for that!' they say." + +All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went out of the +shed with them, giving final orders to the adjutant. After they had +gone Pierre approached Prince Andrew and was about to start a +conversation when they heard the clatter of three horses' hoofs on the +road not far from the shed, and looking in that direction Prince +Andrew recognized Wolzogen and Clausewitz accompanied by a Cossack. +They rode close by continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew +involuntarily heard these words: + +"Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht +genug Preis geben,"~{ "The war must be extended widely. I cannot sufficiently commend +that view." }~ said one of them. + +"Oh, ja," said the other, "der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwachen, +so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privat-Personen in Achtung +nehmen."~{ "Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of course one +cannot take into account the loss of private individuals." }~ + +"Oh, no," agreed the other. + +"Extend widely!" said Prince Andrew with an angry snort, when they +had ridden past. "In that 'extend' were my father, son, and sister, at +Bald Hills. That's all the same to him! That's what I was saying to +you- those German gentlemen won't win the battle tomorrow but will +only make all the mess they can, because they have nothing in their +German heads but theories not worth an empty eggshell and haven't in +their hearts the one thing needed tomorrow- that which Timokhin has. +They have yielded up all Europe to him, and have now come to teach us. +Fine teachers!" and again his voice grew shrill. + +"So you think we shall win tomorrow's battle?" asked Pierre. + +"Yes, yes," answered Prince Andrew absently. "One thing I would do +if I had the power," he began again, "I would not take prisoners. +Why take prisoners? It's chivalry! The French have destroyed my home +and are on their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are +outraging me every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are +all criminals. And so thinks Timokhin and the whole army. They +should be executed! Since they are my foes they cannot be my +friends, whatever may have been said at Tilsit." + +"Yes, yes," muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince +Andrew. "I quite agree with you!" + +The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozhaysk hill and +all that day now seemed to him quite clear and completely solved. He +now understood the whole meaning and importance of this war and of the +impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the significant and +stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up for +him by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in +physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he had seen, +and this explained to him why they all prepared for death calmly, +and as it were lightheartedly. + +"Not take prisoners," Prince Andrew continued: "That by itself would +quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have +played at war- that's what's vile! We play at magnanimity and all that +stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and +sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: +she is so kind-hearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating +the calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of +chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. +It's all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they +humbugged us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people's +houses, issue false paper money, and worst of all they kill my +children and my father, and then talk of rules of war and +magnanimity to foes! Take no prisoners, but kill and be killed! He who +has come to this as I have through the same sufferings..." + +Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to him whether or +not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had been, was suddenly checked in his +speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a +few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips +quivered as he began speaking. + +"If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war +only when it was worth while going to certain death, as now. Then +there would not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended Michael +Ivanovich. And when there was a war, like this one, it would be war! +And then the determination of the troops would be quite different. +Then all these Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon is leading +would not follow him into Russia, and we should not go to fight in +Austria and Prussia without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the +most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that and not +play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and +seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be +war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favorite pastime of the +idle and frivolous. The military calling is the most highly honored. + +"But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are +the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of +war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a +country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, +and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the +military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, +idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in +spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone. +All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he +who kills most people receives the highest rewards. + +"They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they +kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services +for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), +and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they +have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look +at them and hear them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill, +piercing voice. "Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to +live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it doesn't +do for man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.... +Ah, well, it's not for long!" he added. + +"However, you're sleepy, and it's time for me to sleep. Go back to +Gorki!" said Prince Andrew suddenly. + +"Oh no!" Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with frightened, +compassionate eyes. + +"Go, go! Before a battle one must have one's sleep out," repeated +Prince Andrew. + +He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed him. +"Good-by, be off!" he shouted. "Whether we meet again or not..." +and turning away hurriedly he entered the shed. + +It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out whether the +expression of Prince Andrew's face was angry or tender. + +For some time he stood in silence considering whether he should +follow him or go away. "No, he does not want it!" Pierre concluded. +"And I know that this is our last meeting!" He sighed deeply and +rode back to Gorki. + +On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a rug, but he +could not sleep. + +He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in his +imagination. On one of them he dwelt long and joyfully. He vividly +recalled an evening in Petersburg. Natasha with animated and excited +face was telling him how she had gone to look for mushrooms the +previous summer and had lost her way in the big forest. She +incoherently described the depths of the forest, her feelings, and a +talk with a beekeeper she met, and constantly interrupted her story to +say: "No, I can't! I'm not telling it right; no, you don't +understand," though he encouraged her by saying that he did +understand, and he really had understood all she wanted to say. But +Natasha was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that they did +not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced that +day and wished to convey. "He was such a delightful old man, and it +was so dark in the forest... and he had such kind... No, I can't +describe it," she had said, flushed and excited. Prince Andrew +smiled now the same happy smile as then when he had looked into her +eyes. "I understood her," he thought. "I not only understood her, +but it was just that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that +frankness of soul- that very soul of hers which seemed to be +fettered by her body- it was that soul I loved in her... loved so +strongly and happily..." and suddenly he remembered how his love had +ended. "He did not need anything of that kind. He neither saw nor +understood anything of the sort. He only saw in her a pretty and fresh +young girl, with whom he did not deign to unite his fate. And I?... +and he is still alive and gay!" + +Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned him, and again +began pacing up and down in front of the shed. + +CHAPTER XXVI + +On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodino, M. de Beausset, +prefect of the French Emperor's palace, arrived at Napoleon's quarters +at Valuevo with Colonel Fabvier, the former from Paris and the +latter from Madrid. + +Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a box he had +brought for the Emperor to be carried before him and entered the first +compartment of Napoleon's tent, where he began opening the box while +conversing with Napoleon's aides-de-camp who surrounded him. + +Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance talking +to some generals of his acquaintance. + +The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom and was +finishing his toilet. Slightly snorting and grunting, he presented now +his back and now his plump hairy chest to the brush with which his +valet was rubbing him down. Another valet, with his finger over the +mouth of a bottle, was sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the Emperor's +pampered body with an expression which seemed to say that he alone +knew where and how much Eau de Cologne should be sprinkled. Napoleon's +short hair was wet and matted on the forehead, but his face, though +puffy and yellow, expressed physical satisfaction. "Go on, harder, +go on!" he muttered to the valet who was rubbing him, slightly +twitching and grunting. An aide-de-camp, who had entered the bedroom +to report to the Emperor the number of prisoners taken in +yesterday's action, was standing by the door after delivering his +message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon, frowning, looked +at him from under his brows. + +"No prisoners!" said he, repeating the aide-de-camp's words. "They +are forcing us to exterminate them. So much the worse for the +Russian army.... Go on... harder, harder!" he muttered, hunching his +back and presenting his fat shoulders. + +"All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier too," he +said, nodding to the aide-de-camp. + +"Yes, sire," and the aide-de-camp disappeared through the door of +the tent. + +Two valets rapidly dressed His Majesty, and wearing the blue uniform +of the Guards he went with firm quick steps to the reception room. + +De Beausset's hands meanwhile were busily engaged arranging the +present he had brought from the Empress, on two chairs directly in +front of the entrance. But Napoleon had dressed and come out with such +unexpected rapidity that he had not time to finish arranging the +surprise. + +Napoleon noticed at once what they were about and guessed that +they were not ready. He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure +of giving him a surprise, so he pretended not to see de Beausset and +called Fabvier to him, listening silently and with a stern frown to +what Fabvier told him of the heroism and devotion of his troops +fighting at Salamanca, at the other end of Europe, with but one +thought- to be worthy of their Emperor- and but one fear- to fail to +please him. The result of that battle had been deplorable. Napoleon +made ironic remarks during Fabvier's account, as if he had not +expected that matters could go otherwise in his absence. + +"I must make up for that in Moscow," said Napoleon. "I'll see you +later," he added, and summoned de Beausset, who by that time had +prepared the surprise, having placed something on the chairs and +covered it with a cloth. + +De Beausset bowed low, with that courtly French bow which only the +old retainers of the Bourbons knew how to make, and approached him, +presenting an envelope. + +Napoleon turned to him gaily and pulled his ear. + +"You have hurried here. I am very glad. Well, what is Paris saying?" +he asked, suddenly changing his former stern expression for a most +cordial tone. + +"Sire, all Paris regrets your absence," replied de Beausset as was +proper. + +But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say something of +this kind, and though in his lucid moments he knew it was untrue, he +was pleased to hear it from him. Again he honored him by touching +his ear. + +"I am very sorry to have made you travel so far," said he. + +"Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the gates of +Moscow," replied de Beausset. + +Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absentmindedly, glanced to the +right. An aide-de-camp approached with gliding steps and offered him a +gold snuffbox, which he took. + +"Yes, it has happened luckily for you," he said, raising the open +snuffbox to his nose. "You are fond of travel, and in three days you +will see Moscow. You surely did not expect to see that Asiatic +capital. You will have a pleasant journey." + +De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his taste for travel +(of which he had not till then been aware). + +"Ha, what's this?" asked Napoleon, noticing that all the courtiers +were looking at something concealed under a cloth. + +With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and without +turning his back to the Emperor retired two steps, twitching off the +cloth at the same time, and said: + +"A present to Your Majesty from the Empress." + +It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gerard, of the son +borne to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, the boy +whom for some reason everyone called "The King of Rome." + +A very pretty curly-headed boy with a look of the Christ in the +Sistine Madonna was depicted playing at stick and ball. The ball +represented the terrestrial globe and the stick in his other hand a +scepter. + +Though it was not clear what the artist meant to express by +depicting the so-called King of Rome spiking the earth with a stick, +the allegory apparently seemed to Napoleon, as it had done to all +who had seen it in Paris, quite clear and very pleasing. + +"The King of Rome!" he said, pointing to the portrait with a +graceful gesture. "Admirable!" + +With the natural capacity of an Italian for changing the +expression of his face at will, he drew nearer to the portrait and +assumed a look of pensive tenderness. He felt that what he now said +and did would be historical, and it seemed to him that it would now be +best for him- whose grandeur enabled his son to play stick and ball +with the terrestrial globe- to show, in contrast to that grandeur, the +simplest paternal tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he moved forward, +glanced round at a chair (which seemed to place itself under him), and +sat down on it before the portrait. At a single gesture from him +everyone went out on tiptoe, leaving the great man to himself and +his emotion. + +Having sat still for a while he touched- himself not knowing why- +the thick spot of paint representing the highest light in the +portrait, rose, and recalled de Beausset and the officer on duty. He +ordered the portrait to be carried outside his tent, that the Old +Guard, stationed round it, might not be deprived of the pleasure of +seeing the King of Rome, the son and heir of their adored monarch. + +And while he was doing M. de Beausset the honor of breakfasting with +him, they heard, as Napoleon had anticipated, the rapturous cries of +the officers and men of the Old Guard who had run up to see the +portrait. + +"Vive l'Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive l'Empereur!" came +those ecstatic cries. + +After breakfast Napoleon in de Beausset's presence dictated his +order of the day to the army. + +"Short and energetic!" he remarked when he had read over the +proclamation which he had dictated straight off without corrections. +It ran: + +Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for. Victory depends +on you. It is essential for us; it will give us all we need: +comfortable quarters and a speedy return to our country. Behave as you +did at Austerlitz, Friedland, Vitebsk, and Smolensk. Let our +remotest posterity recall your achievements this day with pride. Let +it be said of each of you: "He was in the great battle before Moscow!" + +"Before Moscow!" repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, who +was so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of +the tent to where the horses stood saddled. + +"Your Majesty is too kind!" replied de Beausset to the invitation to +accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did not know how to ride +and was afraid of doing so. + +But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset had to mount. +When Napoleon came out of the tent the shouting of the Guards before +his son's portrait grew still louder. Napoleon frowned. + +"Take him away!" he said, pointing with a gracefully majestic +gesture to the portrait. "It is too soon for him to see a field of +battle." + +De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed deeply, to +indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor's +words. + +CHAPTER XXVII + +On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us, Napoleon +spent the whole day on horseback inspecting the locality, +considering plans submitted to him by his marshals, and personally +giving commands to his generals. + +The original line of the Russian forces along the river Kolocha +had been dislocated by the capture of the Shevardino Redoubt on the +twenty-fourth, and part of the line- the left flank- had been drawn +back. That part of the line was not entrenched and in front of it +the ground was more open and level than elsewhere. It was evident to +anyone, military or not, that it was here the French should attack. It +would seem that not much consideration was needed to reach this +conclusion, nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the +Emperor and his marshals, nor was there any need of that special and +supreme quality called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to +Napoleon; yet the historians who described the event later and the men +who then surrounded Napoleon, and he himself, thought otherwise. + +Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality with a +profound air and in silence, nodded with approval or shook his head +dubiously, and without communicating to the generals around him the +profound course of ideas which guided his decisions merely gave them +his final conclusions in the form of commands. Having listened to a +suggestion from Davout, who was now called Prince d'Eckmuhl, to turn +the Russian left wing, Napoleon said it should not be done, without +explaining why not. To a proposal made by General Campan (who was to +attack the fleches) to lead his division through the woods, Napoleon +agreed, though the so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney) ventured to +remark that a movement through the woods was dangerous and might +disorder the division. + +Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino Redoubt, +Napoleon pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots +where two batteries should be set up by the morrow to act against +the Russian entrenchments, and the places where, in line with them, +the field artillery should be placed. + +After giving these and other commands he returned to his tent, and +the dispositions for the battle were written down from his dictation. + +These dispositions, of which the French historians write with +enthusiasm and other historians with profound respect, were as +follows: + +At dawn the two new batteries established during the night on the +plain occupied by the Prince d'Eckmuhl will open fire on the +opposing batteries of the enemy. + +At the same time the commander of the artillery of the 1st Corps, +General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of Campan's division and all +the howitzers of Dessaix's and Friant's divisions, will move +forward, open fire, and overwhelm with shellfire the enemy's +battery, against which will operate: + +``` block + 24 guns of the artillery of the Guards + 30 guns of Campan's division + +and 8 guns of Friant's and Dessaix's divisions + -- + +in all 62 guns. +``` + +The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouche, +will place the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps, sixteen in all, +on the flanks of the battery that is to bombard the entrenchment on +the left, which will have forty guns in all directed against it. + +General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all +the howitzers of the Guard's artillery against either one or other +of the entrenchments. + +During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the +wood on the village and turn the enemy's position. + +General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first +fortification. + +After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will be given +in accordance with the enemy's movements. + +The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as the guns of +the right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of Morand's division and +of the vice-King's division will open a heavy fire on seeing the +attack commence on the right wing. + +The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its three +bridges, advancing to the same heights as Morand's and Gibrard's +divisions, which under his leadership will be directed against the +redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces. + +All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et +methode) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve. + +``` block + The Imperial Camp near Mozhaysk, +September, 6, 1812. +``` + +These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one +allows oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his +genius, related to Napoleon's orders to deal with four points- four +different orders. Not one of these was, or could be, carried out. + +In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the +spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouche; which +were to come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and +shower shells on the Russian fleches and redoubts. This could not be +done, as from the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did not +carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into the air until +the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon's instructions, moved them +forward. + +The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the village through +the wood, should turn the Russian left flank. This could not be done +and was not done, because Poniatowski, advancing on the village +through the wood, met Tuchkov there barring his way, and could not and +did not turn the Russian position. + +The third order was: General Campan will move through the wood to +seize the first fortification. General Campan's division did not seize +the first fortification but was driven back, for on emerging from +the wood it had to reform under grapeshot, of which Napoleon was +unaware. + +The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village +(Borodino) and cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same +heights as Morand's and Gdrard's divisions (for whose movements no +directions are given), which under his leadership will be directed +against the redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces. + +As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible +sentence as from the attempts the vice-King made to execute the orders +given him, he was to advance from the left through Borodino to the +redoubt while the divisions of Morand and Gerard were to advance +simultaneously from the front. + +All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not and could +not be executed. After passing through Borodino the vice-King was +driven back to the Kolocha and could get no farther; while the +divisions of Morand and Gerard did not take the redoubt but were +driven back, and the redoubt was only taken at the end of the battle +by the cavalry (a thing probably unforeseen and not heard of by +Napoleon). So not one of the orders in the disposition was, or could +be, executed. But in the disposition it is said that, after the +fight has commenced in this manner, orders will be given in accordance +with the enemy's movements, and so it might be supposed that all +necessary arrangements would be made by Napoleon during the battle. +But this was not and could not be done, for during the whole battle +Napoleon was so far away that, as appeared later, he could not know +the course of the battle and not one of his orders during the fight +could be executed. + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of +Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he had not had a +cold the orders he gave before and during the battle would have been +still more full of genius and Russia would have been lost and the face +of the world have been changed. To historians who believe that +Russia was shaped by the will of one man- Peter the Great- and that +France from a republic became an empire and French armies went to +Russia at the will of one man- Napoleon- to say that Russia remained a +power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August +may seem logical and convincing. + +If it had depended on Napoleon's will to fight or not to fight the +battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended +on his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of +his will might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who +omitted to bring Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth +would have been the savior of Russia. Along that line of thought +such a deduction is indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction +Voltaire made in jest (without knowing what he was jesting at) when he +saw that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX's +stomach being deranged. But to men who do not admit that Russia was +formed by the will of one man, Peter I, or that the French Empire +was formed and the war with Russia begun by the will of one man, +Napoleon, that argument seems not merely untrue and irrational, but +contrary to all human reality. To the question of what causes historic +events another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of +human events is predetermined from on high- depends on the coincidence +of the wills of all who take part in the events, and that a Napoleon's +influence on the course of these events is purely external and +fictitious. + +Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the +Massacre of St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX's will, though +he gave the order for it and thought it was done as a result of that +order; and strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of +eighty thousand men at Borodino was not due to Napoleon's will, though +he ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it +was done because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions +appear, yet human dignity- which tells me that each of us is, if not +more at least not less a man than the great Napoleon- demands the +acceptance of that solution of the question, and historic +investigation abundantly confirms it. + +At the battle of Borodino Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one. +That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore it was not he who +killed people. + +The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of +Borodino not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition. +The whole army- French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch- hungry, +ragged, and weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army +blocking their road to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be +drunk. Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the Russians, they +would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because +it was inevitable. + +When they heard Napoleon's proclamation offering them, as +compensation for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about +their having been in the battle before Moscow, they cried "Vive +l'Empereur!" just as they had cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at the sight of +the portrait of the boy piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy +stick, and just as they would have cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at any +nonsense that might be told them. There was nothing left for them to +do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go to fight, in order to get food +and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it was not because of +Napoleon's commands that they killed their fellow men. + +And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for +none of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know +what was going on before him. So the way in which these people +killed one another was not decided by Napoleon's will but occurred +independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands +of people who took part in the common action. It only seemed to +Napoleon that it all took place by his will. And so the question +whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than +the cold of the least of the transport soldiers. + +Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was +the cause of his dispositions not being as well planned as on former +occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as +previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon's +cold on the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant. + +The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even +better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories. +His pseudo-orders during the battle were also no worse than +formerly, but much the same as usual. These dispositions and orders +only seem worse than previous ones because the battle of Borodino +was the first Napoleon did not win. The profoundest and most excellent +dispositions and orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist +criticizes them with looks oks importance, when they relate to a +battle that has been lost, and the very worst dispositions and +orders seem very good, and serious people fill whole volumes to +demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a battle that has been +won. + +The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of +Austerlitz were a model of perfection for that kind of composition, +but still they were criticized- criticized for their very +perfection, for their excessive minuteness. + +Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as +representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other +battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he +inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did +not contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the +field of battle, but with his great tact and military experience +carried out his role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity. + +CHAPTER XXIX + +On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon +remarked: + +"The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!" + +Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to +him about Paris and about some changes he meant to make the Empress' +household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details +relating to the court. + +He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset's love +of travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon +who knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on +his apron while a patient is being strapped to the operating table. +"The matter is in my hands and is clear and definite in my head. +When the times comes to set to work I shall do it as no one else +could, but now I can jest, and the more I jest and the calmer I am the +more tranquil and confident you ought to be, and the more amazed at my +genius." + +Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest +before the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next +day. He was so much interested in that task that he was unable to +sleep, and in spite of his cold which had grown worse from the +dampness of the evening, he went into the large division of the tent +at three o'clock in the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked +whether the Russians had not withdrawn, and was told that the +enemy's fires were still in the same places. He nodded approval. + +The adjutant in attendance came into the tent. + +"Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?" Napoleon +asked him. + +"Without doubt, sire," replied Rapp. + +Napoleon looked at him. + +"Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at +Smolensk?" continued Rapp. "The wine is drawn and must be drunk." + +Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head +on his hand. + +"This poor army!" he suddenly remarked. "It has diminished greatly +since Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always +said so and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the +Guards are intact?" he remarked interrogatively. + +"Yes, sire," replied Rapp. + +Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his +watch. He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was +impossible to give further orders for the sake of killing time, for +the orders had all been given and were now being executed. + +"Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of +the Guards?" asked Napoleon sternly. + +"Yes, sire." + +"The rice too?" + +Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor's order about the rice, +but Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing +that his order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch. +Napoleon ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently +sipped his own. + +"I have neither taste nor smell," he remarked, sniffing at his +glass. "This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine- what is the +good of medicine when it can't cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these +lozenges but they don't help at all. What can doctors cure? One +can't cure anything. Our body is a machine for living. It is organized +for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it +defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by +encumbering it with remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that +should go for a certain time; watchmaker cannot open it, he can only +adjust it by fumbling, and that blindfold.... Yes, our body is just +a machine for living, that is all." + +And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was +fond, Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one. + +"Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?" asked he. "It is the +art of being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That's all." + +Rapp made no reply. + +"Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!" said Napoleon. "We +shall see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three +weeks and did not once mount a horse to inspect his +entrenchments.... We shall see!" + +He looked at his watch. It was still only four o'clock. He did not +feel sleepy. The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do. +He rose, walked to and fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went +out of the tent. The night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible +moisture was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were +dimly burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of +the Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was calm, and +the rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to +take up their positions were clearly audible. + +Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires +and listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman +in a shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel before his tent and had +drawn himself up like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon +stopped in front of him. + +"What year did you enter the service?" he asked with that +affectation of military bluntness and geniality with which he always +addressed the soldiers. + +The man answered the question. + +"Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its rice?" + +"It has, Your Majesty." + +Napoleon nodded and walked away. + +At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevardino. + +It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single cloud +lay in the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out +in the faint morning light. + +On the right a single deep report of a cannon resounded and died +away in the prevailing silence. Some minutes passed. A second and a +third report shook the air, then a fourth and a fifth boomed +solemnly near by on the right. + +The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang +out and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another. + +Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he +dismounted. The game had begun. + +CHAPTER XXX + +On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre +ordered his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the +morning, and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a +corner Boris had given up to him. + +Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already +left the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows and his +groom was shaking him. + +"Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!" he kept +repeating pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without +looking at him, having apparently lost hope of getting him to wake up. + +"What? Has it begun? Is it time?" Pierre asked, waking up. + +"Hear the firing," said the groom, a discharged soldier. "All the +gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness himself rode past +long ago." + +Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was +bright, fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth from +behind a cloud that had concealed it, was shining, with rays still +half broken by the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on +the dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on +the windows, the fence, and on Pierre's horses standing before the +hut. The roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant +accompanied by a Cossack passed by at a sharp trot. + +"It's time, Count; it's time!" cried the adjutant. + +Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down +the street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of +battle the day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there, +members of the staff could be heard conversing in French, and +Kutuzov's gray head in a white cap with a red band was visible, his +gray nape sunk between his shoulders. He was looking through a field +glass down the highroad before him. + +Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before +him, spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he had admired +from that spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of +troops and covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting +rays of the bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre, +cast upon it through the clear morning air penetrating streaks of +rosy, golden tinted light and long dark shadows. The forest at the +farthest extremity of the panorama seemed carved in some precious +stone of a yellowish-green color; its undulating outline was +silhouetted against the horizon and was pierced beyond Valuevo by +the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops. Nearer at hand glittered +golden cornfields interspersed with copses. There were troops to be +seen everywhere, in front and to the right and left. All this was +vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but what impressed Pierre most of all +was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino and the hollows on +both sides of the Kolocha. + +Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially +to the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy banks falls +into the Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve, +and to become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and +magically colored and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns +mingled with this mist, and over the whole expanse and through that +mist the rays of the morning sun were reflected, flashing back like +lightning from the water, from the dew, and from the bayonets of the +troops crowded together by the riverbanks and in Borodino. A white +church could be seen through the mist, and here and there the roofs of +huts in Borodino as well as dense masses of soldiers, or green +ammunition chests and ordnance. And all this moved, or seemed to move, +as the smoke and mist spread out over the whole space. Just as in +the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so along the entire line +outside and above it and especially in the woods and fields to the +left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high ground, clouds +of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now +singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others dense, +which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the +whole expanse. + +These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of sound of +the firing produced the chief beauty of the spectacle. + +"Puff!"- suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging +from violet into gray and milky white, and "boom!" came the report a +second later. + +"Puff! puff!"- and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending +together; and "boom, boom!" came the sounds confirming what the eye +had seen. + +Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a +round compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke +floating to one side, and- "puff" (with a pause)- "puff, puff!" +three and then four more appeared and then from each, with the same +interval- "boom- boom, boom!" came the fine, firm, precise sounds in +reply. It seemed as if those smoke clouds sometimes ran and +sometimes stood still while woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran +past them. From the left, over fields and bushes, those large balls of +smoke were continually appearing followed by their solemn reports, +while nearer still, in the hollows and woods, there burst from the +muskets small cloudlets that had no time to become balls, but had +their little echoes in just the same way. "Trakh-ta-ta-takh!" came the +frequent crackle of musketry, but it was irregular and feeble in +comparison with the reports of the cannon. + +Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets, +that movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and +his suite, to compare his impressions with those of others. They +were all looking at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed +to him, with the same feelings. All their faces were now shining +with that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before +and had fully understood after his talk with Prince Andrew. + +"Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!" Kutuzov was +saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from +the battlefield. + +Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way +down the knoll. + +"To the crossing!" said the general coldly and sternly in reply to +one of the staff who asked where he was going. + +"I'll go there too, I too!" thought Pierre, and followed the +general. + +The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went +to his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the +quietest, clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out +his toes pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his +spectacles were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and +reins, he galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to +smile as they watched him from the knoll. + +CHAPTER XXXI + +Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was +galloping turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him, +galloped in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He +tried to pass either in front of them or to the right or left, but +there were soldiers everywhere, all with expression and busy with some +unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same +dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white +hat, who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under +his horse's hoofs. + +"Why ride into the middle of the battalion?" one of them shouted +at him. + +Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre, +bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying +horse, galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space. + +There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood +firing. Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had +come to the bridge across the Kolocha between Gorki and Borodino, +which the French (having occupied Borodino) were attacking in the +first phase of the battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front +of him and that soldiers were doing something on both sides of it +and in the meadow, among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken +no notice of amid the smoke of the campfires the day before; but +despite the incessant firing going on there he had no idea that this +was the field of battle. He did not notice the sound of the bullets +whistling from every side, or the projectiles that flew over him, +did not see the enemy on the other side of the river, and for a long +time did not notice the killed and wounded, though many fell near him. +He looked about him with a smile which did not leave his face. + +"Why's that fellow in front of the line?" shouted somebody at him +again. + +"To the left!... Keep to the right!" the men shouted to him. + +Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of +Raevski's adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at +him, evidently also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing +him he nodded. + +"How have you got here?" he said, and galloped on. + +Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid +of getting in someone's way again, galloped after the adjutant. + +"What's happening here? May I come with you?" he asked. + +"One moment, one moment!" replied the adjutant, and riding up to a +stout colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message +and then addressed Pierre. + +"Why have you come here, Count?" he asked with a smile. "Still +inquisitive?" + +"Yes, yes," assented Pierre. + +But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on. + +"Here it's tolerable," said he, "but with Bagration on the left +flank they're getting it frightfully hot." + +"Really?" said Pierre. "Where is that?" + +"Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and +in our battery it is still bearable," said the adjutant. "Will you +come?" + +"Yes, I'll come with you," replied Pierre, looking round for his +groom. + +It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering along or +being carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over +the day before, a soldier was lying athwart the rows of scented hay, +with his head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off. + +"Why haven't they carried him away?" Pierre was about to ask, but +seeing the stern expression of the adjutant who was also looking +that way, he checked himself. + +Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the +adjutant to Raevski's Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the +adjutant's and jolted him at every step. + +"You don't seem to be used to riding, Count?" remarked the adjutant. + +"No it's not that, but her action seems so jerky," said Pierre in +a puzzled tone. + +"Why... she's wounded!" said the adjutant. "In the off foreleg above +the knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your +baptism of fire!" + +Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the +artillery which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening +them with the noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was +cool and quiet, with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant +dismounted and walked up the hill on foot. + +"Is the general here?" asked the adjutant on reaching the knoll. + +"He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way," someone +told him, pointing to the right. + +The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do with him now. + +"Don't trouble about me," said Pierre. "I'll go up onto the knoll if +I may?" + +"Yes, do. You'll see everything from there and it's less +dangerous, and I'll come for you." + +Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not +meet again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm +that day. + +The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards +known to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raevski's Redoubt, and +to the French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du +centre, around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French +regarded as the key to the whole position. + +This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which +trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that +were being fired through openings in the earthwork. + +In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also +fired incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When +ascending that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which +small trenches had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was +the most important point of the battle. + +On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought +it one of the least significant parts of the field. + +Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end of a trench +surrounding the battery and gazed at what was going on around him with +an unconsciously happy smile. Occasionally he rose and walked about +the battery still with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the +soldiers who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running +past him with bags and charges. The guns of that battery were being +fired continually one after another with a deafening roar, +enveloping the whole neighborhood in powder smoke. + +In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in +support, here in the battery where a small number of men busy at their +work were separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced +a common and as it were family feeling of animation. + +The intrusion of Pierre's nonmilitary figure in a white hat made +an unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at +him with surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior +artillery officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over +to Pierre as if to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at +him with curiosity. + +A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only +just out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two +guns entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly. + +"Sir," he said, "permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not +be here." + +The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at +Pierre. But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the +white hat was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of +the trench with a shy smile or, politely making way for the +soldiers, paced up and down the battery under fire as calmly as if +he were on a boulevard, their feeling of hostile distrust gradually +began to change into a kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers +feel for their dogs, cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that +live with the regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their +family, adopted him, gave him a nickname ("our gentleman"), and made +kindly fun of him among themselves. + +A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around +with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown +up. + +"And how's it you're not afraid, sir, really now?" a red-faced, +broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a +set of sound, white teeth. + +"Are you afraid, then?" said Pierre. + +"What else do you expect?" answered the soldier. "She has no +mercy, you know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards. +One can't help being afraid," he said laughing. + +Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre. +They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and +the discovery that he did so delighted them. + +"It's the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it's +wonderful! There's a gentleman for you!" + +"To your places!" cried the young officer to the men gathered +round Pierre. + +The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the +first or second time and therefore treated both his superiors and +the men with great precision and formality. + +The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing +more intense over the whole field, especially to the left where +Bagration's fleches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing +made it almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole +attention was engrossed by watching the family circle- separated +from all else- formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious +feeling of joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the +battlefield was now replaced by another, especially since he had +seen that soldier lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the +slope of the trench, he observed the faces of those around him. + +By ten o'clock some twenty men had already been carried away from +the battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more +frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled +around. But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and +merry voices and jokes were heard on all sides. + +"A live one!" shouted a man as a whistling shell approached. + +"Not this way! To the infantry!" added another with loud laughter, +seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports. + +"Are you bowing to a friend, eh?" remarked another, chaffing a +peasant who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over. + +Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out +to see what was happening in front. + +"They've withdrawn the front line, it has retired," said they, +pointing over the earthwork. + +"Mind your own business," an old sergeant shouted at them. "If +they've retired it's because there's work for them to do farther +back." + +And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a +shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter. + +"To the fifth gun, wheel it up!" came shouts from one side. + +"Now then, all together, like bargees!" rose the merry voices of +those who were moving the gun. + +"Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman's hat off!" cried the +red-faced humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre. "Awkward +baggage!" he added reproachfully to a cannon ball that struck a cannon +wheel and a man's leg. + +"Now then, you foxes!" said another, laughing at some militiamen +who, stooping low, entered the battery to carry away the wounded man. + +"So this gruel isn't to your taste? Oh, you crows! You're scared!" +they shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man +whose leg had been torn off. + +"There, lads... oh, oh!" they mimicked the peasants, "they don't +like it at all!" + +Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt, and after +every loss, the liveliness increased more and more. + +As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly +and rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in +opposition to what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire +growing more and more intense glowed in the faces of these men. + +Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned +to know what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching +this fire which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was +flaming up in the same way in his own soul. + +At ten o'clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in +front of the battery and along the Kamenka streamlet retreated. From +the battery they could be seen running back past it carrying their +wounded on their muskets. A general with his suite came to the +battery, and after speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look +and went away again having ordered the infantry supports behind the +battery to lie down, so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from +amid the ranks of infantry to the right of the battery came the +sound of a drum and shouts of command, and from the battery one saw +how those ranks of infantry moved forward. + +Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly +struck by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was +walking backwards and kept glancing uneasily around. + +The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their +long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few +minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back +from that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently +in the battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed. +Around the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No +one any longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted +at for being in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid +strides from one gun to another with a frowning face. The young +officer, with his face still more flushed, commanded the men more +scrupulously than ever. The soldiers handed up the charges, turned, +loaded, and did their business with strained smartness. They gave +little jumps as they walked, as though they were on springs. + +The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire +which Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly. Pierre standing +beside the commanding officer. The young officer, his hand to his +shako, ran up to his superior. + +"I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left. +Are we to continue firing?" he asked. + +"Grapeshot!" the senior shouted, without answering the question, +looking over the wall of the trench. + +Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a gasp and +bending double sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing. +Everything became strange, confused, and misty in Pierre's eyes. + +One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck the +earthwork, a soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these +sounds before, now heard nothing else. On the right of the battery +soldiers shouting "Hurrah!" were running not forwards but backwards, +it seemed to Pierre. + +A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by which he +was standing, crumbling down the earth; a black ball flashed before +his eyes and at the same instant plumped into something. Some +militiamen who were entering the battery ran back. + +"All with grapeshot!" shouted the officer. + +The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened whisper +informed him (as a butler at dinner informs his master that there is +no more of some wine asked for) that there were no more charges. + +"The scoundrels! What are they doing?" shouted the officer, +turning to Pierre. + +The officer's face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered +under his frowning brow. + +"Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!" he +yelled, angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and speaking to his men. + +"I'll go," said Pierre. + +The officer, without answering him, strode across to the opposite +side. + +"Don't fire.... Wait!" he shouted. + +The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition stumbled against +Pierre. + +"Eh, sir, this is no place for you," said he, and ran down the +slope. + +Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young officer +was sitting. + +One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him, falling in +front, beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down the slope. "Where am +I going?" he suddenly asked himself when he was already near the green +ammunition wagons. He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to +return or go on. Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to +the ground. At the same instant he was dazzled by a great flash of +flame, and immediately a deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made +his ears tingle. + +When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground leaning on +his hands; the ammunition wagons he had been approaching no longer +existed, only charred green boards and rags littered the scorched +grass, and a horse, dangling fragments of its shaft behind it, +galloped past, while another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, +uttering prolonged and piercing cries. + +CHAPTER XXXII + +Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the +battery, as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him. + +On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing +something there but that no shots were being fired from the battery. +He had no time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior +officer lying on the earth wall with his back turned as if he were +examining something down below and that one of the soldiers he had +noticed before was struggling forward shouting "Brothers!" and +trying to free himself from some men who were holding him by the +arm. He also saw something else that was strange. + +But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been killed, +that the soldier shouting "Brothers!" was a prisoner, and that another +man had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had +he run into the redoubt before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in +a blue uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting something. +Instinctively guarding against the shock- for they had been running +together at full speed before they saw one another- Pierre put out his +hands and seized the man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one +hand and by the throat with the other. The officer, dropping his +sword, seized Pierre by his collar. + +For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another's +unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and +what they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him +prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently +more inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre's +strong hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever +tighter and tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when +just above their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled, +and it seemed to Pierre that the French officer's head had been torn +off, so swiftly had he ducked it. + +Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without further +thought as to who had taken whom prisoner, the Frenchman ran back to +the battery and Pierre ran down the slope stumbling over the dead +and wounded who, it seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he +reached the foot of the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian +soldiers who, stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and +wildly toward the battery. (This was the attack for which Ermolov +claimed the credit, declaring that only his courage and good luck made +such a feat possible: it was the attack in which he was said to have +thrown some St. George's Crosses he had in his pocket into the battery +for the first soldiers to take who got there.) + +The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops +shouting "Hurrah!" pursued them so far beyond the battery that it +was difficult to call them back. + +The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them +was a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds +of wounded- some known to Pierre and some unknown- Russians and +French, with faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were +carried on stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went up onto +the knoll where he had spent over an hour, and of that family circle +which had received him as a member he did not find a single one. There +were many dead whom he did not know, but some he recognized. The young +officer still sat in the same way, bent double, in a pool of blood +at the edge of the earth wall. The red-faced man was still +twitching, but they did not carry him away. + +Pierre ran down the slope once more. + +"Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have +done!" he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers +moving from the battlefield. + +But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front +and especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be +seething in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not +diminish, but even increased to desperation like a man who, +straining himself, shrieks with all his remaining strength. + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought within the +seven thousand feet between Borodino and Bagration's fleches. Beyond +that space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the +Russians with Uvarov's cavalry at midday, and on the other side, +beyond Utitsa, Poniatowski's collision with Tuchkov; but these two +were detached and feeble actions in comparison with what took place in +the center of the battlefield. On the field between Borodino and the +fleches, beside the wood, the chief action of the day took place on an +open space visible from both sides and was fought in the simplest +and most artless way. + +The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred +guns. + +Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions, +Campan's and Dessaix's, advanced from the French right, while +Murat's troops advanced on Borodino from their left. + +From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the +fleches were two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as +the crow flies to Borodino, so that Napoleon could not see what was +happening there, especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid +the whole locality. The soldiers of Dessaix's division advancing +against the fleches could only be seen till they had entered the +hollow that lay between them and the fleches. As soon as they had +descended into that hollow, the smoke of the guns and musketry on +the fleches grew so dense that it covered the whole approach on that +side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could be caught of something +black- probably men- and at times the glint of bayonets. But whether +they were moving or stationary, whether they were French or Russian, +could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt. + +The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight +into Napoleon's face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked +at the fleches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it +looked as if the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved. +Sometimes shouts were heard through the firing, but it was +impossible to tell what was being done there. + +Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and +in its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and +sometimes Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he +could not tell where what he had seen was. + +He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it. + +Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed +intently at the battlefield. + +But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from +where he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which +some of his generals had taken their stand, but even from the +fleches themselves- in which by this time there were now Russian and +now French soldiers, alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive, +frightened, or maddened- even at those fleches themselves it was +impossible to make out what was taking place. There for several +hours amid incessant cannon and musketry fire, now Russians were +seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now infantry, and now cavalry: they +appeared, fired, fell, collided, not knowing what to do with one +another, screamed, and ran back again. + +From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from +his marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the +progress of the action, but all these reports were false, both because +it was impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at +any given moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the +actual place of conflict but reported what they had heard from others; +and also because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to +Napoleon circumstances changed and the news he brought was already +becoming false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings +that Borodino had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in +the hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished +the troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should +form up on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given- +almost as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino- the bridge +had been retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at +which Pierre had been present at the beginning of the battle. + +An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale and +frightened face and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been +repulsed, Campan wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time +the adjutant had been told that the French had been repulsed, the +fleches had in fact been recaptured by other French troops, and Davout +was alive and only slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily +untrustworthy reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either +been executed before he gave them or could not be and were not +executed. + +The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle +but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and +only occasionally went within musket range, made their own +arrangements without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in +what direction to fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry +should run. But even their orders, like Napoleon's, were seldom +carried out, and then but partially. For the most part things happened +contrary to their orders. Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on +meeting grapeshot; soldiers ordered to remain where they were, +suddenly, seeing Russians unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed +back and sometimes forward, and the cavalry dashed without orders in +pursuit of the flying Russians. In this way two cavalry regiments +galloped through the Semenovsk hollow and as soon as they reached +the top of the incline turned round and galloped full speed back +again. The infantry moved in the same way, sometimes running to +quite other places than those they were ordered to go to. All orders +as to where and when to move the guns, when to send infantry to +shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry- all such orders +were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the units concerned, +without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less Napoleon. +They did not fear getting into trouble for not fulfilling orders or +for acting on their own initiative, for in battle what is at stake +is what is dearest to man- his own life- and it sometimes seems that +safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and these +men who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to the +mood of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward +and backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops. +All their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the +harm of disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that +flew over the fields on which these men were floundering about. As +soon as they left the place where the balls and bullets were flying +about, their superiors, located in the background, re-formed them +and brought them under discipline and under the influence of that +discipline led them back to the zone of fire, where under the +influence of fear of death they lost their discipline and rushed about +according to the chance promptings of the throng. + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +Napoleon's generals- Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near that +region of fire and sometimes even entered it- repeatedly led into it +huge masses of well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had always +happened in their former battles, instead of the news they expected of +the enemy's flight, these orderly masses returned thence as +disorganized and terrified mobs. The generals re-formed them, but +their numbers constantly decreased. In the middle of the day Murat +sent his adjutant to Napoleon to demand reinforcements. + +Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, when +Murat's adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians would +be routed if His Majesty would let him have another division. + +"Reinforcements?" said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, looking +at the adjutant- a handsome lad with long black curls arranged like +Murat's own- as though he did not understand his words. + +"Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon to himself. "How can they need +reinforcements when they already have half the army directed against a +weak, unentrenched Russian wing?" + +"Tell the King of Naples," said he sternly, "that it is not noon +yet, and I don't yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!..." + +The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply without +removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men were +being slaughtered. + +Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier began +talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle. + +In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to interest +Napoleon, Berthier's eyes turned to look at a general with a suite, +who was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering horse. It was +Belliard. Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor with rapid +strides and in a loud voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity +of sending reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russians +were lost if the Emperor would give another division. + +Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and down +without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to the +generals of the suite around him. + +"You are very fiery, Belliard," said Napoleon, when he again came up +to the general. "In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake. +Go and have another look and then come back to me." + +Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part of +the battlefield galloped up. + +"Now then, what do you want?" asked Napoleon in the tone of a man +irritated at being continually disturbed. + +"Sire, the prince..." began the adjutant. + +"Asks for reinforcements?" said Napoleon with an angry gesture. + +The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, but +the Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped, came +back, and called Berthier. + +"We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms slightly apart. +"Who do you think should be sent there?" he asked of Berthier (whom he +subsequently termed "that gosling I have made an eagle"). + +"Send Claparede's division, sire," replied Berthier, who knew all +the divisions regiments, and battalions by heart. + +Napoleon nodded assent. + +The adjutant galloped to Claparede's division and a few minutes +later the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward. +Napoleon gazed silently in that direction. + +"No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can't send Claparede. Send +Friant's division." + +Though there was no advantage in sending Friant's division instead +of Claparede's, and even in obvious inconvenience and delay in +stopping Claparede and sending Friant now, the order was carried out +exactly. Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was +playing the part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines- a role he +so justly understood and condemned. + +Friant's division disappeared as the others had done into the +smoke of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arrive +at a gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They all +asked for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holding +their positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which the +French army was melting away. + +Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought. + +M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since +morning, came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest +lunch to His Majesty. + +"I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he. + +Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the +negation to refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M. de +Beausset ventured with respectful jocularity to remark that there is +no reason for not having lunch when one can get it. + +"Go away..." exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely, and turned +aside. + +A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed on M. +de Beausset's face and he glided away to the other generals. + +Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an +ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about and +always winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chances +of the game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely +he loses. + +His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same +preparations had been made, the same dispositions, and the same +proclamation courte et energique, he himself was still the same: he +knew that and knew that he was now even more experienced and +skillful than before. Even the enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and +Friedland- yet the terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturally +become impotent. + +All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with +success: the concentration of batteries on one point, an attack by +reserves to break the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by "the men +of iron," all these methods had already been employed, yet not only +was there no victory, but from all sides came the same news of +generals killed and wounded, of reinforcements needed, of the +impossibility of driving back the Russians, and of disorganization +among his own troops. + +Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a few +phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with +congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the +corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon +and stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to +gather in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola, +Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange was +happening to his troops. + +Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that this +was not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his +former battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the +men about him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked +dejected, and they all shunned one another's eyes- only a de +Beausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was happening. + +But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning +of a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all +efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and +that the least accident might now- with the fight balanced on such a +strained center- destroy him and his army. + +When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaign +in which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, or +cannon, or army corps had been captured in two months, when he +looked at the concealed depression on the faces around him and heard +reports of the Russians still holding their ground- a terrible feeling +like a nightmare took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents +that might destroy him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall +on his left wing, might break through his center, he himself might +be killed by a stray cannon ball. All this was possible. In former +battles he had only considered the possibilities of success, but now +innumerable unlucky chances presented themselves, and he expected them +all. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is +coming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a +terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels +that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of +unavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness. + +The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of the +French army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently on a +campstool below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on his knees. +Berthier approached and suggested that they should ride along the line +to ascertain the position of affairs. + +"What? What do you say?" asked Napoleon. "Yes, tell them to bring me +my horse." + +He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk. + +Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole space +through which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools of +blood, singly or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals +had ever before seen such horrors or so many slain in such a small +area. The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the +ear and gave a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does +to tableaux vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at Semenovsk, +and through the smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a color +unfamiliar to him. They were Russians. + +The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk village and its +knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line and sent +forth clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it was a +continuous slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French +or the Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into the +reverie from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop what +was going on before him and around him and was supposed to be directed +by him and to depend on him, and from its lack of success this affair, +for the first time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible. + +One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer to +lead the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing near +Napoleon, exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this +general's senseless offer. + +Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time. + +"At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have my Guard +destroyed!" he said, and turning his horse rode back to Shevardino. + +CHAPTER XXXV + +On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning +sat Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed. He gave no +orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested. + +"Yes, yes, do that," he replied to various proposals. "Yes, yes: go, +dear boy, and have a look," he would say to one or another of those +about him; or, "No, don't, we'd better wait!" He listened to the +reports that were brought him and gave directions when his +subordinates demanded that of him; but when listening to the reports +it seemed as if he were not interested in the import of the words +spoken, but rather in something else- in the expression of face and +tone of voice of those who were reporting. By long years of military +experience he knew, and with the wisdom of age understood, that it +is impossible for one man to direct hundreds of thousands of others +struggling with death, and he knew that the result of a battle is +decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where +the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of +slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the +army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in +his power. + +Kutuzov's general expression was one of concentrated quiet +attention, and his face wore a strained look as if he found it +difficult to master the fatigue of his old and feeble body. + +At eleven o'clock they brought him news that the fleches captured by +the French had been retaken, but that Prince Bagration was wounded. +Kutuzov groaned and swayed his head. + +"Ride over to Prince Peter Ivanovich and find out about it exactly," +he said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to the Duke of +Wurttemberg who was standing behind him. + +"Will Your Highness please take command of the first army?" + +Soon after the duke's departure- before he could possibly have +reached Semenovsk- his adjutant came back from him and told Kutuzov +that the duke asked for more troops. + +Kutuzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhturov to take over +the command of the first army, and a request to the duke- whom he said +he could not spare at such an important moment- to return to him. When +they brought him news that Murat had been taken prisoner, and the +staff officers congratulated him, Kutuzov smiled. + +"Wait a little, gentlemen," said he. "The battle is won, and there +is nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still, it is +better to wait before we rejoice." + +But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the army. + +When Scherbinin came galloping from the left flank with news that +the French had captured the fleches and the village of Semenovsk, +Kutuzov, guessing by the sounds of the battle and by Scherbinin's +looks that the news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and, +taking Scherbinin's arm, led him aside. + +"Go, my dear fellow," he said to Ermolov, "and see whether something +can't be done." + +Kutuzov was in Gorki, near the center of the Russian position. The +attack directed by Napoleon against our left flank had been several +times repulsed. In the center the French had not got beyond +Borodino, and on their left flank Uvarov's cavalry had put the +French to flight. + +Toward three o'clock the French attacks ceased. On the faces of +all who came from the field of battle, and of those who stood around +him, Kutuzov noticed an expression of extreme tension. He was +satisfied with the day's success- a success exceeding his +expectations, but the old man's strength was failing him. Several +times his head dropped low as if it were falling and he dozed off. +Dinner was brought him. + +Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding past Prince +Andrew had said, "the war should be extended widely," and whom +Bagration so detested, rode up while Kutuzov was at dinner. Wolzogen +had come from Barclay de Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on +the left flank. The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of +wounded men running back and the disordered rear of the army, +weighed all the circumstances, concluded that the battle was lost, and +sent his favorite officer to the commander in chief with that news. + +Kutuzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with difficulty and +glanced at Wolzogen with eyes that brightened under their puckering +lids. + +Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs, approached Kutuzov +with a half-contemptuous smile on his lips, scarcely touching the peak +of his cap. + +He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat affected +nonchalance intended to show that, as a highly trained military man, +he left it to Russians to make an idol of this useless old man, but +that he knew whom he was dealing with. "Der alte Herr" (as in their +own set the Germans called Kutuzov) "is making himself very +comfortable," thought Wolzogen, and looking severely at the dishes +in front of Kutuzov he began to report to "the old gentleman" the +position of affairs on the left flank as Barclay had ordered him to +and as he himself had seen and understood it. + +"All the points of our position are in the enemy's hands and we +cannot dislodge them for lack of troops, the men are running away +and it is impossible to stop them," he reported. + +Kutuzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze on Wolzogen, +as if not understand what was said to him. Wolzogen, noticing "the old +gentleman's" agitation, said with a smile: + +"I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness +what I have seen. The troops are in complete disorder..." + +"You have seen? You have seen?..." Kutuzov shouted frowning, and +rising quickly he went up to Wolzogen. + +"How... how dare you!..." he shouted, choking and making a +threatening gesture with his trembling arms: "How dare you, sir, say +that to me? You know nothing about it. Tell General Barclay from me +that his information is incorrect and that the real course of the +battle is better known to me, the commander in chief, than to him." + +Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutuzov interrupted him. + +"The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right +flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow yourself to say +what you don't know! Be so good as to ride to General Barclay and +inform him of my firm intention to attack the enemy tomorrow," said +Kutuzov sternly. + +All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy +breathing of the panting old general. + +"They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave +army! The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we shall drive him from the +sacred soil of Russia," said Kutuzov crossing himself, and he suddenly +sobbed as his eyes filled with tears. + +Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips, stepped +silently aside, marveling at "the old gentleman's" conceited +stupidity. + +"Ah, here he is, my hero!" said Kutuzov to a portly, handsome, +dark-haired general who was just ascending the knoll. + +This was Raevski, who had spent the whole day at the most +important part of the field of Borodino. + +Raevski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground +and that the French no longer ventured to attack. + +After hearing him, Kutuzov said in French: + +"Then you do not think, like some others, that we must retreat?" + +"On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions it is +always the most stubborn who remain victors," replied Raevski, "and in +my opinion..." + +"Kaysarov!" Kutuzov called to his adjutant. "Sit down and write +out the order of the day for tomorrow. And you," he continued, +addressing another, "ride along the line and that tomorrow we attack." + +While Kutuzov was talking to Raevski and dictating the order of +the day, Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said that General +Barclay wished to have written confirmation of the order the field +marshal had given. + +Kutuzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions for the +order to be written out which the former commander in chief, to +avoid personal responsibility, very judiciously wished to receive. + +And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which maintains +throughout an army one and the same temper, known as "the spirit of +the army," and which constitutes the sinew of war, Kutuzov's words, +his order for a battle next day, immediately became known from one end +of the army to the other. + +It was far from being the same words or the same order that +reached the farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth +to mouth at different ends of the army did not even resemble what +Kutuzov had said, but the sense of his words spread everywhere because +what he said was not the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a +feeling that lay in the commander in chief's soul as in that of +every Russian. + +And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the enemy, and +hearing from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted +to believe, the exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited. + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +Prince Andrew's regiment was among the reserves which till after one +o'clock were stationed inactive behind Semenovsk, under heavy +artillery fire. Toward two o'clock the regiment, having already lost +more than two hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled +oatfield in the gap between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery, where +thousands of men perished that day and on which an intense, +concentrated fire from several hundred enemy guns was directed between +one and two o'clock. + +Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the regiment +here lost another third of its men. From in front and especially +from the right, in the unlifting smoke the guns boomed, and out of the +mysterious domain of smoke that overlay the whole space in front, +quick hissing cannon balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly. +At times, as if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed +during which the cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but +sometimes several men were torn from the regiment in a minute and +the slain were continually being dragged away and the wounded +carried off. + +With each fresh blow less and less chance of life remained for those +not yet killed. The regiment stood in columns of battalion, three +hundred paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and +the same mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely +heard in the ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud of +a successful shot and the cry of "stretchers!" was heard. Most of +the time, by their officers' order, the men sat on the ground. One, +having taken off his shako, carefully loosened the gathers of its +lining and drew them tight again; another, rubbing some dry clay +between his palms, polished his bayonet; another fingered the strap +and pulled the buckle of his bandolier, while another smoothed and +refolded his leg bands and put his boots on again. Some built little +houses of the tufts in the plowed ground, or plaited baskets from +the straw in the cornfield. All seemed fully absorbed in these +pursuits. When men were killed or wounded, when rows of stretchers +went past, when some troops retreated, and when great masses of the +enemy came into view through the smoke, no one paid any attention to +these things. But when our artillery or cavalry advanced or some of +our infantry were seen to move forward, words of approval were heard +on all sides. But the liveliest attention was attracted by occurrences +quite apart from, and unconnected with, the battle. It was as if the +minds of these morally exhausted men found relief in everyday, +commonplace occurrences. A battery of artillery was passing in front +of the regiment. The horse of an ammunition cart put its leg over a +trace. "Hey, look at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She'll +fall.... Ah, they don't see it!" came identical shouts from the +ranks all along the regiment. Another time, general attention was +attracted by a small brown dog, coming heaven knows whence, which +trotted in a preoccupied manner in front of the ranks with tail +stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell close by, when it yelped, +tucked its tail between its legs, and darted aside. Yells and +shrieks of laughter rose from the whole regiment. But such +distractions lasted only a moment, and for eight hours the men had +been inactive, without food, in constant fear of death, and their pale +and gloomy faces grew ever paler and gloomier. + +Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the regiment, +paced up and down from the border of one patch to another, at the edge +of the meadow beside an oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind +his back. There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given. +Everything went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the +front, the wounded carried away, and the ranks closed up. If any +soldiers ran to the rear they returned immediately and hastily. At +first Prince Andrew, considering it his duty to rouse the courage of +the men and to set them an example, walked about among the ranks, +but he soon became convinced that this was unnecessary and that +there was nothing he could teach them. All the powers of his soul, +as of every soldier there, were unconsciously bent on avoiding the +contemplation of the horrors of their situation. He walked along the +meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the grass, and gazing at the +dust that covered his boots; now he took big strides trying to keep to +the footprints left on the meadow by the mowers, then he counted his +steps, calculating how often he must walk from one strip to another to +walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers from the wormwood that +grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and smelled their +pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained of the previous +day's thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with weary ears +to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flying +projectiles from the booming of the reports, glanced at the tiresomely +familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and waited. "Here it +comes... this one is coming our way again!" he thought, listening to +an approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. "One, another! +Again! It has hit...." He stopped and looked at the ranks. "No, it has +gone over. But this one has hit!" And again he started trying to reach +the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five paces +from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A chill +ran down his back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many had +been hit- a large crowd had gathered near the second battalion. + +"Adjutant!" he shouted. "Order them not to crowd together." + +The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction, approached Prince +Andrew. From the other side a battalion commander rode up. + +"Look out!" came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird +whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell +dropped with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and +close to the battalion commander's horse. The horse first, +regardless of whether it was right or wrong to show fear, snorted, +reared almost throwing the major, and galloped aside. The horse's +terror infected the men. + +"Lie down!" cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground. + +Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between +him and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the +field and the meadow. + +"Can this be death?" thought Prince Andrew, looking with a quite +new, envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of +smoke that curled up from the rotating black ball. "I cannot, I do not +wish to die. I love life- I love this grass, this earth, this air...." +He thought this, and at the same time remembered that people were +looking at him. + +"It's shameful, sir!" he said to the adjutant. "What..." + +He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the +sound of an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking +window frame, a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started +to one side, raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several +officers ran up to him. From the right side of his abdomen, blood +was welling out making a large stain on the grass. + +The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the +officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his face in the grass, +breathing heavily and noisily. + +"What are you waiting for? Come along!" + +The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but +he moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again. + +"Pick him up, lift him, it's all the same!" cried someone. + +They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on the stretcher. + +"Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means death! My +God!"- voices among the officers were heard saying. + +"It flew a hair's breadth past my ear," said the adjutant. + +The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders, started +hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to the dressing +station. + +"Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!" shouted an officer, seizing by +their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly +and jolting the stretcher. + +"Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!" said the foremost peasant. + +"Now that's right!" said the one behind joyfully, when he had got +into step. + +"Your excellency! Eh, Prince!" said the trembling voice of Timokhin, +who had run up and was looking down on the stretcher. + +Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from +the stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his +eyelids drooped. + +The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to dressing station by the +wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of +three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch +wood. In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were +eating oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and +pecked the grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among +the birch trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than +five acres, bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay. +Around the wounded stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with +dismal and attentive faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in +vain to drive from the spot. Disregarding the officers' orders, the +soldiers stood leaning against their stretchers and gazing intently, +as if trying to comprehend the difficult problem of what was taking +place before them. From the tents came now loud angry cries and now +plaintive groans. Occasionally dressers ran out to fetch water, or +to point out those who were to be brought in next. The wounded men +awaiting their turn outside the tents groaned, sighed, wept, screamed, +swore, or asked for vodka. Some were delirious. Prince Andrew's +bearers, stepping over the wounded who had not yet been bandaged, took +him, as a regimental commander, close up to one of the tents and there +stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andrew opened his eyes and +for a long time could not make out what was going on around him. He +remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the whirling black +ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life. Two steps from +him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and attracting +general attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired +noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had been wounded in +the head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his +talk, a crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was gathered. + +"We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we +grabbed the King himself!" cried he, looking around him with eyes that +glittered with fever. "If only reserves had come up just then, lads, +there wouldn't have been nothing left of him! I tell you surely..." + +Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew looked at him +with shining eyes and experienced a sense of comfort. "But isn't it +all the same now?" thought he. "And what will be there, and what has +there been here? Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was +something in this life I did not and do not understand." + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron, +holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his +small bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head +and looked about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He +evidently wanted a little respite. After turning his head from right +to left for some time, he sighed and looked down. + +"All right, immediately," he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince +Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent. + +Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting. + +"It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have +a chance!" remarked one. + +Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only +just been cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince +Andrew could not make out distinctly what was in that tent. The +pitiful groans from all sides and the torturing pain in his thigh, +stomach, and back distracted him. All he saw about him merged into a +general impression of naked, bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill +the whole of the low tent, as a few weeks previously, on that hot +August day, such bodies had filled the dirty pond beside the +Smolensk road. Yes, it was the same flesh, the same chair a canon, the +sight of which had even then filled him with horror, as by a +presentiment. + +There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied, +and on the third they placed Prince Andrew. For a little while he +was left alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on +the other two tables. On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a +Cossack, judging by the uniform thrown down beside him. Four +soldiers were holding him, and a spectacled doctor was cutting into +his muscular brown back. + +"Ooh, ooh, ooh!" grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his +swarthy snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white +teeth, he began to wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing, +ringing, and prolonged yells. On the other table, round which many +people were crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his +head thrown back. His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head +seemed strangely familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were +pressing on his chest to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg +twitched rapidly all the time with a feverish tremor. The man was +sobbing and choking convulsively. Two doctors- one of whom was pale +and trembling- were silently doing something to this man's other, gory +leg. When he had finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an +overcoat, the spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrew, wiping his +hands. + +He glanced at Prince Andrew's face and quickly turned away. + +"Undress him! What are you waiting for?" he cried angrily to the +dressers. + +His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to +Prince Andrew's mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began +hastily to undo the buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The +doctor bent down over the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he +made a sign to someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused +Prince Andrew to lose consciousness. When he came to himself the +splintered portions of his thighbone had been extracted, the torn +flesh cut away, and the wound bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on +his face. As soon as Prince Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent +over, kissed him silently on the lips, and hurried away. + +After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a +blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All +the best and happiest moments of his life- especially his earliest +childhood, when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when +leaning over him his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his +head in the pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of life- +returned to his memory, not merely as something past but as +something present. + +The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of +whose head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him +up and trying to quiet him. + +"Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!" his frightened moans +could be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs. + +Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted Andrew wanted to weep. +Whether because he was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to +part with life, or because of those memories of a childhood that could +not return, or because he was suffering and others were suffering +and that man near him was groaning so piteously- he felt like +weeping childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears. + +The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted +blood and with the boot still on. + +"Oh! Oh, ooh!" he sobbed, like a woman. + +The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince +Andrew from seeing his face, moved away. + +"My God! What is this? Why is he here?" said Prince Andrew to +himself. + +In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been +amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. Men were supporting him in +their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling, +swollen lips could not grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully. +"Yes, it is he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully +connected with me," thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping +what he saw before him. "What is the connection of that man with my +childhood and life?" he asked himself without finding an answer. And +suddenly a new unexpected memory from that realm of pure and loving +childhood presented itself to him. He remembered Natasha as he had +seen her for the first time at the ball in 1810, with her slender neck +and arms and with a frightened happy face ready for rapture, and +love and tenderness for her, stronger and more vivid than ever, +awoke in his soul. He now remembered the connection that existed +between himself and this man who was dimly gazing at him through tears +that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered everything, and ecstatic +pity and love for that man overflowed his happy heart. + +Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender +loving tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and +their errors. + +"Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for +those who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God +preached on earth and which Princess Mary taught me and I did not +understand- that is what made me sorry to part with life, that is what +remained for me had I lived. But now it is too late. I know it!" + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with dead and +wounded, together with the heaviness of his head and the news that +some twenty generals he knew personally had been killed or wounded, +and the consciousness of the impotence of his once mighty arm, +produced an unexpected impression on Napoleon who usually liked to +look at the killed and wounded, thereby, he considered, testing his +strength of mind. This day the horrible appearance of the +battlefield overcame that strength of mind which he thought +constituted his merit and his greatness. He rode hurriedly from the +battlefield and returned to the Shevardino knoll, where he sat on +his campstool, his sallow face swollen and heavy, his eyes dim, his +nose red, and his voice hoarse, involuntarily listening, with downcast +eyes, to the sounds of firing. With painful dejection he awaited the +end of this action, in which he regarded himself as a participant +and which he was unable to arrest. A personal, human feeling for a +brief moment got the better of the artificial phantasm of life he +had served so long. He felt in his own person the sufferings and death +he had witnessed on the battlefield. The heaviness of his head and +chest reminded him of the possibility of suffering and death for +himself. At that moment he did not desire Moscow, or victory, or glory +(what need had he for any more glory?). The one thing he wished for +was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when he had been on the +Semenovsk heights the artillery commander had proposed to him to bring +several batteries of artillery up to those heights to strengthen the +fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkovo. Napoleon had +assented and had given orders that news should be brought to him of +the effect those batteries produced. + +An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two hundred guns +had been concentrated on the Russians, as he had ordered, but that +they still held their ground. + +"Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on," said +the adjutant. + +"They want more!..." said Napoleon in a hoarse voice. + +"Sire?" asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark. + +"They want more!" croaked Napoleon frowning. "Let them have it!" + +Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and +for which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of +him, was being done. And he fell back into that artificial realm of +imaginary greatness, and again- as a horse walking a treadmill +thinks it is doing something for itself- he submissively fulfilled the +cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him. + +And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and conscience +darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening +lay more than on all the others who took part in it. Never to the +end of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the +significance of his actions which were too contrary to goodness and +truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to +grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as +they were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth, +goodness, and all humanity. + +Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn with +men killed and maimed (by his will as he believed), did he reckon as +he looked at them how many Russians there were for each Frenchman and, +deceiving himself, find reason for rejoicing in the calculation that +there were five Russians for every Frenchman. Not on that day alone +did he write in a letter to Paris that "the battle field was +superb," because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on the +island of St. Helena in the peaceful solitude where he said he +intended to devote his leisure to an account of the great deeds he had +done, he wrote: + +The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern +times: it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the +tranquillity and security of all; it was purely pacific and +conservative. + +It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the +beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening +out, full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system +was already founded; all that remained was to organize it. + +Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I +too should have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were +stolen from me. In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have +discussed our interests like one family, and have rendered account +to the peoples as clerk to master. + +Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people, +and anyone who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in +the common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all +navigable rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all, +and that the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to +mere guards for the sovereigns. + +On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong, +magnificent, peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have +proclaimed her frontiers immutable; all future wars purely +defensive, all aggrandizement antinational. I should have associated +my son in the Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and +his constitutional reign would have begun. + +Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the +envy of the nations! + +My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company +with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to +leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country +couple, every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing +wrongs, and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all +sides and everywhere. + +Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of +executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his +actions had been the peoples' welfare and that he could control the +fate of millions and by the employment of power confer benefactions. + +"Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula," he wrote further +of the Russian war, "half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles, +Bavarians, Wurttembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and +Neapolitans. The Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third +composed of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of the Rhine, +Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the +Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of Hamburg, and so on: +it included scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who spoke French. +The Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty thousand +men; the Russian army in its retreat from Vilna to Moscow lost in +the various battles four times more men than the French army; the +burning of Moscow cost the lives of a hundred thousand Russians who +died of cold and want in the woods; finally, in its march from +Moscow to the Oder the Russian army also suffered from the severity of +the season; so that by the the time it reached Vilna it numbered +only fifty thousand, and at Kalisch less than eighteen thousand." + +He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the +horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the +whole responsibility for what happened, and his darkened mind found +justification in the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who +perished there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians. + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and +various uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davydov +family and to the crown serfs- those fields and meadows where for +hundreds of years the peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and +Semenovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At +the dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for a +space of some three acres around. Crowds of men of various arms, +wounded and unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged themselves +back to Mozhaysk from the one army and back to Valuevo from the other. +Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their +officers. Others held their ground and continued to fire. + +Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter +of bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now +spread a mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of +saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall +on the dead and wounded, on the frightened, exhausted, and +hesitating men, as if to say: "Enough, men! Enough! Cease... bethink +yourselves! What are you doing?" + +To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest, +it began equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue to +slaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the +question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and +be killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don't want to +do so anymore!" By evening this thought had ripened in every soul. +At any moment these men might have been seized with horror at what +they were doing and might have thrown up everything and run away +anywhere. + +But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the +horror of what they were doing, though they would have been glad to +leave off, some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to +control them, and they still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed, +and applied the match, though only one artilleryman survived out of +every three, and though they stumbled and panted with fatigue, +perspiring and stained with blood and powder. The cannon balls flew +just as swiftly and cruelly from both sides, crushing human bodies, +and that terrible work which was not done by the will of a man but +at the will of Him who governs men and worlds continued. + +Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would +have said that, if only the French made one more slight effort, it +would disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French army +would have said that the Russians need only make one more slight +effort and the French would be destroyed. But neither the French nor +the Russians made that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowly +out. + +The Russians did not make that effort because they were not +attacking the French. At the beginning of the battle they stood +blocking the way to Moscow and they still did so at the end of the +battle as at the beginning. But even had the aim of the Russians +been to drive the French from their positions, they could not have +made this last effort, for all the Russian troops had been broken +up, there was no part of the Russian army that had not suffered in the +battle, and though still holding their positions they had lost ONE +HALF of their army. + +The French, with the memory of all their former victories during +fifteen years, with the assurance of Napoleon's invincibility, with +the consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield and +had lost only a quarter of their men and still had their Guards +intact, twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort. +The French had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from its +position ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians +continued to block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the French +had not been attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain. +But the French did not make that effort. Some historians say that +Napoleon need only have used his Old Guards, who were intact, and +the battle would have been won. To speak of what would have happened +had Napoleon sent his Guards is like talking of what would happen if +autumn became spring. It could not be. Napoleon did not give his +Guards, not because he did not want to, but because it could not be +done. All the generals, officers. and soldiers of the French army knew +it could not be done, because the flagging spirit of the troops +would not permitit. + +It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling +of the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and +soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not, +after all their experience of previous battles- when after one tenth +of such efforts the enemy had fled- experienced a similar feeling of +terror before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as +threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The +moral force of the attacking French army was exhausted. Not that +sort of victory which is defined by the capture of pieces of +material fastened to sticks, called standards, and of the ground on +which the troops had stood and were standing, but a moral victory that +convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his opponent and of +his own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodino. The French +invaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught received +a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not stop, any +more than the Russian army, weaker by one half, could help swerving. +By impetus gained, the French army was still able to roll forward to +Moscow, but there, without further effort on the part of the Russians, +it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal wound it had received at +Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle of Borodino was +Napoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the old +Smolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundred +thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at +Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit +had been laid. + +BOOK ELEVEN: 1812 + +CHAPTER I + +Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human +mind. Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only +when he examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but +at the same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the +arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements. +There is a well known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in +this, that Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was +following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast +as the tortoise. By the time Achilles has covered the distance that +separated him from the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of +that distance ahead of him: when Achilles has covered that tenth, +the tortoise has covered another one hundredth, and so on forever. +This problem seemed to the ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (that +Achilles could never overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that +motion was arbitrarily divided into discontinuous elements, whereas +the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was continuous. + +By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we only +approach a solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only when we +have admitted the conception of the infinitely small, and the +resulting geometrical progression with a common ratio of one tenth, +and have found the sum of this progression to infinity, do we reach +a solution of the problem. + +A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing +with the infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more +complex problems of motion which used to appear insoluble. + +This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when +dealing with problems of motion admits the conception of the +infinitely small, and so conforms to the chief condition of motion +(absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable error +which the human mind cannot avoid when it deals with separate elements +of motion instead of examining continuous motion. + +In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing +happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable +arbitrary human wills, is continuous. + +To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of +history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all +those human wills, man's mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected +units. The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily +selected series of continuous events and examine it apart from others, +though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event +always flows uninterruptedly from another. + +The second method is to consider the actions of some one man- a king +or a commander- as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills; +whereas the sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity +of a single historic personage. + +Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth +continually takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But +however small the units it takes, we feel that to take any unit +disconnected from others, or to assume a beginning of any +phenomenon, or to say that the will of many men is expressed by the +actions of any one historic personage, is in itself false. + +It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any +deductions drawn from history. It is merely necessary to select some +larger or smaller unit as the subject of observation- as criticism has +every right to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must +always be arbitrarily selected. + +Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the +differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) +and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum +of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history. + +The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe +present an extraordinary movement of millions of people. Men leave +their customary pursuits, hasten from one side of Europe to the other, +plunder and slaughter one another, triumph and are plunged in despair, +and for some years the whole course of life is altered and presents an +intensive movement which first increases and then slackens. What was +the cause of this movement, by what laws was it governed? asks the +mind of man. + +The historians, replying to this question, lay before us the sayings +and doings of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris, +calling these sayings and doings "the Revolution"; then they give a +detailed biography of Napoleon and of certain people favorable or +hostile to him; tell of the influence some of these people had on +others, and say: that is why this movement took place and those are +its laws. + +But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation, +but plainly says that this method of explanation is fallacious, +because in it a weaker phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger. +The sum of human wills produced the Revolution and Napoleon, and +only the sum of those wills first tolerated and then destroyed them. + +"But every time there have been conquests there have been +conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in any state +there have been great men," says history. And, indeed, human reason +replies: every time conquerors appear there have been wars, but this +does not prove that the conquerors caused the wars and that it is +possible to find the laws of a war in the personal activity of a +single man. Whenever I look at my watch and its hands point to ten, +I hear the bells of the neighboring church; but because the bells +begin to ring when the hands of the clock reach ten, I have no right +to assume that the movement of the bells is caused by the position +of the hands of the watch. + +Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the whistle and +see the valves opening and wheels turning; but I have no right to +conclude that the whistling and the turning of wheels are the cause of +the movement of the engine. + +The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the +oaks are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when +the oak is budding. But though I do not know what causes the cold +winds to blow when the oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the +peasants that the unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold +wind, for the force of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I +see only a coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the +phenomena of life, and I see that however much and however carefully I +observe the hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the +engine, and the oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells +ringing, the engine moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I +must entirely change my point of view and study the laws of the +movement of steam, of the bells, and of the wind. History must do +the same. And attempts in this direction have already been made. + +To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject +of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, +and the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are +moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to advance +in this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it +is evident that only along that path does the possibility of +discovering the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth +part as much mental effort has been applied in this direction by +historians as has been devoted to describing the actions of various +kings, commanders, and ministers and propounding the historians' own +reflections concerning these actions. + +CHAPTER II + +The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The +Russian army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk was reached, +and again from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army pushed on to +Moscow, its goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, +just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches +the earth. Behind it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken, +hostile country; ahead were a few dozen miles separating it from its +goal. Every soldier in Napoleon's army felt this and the invasion +moved on by its own momentum. + +The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of +hatred of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army +increased and consolidated. At Borodino a collision took place. +Neither army was broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately +after the collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding +with another having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability +the ball of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on +for some distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its +force. + +The Russians retreated eighty miles- to beyond Moscow- and the +French reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks +after that there was not a single battle. The French did not move. +As a bleeding, mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained +inert in Moscow for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh +reason, fled back: they made a dash for the Kaluga road, and (after +a victory- for at Malo-Yaroslavets the field of conflict again +remained theirs) without undertaking a single serious battle, they +fled still more rapidly back to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond +the Berezina, beyond Vilna, and farther still. + +On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov and the +whole Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino was a +victory. Kutuzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare +for a fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive +anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who +had taken part in the battle knew it. + +But all that evening and next day reports came in one after +another of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a +fresh battle proved physically impossible. + +It was impossible to give battle before information had been +collected, the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition +replenished, the slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to +replace those who had been killed, and before the men had had food and +sleep. And meanwhile, the very next morning after the battle, the +French army advanced of itself upon the Russians, carried forward by +the force of its own momentum now seemingly increased in inverse +proportion to the square of the distance from its aim. Kutuzov's +wish was to attack next day, and the whole army desired to do so. +But to make an attack the wish to do so is not sufficient, there +must also be a possibility of doing it, and that possibility did not +exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day's march, and then in the +same way it was impossible not to retreat another and a third day's +march, and at last, on the first of September when the army drew +near Moscow- despite the strength of the feeling that had arisen in +all ranks- the force of circumstances compelled it to retire beyond +Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last, day's march, and +abandoned Moscow to the enemy. + +For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles +are made by generals- as any one of us sitting over a map in his study +may imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that +battle- the questions present themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the +retreat not do this or that? Why did he not take up a position +before reaching Fili? Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga +road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to think in that +way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which always +limit the activities of any commander in chief. The activity of a +commander in chief does not all resemble the activity we imagine to +ourselves when we sit at case in our studies examining some campaign +on the map, with a certain number of troops on this and that side in a +certain known locality, and begin our plans from some given moment. +A commander in chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event- +the position from which we always contemplate it. The commander in +chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so +he never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event +that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping +itself, and at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted +shaping of events the commander in chief is in the midst of a most +complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities, +projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged +to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly +conflict with one another. + +Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutuzov +should have moved his army to the Kaluga road long before reaching +Fili, and that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But +a commander in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always +before him not one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these +proposals, based on strategics and tactics, contradict each other. + +A commander in chief's business, it would seem, is simply to +choose one of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and +time do not wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested +to him to cross to the Kaluga road, but just then an adjutant +gallops up from Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French +or retire. An order must be given him at once, that instant. And the +order to retreat carries us past the turn to the Kaluga road. And +after the adjutant comes the commissary general asking where the +stores are to be taken, and the chief of the hospitals asks where +the wounded are to go, and a courier from Petersburg brings a letter +from the sovereign which does not admit of the possibility of +abandoning Moscow, and the commander in chief's rival, the man who +is undermining him (and there are always not merely one but several +such), presents a new project diametrically opposed to that of turning +to the Kaluga road, and the commander in chief himself needs sleep and +refreshment to maintain his energy and a respectable general who has +been overlooked in the distribution of rewards comes to complain, +and the inhabitants of the district pray to be defended, and an +officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and gives a report quite +contrary to what was said by the officer previously sent; and a spy, a +prisoner, and a general who has been on reconnaissance, all describe +the position of the enemy's army differently. People accustomed to +misunderstand or to forget these inevitable conditions of a +commander in chief's actions describe to us, for instance, the +position of the army at Fili and assume that the commander in chief +could, on the first of September, quite freely decide whether to +abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army less +than four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had that +question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and most palpably +of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevardino and on the +twenty-sixth at Borodino, and each day and hour and minute of the +retreat from Borodino to Fili. + +CHAPTER III + +When Ermolov, having been sent by Kutuzov to inspect the position, +told the field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before +Moscow and that they must retreat, Kutuzov looked at him in silence. + +"Give me your hand," said he and, turning it over so as to feel +the pulse, added: "You are not well, my dear fellow. Think what you +are saying!" + +Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond +Moscow without a battle. + +On the Poklonny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomilov gate of +Moscow, Kutuzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the +roadside. A great crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count +Rostopchin, who had come out from Moscow, joined them. This +brilliant company separated into several groups who all discussed +the advantages and disadvantages of the position, the state of the +army, the plans suggested, the situation of Moscow, and military +questions generally. Though they had not been summoned for the +purpose, and though it was not so called, they all felt that this +was really a council of war. The conversations all dealt with public +questions. If anyone gave or asked for personal news, it was done in a +whisper and they immediately reverted to general matters. No jokes, or +laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all these men. They +evidently all made an effort to hold themselves at the height the +situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking among +themselves, tried to keep near the commander in chief (whose bench +formed the center of the gathering) and to speak so that he might +overhear them. The commander in chief listened to what was being +said and sometimes asked them to repeat their remarks, but did not +himself take part in the conversations or express any opinion. After +hearing what was being said by one or other of these groups he +generally turned away with an air of disappointment, as though they +were not speaking of anything he wished to hear. Some discussed the +position that had been chosen, criticizing not the position itself +so much as the mental capacity of those who had chosen it. Others +argued that a mistake had been made earlier and that a battle should +have been fought two days before. Others again spoke of the battle +of Salamanca, which was described by Crosart, a newly arrived +Frenchman in a Spanish uniform. (This Frenchman and one of the +German princes serving with the Russian army were discussing the siege +of Saragossa and considering the possibility of defending Moscow in +a similar manner.) Count Rostopchin was telling a fourth group that he +was prepared to die with the city train bands under the walls of the +capital, but that he still could not help regretting having been +left in ignorance of what was happening, and that had he known it +sooner things would have been different.... A fifth group, +displaying the profundity of their strategic perceptions, discussed +the direction the troops would now have to take. A sixth group was +talking absolute nonsense. Kutuzov's expression grew more and more +preoccupied and gloomy. From all this talk he saw only one thing: that +to defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full meaning of +those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any +senseless commander were to give orders to fight, confusion would +result but the battle would still not take place. It would not take +place because the commanders not merely all recognized the position to +be impossible, but in their conversations were only discussing what +would happen after its inevitable abandonment. How could the +commanders lead their troops to a field of battle they considered it +impossible to hold? The lower-grade officers and even the soldiers +(who too reason) also considered the position impossible and therefore +could not go to fight, fully convinced as they were of defeat. If +Bennigsen insisted on the position being defended and others still +discussed it, the question was no longer important in itself but +only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue. This Kutuzov knew well. + +Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian +patriotism (Kutuzov could not listen to this without wincing) by +insisting that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as +daylight to Kutuzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on +Kutuzov who had brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without +giving battle; if it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if +battle were not given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning +Moscow. But this intrigue did not now occupy the old man's mind. One +terrible question absorbed him and to that question he heard no +reply from anyone. The question for him now was: "Have I really +allowed Napoleon to reach Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it +decided? Can it have been yesterday when I ordered Platov to +retreat, or was it the evening before, when I had a nap and told +Bennigsen to issue orders? Or was it earlier still?... When, when +was this terrible affair decided? Moscow must be abandoned. The army +must retreat and the order to do so must be given." To give that +terrible order seemed to him equivalent to resigning the command of +the army. And not only did he love power to which he was accustomed +(the honours awarded to Prince Prozorovski, under whom he had served +in Turkey, galled him), but he was convinced that he was destined to +save Russia and that that was why, against the Emperor's wish and by +the will of the people, he had been chosen commander in chief. He +was convinced that he alone could maintain command of the army in +these difficult circumstances, and that in all the world he alone +could encounter the invincible Napoleon without fear, and he was +horrified at the thought of the order he had to issue. But something +had to be decided, and these conversations around him which were +assuming too free a character must be stopped. + +He called the most important generals to him. + +"My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself," said he, rising +from the bench, and he rode to Fili where his carriages were waiting. + +CHAPTER IV + +The Council of War began to assemble at two in the afternoon in +the better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyanov's hut. The men, +women, and children of the large peasant family crowded into the +back room across the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew's six-year-old +granddaughter whom his Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had +given a lump of sugar while drinking his tea, remained on the top of +the brick oven in the larger room. Malasha looked down from the oven +with shy delight at the faces, uniforms, and decorations of the +generals, who one after another came into the room and sat down on the +broad benches in the corner under the icons. "Granddad" himself, as +Malasha in her own mind called Kutuzov, sat apart in a dark corner +behind the oven. He sat, sunk deep in a folding armchair, and +continually cleared his throat and pulled at the collar of his coat +which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to pinch his neck. Those +who entered went up one by one to the field marshal; he pressed the +hands of some and nodded to others. His adjutant Kaysarov was about to +draw back the curtain of the window facing Kutuzov, but the latter +moved his hand angrily and Kaysarov understood that his Serene +Highness did not wish his face to be seen. + +Round the peasant's deal table, on which lay maps, plans, pencils, +and papers, so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in +another bench and put it beside the table. Ermolov, Kaysarov, and +Toll, who had just arrived, sat down on this bench. In the foremost +place, immediately under the icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his high +forehead merging into his bald crown. He had a St. George's Cross +round his neck and looked pale and ill. He had been feverish for two +days and was now shivering and in pain. Beside him sat Uvarov, who +with rapid gesticulations was giving him some information, speaking in +low tones as they all did. Chubby little Dokhturov was listening +attentively with eyebrows raised and arms folded on his stomach. On +the other side sat Count Ostermann-Tolstoy, seemingly absorbed in +his own thoughts. His broad head with its bold features and glittering +eyes was resting on his hand. Raevski, twitching forward the black +hair on his temples as was his habit, glanced now at Kutuzov and now +at the door with a look of impatience. Konovnitsyn's firm, handsome, +and kindly face was lit up by a tender, sly smile. His glance met +Malasha's, and the expression of his eyes caused the little girl to +smile. + +They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of +inspecting the position was finishing his savory dinner. They waited +for him from four till six o'clock and did not begin their +deliberations all that time talked in low tones of other matters. + +Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov leave his corner +and draw toward the table, but not near enough for the candles that +had been placed there to light up his face. + +Bennigsen opened the council with the question: "Are we to abandon +Russia's ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to +defend it?" A prolonged and general silence followed. There was a +frown on every face and only Kutuzov's angry grunts and occasional +cough broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malasha too +looked at "Granddad." She was nearest to him and saw how his face +puckered; he seemed about to cry, but this did not last long. + +"Russia's ancient and sacred capital!" he suddenly said, repeating +Bennigsen's words in an angry voice and thereby drawing attention to +the false note in them. "Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that +that question has no meaning for a Russian." (He lurched his heavy +body forward.) "Such a question cannot be put; it is senseless! The +question I have asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is a military +one. The question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up +Moscow without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the +army as well as Moscow? That is the question on which I want your +opinion," and he sank back in his chair. + +The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his game +lost. Admitting the view of Barclay and others that a defensive battle +at Fili was impossible, but imbued with Russian patriotism and the +love of Moscow, he proposed to move troops from the right to the +left flank during the night and attack the French right flank the +following day. Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced +for and against that project. Ermolov, Dokhturov, and Raevski agreed +with Bennigsen. Whether feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice +before abandoning the capital or guided by other, personal +considerations, these generals seemed not to understand that this +council could not alter the inevitable course of events and that +Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other generals, however, +understood it and, leaving aside the question of Moscow, of the +direction the army should take in its retreat. Malasha, who kept her +eyes fixed on what was going on before her, understood the meaning +of the council differently. It seemed to her that it was only a +personal struggle between "Granddad" and "Long-coat" as she termed +Bennigsen. She saw that they grew spiteful when they spoke to one +another, and in her heart she sided with "Granddad." In the midst of +the conversation she noticed "Granddad" give Bennigsen a quick, subtle +glance, and then to her joys he saw that "Granddad" said something +to "Long-coat" which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened and +paced angrily up and down the room. What so affected him was Kutuzov's +calm and quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen's +proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left flank to +attack the French right wing. + +"Gentlemen," said Kutuzov, "I cannot approve of the count's plan. +Moving troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous, +and military history supports that view. For instance..." Kutuzov +seemed to reflect, searching for an example, then with a clear, +naive look at Bennigsen he added: "Oh yes; take the battle of +Friedland, which I think the count well remembers, and which was... +not fully successful, only because our troops were rearranged too near +the enemy..." + +There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them +all. + +The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and +they all felt that there was no more to be said. + +During one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a deep sigh as if +preparing to speak. They all looked at him. + +"Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the +broken crockery," said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table. +"Gentlemen, I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with +me. But I," he paused, "by the authority entrusted to me by my +Sovereign and country, order a retreat." + +After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and +circumspect silence of people who are leaving, after a funeral. + +Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very different +from the way they had spoken during the council, communicated +something to their commander in chief. + +Malasha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed carefully +backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet catching at its +projections, and slipping between the legs of the generals she +darted out of the room. + +When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a long time with +his elbows on the table, thinking always of the same terrible +question: "When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become inevitable? +When was that done which settled the matter? And who was to blame +for it?" + +"I did not expect this," said he to his adjutant Schneider when +the latter came in late that night. "I did not expect this! I did +not think this would happen." + +"You should take some rest, your Serene Highness," replied +Schneider. + +"But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!" exclaimed +Kutuzov without replying, striking the table with his podgy fist. +"They shall too, if only..." + +CHAPTER V + +At that very time, in circumstances even more important than +retreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of +Moscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the instigator +of that event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov. + +After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow +was as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without +fighting. + +Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the +feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers. + +The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the +towns and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, without +the participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The +people awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited +or tear anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the +strength to find what it should do at that most difficult moment. +And as soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away +abandoning their property, while the poorer remained and burned and +destroyed what was left. + +The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was +and is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of +this, and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in +Russian Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already +in July and at the beginning of August showed that they expected this. +Those who went away, taking what they could and abandoning their +houses and half their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism +which expresses itself not by phrases or by giving one's children to +save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively, +simply, organically, and therefore in the way that always produces the +most powerful results. + +"It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running +away from Moscow," they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchin +impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed +to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing +it had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose that +Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had +committed in conquered countries. The first people to go away were the +rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had +remained intact and that during Napoleon's occupation the +inhabitants had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the +charming Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russian +ladies, then liked so much. + +They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to +whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It +was out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst +thing that could happen. They went away even before the battle of +Borodino and still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin's calls +to defend Moscow or the announcement of his intention to take the +wonder-working icon of the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, or +of the balloons that were to destroy the French, and despite all the +nonsense Rostopchin wrote in his broadsheets. They knew that it was +for the army to fight, and that if it could not succeed it would not +do to take young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter +of Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as they +were to abandon their property to destruction. They went away +without thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense and +wealthy city being given over to destruction, for a great city with +wooden buildings was certain when abandoned by its inhabitants to be +burned. They went away each on his own account, and yet it was only in +consequence of their going away that the momentous event was +accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian +people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count Rostopchin's +orders, had already in June moved with her Negroes and her women +jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a vague +consciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was really, +simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia. +But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now +had the government offices removed; now distributed quite useless +weapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the +icons, and now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics +of saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one +hundred and thirty-six of them removed the balloon that was being +constructed by Leppich; now hinted that he would burn Moscow and +related how he had set fire to his own house; now wrote a proclamation +to the French solemnly upbraiding them for having destroyed his +Orphanage; now claimed the glory of having hinted that he would burn +Moscow and now repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catch +all spies and bring them to him, and now reproached them for doing so; +now expelled all the French residents from Moscow, and now allowed +Madame Aubert-Chalme (the center of the whole French colony in Moscow) +to remain, but ordered the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to be +arrested and exiled for no particular offense; now assembled the +people at the Three Hills to fight the French and now, to get rid of +them, handed over to them a man to be killed and himself drove away by +a back gate; now declared that he would not survive the fall of +Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums concerning his share +in the affair- this man did not understand the meaning of what was +happening but merely wanted to do something himself that would +astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like a +child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event- the +abandonment and burning of Moscow- and tried with his puny hand now to +speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him along +with it. + +CHAPTER VI + +Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to Petersburg, +found herself in a difficult position. + +In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a grandee +who occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In Vilna she +had formed an intimacy with a young foreign prince. When she +returned to Petersburg both the magnate and the prince were there, and +both claimed their rights. Helene was faced by a new problem- how to +preserve her intimacy with both without offending either. + +What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another woman +did not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezukhova, who +evidently deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had +she attempted concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her +awkward position by cunning, she would have spoiled her case by +acknowledging herself guilty. But Helene, like a really great man +who can do whatever he pleases, at once assumed her own position to be +correct, as she sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else +was to blame. + +The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach +her, she lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said +firmly: "That's just like a man- selfish and cruel! I expected nothing +else. A woman sacrifices herself for you, she suffers, and this is her +reward! What right have you, monseigneur, to demand an account of my +attachments and friendships? He is a man who has been more than a +father to me!" The prince was about to say something, but Helene +interrupted him. + +"Well, yes," said she, "it may be that he has other sentiments for +me than those of a father, but that is not a reason for me to shut +my door on him. I am not a man, that I should repay kindness with +ingratitude! Know, monseigneur, that in all that relates to my +intimate feelings I render account only to God and to my +conscience," she concluded, laying her hand on her beautiful, fully +expanded bosom and looking up to heaven. + +"But for heaven's sake listen to me!" + +"Marry me, and I will be your slave!" + +"But that's impossible." + +"You won't deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you..." said +Helene, beginning to cry. + +The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite distraught, +said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying, +that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few, but +she mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she +had never been her husband's wife, and that she had been sacrificed. + +"But the law, religion..." said the prince, already yielding. + +"The law, religion... What have they been invented for if they can't +arrange that?" said Helene. + +The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred +to him, and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the +Society of Jesus, with whom he was on intimate terms. + +A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Helene +gave at her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur +de Jobert, a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant +black eyes, a Jesuit a robe courte~{ Lay member of the Society of Jesus. }~ was presented to her, and in the +garden by the light of the illuminations and to the sound of music +talked to her for a long time of the love of God, of Christ, of the +Sacred Heart, and of the consolations the one true Catholic religion +affords in this world and the next. Helene was touched, and more +than once tears rose to her eyes and to those of Monsieur de Jobert +and their voices trembled. A dance, for which her partner came to seek +her, put an end to her discourse with her future directeur de +conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de Jobert came to see Helene +when she was alone, and after that often came again. + +One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where she +knelt down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting, +middle-aged Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself +afterward described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze +wafted into her soul. It was explained to her that this was la grace. + +After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She confessed +to him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received a box +containing the Sacred Host, which was left at her house for her to +partake of. A few days later Helene learned with pleasure that she had +now been admitted to the true Catholic Church and that in a few days +the Pope himself would hear of her and would send her a certain +document. + +All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the +attention devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed in such +pleasant, refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity she was +now in (she wore only white dresses and white ribbons all that time) +gave her pleasure, but her pleasure did not cause her for a moment +to forget her aim. And as it always happens in contests of cunning +that a stupid person gets the better of cleverer ones, Helene- +having realized that the main object of all these words and all this +trouble was, after converting her to Catholicism, to obtain money from +her for Jesuit institutions (as to which she received indications)- +before parting with her money insisted that the various operations +necessary to free her from her husband should be performed. In her +view the aim of every religion was merely to preserve certain +proprieties while affording satisfaction to human desires. And with +this aim, in one of her talks with her Father Confessor, she +insisted on an answer to the question, in how far was she bound by her +marriage? + +They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room. +The scent of flowers came in at the window. Helene was wearing a white +dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbe, a +well-fed man with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth, +and white hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to Helene and, +with a subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful look of delight at +her beauty, occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his +opinion on the subject. Helene with an uneasy smile looked at his +curly hair and his plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every +moment expected the conversation to take a fresh turn. But the abbe, +though he evidently enjoyed the beauty of his companion, was +absorbed in his mastery of the matter. + +The course of the Father Confessor's arguments ran as follows: +"Ignorant of the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow +of conjugal fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering the married +state without faith in the religious significance of marriage, +committed an act of sacrilege. That marriage lacked the dual +significance it should have had. Yet in spite of this your vow was +binding. You swerved from it. What did you commit by so acting? A +venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial sin, for you acted without evil +intention. If now you married again with the object of bearing +children, your sin might be forgiven. But the question is again a +twofold one: firstly..." + +But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with one of her +bewitching smiles: "But I think that having espoused the true religion +I cannot be bound by what a false religion laid upon me." + +The director of her conscience was astounded at having the case +presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus' egg. He was +delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his pupil's progress, but +could not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously +constructed. + +"Let us understand one another, Countess," said he with a smile, and +began refuting his spiritual daughter's arguments. + +CHAPTER VII + +Helene understood that the question was very simple and easy from +the ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making +difficulties only because they were apprehensive as to how the +matter would be regarded by the secular authorities. + +So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of +society. She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him +what she had told her other suitor; that is, she put the matter so +that the only way for him to obtain a right over her was to marry her. +The elderly magnate was at first as much taken aback by this +suggestion of marriage with a woman whose husband was alive, as the +younger man had been, but Helene's imperturbable conviction that it +was as simple and natural as marrying a maiden had its effect on him +too. Had Helene herself shown the least sign of hesitation, shame, +or secrecy, her cause would certainly have been lost; but not only did +she show no signs of secrecy or shame, on the contrary, with +good-natured naivete she told her intimate friends (and these were all +Petersburg) that both the prince and the magnate had proposed to her +and that she loved both and was afraid of grieving either. + +A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Helene wanted +to be divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would +have opposed so illegal an intention) but simply that the +unfortunate and interesting Helene was in doubt which of the two men +she should marry. The question was no longer whether this was +possible, but only which was the better match and how the matter would +be regarded at court. There were, it is true, some rigid individuals +unable to rise to the height of such a question, who saw in the +project a desecration of the sacrament of marriage, but there were not +many such and they remained silent, while the majority were interested +in Helene's good fortune and in the question which match would be +the more advantageous. Whether it was right or wrong to remarry +while one had a husband living they did not discuss, for that question +had evidently been settled by people "wiser than you or me," as they +said, and to doubt the correctness of that decision would be to risk +exposing one's stupidity and incapacity to live in society. + +Only Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, had come to Petersburg that +summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express an +opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Helene at a ball she +stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence, +said in her gruff voice: "So wives of living men have started marrying +again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been +forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all +the brothels," and with these words Marya Dmitrievna, turning up her +wide sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly +round, moved across the room. + +Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she was regarded in +Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only +noticed, and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had +used, supposing the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word. + +Prince Vasili, who of late very often forgot what he had said and +repeated one and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his +daughter whenever he chanced to see her: + +"Helene, I have a word to say to you," and he would lead her +aside, drawing her hand downward. "I have heard of certain projects +concerning... you know. Well my dear child, you know how your father's +heart rejoices to know that you... You have suffered so much.... +But, my dear child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to +say," and concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek +against his daughter's and move away. + +Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever +man, and who was one of one of the disinterested friends so +brilliant a woman as Helene always has- men friends who can never +change into lovers- once gave her his view of the matter at a small +and intimate gathering. + +"Listen, Bilibin," said Helene (she always called friends of that +sort by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her +white, beringed fingers. "Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought +to do. Which of the two?" + +Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with +a smile on his lips. + +"You are not taking me unawares, you know," said he. "As a true +friend, I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see, +if you marry the prince"- he meant the younger man- and he crooked one +finger, "you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you +will displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of +connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last +days happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no longer be +making a mesalliance by marrying you," and Bilibin smoothed out his +forehead. + +"That's a true friend!" said Helene beaming, and again touching +Bilibin's sleeve. "But I love them, you know, and don't want to +distress either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of +them both." + +Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he +could help in that difficulty. + +"Une maitresse-femme!~{ A masterly woman. }~ That's what is called putting things +squarely. She would like to be married to all three at the same time," +thought he. + +"But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?" Bilibin +asked, his reputation being so well established that he did not fear +to ask so naive a question. "Will he agree?" + +"Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that +Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me." + +Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty. + +"Even divorce you?" said he. + +Helene laughed. + +Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed +marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually +tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned +a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to +the idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of +divorce and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest +told her that it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a +text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him) plainly remarriage +while the husband is alive. + +Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, +she drove to her daughter's early one morning so as to find her alone. + +Having listened to her mother's objections, Helene smiled blandly +and ironically. + +"But it says plainly: 'Whosoever shall marry her that is +divorced...'" said the old princess. + +"Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rein. Dans ma +position j'ai des devoirs,"~{ "Oh, Mamma, don't talk nonsense! You don't understand anything. +In my position I have obligations. }~ said Helene changing from Russian, in +which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite +clear, into French which suited it better. + +"But, my dear...." + +"Oh, Mamma, how is it you don't understand that the Holy Father, who +has the right to grant dispensations..." + +Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene came in to +announce that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her. + +"Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse +contre lui, parce qu'il m' a manque parole."~{ "No, tell him I don't wish to see him, I am furious with him for +not keeping his word to me." }~ + +"Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde,"~{ "Countess, there is mercy for every sin." }~ said a fair-haired young +man with a long face and nose, as he entered the room. + +The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who +had entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter +and sidled out of the room. + +"Yes, she is right," thought the old princess, all her convictions +dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. "She is right, but how +is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so +simple," she thought as she got into her carriage. + +By the beginning of August Helene's affairs were clearly defined and +she wrote a letter to her husband- who, as she imagined, loved her +very much- informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her +having embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all +the formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to +him by the bearer of the letter. + +And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful +keeping- Your friend Helene. + +This letter was brought to Pierre's house when he was on the field +of Borodino. + +CHAPTER VIII + +Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having run down +from Raevski's battery a second time, made his way through a gully +to Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station, +and seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still +entangled in the crowds of soldiers. + +The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away +quickly from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that +day and return to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a +room in his own bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of +life would he be able to understand himself and all he had seen and +felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found. + +Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along +which he was going, still on all sides there was what there had been +on the field of battle. There were still the same suffering, +exhausted, and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same +blood, the same soldiers' overcoats, the same sounds of firing +which, though distant now, still aroused terror, and besides this +there were the foul air and the dust. + +Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road, Pierre sat +down by the roadside. + +Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay +leaning on his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved +past him in the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon +ball was flying toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he +shuddered and sat up. He had no idea how long he had been there. In +the middle of the night three soldiers, having brought some +firewood, settled down near him and began lighting a fire. + +The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire +to burn and placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some +dried bread and put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy +viands mingled with the smell of smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed. +The three soldiers were eating and talking among themselves, taking no +notice of him. + +"And who may you be?" one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently +meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: "If you want to eat +we'll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest +man." + +"I, I..." said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social +position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and +better understood by them. "By rights I am a militia officer, but my +men are not here. I came to the battle and have lost them." + +"There now!" said one of the soldiers. + +Another shook his head. + +"Would you like a little mash?" the first soldier asked, and +handed Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean. + +Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they +called the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than +any food he had ever tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it, +helping himself to large spoonfuls and chewing one after another, +his was lit up by the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence. + +"Where have you to go to? Tell us!" said one of them. + +"To Mozhaysk." + +"You're a gentleman, aren't you?" + +"Yes." + +"And what's your name?" + +"Peter Kirilych." + +"Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we'll take you +there." + +In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozhaysk. + +By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began ascending the steep +hill into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on +with the soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom +of the hill and that he had already passed it. He would not soon +have remembered this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he +not halfway up the hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to +look for him in the town and was returning to the inn. The groom +recognized Pierre in the darkness by his white hat. + +"Your excellency!" he said. "Why, we were beginning to despair! +How is it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?" + +"Oh, yes!" said Pierre. + +The soldiers stopped. + +"So you've found your folk?" said one of them. "Well, good-by, Peter +Kirilych- isn't it?" + +"Good-by, Peter Kirilych!" Pierre heard the other voices repeat. + +"Good-by!" he said and turned with his groom toward the inn. + +"I ought to give them something!" he thought, and felt in his +pocket. "No, better not!" said another, inner voice. + +There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied. +Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all, +lay down in his carriage. + +CHAPTER IX + +Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt +himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness +of reality, he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of +projectiles, groans and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a +feeling of horror and dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he +opened his eyes and lifted his head from under his cloak. All was +tranquil in the yard. Only someone's orderly passed through the +gateway, splashing through the mud, and talked to the innkeeper. Above +Pierre's head some pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in +sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof of the penthouse. The +whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful smell of stable +yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see the clear +starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses. + +"Thank God, there is no more of that!" he thought, covering up his +head again. "Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I +yielded to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time, +to the end..." thought he. + +They, in Pierre's mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the +battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before +the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood +out clearly and sharply from everyone else. + +"To be a soldier, just a soldier!" thought Pierre as he fell asleep, +"to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them +what they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden +of my outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could +have run away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been +sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with Dolokhov." And the +memory of the dinner at the English Club when he had challenged +Dolokhov flashed through Pierre's mind, and then he remembered his +benefactor at Torzhok. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the +lodge presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at the English +Club and someone near and dear to him sat at the end of the table. +"Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor. But he died!" thought Pierre. +"Yes, he died, and I did not know he was alive. How sorry I am that he +died, and how glad I am that he is alive again!" On one side of the +table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski, Denisov, and others like +them (in his dream the category to which these men belonged was as +clearly defined in his mind as the category of those he termed +they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dolokhov, shouting and +singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his benefactor +was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words was as +weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but +pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor +was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite +distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the +possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind, +firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they +were kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him. +Wishing to speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at +that moment his legs grew cold and bare. + +He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his +cloak had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his +cloak Pierre opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs, +posts, and yard, but now they were all bluish, lit up, and +glittering with frost or dew. + +"It is dawn," thought Pierre. "But that's not what I want. I want to +hear and understand my benefactor's words." Again he covered himself +up with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was +there. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts +that someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating. + +Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that +someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of +that day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to +think and express his thoughts like that when awake. + +"To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man's +freedom to the law of God," the voice had said. "Simplicity is +submission to the will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they +are simple. They do not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but +the unspoken is golden. Man can be master of nothing while he fears +death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no +suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. +The hardest thing [Pierre went on thinking, or hearing, in his +dream] is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To +unite all?" he asked himself. "No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be +united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need! +Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!" he repeated to himself +with inward rapture, feeling that these words and they alone expressed +what he wanted to say and solved the question that tormented him. + +"Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness." + +"Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your +excellency!" some voice was repeating. "We must harness, it is time to +harness...." + +It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone +straight into Pierre's face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the +middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump +while carts were passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with +repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the carriage +seat. "No, I don't want that, I don't want to see and understand that. +I want to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream. +One second more and I should have understood it all! But what am I +to do? Harness, but how can I harness everything?" and Pierre felt +with horror that the meaning of all he had seen and thought in the +dream had been destroyed. + +The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an +officer had come with news that the French were already near +Mozhaysk and that our men were leaving it. + +Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him, +went on foot through the town. + +The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind +them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses, +and the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts +that were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and +blows could be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which +had overtaken him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him to +Moscow. On the way Pierre was told of the death of his +brother-in-law Anatole and of that of Prince Andrew. + +CHAPTER X + +On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the +gates of the city he was met by Count Rostopchin's adjutant. + +"We have been looking for you everywhere," said the adjutant. "The +count wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at +once on a very important matter." + +Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow +commander in chief. + +Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to town from his +summer villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom and reception room of his +house were full of officials who had been summoned or had come for +orders. Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and +explained to him that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it +would have to be surrendered. Though this news was being concealed +from the inhabitants, the officials- the heads of the various +government departments- knew that Moscow would soon be in the +enemy's hands, just as Count Rostopchin himself knew it, and to escape +personal responsibility they had all come to the governor to ask how +they were to deal with their various departments. + +As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army +came out of Rostopchin's private room. + +In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the courier made a +despairing gesture with his hand and passed through the room. + +While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary eyes watched +the various officials, old and young, military and civilian, who +were there. They all seemed dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to +a group of men, one of whom he knew. After greeting Pierre they +continued their conversation. + +"If they're sent out and brought back again later on it will do no +harm, but as things are now one can't answer for anything." + +"But you see what he writes..." said another, pointing to a +printed sheet he held in his hand. + +"That's another matter. That's necessary for the people," said the +first. + +"What is it?" asked Pierre. + +"Oh, it's a fresh broadsheet." + +Pierre took it and began reading. + +His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in order to join +up with the troops moving toward him and has taken up a strong +position where the enemy will not soon attack him. Forty eight guns +with ammunition have been sent him from here, and his Serene +Highness says he will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is +even ready to fight in the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that +the law courts are closed; things have to be put in order, and we will +deal with villains in our own way! When the time comes I shall want +both town and peasant lads and will raise the cry a day or two +beforehand, but they are not wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will +be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a three-pronged fork will be +best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow +after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the Mother of God to the +wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will have some water +blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I, too, am well now: +one of my eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout with both. + +"But military men have told me that it is impossible to fight in the +town," said Pierre, "and that the position..." + +"Well, of course! That's what we were saying," replied the first +speaker. + +"And what does he mean by 'One of my eyes was sore but now I am on +the lookout with both'?" asked Pierre. + +"The count had a sty," replied the adjutant smiling, "and was very +much upset when I told him people had come to ask what was the +matter with him. By the by, Count," he added suddenly, addressing +Pierre with a smile, "we heard that you have family troubles and +that the countess, your wife..." + +"I have heard nothing," Pierre replied unconcernedly. "But what have +you heard?" + +"Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say what I +heard." + +"But what did you hear?" + +"Well, they say," continued the adjutant with the same smile, +"that the countess, your wife, is preparing to go abroad. I expect +it's nonsense...." + +"Possibly," remarked Pierre, looking about him absent-mindedly. "And +who is that?" he asked, indicating a short old man in a clean blue +peasant overcoat, with a big snow-white beard and eyebrows and a ruddy +face. + +"He? That's a tradesman, that is to say, he's the restaurant keeper, +Vereshchagin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the +proclamation." + +"Oh, so that is Vereshchagin!" said Pierre, looking at the firm, +calm face of the old man and seeking any indication of his being a +traitor. + +"That's not he himself, that's the father of the fellow who wrote +the proclamation," said the adjutant. "The young man is in prison +and I expect it will go hard with him." + +An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a German +wearing a cross round his neck, approached the speaker. + +"It's a complicated story, you know," said the adjutant. "That +proclamation appeared about two months ago. The count was informed +of it. He gave orders to investigate the matter. Gabriel Ivanovich +here made the inquiries. The proclamation had passed through exactly +sixty-three hands. He asked one, 'From whom did you get it?' 'From +so-and-so.' He went to the next one. 'From whom did you get it?' and +so on till he reached Vereshchagin, a half educated tradesman, you +know, 'a pet of a trader,'" said the adjutant smiling. "They asked +him, 'Who gave it you?' And the point is that we knew whom he had it +from. He could only have had it from the Postmaster. But evidently +they had come to some understanding. He replied: 'From no one; I +made it up myself.' They threatened and questioned him, but he stuck +to that: 'I made it up myself.' And so it was reported to the count, +who sent for the man. 'From whom did you get the proclamation?' 'I +wrote it myself.' Well, you know the count," said the adjutant +cheerfully, with a smile of pride, "he flared up dreadfully- and +just think of the fellow's audacity, lying, and obstinacy!" + +"And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharev? I +understand!" said Pierre. + +"Not at all," rejoined the adjutant in dismay. "Klyucharev had his +own sins to answer for without that and that is why he has been +banished. But the point is that the count was much annoyed. 'How could +you have written it yourself?' said he, and he took up the Hamburg +Gazette that was lying on the table. 'Here it is! You did not write it +yourself but translated it, and translated it abominably, because +you don't even know French, you fool.' And what do you think? 'No,' +said he, 'I have not read any papers, I made it up myself.' 'If that's +so, you're a traitor and I'll have you tried, and you'll be hanged! +Say from whom you had it.' 'I have seen no papers, I made it up +myself.' And that was the end of it. The count had the father fetched, +but the fellow stuck to it. He was sent for trial and condemned to +hard labor, I believe. Now the father has come to intercede for him. +But he's a good-for-nothing lad! You know that sort of tradesman's +son, a dandy and lady-killer. He attended some lectures somewhere +and imagines that the devil is no match for him. That's the sort of +fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop here by the Stone Bridge, +and you know there was a large icon of God Almighty painted with a +scepter in one hand and an orb in the other. Well, he took that icon +home with him for a few days and what did he do? He found some +scoundrel of a painter..." + +CHAPTER XI + +In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to the +commander in chief. + +When he entered the private room Count Rostopchin, puckering his +face, was rubbing his forehead and eyes with his hand. A short man was +saying something, but when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went +out. + +"Ah, how do you do, great warrior?" said Rostopchin as soon as the +short man had left the room. "We have heard of your prowess. But +that's not the point. Between ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to +the Masons?" he went on severely, as though there were something wrong +about it which he nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre remained +silent. "I am well informed, my friend, but I am aware that there +are Masons and Masons and I hope that you are not one of those who +on pretense of saving mankind wish to ruin Russia." + +"Yes, I am a Mason," Pierre replied. + +"There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs. +Speranski and Magnitski have been deported to their proper place. +Mr. Klyucharev has been treated in the same way, and so have others +who on the plea of building up the temple of Solomon have tried to +destroy the temple of their fatherland. You can understand that +there are reasons for this and that I could not have exiled the +Postmaster had he not been a harmful person. It has now come to my +knowledge that you lent him your carriage for his removal from town, +and that you have even accepted papers from him for safe custody. I +like you and don't wish you any harm and- as you are only half my age- +I advise you, as a father would, to cease all communication with men +of that stamp and to leave here as soon as possible." + +"But what did Klyucharev do wrong, Count?" asked Pierre. + +"That is for me to know, but not for you to ask," shouted +Rostopchin. + +"If he is accused of circulating Napoleon's proclamation it is not +proved that he did so," said Pierre without looking at Rostopchin, +"and Vereshchagin..." + +"There we are!" Rostopchin shouted at Pierre louder than before, +frowning suddenly. "Vereshchagin is a renegade and a traitor who +will be punished as he deserves," said he with the vindictive heat +with which people speak when recalling an insult. "But I did not +summon you to discuss my actions, but to give you advice- or an +order if you prefer it. I beg you to leave the town and break off +all communication with such men as Klyucharev. And I will knock the +nonsense out of anybody"- but probably realizing that he was +shouting at Bezukhov who so far was not guilty of anything, he +added, taking Pierre's hand in a friendly manner, "We are on the eve +of a public disaster and I haven't time to be polite to everybody +who has business with me. My head is sometimes in a whirl. Well, mon +cher, what are you doing personally?" + +"Why, nothing," answered Pierre without raising his eyes or changing +the thoughtful expression of his face. + +The count frowned. + +"A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as you can, +that's all I have to tell you. Happy he who has ears to hear. Good-by, +my dear fellow. Oh, by the by!" he shouted through the doorway after +Pierre, "is it true that the countess has fallen into the clutches +of the holy fathers of the Society of Jesus?" + +Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchin's room more sullen and +angry than he had ever before shown himself. + +When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some eight +people had come to see him that evening: the secretary of a committee, +the colonel of his battalion, his steward, his major-domo, and various +petitioners. They all had business with Pierre and wanted decisions +from him. Pierre did not understand and was not interested in any of +these questions and only answered them in order to get rid of these +people. When left alone at last he opened and read his wife's letter. + +"They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed... that old +man... Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is necessary... +the meaning of all... one must harness... my wife is getting +married... One must forget and understand..." And going to his bed +he threw himself on it without undressing and immediately fell asleep. + +When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to inform him that +a special messenger, a police officer, had come from Count +Rostopchin to know whether Count Bezukhov had left or was leaving +the town. + +A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were awaiting him in +the drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to +see them, went to the back porch and out through the gate. + +From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of +Bezukhov's household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre +again or knew where he was. + +CHAPTER XII + +The Rostovs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is, +till the eve of the enemy's entry into the city. + +After Petya had joined Obolenski's regiment of Cossacks and left for +Belaya Tserkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was +seized with terror. The thought that both her sons were at the war, +had both gone from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or +both of them might be killed like the three sons of one of her +acquaintances, struck her that summer for the first time with cruel +clearness. She tried to get Nicholas back and wished to go herself +to join Petya, or to get him an appointment somewhere in Petersburg, +but neither of these proved possible. Petya could not return unless +his regiment did so or unless he was transferred to another regiment +on active service. Nicholas was somewhere with the army and had not +sent a word since his last letter, in which he had given a detailed +account of his meeting with Princess Mary. The countess did not +sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep dreamed that she saw her +sons lying dead. After many consultations and conversations, the count +at last devised means to tranquillize her. He got Petya transferred +from Obolenski's regiment to Bezukhov's, which was in training near +Moscow. Though Petya would remain in the service, this transfer +would give the countess the consolation of seeing at least one of +her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for her +Petya so as not to let him go again, but always get him appointed to +places where he could not possibly take part in a battle. As long as +Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved +her first-born more than all her other children and even reproached +herself for it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad +at lessons, was always breaking things in the house and making himself +a nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Petya with his merry black +eyes and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show- +when he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were +fighting somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure +in it- then his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all +her other children. The nearer the time came for Petya to return, +the more uneasy grew the countess. She began to think she would +never live to see such happiness. The presence of Sonya, of her +beloved Natasha, or even of her husband irritated her. "What do I want +with them? I want no one but Petya," she thought. + +At the end of August the Rostovs received another letter from +Nicholas. He wrote from the province of Voronezh where he had been +sent to procure remounts, but that letter did not set the countess +at ease. Knowing that one son was out of danger she became the more +anxious about Petya. + +Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostovs' +acquaintances had left Moscow, and though everybody tried to +persuade the countess to get away as quickly as possible, she would +not bear of leaving before her treasure, her adored Petya, returned. +On the twenty-eighth of August he arrived. The passionate tenderness +with which his mother received him did not please the sixteen-year-old +officer. Though she concealed from him her intention of keeping him +under her wing, Petya guessed her designs, and instinctively fearing +that he might give way to emotion when with her- might "become +womanish" as he termed it to himself- he treated her coldly, avoided +her, and during his stay in Moscow attached himself exclusively to +Natasha for whom he had always had a particularly brotherly +tenderness, almost lover-like. + +Owing to the count's customary carelessness nothing was ready for +their departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were +to come from their Ryazan and Moscow estates to remove their household +belongings did not arrive till the thirtieth. + +From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a +bustle and commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodino +were brought in by the Dorogomilov gate and taken to various parts +of Moscow, and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their +possessions out by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchin's +broadsheets, or because of them or independently of them, the +strangest and most contradictory rumors were current in the town. Some +said that no one was to be allowed to leave the city, others on the +contrary said that all the icons had been taken out of the churches +and everybody was to be ordered to leave. Some said there had been +another battle after Borodino at which the French had been routed, +while others on the contrary reported that the Russian army bad been +destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia which, preceded by the +clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others whispered that Augustin +had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had been seized, that the +peasants were rioting and robbing people on their way from Moscow, and +so on. But all this was only talk; in reality (though the Council of +Fili, at which it was decided to abandon Moscow, had not yet been +held) both those who went away and those who remained behind felt, +though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly be abandoned, +and that they ought to get away as quickly as possible and save +their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break +up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so. +As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die +immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is +awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life, +though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the +conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would +be completely upset. + +During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole +Rostov family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the +family, Count Ilya Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting +the current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and hasty +orders at home about the preparations for their departure. + +The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied +with everything, was constantly in pursuit of Petya who was always +running away from her, and was jealous of Natasha with whom he spent +all his time. Sonya alone directed the practical side of matters by +getting things packed. But of late Sonya had been particularly sad and +silent. Nicholas' letter in which he mentioned Princess Mary had +elicited, in her presence, joyous comments from the countess, who +saw an intervention of Providence in this meeting of the princess +and Nicholas. + +"I was never pleased at Bolkonski's engagement to Natasha," said the +countess, "but I always wanted Nicholas to marry the princess, and had +a presentiment that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!" + +Sonya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of +retrieving the Rostovs' affairs was by Nicholas marrying a rich woman, +and that the princess was a good match. It was very bitter for her. +But despite her grief, or perhaps just because of it, she took on +herself all the difficult work of directing the storing and packing of +their things and was busy for whole days. The count and countess +turned to her when they had any orders to give. Petya and Natasha on +the contrary, far from helping their parents, were generally a +nuisance and a hindrance to everyone. Almost all day long the house +resounded with their running feet, their cries, and their +spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were gay not because there +was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and mirth were in their +hearts and so everything that happened was a cause for gaiety and +laughter to them. Petya was in high spirits because having left home a +boy he had returned (as everybody told him) a fine young man, +because he was at home, because he had left Belaya Tserkov where there +was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had come to Moscow +where there was to be fighting in a few days, and chiefly because +Natasha, whose lead he always followed, was in high spirits. Natasha +was gay because she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her +of the cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was +also happy because she had someone to adore her: the adoration of +others was a lubricant the wheels of her machine needed to make them +run freely- and Petya adored her. Above all, they were gay because +there was a war near Moscow, there would be fighting at the town +gates, arms were being given out, everybody was escaping- going away +somewhere, and in general something extraordinary was happening, and +that is always exciting, especially to the young. + +CHAPTER XIII + +On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the +Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the +furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and +pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, +wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house +serfs carrying out the things were treading heavily on the parquet +floors. The yard was crowded with peasant carts, some loaded high +and already corded up, others still empty. + +The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the peasants +who had come with the carts resounded as they shouted to one another +in the yard and in the house. The count bad been out since morning. +The countess had a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil +and was lying down in the new sitting room with a vinegar compress +on her head. Petya was not at home, he had gone to visit a friend with +whom he meant to obtain a transfer from the militia to the active +army. Sonya was in the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass +and china. Natasha was sitting on the floor of her dismantled room +with dresses, ribbons, and scarves strewn all about her, gazing +fixedly at the floor and holding in her hands the old ball dress +(already out of fashion) which she had worn at her first Petersburg +ball. + +Natasha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone else was so busy, +and several times that morning had tried to set to work, but her heart +was not in it, and she could not and did not know how to do anything +except with all her heart and all her might. For a while she had stood +beside Sonya while the china was being packed and tried to help, but +soon gave it up and went to her room to pack her own things. At +first she found it amusing to give away dresses and ribbons to the +maids, but when that was done and what was left had still to be +packed, she found it dull. + +"Dunyasha, you pack! You will, won't you, dear?" And when Dunyasha +willingly promised to do it all for her, Natasha sat down on the +floor, took her old ball dress, and fell into a reverie quite +unrelated to what ought to have occupied her thoughts now. She was +roused from her reverie by the talk of the maids in the next room +(which was theirs) and by the sound of their hurried footsteps going +to the back porch. Natasha got up and looked out of the window. An +enormously long row of carts full of wounded men had stopped in the +street. + +The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen, maids, footmen, +postilions, and scullions stood at the gate, staring at the wounded. + +Natasha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her hair and +holding an end of it in each hand, went out into the street. + +The former housekeeper, old Mavra Kuzminichna, had stepped out of +the crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with a hood constructed of +bast mats, and was speaking to a pale young officer who lay inside. +Natasha moved a few steps forward and stopped shyly, still holding her +handkerchief, and listened to what the housekeeper was saying. + +"Then you have nobody in Moscow?" she was saying. "You would be more +comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours, for instance... the +family are leaving." + +"I don't know if it would be allowed," replied the officer in a weak +voice. "Here is our commanding officer... ask him," and he pointed +to a stout major who was walking back along the street past the row of +carts. + +Natasha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the wounded +officer and at once went to meet the major. + +"May the wounded men stay in our house?" she asked. + +The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile. + +"Which one do you want, Ma'am'selle?" said he, screwing up his +eyes and smiling. + +Natasha quietly repeated her question, and her face and whole manner +were so serious, though she was still holding the ends of her +handkerchief, that the major ceased smiling and after some reflection- +as if considering in how far the thing was possible- replied in the +affirmative. + +"Oh yes, why not? They may," he said. + +With a slight inclination of her head, Natasha stepped back +quickly to Mavra Kuzminichna, who stood talking compassionately to the +officer. + +"They may. He says they may!" whispered Natasha. + +The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostovs' yard, +and dozens of carts with wounded men began at the invitation of the +townsfolk to turn into the yards and to draw up at the entrances of +the houses in Povarskaya Street. Natasha was evidently pleased to be +dealing with new people outside the ordinary routine of her life. +She and Mavra Kuzminichna tried to get as many of the wounded as +possible into their yard. + +"Your Papa must be told, though," said Mavra Kuzminichna. + +"Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one day we can +move into the drawing room. They can have all our half of the house." + +"There now, young lady, you do take things into your head! Even if +we put them into the wing, the men's room, or the nurse's room, we +must ask permission." + +"Well, I'll ask." + +Natasha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through the +half-open door into the sitting room, where there was a smell of +vinegar and Hoffman's drops. + +"Are you asleep, Mamma?" + +"Oh, what sleep-?" said the countess, waking up just as she was +dropping into a doze. + +"Mamma darling!" said Natasha, kneeling by her mother and bringing +her face close to her mother's, "I am sorry, forgive me, I'll never do +it again; I woke you up! Mavra Kuzminichna has sent me: they have +brought some wounded here- officers. Will you let them come? They have +nowhere to go. I knew you'd let them come!" she said quickly all in +one breath. + +"What officers? Whom have they brought? I don't understand +anything about it," said the countess. + +Natasha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly. + +"I knew you'd give permission... so I'll tell them," and, having +kissed her mother, Natasha got up and went to the door. + +In the hall she met her father, who had returned with bad news. + +"We've stayed too long!" said the count with involuntary vexation. +"The Club is closed and the police are leaving." + +"Papa, is it all right- I've invited some of the wounded into the +house?" said Natasha. + +"Of course it is," he answered absently. "That's not the point. I +beg you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help to pack, and +tomorrow we must go, go, go!...." + +And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo and the +servants. + +At dinner Petya having returned home told them the news he had +heard. He said the people had been getting arms in the Kremlin, and +that though Rostopchin's broadsheet had said that he would sound a +call two or three days in advance, the order had certainly already +been given for everyone to go armed to the Three Hills tomorrow, and +that there would be a big battle there. + +The countess looked with timid horror at her son's eager, excited +face as he said this. She realized that if she said a word about his +not going to the battle (she knew he enjoyed the thought of the +impending engagement) he would say something about men, honor, and the +fatherland- something senseless, masculine, and obstinate which +there would be no contradicting, and her plans would be spoiled; and +so, hoping to arrange to leave before then and take Petya with her +as their protector and defender, she did not answer him, but after +dinner called the count aside and implored him with tears to take +her away quickly, that very night if possible. With a woman's +involuntary loving cunning she, who till then had not shown any alarm, +said that she would die of fright if they did not leave that very +night. Without any pretense she was now afraid of everything. + +CHAPTER XIV + +Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the +countess' fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit +dealer's in Myasnitski Street. When returning by that street she had +been unable to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the +shop. She had taken a cab and driven home by a side street and the +cabman had told her that the people were breaking open the barrels +at the drink store, having received orders to do so. + +After dinner the whole Rostov household set to work with +enthusiastic haste packing their belongings and preparing for their +departure. The old count, suddenly setting to work, kept passing +from the yard to the house and back again, shouting confused +instructions to the hurrying people, and flurrying them still more. +Petya directed things in the yard. Sonya, owing to the count's +contradictory orders, lost her head and did not know what to do. The +servants ran noisily about the house and yard, shouting and disputing. +Natasha, with the ardor characteristic of all she did suddenly set +to work too. At first her intervention in the business of packing +was received skeptically. Everybody expected some prank from her and +did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely and passionately demanded +obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because they did not heed +her, and at last succeeded in making them believe her. Her first +exploit, which cost her immense effort and established her +authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had valuable +Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house. When Natasha +set to work two cases were standing open in the ballroom, one almost +full up with crockery, the other with carpets. There was also much +china standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in from +the storeroom. A third case was needed and servants had gone to +fetch it. + +"Sonya, wait a bit- we'll pack everything into these," said Natasha. + +"You can't, Miss, we have tried to," said the butler's assistant. + +"No, wait a minute, please." + +And Natasha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes and plates +wrapped in paper. + +"The dishes must go in here among the carpets," said she. + +"Why, it's a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into three +cases," said the butler's assistant. + +"Oh, wait, please!" And Natasha began rapidly and deftly sorting out +the things. "These aren't needed," said she, putting aside some plates +of Kiev ware. "These- yes, these must go among the carpets," she said, +referring to the Saxony china dishes. + +"Don't, Natasha! Leave it alone! We'll get it all packed," urged +Sonya reproachfully. + +"What a young lady she is!" remarked the major-domo. + +But Natasha would not give in. She turned everything out and began +quickly repacking, deciding that the inferior Russian carpets and +unnecessary crockery should not be taken at all. When everything had +been taken out of the cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned +out that when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly all +been rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the two cases. +Only the lid of the case containing the carpets would not shut down. A +few more things might have been taken out, but Natasha insisted on +having her own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler's +assistant and Petya- whom she had drawn into the business of +packing- press on the lid, and made desperate efforts herself. + +"That's enough, Natasha," said Sonya. "I see you were right, but +just take out the top one." + +"I won't!" cried Natasha, with one hand bolding back the hair that +hung over her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down +the carpets. "Now press, Petya! Press, Vasilich, press hard!" she +cried. + +The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natasha, clapping her hands, +screamed with delight and tears fell from her eyes. But this only +lasted a moment. She at once set to work afresh and they now trusted +her completely. The count was not angry even when they told him that +Natasha had countermanded an order of his, and the servants now came +to her to ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded, and whether it +might be corded up. Thanks to Natasha's directions the work now went +on expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most +valuable packed as compactly as possible. + +But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they could +not get everything packed. The countess had fallen asleep and the +count, having put off their departure till next morning, went to bed. + +Sonya and Natasha slept in the sitting room without undressing. + +That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskaya, and +Mavra Kuzminichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought +into the Rostovs' yard. Mavra Kuzminichna concluded that he was a very +important man. He was being conveyed in a caleche with a raised +hood, and was quite covered by an apron. On the box beside the +driver sat a venerable old attendant. A doctor and two soldiers +followed the carriage in a cart. + +"Please come in here. The masters are going away and the whole house +will be empty," said the old woman to the old attendant. + +"Well, perhaps," said he with a sigh. "We don't expect to get him +home alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it's a long +way from here, and there's nobody living in it." + +"Do us the honor to come in, there's plenty of everything in the +master's house. Come in," said Mavra Kuzminichna. "Is he very ill?" +she asked. + +The attendant made a hopeless gesture. + +"We don't expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor." + +And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart. + +"All right!" said the doctor. + +The old servant returned to the caleche, looked into it, shook his +head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and +stopped beside Mavra Kuzminichna. + +"O, Lord Jesus Christ!" she murmured. + +She invited them to take the wounded man into the house. + +"The masters won't object..." she said. + +But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took +him into the wing and put him in the room that had been Madame +Schoss'. + +This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkonski. + +CHAPTER XV + +Moscow's last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a +Sunday. The church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just +as usual on Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the +city. + +Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscow- the +rabble, that is the poor people, and the price of commodities. An +enormous crowd of factory hands, house serfs, and peasants, with +whom some officials, seminarists, and gentry were mingled, had gone +early that morning to the Three Hills. Having waited there for +Rostopchin who did not turn up, they became convinced that Moscow +would be surrendered, and then dispersed all about the town to the +public houses and cookshops. Prices too that day indicated the state +of affairs. The price of weapons, of gold, of carts and horses, kept +rising, but the value of paper money and city articles kept falling, +so that by midday there were instances of carters removing valuable +goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment a half of what they +carted, while peasant horses were fetching five hundred rubles each, +and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being given away for nothing. + +In the Rostovs' staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of +former conditions of life was but little noticeable. As to the serfs +the only indication was that three out of their huge retinue +disappeared during the night, but nothing was stolen; and as to the +value of their possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come +in from their estates and which many people envied proved to be +extremely valuable and they were offered enormous sums of money for +them. Not only were huge sums offered for the horses and carts, but on +the previous evening and early in the morning of the first of +September, orderlies and servants sent by wounded officers came to the +Rostovs' and wounded men dragged themselves there from the Rostovs' +and from neighboring houses where they were accommodated, entreating +the servants to try to get them a lift out of Moscow. The major-domo +to whom these entreaties were addressed, though he was sorry for the +wounded, resolutely refused, saying that he dare not even mention +the matter to the count. Pity these wounded men as one might, it was +evident that if they were given one cart there would be no reason to +refuse another, or all the carts and one's own carriages as well. +Thirty carts could not save all the wounded and in the general +catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and one's own family. So +thought the major-domo on his master's behalf. + +On waking up that morning Count Ilya Rostov left his bedroom softly, +so as not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward +morning, and came out to the porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In +the yard stood the carts ready corded. The carriages were at the front +porch. The major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly orderly +and to a pale young officer with a bandaged arm. On seeing the count +the major-domo made a significant and stern gesture to them both to go +away. + +"Well, Vasilich, is everything ready?" asked the count, and stroking +his bald head he looked good-naturedly at the officer and the +orderly and nodded to them. (He liked to see new faces.) + +"We can harness at once, your excellency." + +"Well, that's right. As soon as the countess wakes we'll be off, God +willing! What is it, gentlemen?" he added, turning to the officer. +"Are you staying in my house?" + +The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed crimson. + +"Count, be so good as to allow me... for God's sake, to get into +some corner of one of your carts! I have nothing here with me.... I +shall be all right on a loaded cart..." + +Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly made the same +request on behalf of his master. + +"Oh, yes, yes,yes!" said the count hastily. "I shall be very +pleased, very pleased. Vasilich, you'll see to it. Just unload one +or two carts. Well, what of it... do what's necessary..." said the +count, muttering some indefinite order. + +But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the +officer's face had already sealed the order. The count looked around +him. In the yard, at the gates, at the window of the wings, wounded +officers and their orderlies were to be seen. They were all looking at +the count and moving toward the porch. + +"Please step into the gallery, your excellency," said the +major-domo. "What are your orders about the pictures?" + +The count went into the house with him, repeating his order not to +refuse the wounded who asked for a lift. + +"Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded," he added +in a soft, confidential voice, as though afraid of being overheard. + +At nine o'clock the countess woke up, and Matrena Timofeevna, who +had been her lady's maid before her marriage and now performed a +sort of chief gendarme's duty for her, came to say that Madame +Schoss was much offended and the young ladies' summer dresses could +not be left behind. On inquiry, the countess learned that Madame +Schoss was offended because her trunk had been taken down from its +cart, and all the loads were being uncorded and the luggage taken +out of the carts to make room for wounded men whom the count in the +simplicity of his heart had ordered that they should take with them. +The countess sent for her husband. + +"What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being unloaded." + +"You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear... an officer +came to me to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are +things that can be bought but think what being left behind means to +them!... Really now, in our own yard- we asked them in ourselves and +there are officers among them.... You know, I think, my dear... let +them be taken... where's the hurry?" + +The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money +matters. The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of +news of something detrimental to the children's interests, such as the +building of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a +private theater or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose +anything announced in that timid tone and considered it her duty to do +so. + +She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said to her husband: +"Listen to me, Count, you have managed matters so that we are +getting nothing for the house, and now you wish to throw away all our- +all the children's property! You said yourself that we have a +hundred thousand rubles' worth of things in the house. I don't +consent, my dear, I don't! Do as you please! It's the government's +business to look after the wounded; they know that. Look at the +Lopukhins opposite, they cleared out everything two days ago. That's +what other people do. It's only we who are such fools. If you have +no pity on me, have some for the children." + +Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room without +replying. + +"Papa, what are you doing that for?" asked Natasha, who had followed +him into her mother's room. + +"Nothing! What business is it of yours?" muttered the count angrily. + +"But I heard," said Natasha. "Why does Mamma object?" + +"What business is it of yours?" cried the count. + +Natasha stepped up to the window and pondered. + +"Papa! Here's Berg coming to see us," said she, looking out of the +window. + +CHAPTER XVI + +Berg, the Rostovs' son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the +orders of Vladimir and Anna, and he still filled the quiet and +agreeable post of assistant to the head of the staff of the +assistant commander of the first division of the Second Army. + +On the first of September he had come to Moscow from the army. + +He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that everyone +in the army was asking for leave to visit Moscow and had something +to do there. So he considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence +for family and domestic reasons. + +Berg drove up to his father-in-law's house in his spruce little trap +with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince. He +looked attentively at the carts in the yard and while going up to +the porch took out a clean pocket handkerchief and tied a knot in it. + +From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into +the drawing room, where he embraced the count, kissed the hands of +Natasha and Sonya, and hastened to inquire after "Mamma's" health. + +"Health, at a time like this?" said the count. "Come, tell us the +news! Is the army retreating or will there be another battle?" + +"God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa," +said Berg. "The army is burning with a spirit of heroism and the +leaders, so to say, have now assembled in council. No one knows what +is coming. But in general I can tell you, Papa, that such a heroic +spirit, the truly antique valor of the Russian army, which they- which +it" (he corrected himself) "has shown or displayed in the battle of +the twenty-sixth- there are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell +you, Papa" (he smote himself on the breast as a general he had heard +speaking had done, but Berg did it a trifle late for he should have +struck his breast at the words "Russian army"), "I tell you frankly +that we, the commanders, far from having to urge the men on or +anything of that kind, could hardly restrain those... those... yes, +those exploits of antique valor," he went on rapidly. "General Barclay +de Tolly risked his life everywhere at the head of the troops, I can +assure you. Our corps was stationed on a hillside. You can imagine!" + +And Berg related all that he remembered of the various tales he +had heard those days. Natasha watched him with an intent gaze that +confused him, as if she were trying to find in his face the answer +to some question. + +"Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian warriors +cannot be imagined or adequately praised!" said Berg, glancing round +at Natasha, and as if anxious to conciliate her, replying to her +intent look with a smile. "'Russia is not in Moscow, she lives in +the hearts of her sons!' Isn't it so, Papa?" said he. + +Just then the countess came in from the sitting room with a weary +and dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly jumped up, kissed her +hand, asked about her health, and, swaying his head from side to +side to express sympathy, remained standing beside her. + +"Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and sad +times for every Russian. But why are you so anxious? You have still +time to get away...." + +"I can't think what the servants are about," said the countess, +turning to her husband. "I have just been told that nothing is ready +yet. Somebody after all must see to things. One misses Mitenka at such +times. There won't be any end to it." + +The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained +himself. He got up from his chair and went to the door. + +At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to blow his nose +and, seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking his head sadly and +significantly. + +"And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa," said he. + +"Hm..." said the count, and stopped. + +"I was driving past Yusupov's house just now," said Berg with a +laugh, "when the steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I +wouldn't buy something. I went in out of curiosity, you know, and +there is a small chiffonier and a dressing table. You know how dear +Vera wanted a chiffonier like that and how we had a dispute about it." +(At the mention of the chiffonier and dressing table Berg +involuntarily changed his tone to one of pleasure at his admirable +domestic arrangements.) "And it's such a beauty! It pulls out and +has a secret English drawer, you know! And dear Vera has long wanted +one. I wish to give her a surprise, you see. I saw so many of those +peasant carts in your yard. Please let me have one, I will pay the man +well, and..." + +The count frowned and coughed. + +"Ask the countess, I don't give orders." + +"If it's inconvenient, please don't," said Berg. "Only I so wanted +it, for dear Vera's sake." + +"Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the +devil..." cried the old count. "My head's in a whirl!" + +And he left the room. The countess began to cry. + +"Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!" said Berg. + +Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding it +difficult to reach some decision, first followed him and then ran +downstairs. + +Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the +servants who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still +standing in the yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded +officer was climbing into one of them helped by an orderly. + +"Do you know what it's about?" Petya asked Natasha. + +She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling +about. She did not answer. + +"It's because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the +wounded," said Petya. "Vasilich told me. I consider..." + +"I consider," Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry +face to Petya, "I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I +don't know what. Are we despicable Germans?" + +Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening +and letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed +headlong up the stairs. + +Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the +respectful attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was +pacing up and down the room, when Natasha, her face distorted by +anger, burst in like a tempest and approached her mother with rapid +steps. + +"It's horrid! It's abominable! she screamed. "You can't possibly +have ordered it!" + +Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The +count stood still at the window and listened. + +"Mamma, it's impossible: see what is going on in the yard!" she +cried. "They will be left!..." + +"What's the matter with you? Who are 'they'? What do you want?" + +"Why, the wounded! It's impossible, Mamma. It's monstrous!... No, +Mamma darling, it's not the thing. Please forgive me, darling.... +Mamma, what does it matter what we take away? Only look what is +going on in the yard... Mamma!... It's impossible!" + +The count stood by the window and listened without turning round. +Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer to the window. + +The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for +her mother, saw her agitation, and understood why her husband did +not turn to look at her now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted. + +"Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?" she said, not +surrendering at once. + +"Mamma, darling, forgive me!" + +But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her +husband. + +"My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don't understand +about it," said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly. + +"The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen," muttered the count +through tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide +her look of shame on his breast. + +"Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?..." asked Natasha. "We will +still take all the most necessary things." + +The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the rapid pace at +which she used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to +the anteroom and downstairs into the yard. + +The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not believe the +strange order she brought them until the count himself, in his +wife's name, confirmed the order to give up all the carts to the +wounded and take the trunks to the storerooms. When they understood +that order the servants set to work at this new task with pleasure and +zeal. It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it +seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an hour +before it had not seemed strange to anyone that the wounded should +be left behind and the goods carted away but that had seemed the +only thing to do. + +The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner, +set eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the +carts. The wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood +with pale but happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to +be had spread to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men +began to come into the Rostovs' yard. Many of the wounded asked them +not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the top of the +things. But the work of unloading, once started, could not be +arrested. It seemed not to matter whether all or only half the +things were left behind. Cases full of china, bronzes, pictures, and +mirrors that had been so carefully packed the night before now lay +about the yard, and still they went on searching for and finding +possibilities of unloading this or that and letting the wounded have +another and yet another cart. + +"We can take four more men," said the steward. "They can have my +trap, or else what is to become of them?" + +"Let them have my wardrobe cart," said the countess. "Dunyasha can +go with me in the carriage." + +They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take wounded men from +a house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was +bright and animated. Natasha was in a state of rapturous excitement +such as she had not known for a long time. + +"What could we fasten this onto?" asked the servants, trying to +fix a trunk on the narrow footboard behind a carriage. "We must keep +at least one cart." + +"What's in it?" asked Natasha. + +"The count's books." + +"Leave it, Vasilich will put it away. It's not wanted." + +The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as to where +Count Peter could sit. + +"On the box. You'll sit on the box, won't you, Petya?" cried +Natasha. + +Sonya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was +quite different from Natasha's. She was putting away the things that +had to be left behind and making a list of them as the countess +wished, and she tried to get as much taken away with them as possible. + +CHAPTER XVII + +Before two o'clock in the afternoon the Rostovs' four carriages, +packed full and with the horses harnessed, stood at the front door. +One by one the carts with the wounded had moved out of the yard. + +The caleche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sonya's +attention as it passed the front porch. With the help of a maid she +was arranging a seat for the countess in the huge high coach that +stood at the entrance. + +"Whose caleche is that?" she inquired, leaning out of the carriage +window. + +"Why, didn't you know, Miss?" replied the maid. "The wounded prince: +he spent the night in our house and is going with us." + +"But who is it? What's his name?" + +"It's our intended that was- Prince Bolkonski himself! They say he +is dying," replied the maid with a sigh. + +Sonya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess. The countess, +tired out and already dressed in shawl and bonnet for her journey, was +pacing up and down the drawing room, waiting for the household to +assemble for the usual silent prayer with closed doors before +starting. Natasha was not in the room. + +"Mamma," said Sonya, "Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is +going with us." + +The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sonya's arm, +glanced around. + +"Natasha?" she murmured. + +At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them. +They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to what would happen if she +heard this news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked. + +"Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us," said Sonya. + +"You say he is dying?" + +Sonya nodded. + +The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to cry. + +"The ways of God are past finding out!" she thought, feeling that +the Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming manifest in all +that was now taking place. + +"Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What's the matter?" asked +Natasha, as with animated face she ran into the room. + +"Nothing," answered the countess. "If everything is ready let us +start." + +And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face. +Sonya embraced Natasha and kissed her. + +Natasha looked at her inquiringly. + +"What is it? What has happened?" + +"Nothing... No..." + +"Is it something very bad for me? What is it?" persisted Natasha +with her quick intuition. + +Sonya sighed and made no reply. The count, Petya, Madame Schoss, +Mavra Kuzminichna, and Vasilich came into the drawing room and, having +closed the doors, they all sat down and remained for some moments +silently seated without looking at one another. + +The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh crossed +himself before the icon. All the others did the same. Then the count +embraced Mavra Kuzminichna and Vasilich, who were to remain in Moscow, +and while they caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder he patted +their backs lightly with some vaguely affectionate and comforting +words. The countess went into the oratory and there Sonya found her on +her knees before the icons that had been left here and there hanging +on the wall. (The most precious ones, with which some family tradition +was connected, were being taken with them.) + +In the porch and in the yard the men whom Petya had armed with +swords and daggers, with trousers tucked inside their high boots and +with belts and girdles tightened, were taking leave of those remaining +behind. + +As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put +in the wrong place, and for a long time two menservants stood one on +each side of the open door and the carriage steps waiting to help +the countess in, while maids rushed with cushions and bundles from the +house to the carriages, the caleche, the phaeton, and back again. + +"They always will forget everything!" said the countess. "Don't +you know I can't sit like that?" + +And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth, without replying but with an +aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the coach to rearrange +the seat. + +"Oh, those servants!" said the count, swaying his head. + +Efim, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to +drive her, sat perched up high on the box and did not so much as +glance round at what was going on behind him. From thirty years' +experience he knew it would be some time yet before the order, "Be +off, in God's name!" would be given him: and he knew that even when it +was said he would be stopped once or twice more while they sent back +to fetch something that had been forgotten, and even after that he +would again be stopped and the countess herself would lean out of +the window and beg him for the love of heaven to drive carefully +down the hill. He knew all this and therefore waited calmly for what +would happen, with more patience than the horses, especially the +near one, the chestnut Falcon, who was pawing the ground and +champing his bit. At last all were seated, the carriage steps were +folded and pulled up, the door was shut, somebody was sent for a +traveling case, and the countess leaned out and said what she had to +say. Then Efim deliberately doffed his hat and began crossing himself. +The postilion and all the other servants did the same. "Off, in +God's name!" said Efim, putting on his hat. "Start!" The postilion +started the horses, the off pole horse tugged at his collar, the +high springs creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman +sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as it passed +out of the yard onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted +in their turn, and the procession of carriages moved up the street. In +the carriages, the caleche, and the phaeton, all crossed themselves as +they passed the church opposite the house. Those who were to remain in +Moscow walked on either side of the vehicles seeing the travelers off. + +Rarely had Natasha experienced so joyful a feeling as now, sitting +in the carriage beside the countess and gazing at the slowly +receding walls of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned +out of the carriage window and looked back and then forward at the +long train of wounded in front of them. Almost at the head of the line +she could see the raised hood of Prince Andrew's caleche. She did +not know who was in it, but each time she looked at the procession her +eyes sought that caleche. She knew it was right in front. + +In Kudrino, from the Nikitski, Presnya, and Podnovinsk Streets +came several other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostovs', and +as they passed along the Sadovaya Street the carriages and carts +formed two rows abreast. + +As they were going round the Sukharev water tower Natasha, who was +inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking +past, suddenly cried out in joyful surprise: + +"Dear me! Mamma, Sonya, look, it's he!" + +"Who? Who?" + +"Look! Yes, on my word, it's Bezukhov!" said Natasha, putting her +head out of the carriage and staring at a tall, stout man in a +coachman's long coat, who from his manner of walking and moving was +evidently a gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the +arch of the Sukharev tower accompanied by a small, sallow-faced, +beardless old man in a frieze coat. + +"Yes, it really is Bezukhov in a coachman's coat, with a +queer-looking old boy. Really," said Natasha, "look, look!" + +"No, it's not he. How can you talk such nonsense?" + +"Mamma," screamed Natasha, "I'll stake my head it's he! I assure +you! Stop, stop!" she cried to the coachman. + +But the coachman could not stop, for from the Meshchanski Street +came more carts and carriages, and the Rostovs were being shouted at +to move on and not block the way. + +In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the +Rostovs all saw Pierre- or someone extraordinarily like him- in a +coachman's coat, going down the street with head bent and a serious +face beside a small, beardless old man who looked like a footman. That +old man noticed a face thrust out of the carriage window gazing at +them, and respectfully touching Pierre's elbow said something to him +and pointed to the carriage. Pierre, evidently engrossed in thought, +could not at first understand him. At length when he had understood +and looked in the direction the old man indicated, he recognized +Natasha, and following his first impulse stepped instantly and rapidly +toward the coach. But having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember +something and stopped. + +Natasha's face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical +kindliness. + +"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you! This is +wonderful!" she cried, holding out her hand to him. "What are you +doing? Why are you like this?" + +Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he +walked along beside her while the coach still moved on. + +"What is the matter, Count?" asked the countess in a surprised and +commiserating tone. + +"What? What? Why? Don't ask me," said Pierre, and looked round at +Natasha whose radiant, happy expression- of which he was conscious +without looking at her- filled him with enchantment. + +"Are you remaining in Moscow, then?" + +Pierre hesitated. + +"In Moscow?" he said in a questioning tone. "Yes, in Moscow. +Goodby!" + +"Ah, if only I were a man? I'd certainly stay with you. How +splendid!" said Natasha. "Mamma, if you'll let me, I'll stay!" + +Pierre glanced absently at Natasha and was about to say something, +but the countess interrupted him. + +"You were at the battle, we heard." + +"Yes, I was," Pierre answered. "There will be another battle +tomorrow..." he began, but Natasha interrupted him. + +"But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not like +yourself...." + +"Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me! I don't know myself. Tomorrow... +But no! Good-by, good-by!" he muttered. "It's an awful time!" and +dropping behind the carriage he stepped onto the pavement. + +Natasha continued to lean out of the window for a long time, beaming +at him with her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre had been +living in the empty house of his deceased benefactor, Bazdeev. This is +how it happened. + +When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his +interview with Count Rostopchin, he could not for some time make out +where he was and what was expected of him. When he was informed that +among others awaiting him in his reception room there was a +Frenchman who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Helene, +he felt suddenly overcome by that sense of confusion and +hopelessness to which he was apt to succumb. He felt that everything +was now at an end, all was in confusion and crumbling to pieces, +that nobody was right or wrong, the future held nothing, and there was +no escape from this position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to +himself, he first sat down on the sofa in an attitude of despair, then +rose, went to the door of the reception room and peeped through the +crack, returned flourishing his arms, and took up a book. His +major-domo came in a second time to say that the Frenchman who had +brought the letter from the countess was very anxious to see him if +only for a minute, and that someone from Bazdeev's widow had called to +ask Pierre to take charge of her husband's books, as she herself was +leaving for the country. + +"Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go and say +I will come directly," Pierre replied to the major-domo. + +But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took up his hat +which was lying on the table and went out of his study by the other +door. There was no one in the passage. He went along the whole +length of this passage to the stairs and, frowning and rubbing his +forehead with both hands, went down as far as the first landing. The +hall porter was standing at the front door. From the landing where +Pierre stood there was a second staircase leading to the back +entrance. He went down that staircase and out into the yard. No one +had seen him. But there were some carriages waiting, and as soon as +Pierre stepped out of the gate the coachmen and the yard porter +noticed him and raised their caps to him. When he felt he was being +looked at he behaved like an ostrich which hides its head in a bush in +order not to be seen: he hung his head and quickening his pace went +down the street. + +Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Joseph +Bazdeev's books and papers appeared to him the most necessary. + +He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the +Patriarch's Ponds, where the widow Bazdeev's house was. + +Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that +were making their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing +his bulky body so as not to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle, +Pierre, experiencing the joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school, +began to talk to his driver. + +The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the +Kremlin and that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the +Three Hills gates and a great battle would be fought there. + +Having reached the Patriarch's Ponds Pierre found the Bazdeevs' +house, where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the +gate. Gerasim, that sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at +Torzhok five years before with Joseph Bazdeev, came out in answer to +his knock. + +"At home?" asked Pierre. + +"Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danilovna has gone to +the Torzhok estate with the children, your excellency." + +"I will come in all the same, I have to look through the books," +said Pierre. + +"Be so good as to step in. Makar Alexeevich, the brother of my +late master- may the kingdom of heaven be his- has remained here, +but he is in a weak state as you know," said the old servant. + +Pierre knew that Makar Alexeevich was Joseph Bazdeev's half-insane +brother and a hard drinker. + +"Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in..." said Pierre and entered the +house. + +A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown +and with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing +Pierre he muttered something angrily and went away along the passage. + +"He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your +honor sees," said Gerasim. "Will you step into the study?" Pierre +nodded. "As it was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia +Danilovna gave orders that if anyone should come from you they were to +have the books." + +Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such +trepidation in his benefactor's lifetime. The room, dusty and +untouched since the death of Joseph Bazdeev was now even gloomier. + +Gerasim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe. +Pierre went round the study, approached the cupboard in which the +manuscripts were kept, and took out what had once been one of the most +important, the holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic +Scotch Acts with Bazdeev's notes and explanations. He sat down at +the dusty writing table, and, having laid the manuscripts before +him, opened them out, closed them, finally pushed them away, and +resting his head on his hand sank into meditation. + +Gerasim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw +Pierre always sitting in the same attitude. + +More than two hours passed and Gerasim took the liberty of making +a slight noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did +not hear him. + +"Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?" + +"Oh yes!" said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. "Look +here," he added, taking Gerasim by a button of his coat and looking +down at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, "I say, do +you know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?" + +"We heard so," replied the man. + +"I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you." + +"Yes, your excellency," replied Gerasim. "Will you have something to +eat?" + +"No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a +pistol," said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing. + +"Yes, your excellency," said Gerasim after thinking for a moment. + +All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor's +study, and Gerasim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to +another and talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made +up for him there. + +Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange +things, accepted Pierre's taking up his residence in the house without +surprise, and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same +evening- without even asking himself what they were wanted for- he +procured a coachman's coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him +the pistol next day. Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening +shuffling along in his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and +looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward +him he wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and +angry look and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the +coachman's coat which Gerasim had procured for him and had disinfected +by steam) was on his way with the old man to buy the pistol at the +Sukharev market that he met the Rostovs. + +CHAPTER XIX + +Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was +issued at night on the first of September. + +The first troops started at once, and during the night they +marched slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those +nearing the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of +soldiers crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the +opposite side and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless +masses of troops were bearing down on them from behind, and an +unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them. They all rushed forward +to the bridge, onto it, and to the fords and the boats. Kutuzov +himself had driven round by side streets to the other side of Moscow. + +By ten o'clock in the morning of the second of September, only the +rear guard remained in the Dorogomilov suburb, where they had ample +room. The main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it. + +At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September, +Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklonny Hill looking at +the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to +the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodino to the +entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating, +memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that +always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat +than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear +atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and +refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights +are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and +delight us continually by falling from the sky. + +At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather +still held. + +The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the +Poklonny Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens, +and her churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her +cupolas glittering like stars in the sunlight. + +The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as +he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious +and uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that +has no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full +force of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a +distance, distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the +Poklonny Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as +it were, the breathing of that great and beautiful body. + +Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every +foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the +mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it. + +"Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou la sainte. +La voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait temps,"~{ "That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy Moscow! Here +it is then at last, that famous city. It was high time." }~ said he, +and dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before +him, and summoned Lelorgne d'Ideville, the interpreter. + +"A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her +honor," thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at Smolensk). From +that point of view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen +before. It seemed strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had +seemed unattainable, had at last been realized. In the clear morning +light he gazed now at the city and now at the plan, considering its +details, and the assurance of possessing it agitated and awed him. + +"But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here is this capital at my +feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange, +beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In +what light must I appear to them!" thought he, thinking of his troops. +"Here she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men," he +reflected, glancing at those near him and at the troops who were +approaching and forming up. "One word from me, one movement of my +hand, and that ancient capital of the Tsars would perish. But my +clemency is always ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be +magnanimous and truly great. But no, it can't be true that I am in +Moscow," he suddenly thought. "Yet here she is lying at my feet, +with her golden domes and crosses scintillating and twinkling in the +sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism +and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy.... +It is just this which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know him." +(It seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what was taking +place lay in the personal struggle between himself and Alexander.) +"From the height of the Kremlin- yes, there is the Kremlin, yes- I +will give them just laws; I will teach them the meaning of true +civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember their +conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not, and do +not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false policy +of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in Moscow I +will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people. I do not +wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored monarch. +'Boyars,' I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire the peace +and welfare of all my subjects.' However, I know their presence will +inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly, +impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in +Moscow? Yes, there she lies." + +"Qu'on m'amene les boyars,"~{ "Bring the boyars to me." }~ said he to his suite. + +A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the +boyars. + +Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the +same place on the Poklonny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to +the boyars had already taken definite shape in his imagination. That +speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it. + +He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended +to adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for +assemblies at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and +his own would mingle. He mentally appointed a governor, one who +would win the hearts of the people. Having learned that there were +many charitable institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he +would shower favors on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he +had to put on a burnoose and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must +be beneficent like the Tsars. And in order finally to touch the hearts +of the Russians- and being like all Frenchmen unable to imagine +anything sentimental without a reference to ma chere, ma tendre, ma +pauvre mere~{ "My dear, my tender, my poor mother." }~ - he decided that he would place an inscription on all +these establishments in large letters: "This establishment is +dedicated to my dear mother." Or no, it should be simply: Maison de ma +Mere,~{ "House of my Mother." }~ he concluded. "But am I really in Moscow? Yes, here it +lies before me, but why is the deputation from the city so long in +appearing?" he wondered. + +Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in +whispers among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite. +Those sent to fetch the deputation had returned with the news that +Moscow was empty, that everyone had left it. The faces of those who +were not conferring together were pale and perturbed. They were not +alarmed by the fact that Moscow had been abandoned by its +inhabitants (grave as that fact seemed), but by the question how to +tell the Emperor- without putting him in the terrible position of +appearing ridiculous- that he had been awaiting the boyars so long +in vain: that there were drunken mobs left in Moscow but no one +else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must be scraped +together, others disputed that opinion and maintained that the Emperor +should first be carefully and skillfully prepared, and then told the +truth. + +"He will have to be told, all the same," said some gentlemen of +the suite. "But, gentlemen..." + +The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating +upon his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before +the outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from +under his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile. + +"But it's impossible..." declared the gentlemen of the suite, +shrugging their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied word- +le ridicule... + +At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor's +instinct suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been too +long drawn out was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with +his hand. A single report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops, +who were already spread out on different sides of Moscow, moved into +the city through Tver, Kaluga, and Dorogomilov gates. Faster and +faster, vying with one another, they moved at the double or at a trot, +vanishing amid the clouds of dust they raised and making the air +ring with a deafening roar of mingling shouts. + +Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with them as +far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there again stopped and, +dismounting from his horse, paced for a long time by the +Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting the deputation. + +CHAPTER XX + +Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a +fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was +empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty. + +In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance +it seems as much alive as other hives. + +The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the +midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it +smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same +way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no +longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the +smell and the sound that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the +beekeeper's tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former +instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees with their +abdomens threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid +vibration of their wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a +disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From +the alighting board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell +of honey and venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor +of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are +no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and +ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured +quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water, +but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long +black robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do +not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly only bees laden with +honey flew into the hive, and they flew out empty; now they fly out +laden. The beekeeper opens the lower part of the hive and peers in. +Instead of black, glossy bees- tamed by toil, clinging to one +another's legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless hum of labor- +that used to hang in long clusters down to the floor of the hive, +drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately in various directions +on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a neatly glued floor, +swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings, there is a floor +littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees scarcely moving their +legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared away. + +The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the +super. Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the +combs and keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex +structures of the combs, but no longer in their former state of +purity. All is neglected and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and +stealthily prowling about the combs, and the short home bees, +shriveled and listless as if they were old, creep slowly about without +trying to hinder the robbers, having lost all motive and all sense +of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies knock awkwardly +against the walls of the hive in their flight. Here and there among +the cells containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can +sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of bees, by force of habit +and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with efforts beyond their +strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or bumblebee without knowing +why they do it. In another corner two old bees are languidly fighting, +or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, without themselves +knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile intent. In a third +place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack some victim and +fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops +from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap of corpses. +The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine the brood cells. +In place of the former close dark circles formed by thousands of +bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery of generation, +he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They +have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they had +guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only a +few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the +enemy's hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are +dead and fall as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the +hive, chalks a mark on it, and when he has time tears out its contents +and burns it clean. + +So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy, +and morose, paced up and down in front of the Kammer-Kollezski +rampart, awaiting what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal, +observance of the proprieties- a deputation. + +In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few people +aimlessly moving about, following their old habits and hardly aware of +what they were doing. + +When with due circumspection Napoleon was informed that Moscow was +empty, he looked angrily at his informant, turned away, and silently +continued to walk to and fro. + +"My carriage!" he said. + +He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into +the suburb. "Moscow deserted!" he said to himself. "What an incredible +event!" + +He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in the +Dorogomilov suburb. + +The coup de theatre had not come off. + +CHAPTER XXI + +The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o'clock at +night till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the wounded +and the last of the inhabitants who were leaving. + +The greatest crush during the movement of the troops took place at +the Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges. + +While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the +Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the Stone bridges, a great many +soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion, turned back +from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently past the church +of Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back up the +hill to the Red Square where some instinct told them they could easily +take things not belonging to them. Crowds of the kind seen at cheap +sales filled all the passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were +no dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting customers +to enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of +female purchasers- but only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though +without muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and silently +making their way out through its passages with bundles. Tradesmen +and their assistants (of whom there were but few) moved about among +the soldiers quite bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked +them up again, and themselves carried goods away with the help their +assistants. On the square in front of the Bazaar were drummers beating +the muster call. But the roll of the drums did not make the looting +soldiers run in the direction of the drum as formerly, but made +them, on the contrary, run farther away. Among the soldiers in the +shops and passages some men were to be seen in gray coats, with +closely shaven heads. Two officers, one with a scarf over his +uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse, the other in an +overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka Street, +talking. A third officer galloped up to them. + +"The general orders them all to be driven out at once, without fail. +This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed." + +"Where are you off to?... Where?..." he shouted to three infantrymen +without muskets who, holding up the skirts of their overcoats, were +slipping past him into the Bazaar passage. "Stop, you rascals!" + +"But how are you going to stop them?" replied another officer. +"There is no getting them together. The army should push on before the +rest bolt, that's all!" + +"How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged on the bridge, +and don't move. Shouldn't we put a cordon round to prevent the rest +from running away?" + +"Come, go in there and drive them out!" shouted the senior officer. + +The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer, and went +with him into the arcade. Some soldiers started running away in a +group. A shopkeeper with red pimples on his cheeks near the nose, +and a calm, persistent, calculating expression on his plump face, +hurriedly and ostentatiously approached the officer, swinging his +arms. + +"Your honor!" said he. "Be so good as to protect us! We won't grudge +trifles, you are welcome to anything- we shall be delighted! +Pray!... I'll fetch a piece of cloth at once for such an honorable +gentleman, or even two pieces with pleasure. For we feel how it is; +but what's all this- sheer robbery! If you please, could not guards be +placed if only to let us close the shop...." + +Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer. + +"Eh, what twaddle!" said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man. +"When one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair! Take what +any of you like!" And flourishing his arm energetically he turned +sideways to the officer. + +"It's all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk," said the first +tradesman angrily. "Please step inside, your honor!" + +"Talk indeed!" cried the thin one. "In my three shops here I have +a hundred thousand rubles' worth of goods. Can they be saved when +the army has gone? Eh, what people! 'Against God's might our hands +can't fight.'" + +"Come inside, your honor!" repeated the tradesman, bowing. + +The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision. + +"It's not my business!" he exclaimed, and strode on quickly down one +of the passages. + +From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation, and +just as the officer came up to it a man in a gray coat with a shaven +head was flung out violently. + +This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and the officer. +The officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but at that +moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd on the +Moskva bridge and the officer ran out into the square. + +"What is it? What is it?" he asked, but his comrade was already +galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the direction from which +the screams came. + +The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When he reached +the bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing the +bridge, several overturned carts, and frightened and laughing faces +among the troops. Beside the cannon a cart was standing to which two +horses were harnessed. Four borzois with collars were pressing close +to the wheels. The cart was loaded high, and at the very top, beside a +child's chair with its legs in the air, sat a peasant woman uttering +piercing and desperate shrieks. He was told by his fellow officers +that the screams of the crowd and the shrieks of the woman were due to +the fact that General Ermolov, coming up to the crowd and learning +that soldiers were dispersing among the shops while crowds of +civilians blocked the bridge, had ordered two guns to be unlimbered +and made a show of firing at the bridge. The crowd, crushing one +another, upsetting carts, and shouting and squeezing desperately, +had cleared off the bridge and the troops were now moving forward. + +CHAPTER XXII + +Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was hardly anyone +in the streets. The gates and shops were all closed, only here and +there round the taverns solitary shouts or drunken songs could be +heard. Nobody drove through the streets and footsteps were rarely +heard. The Povarskaya was quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard +of the Rostovs' house was littered with wisps of hay and with dung +from the horses, and not a soul was to be seen there. In the great +drawing room of the house, which had been left with all it +contained, were two people. They were the yard porter Ignat, and the +page boy Mishka, Vasilich's grandson who had stayed in Moscow with his +grandfather. Mishka had opened the clavichord and was strumming on +it with one finger. The yard porter, his arms akimbo, stood smiling +with satisfaction before the large mirror. + +"Isn't it fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?" said the boy, suddenly beginning +to strike the keyboard with both hands. + +"Only fancy!" answered Ignat, surprised at the broadening grin on +his face in the mirror. + +"Impudence! Impudence!" they heard behind them the voice of Mavra +Kuzminichna who had entered silently. "How he's grinning, the fat mug! +Is that what you're here for? Nothing's cleared away down there and +Vasilich is worn out. Just you wait a bit!" + +Ignat left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of the +room with meekly downcast eyes. + +"Aunt, I did it gently," said the boy. + +"I'll give you something gently, you monkey you!" cried Mavra +Kuzminichna, raising her arm threateningly. "Go and get the samovar to +boil for your grandfather." + +Mavra Kuzminichna flicked the dust off the clavichord and closed it, +and with a deep sigh left the drawing room and locked its main door. + +Going out into the yard she paused to consider where she should go +next- to drink tea in the servants' wing with Vasilich, or into the +storeroom to put away what still lay about. + +She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet street. +Someone stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to +open it. Mavra Kuzminichna went to the gate. + +"Who do you want?" + +"The count- Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov." + +"And who are you?" + +"An officer, I have to see him," came the reply in a pleasant, +well-bred Russian voice. + +Mavra Kuzminichna opened the gate and an officer of eighteen, with +the round face of a Rostov, entered the yard. + +"They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime," +said Mavra Kuzminichna cordially. + +The young officer standing in the gateway, as if hesitating +whether to enter or not, clicked his tongue. + +"Ah, how annoying!" he muttered. "I should have come yesterday.... +Ah, what a pity." + +Meanwhile, Mavra Kuzminichna was attentively and sympathetically +examining the familiar Rostov features of the young man's face, his +tattered coat and trodden-down boots. + +"What did you want to see the count for?" she asked. + +"Oh well... it can't be helped!" said he in a tone of vexation and +placed his hand on the gate as if to leave. + +He again paused in indecision. + +"You see," he suddenly said, "I am a kinsman of the count's and he +has been very kind to me. As you see" (he glanced with an amused air +and good-natured smile at his coat and boots) "my things are worn +out and I have no money, so I was going to ask the count..." + +Mavra Kuzminichna did not let him finish. + +"Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment," said she. + +And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she turned and, +hurrying away on her old legs, went through the back yard to the +servants' quarters. + +While Mavra Kuzminichna was running to her room the officer walked +about the yard gazing at his worn-out boots with lowered head and a +faint smile on his lips. "What a pity I've missed Uncle! What a nice +old woman! Where has she run off to? And how am I to find the +nearest way to overtake my regiment, which must by now be getting near +the Rogozhski gate?" thought he. Just then Mavra Kuzminichna +appeared from behind the corner of the house with a frightened yet +resolute look, carrying a rolled-up check kerchief in her hand. +While still a few steps from the officer she unfolded the kerchief and +took out of it a white twenty-five-ruble assignat and hastily handed +it to him. + +"If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he would of +course... but as it is..." + +Mavra Kuzminichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not +decline, but took the note quietly and thanked her. + +"If the count had been at home..." Mavra Kuzminichna went on +apologetically. "Christ be with you, sir! May God preserve you!" +said she, bowing as she saw him out. + +Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself, the officer +ran almost at a trot through the deserted streets toward the Yauza +bridge to overtake his regiment. + +But Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate for some time with +moist eyes, pensively swaying her head and feeling an unexpected +flow of motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown young officer. + +CHAPTER XXIII + +From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor of +which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches +round the tables in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands. +Tipsy and perspiring, with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were +all laboriously singing some song or other. They were singing +discordantly, arduously, and with great effort, evidently not +because they wished to sing, but because they wanted to show they were +drunk and on a spree. One, a tall, fair-haired lad in a clean blue +coat, was standing over the others. His face with its fine straight +nose would have been handsome had it not been for his thin, +compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed eyes. Evidently +possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were singing, and +solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white arm with +the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread out +his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he +always carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it +were most important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing +should be bare. In the midst of the song cries were heard, and +fighting and blows in the passage and porch. The tall lad waved his +arm. + +"Stop it!" he exclaimed peremptorily. "There's a fight, lads!" +And, still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch. + +The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the +leadership of the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning, +had brought the publican some skins from the factory and for this +had had drink served them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring +smithy, hearing the sounds of revelry in the tavern and supposing it +to have been broken into, wished to force their way in too and a fight +in the porch had resulted. + +The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and when +the workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from the tavern +keeper, fell face downward on the pavement. + +Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against the +publican with his chest. + +The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow in the +face and cried wildly: "They're fighting us, lads!" + +At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his bruised +face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: "Police! Murder!... +They've killed a man, lads!" + +"Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death- killed!..." screamed a +woman coming out of a gate close by. + +A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith. + +"Haven't you robbed people enough- taking their last shirts?" said a +voice addressing the publican. "What have you killed a man for, you +thief?" + +The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes from +the publican to the smith and back again as if considering whom he +ought to fight now. + +"Murderer!" he shouted suddenly to the publican. "Bind him, lads!" + +"I daresay you would like to bind me!" shouted the publican, pushing +away the men advancing on him, and snatching his cap from his head +he flung it on the ground. + +As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance, the +workmen surrounding the publican paused in indecision. + +"I know the law very well, mates! I'll take the matter to the +captain of police. You think I won't get to him? Robbery is not +permitted to anybody now a days!" shouted the publican, picking up his +cap. + +"Come along then! Come along then!" the publican and the tall +young fellow repeated one after the other, and they moved up the +street together. + +The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory hands and +others followed behind, talking and shouting. + +At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house with closed +shutters and bearing a bootmaker's signboard, stood a score of thin, +worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and long +tattered coats. + +"He should pay folks off properly," a thin workingman, with frowning +brows and a straggly beard, was saying. + +"But he's sucked our blood and now he thinks he's quit of us. He's +been misleading us all the week and now that he's brought us to this +pass he's made off." + +On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the workman ceased +speaking, and with eager curiosity all the bootmakers joined the +moving crowd. + +"Where are all the folks going?" + +"Why, to the police, of course!" + +"I say, is it true that we have been beaten?" "And what did you +think? Look what folks are saying." + +Questions and answers were heard. The publican, taking advantage +of the increased crowd, dropped behind and returned to his tavern. + +The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe, waved his +bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting general attention +to himself. It was around him that the people chiefly crowded, +expecting answers from him to the questions that occupied all their +minds. + +"He must keep order, keep the law, that's what the government is +there for. Am I not right, good Christians?" said the tall youth, with +a scarcely perceptible smile. "He thinks there's no government! How +can one do without government? Or else there would be plenty who'd rob +us." + +"Why talk nonsense?" rejoined voices in the crowd. "Will they give +up Moscow like this? They told you that for fun, and you believed +it! Aren't there plenty of troops on the march? Let him in, indeed! +That's what the government is for. You'd better listen to what +people are saying," said some of the mob pointing to the tall youth. + +By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people were gathered +round a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand. + +"An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an ukase!" cried +voices in the crowd, and the people rushed toward the reader. + +The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of August 31 +When the crowd collected round him he seemed confused, but at the +demand of the tall lad who had pushed his way up to him, he began in a +rather tremulous voice to read the sheet from the beginning. + +"Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness," he read +("Sirin Highness," said the tall fellow with a triumphant smile on his +lips and a frown on his brow), "to consult with him to act, and to aid +the army to exterminate these scoundrels. We too will take part..." +the reader went on, and then paused ("Do you see," shouted the youth +victoriously, "he's going to clear up the whole affair for +you...."), "in destroying them, and will send these visitors to the +devil. I will come back to dinner, and we'll set to work. We will +do, completely do, and undo these scoundrels." + +The last words were read out in the midst of complete silence. The +tall lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident that no one had +understood the last part. In particular, the words "I will come back +to dinner," evidently displeased both reader and audience. The +people's minds were tuned to a high pitch and this was too simple +and needlessly comprehensible- it was what any one of them might +have said and therefore was what an ukase emanating from the highest +authority should not say. + +They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth moved his +lips and swayed from side to side. + +"We should ask him... that's he himself?"... "Yes, ask him +indeed!... Why not? He'll explain"... voices in the rear of the +crowd were suddenly heard saying, and the general attention turned +to the police superintendent's trap which drove into the square +attended by two mounted dragoons. + +The superintendent of police, who had that morning by Count +Rostopchin's orders to burn the barges and had in connection with that +matter acquired a large sum of money which was at that moment in his +pocket, on seeing a crowd bearing down upon him told his coachman to +stop. + +"What people are these?" he shouted to the men, who were moving +singly and timidly in the direction of his trap. + +"What people are these?" he shouted again, receiving no answer. + +"Your honor..." replied the shopman in the frieze coat, "your honor, +in accord with the proclamation of his highest excellency the count, +they desire to serve, not sparing their lives, and it is not any +kind of riot, but as his highest excellence said..." + +"The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be issued +concerning you," said the superintendent of police. "Go on!" he +ordered his coachman. + +The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard what the +superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap. + +The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with a +scared look, said something to his coachman, and his horses +increased their speed. + +"It's a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!" shouted the tall +youth. "Don't let him go, lads! Let him answer us! Keep him!" +shouted different people and the people dashed in pursuit of the trap. + +Following the superintendent of police and talking loudly the +crowd went in the direction of the Lubyanka Street. + +"There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and left us to +perish. Do they think we're dogs?" voices in the crowd were heard +saying more and more frequently. + +CHAPTER XXIV + +On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with +Kutuzov, Count Rostopchin had returned to Moscow mortified and +offended because he had not been invited to attend the council of war, +and because Kutuzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in +the defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed +to him at the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital +and its patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite +irrelevant and unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and +surprised by all this, Rostopchin had returned to Moscow. After supper +he lay down on a sofa without undressing, and was awakened soon +after midnight by a courier bringing him a letter from Kutuzov. This +letter requested the count to send police officers to guide the troops +through the town, as the army was retreating to the Ryazan road beyond +Moscow. This was not news to Rostopchin. He had known that Moscow +would be abandoned not merely since his interview the previous day +with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill but ever since the battle of +Borodino, for all the generals who came to Moscow after that battle +had said unanimously that it was impossible to fight another battle, +and since then the government property had been removed every night, +and half the inhabitants had left the city with Rostopchin's own +permission. Yet all the same this information astonished and irritated +the count, coming as it did in the form of a simple note with an order +from Kutuzov, and received at night, breaking in on his beauty sleep. + +When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchin explained his +actions at this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated +by two important considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow +and expedite the departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this +twofold aim all Rostopchin's actions appear irreproachable. "Why +were the holy relics, the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of +corn not removed? Why were thousands of inhabitants deceived into +believing that Moscow would not be given up- and thereby ruined?" +"To presence the tranquillity of the city," explains Count Rostopchin. +"Why were bundles of useless papers from the government offices, and +Leppich's balloon and other articles removed?" "To leave the town +empty," explains Count Rostopchin. One need only admit that public +tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification. + +All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude +for public tranquillity. + +On what, then, was Count Rostopchin's fear for the tranquillity of +Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there for assuming any +probability of an uprising in the city? The inhabitants were leaving +it and the retreating troops were filling it. Why should that cause +the masses to riot? + +Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything resembling +an insurrection ever occur when the enemy entered a town. More than +ten thousand people were still in Moscow on the first and second of +September, and except for a mob in the governor's courtyard, assembled +there at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there would +have been even less reason to expect a disturbance among the people if +after the battle of Borodino, when the surrender of Moscow became +certain or at least probable, Rostopchin instead of exciting the +people by distributing arms and broadsheets had taken steps to +remove all the holy relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and +had told the population plainly that the town would be abandoned. + +Rostopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and +impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative +circles and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed +himself to be guiding. Ever since the enemy's entry into Smolensk he +had in imagination been playing the role of director of the popular +feeling of "the heart of Russia." Not only did it seem to him (as to +all administrators) that he controlled the external actions of +Moscow's inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental +attitude by means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a +coarse tone which the people despise in their own class and do not +understand from those in authority. Rostopchin was so pleased with the +fine role of leader of popular feeling, and had grown so used to it, +that the necessity of relinquishing that role and abandoning Moscow +without any heroic display took him unawares and he suddenly felt +the ground slip away from under his feet, so that he positively did +not know what to do. Though he knew it was coming, he did not till the +last moment wholeheartedly believe that Moscow would be abandoned, and +did not prepare for it. The inhabitants left against his wishes. If +the government offices were removed, this was only done on the +demand of officials to whom the count yielded reluctantly. He was +absorbed in the role he had created for himself. As is often the +case with those gifted with an ardent imagination, though he had +long known that Moscow would be abandoned he knew it only with his +intellect, he did not believe it in his heart and did not adapt +himself mentally to this new position of affairs. + +All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it was useful +and had any effect on the people is another question) had been +simply directed toward arousing in the masses his own feeling of +patriotic hatred of the French. + +But when events assumed their true historical character, when +expressing hatred for the French in words proved insufficient, when it +was not even possible to express that hatred by fighting a battle, +when self-confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question +before Moscow, when the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one +man, abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative action +all the depth of their national feeling, then the role chosen by +Rostopchin suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself +ridiculous, weak, and alone, with no ground to stand on. + +When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold, peremptory +note from Kutuzov, he felt the more irritated the more he felt himself +to blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state +property which he should have removed, was still in Moscow and it +was no longer possible to take the whole of it away. + +"Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?" he +ruminated. "Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow +firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains! +Traitors!" he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and +traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever +they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous +position in which he found himself. + +All that night Count Rostopchin issued orders, for which people came +to him from all parts of Moscow. Those about him had never seen the +count so morose and irritable. + +"Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar's Department has +sent for instructions... From the Consistory, from the Senate, from +the University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent... +asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire +Brigade? From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of +the lunatic asylum..." All night long such announcements were +continually being received by the count. + +To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating +that orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair, +carefully prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that +that somebody would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that +might happen. + +"Oh, tell that blockhead," he said in reply to the question from the +Registrar's Department, "that he should remain to guard his documents. +Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They +have horses, let them be off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the +French." + +"Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come: +what are your commands?" + +"My commands? Let them go away, that's all.... And let the +lunatics out into the town. When lunatics command our armies God +evidently means these other madmen to be free." + +In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count +Rostopchin shouted angrily at the governor: + +"Do you expect me to give you two battalions- which we have not got- +for a convoy? Release them, that's all about it!" + +"Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkov, +Vereshchagin..." + +"Vereshchagin! Hasn't he been hanged yet?" shouted Rostopchin. +"Bring him to me!" + +CHAPTER XXV + +Toward nine o'clock in the morning, when the troops were already +moving through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more for +instructions. Those who were able to get away were going of their +own accord, those who remained behind decided for themselves what they +must do. + +The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokolniki, and +sat in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn. + +In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that +it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule +is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable +every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. +While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his +frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people +and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the +ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea +begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer +possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, +the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the +administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, +becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man. + +Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated him. + +The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had stopped, went in to +see him at the same time as an adjutant who informed the count that +the horses were harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendent +of police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions he +had received, informed the count that an immense crowd had collected +in the courtyard and wished to see him. + +Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked hastily to his +light, luxurious drawing room, went to the balcony door, took hold +of the handle, let it go again, and went to the window from which he +had a better view of the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in +front, flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern look. The +blood stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone of +voices was audible through the closed window. + +"Is my carriage ready?" asked Rostopchin, stepping back from the +window. + +"It is, your excellency," replied the adjutant. + +Rostopchin went again to the balcony door. + +"But what do they want?" he asked the superintendent of police. + +"Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according to your +orders, to go against the French, and they shouted something about +treachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your excellency- I hardly +managed to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..." + +"You may go. I don't need you to tell me what to do!" exclaimed +Rostopchin angrily. + +He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd. + +"This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they have +done with me!" thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welled +up within him against the someone to whom what was happening might +be attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he was +mastered by anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it. +"Here is that mob, the dregs of the people," he thought as he gazed at +the crowd: "this rabble they have roused by their folly! They want a +victim," he thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing his +arm. And this thought occurred to him just because he himself +desired a victim, something on which to vent his rage. + +"Is the carriage ready?" he asked again. + +"Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchagin? He +is waiting at the porch," said the adjutant. + +"Ah!" exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an unexpected +recollection. + +And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out onto the +balcony. The talking instantly ceased, hats and caps were doffed, +and all eyes were raised to the count. + +"Good morning, lads!" said the count briskly and loudly. "Thank +you for coming. I'll come out to you in a moment, but we must first +settle with the villain. We must punish the villain who has caused the +ruin of Moscow. Wait for me!" + +And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and slammed +the door behind him. + +A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through the crowd. +"He'll settle with all the villains, you'll see! And you said the +French... He'll show you what law is!" the mob were saying as if +reproving one another for their lack of confidence. + +A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the front door, +gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in line. The crowd moved +eagerly from the balcony toward the porch. Rostopchin, coming out +there with quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seeking +someone. + +"Where is he?" he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a young man +coming round the corner of the house between two dragoons. He had a +long thin neck, and his head, that had been half shaved, was again +covered by short hair. This young man was dressed in a threadbare blue +cloth coat lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirty +hempen convict trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty, +trodden-down boots. On his thin, weak legs were heavy chains which +hampered his irresolute movements. + +"Ah!" said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes from the +young man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to the bottom step of the +porch. "Put him there." + +The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily to the +spot indicated, holding away with one finger the coat collar which +chafed his neck, turned his long neck twice this way and that, sighed, +and submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to work. + +For several seconds while the young man was taking his place on +the step the silence continued. Only among the back rows of the +people, who were all pressing toward the one spot, could sighs, +groans, and the shuffling of feet be heard. + +While waiting for the young man to take his place on the step +Rostopchin stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand. + +"Lads!" said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. "This man, +Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing." + +The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little, stood in a +submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before him. His emaciated +young face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung down +hopelessly. At the count's first words he raised it slowly and +looked up at him as if wishing to say something or at least to meet +his eye. But Rostopchin did not look at him. A vein in the young man's +long thin neck swelled like a cord and went blue behind the ear, and +suddenly his face flushed. + +All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and rendered +more hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled +sadly and timidly, and lowering his head shifted his feet on the step. + +"He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he had gone over to +Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russian +name, he has caused Moscow to perish," said Rostopchin in a sharp, +even voice, but suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchagin who continued +to stand in the same submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight, +he raised his arm and addressed the people, almost shouting: + +"Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you." + +The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and closer to +one another. To keep one another back, to breathe in that stifling +atmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await something unknown, +uncomprehended, and terrible, was becoming unbearable. Those +standing in front, who had seen and heard what had taken place +before them, all stood with wide open eyes and mouths, straining +with all their strength, and held back the crowd that was pushing +behind them. + +"Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the Russian +name!" shouted Rostopchin. "Cut him down. I command it." + +Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchin's +voice, the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused. + +"Count!" exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchagin in +the midst of the momentary silence that ensued, "Count! One God is +above us both...." He lifted his head and again the thick vein in +his thin neck filled with blood and the color rapidly came and went in +his face. + +He did not finish what he wished to say. + +"Cut him down! I command it..." shouted Rostopchin, suddenly growing +pale like Vereshchagin. + +"Draw sabers!" cried the dragoon officer, drawing his own. + +Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd and reaching +the front ranks carried it swaying to the very steps of the porch. The +tall youth, with a stony look on his face, and rigid and uplifted arm, +stood beside Vereshchagin. + +"Saber him!" the dragoon officer almost whispered. + +And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury, +struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber. + +"Ah!" cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking round with a +frightened glance as if not understanding why this was done to him. +A similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd. "O Lord!" +exclaimed a sorrowful voice. + +But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped from +Vereshchagin he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry was +fatal. The barrier of human feeling, strained to the utmost, that +had held the crowd in check suddenly broke. The crime had begun and +must now be completed. The plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by +the threatening and angry roar of the crowd. Like the seventh and last +wave that shatters a ship, that last irresistible wave burst from +the rear and reached the front ranks, carrying them off their feet and +engulfing them all. The dragoon was about to repeat his blow. +Vereshchagin with a cry of horror, covering his head with his hands, +rushed toward the crowd. The tall youth, against whom he stumbled, +seized his thin neck with his hands and, yelling wildly, fell with him +under the feet of the pressing, struggling crowd. + +Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall youth. And +the screams of those that were being trampled on and of those who +tried to rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd. +It was a long time before the dragoons could extricate the bleeding +youth, beaten almost to death. And for a long time, despite the +feverish haste with which the mob tried to end the work that had +been begun, those who were hitting, throttling, and tearing at +Vereshchagin were unable to kill him, for the crowd pressed from all +sides, swaying as one mass with them in the center and rendering it +impossible for them either to kill him or let him go. + +"Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold +Christ.... Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture +serves a thief right. Use the hatchet!... What- still alive?" + +Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries changed to a +long-drawn, measured death rattle did the crowd around his +prostrate, bleeding corpse begin rapidly to change places. Each one +came up, glanced at what had been done, and with horror, reproach, and +astonishment pushed back again. + +"O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he be alive?" +voices in the crowd could be heard saying. "Quite a young fellow +too... must have been a merchant's son. What men!... and they say he's +not the right one.... How not the right one?... O Lord! And there's +another has been beaten too- they say he's nearly done for.... Oh, the +people... Aren't they afraid of sinning?..." said the same mob now, +looking with pained distress at the dead body with its long, thin, +half-severed neck and its livid face stained with blood and dust. + +A painstaking police officer, considering the presence of a corpse +in his excellency's courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take it +away. Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged it +along the ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with its +long neck trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back +from it. + +At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd closed in with +savage yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned pale +and, instead of going to the back entrance where his carriage +awaited him, went with hurried steps and bent head, not knowing +where and why, along the passage leading to the rooms on the ground +floor. The count's face was white and he could not control the +feverish twitching of his lower jaw. + +"This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way, +please..." said a trembling, frightened voice behind him. + +Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went +in the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his caleche. +The distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. He +hastily took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to his +country house in Sokolniki. + +When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no longer hear the +shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with +dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his +subordinates. "The mob is terrible- disgusting," he said to himself in +French. "They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease." +"Count! One God is above us both!"- Vereshchagin's words suddenly +recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this +was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smiled +disdainfully at himself. "I had other duties," thought he. "The people +had to be appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing +for the public good"- and he began thinking of his social duties to +his family and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself- not +himself as Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that Theodore +Vasilyevich Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for the public good) +but himself as governor, the representative of authority and of the +Tsar. "Had I been simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of action +would have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard my +life and dignity as commander in chief." + +Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and no +longer hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew +physically calm and, as always happens, as soon as he became +physically tranquil his mind devised reasons why he should be mentally +tranquil too. The thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new +one. Since the world began and men have killed one another no one +has ever committed such a crime against his fellow man without +comforting himself with this same idea. This idea is le bien public, +the hypothetical welfare of other people. + +To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he +who commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies. +And Rostopchin now knew it. + +Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, but +he even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfully +contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a +criminal and at the same time pacify the mob. + +"Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death," thought +Rostopchin (though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to +hard labor), "he was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go +unpunished and so I have killed two birds with one stone: to appease +the mob I gave them a victim and at the same time punished a +miscreant." + +Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about +domestic arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil. + +Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across the +Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but +considering what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge where +he had heard that Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing +the angry and stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov for +his deception. He would make that foxy old courtier feel that the +responsibility for all the calamities that would follow the +abandonment of the city and the ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regarded +it) would fall upon his doting old head. Planning beforehand what he +would say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin turned angrily in his caleche and +gazed sternly from side to side. + +The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front of +the almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in +white and others like them walking singly across the field shouting +and gesticulating. + +One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin's +carriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons looked +with vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics and +especially at the one running toward them. + +Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his fluttering +dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on +Rostopchin, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs to +him to stop. The lunatic's solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow, +with its beard growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils with +saffron-yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids. + +"Stop! Pull up, I tell you!" he cried in a piercing voice, and again +shouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures. + +Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it. + +"Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the dead. +They stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall rise... shall +rise. They have torn my body. The kingdom of God will be overthrown... +Thrice will I overthrow it and thrice re-establish it!" he cried, +raising his voice higher and higher. + +Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowd +closed in on Vereshchagin. He turned away. "Go fas... faster!" he +cried in a trembling voice to his coachman. The caleche flew over +the ground as fast as the horses could draw it, but for a long time +Count Rostopchin still heard the insane despairing screams growing +fainter in the distance, while his eyes saw nothing but the +astonished, frightened, bloodstained face of "the traitor" in the +fur-lined coat. + +Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already felt that it +had cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he felt +clearly that the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with +time, but that the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell in +his heart ever more cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He +seemed still to hear the sound of his own words: "Cut him down! I +command it...." + +"Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said +them.... I need not have said them," he thought. "And then nothing +would have happened." He saw the frightened and then infuriated face +of the dragoon who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid +reproach that boy in the fur-lined coat had turned upon him. "But I +did not do it for my own sake. I was bound to act that way.... The +mob, the traitor... the public welfare," thought he. + +Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was hot. Kutuzov, +dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his +whip in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a +general's uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said +something in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov that +he had come because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army +remained. + +"Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not +told me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle; +all this would not have happened," he said. + +Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what was said to +him, he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment +on the face of the man addressing him. Rostopchin grew confused and +became silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his +penetrating gaze from Rostopchin's face muttered softly: + +"No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!" + +Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when he +spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be +meaningless, at any rate Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left +him. And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count +Rostopchin, took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he +began with shouts to drive on the carts that blocked the way. + +CHAPTER XXVI + +Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were entering +Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind +them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite. + +About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the +Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the +advanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found the +citadel, le Kremlin. + +Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow. +They all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired +commander dressed up in feathers and gold. + +"Is that their Tsar himself? He's not bad!" low voices could be +heard saying. + +An interpreter rode up to the group. + +"Take off your cap... your caps!" These words went from one to +another in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and +asked if it was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening in +perplexity to the unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that +the interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what was +being said to him and slipped behind the others. + +Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the +Russian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and +several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French +officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat +and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and +that there was probably an ambuscade there. + +"Good!" said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his +suite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the +gates. + +The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and +advanced up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the Vozdvizhenka +Street they halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers +superintended the placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin +through field glasses. + +The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound +troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few +infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had +been put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as +soon as an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was +standing by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and +the latter ran back again with his men. + +The sound of three more shots came from the gate. + +One shot struck a French soldier's foot, and from behind the screens +came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a +word of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of +the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined +concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from +the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka, +Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar +in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove +sanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the +gates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash +off their linstocks, and an officer gave the word "Fire!" This was +followed by two whistling sounds of canister shot, one after +another. The shot rattled against the stone of the gate and upon the +wooden beams and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over +the Square. + +A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the +stone-built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange sound +above their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and +circled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings. +Together with that sound came a solitary human cry from the gateway +and amid the smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a +peasant's coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the French. +"Fire!" repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musket +and of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously. The gate again +hidden by smoke. + +Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry +soldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three +wounded and four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot +of the wall, toward the Znamenka. + +"Clear that away!" said the officer, pointing to the beams and the +corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw +the corpses over the parapet. + +Who these men were nobody knew. "Clear that away!" was all that +was said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed +later on that they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few +eloquent lines to their memory: "These wretches had occupied the +sacred citadel, having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal, +and fired" (the wretches) "at the French. Some of them were sabered +and the Kremlin was purged of their presence." + +Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered +the gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of +the windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the +Square for fuel and kindled fires there. + +Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along +the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered +themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy +Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French +were not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in +it as in a camp. + +Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their +original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order. +It was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army. +But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into +their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various +regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the +army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript, +neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When +five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed +an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of +articles which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man +when he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but +merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its +paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts +will not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore +perishes, the French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish +because they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they +had stolen was as impossible for them as it is for the monkey to +open its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment +had entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was left. +Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through the +windows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In cellars and +storerooms similar men were busy among the provisions, and in the +yards unlocking or breaking open coach house and stable doors, +lighting fires in kitchens and kneading and baking bread with +rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or +caressing women and children. There were many such men both in the +shops and houses- but there was no army. + +Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day +forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding +any violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a +roll call for that very evening. But despite all these measures the +men, who had till then constituted an army, flowed all over the +wealthy, deserted city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As +a hungry herd of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren +field, but gets out of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as +soon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army disperse all over +the wealthy city. + +No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers- like water +percolating through sand- spread irresistibly through the city in +all directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. The +cavalry, on entering a merchant's house that had been abandoned and +finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on, +all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of +them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and +quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they +had had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the +streets to see the city and, hearing that everything had been +abandoned, rushed to places where valuables were to be had for the +taking. The officers followed to check the soldiers and were +involuntarily drawn into doing the same. In Carriage Row carriages had +been left in the shops, and generals flocked there to select +caleches and coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who had +remained invited commanding officers to their houses, hoping thereby +to secure themselves from being plundered. There were masses of wealth +and there seemed no end to it. All around the quarters occupied by the +French were other regions still unexplored and unoccupied where, +they thought, yet greater riches might be found. And Moscow engulfed +the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is spilled on dry ground +both the dry ground and the water disappear and mud results; and in +the same way the entry of the famished army into the rich and deserted +city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction of both the +army and the wealthy city. + +The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de +Rostopchine,~{ To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism. }~ the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality, +however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning +of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people, +responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a +position in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite +apart from whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior +fire engines. Deserted Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of +shavings has to burn on which sparks continually fall for several +days. A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes without +conflagrations when the house owners are in residence and a police +force is present, cannot help burning when its inhabitants have left +it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of +the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves meals +twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to billet troops in the +villages of any district and the number of fires in that district +immediately increases. How much then must the probability of fire be +increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops are +quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity of +the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire +by the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the +carelessness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even +if there was any arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any +reason to burn the houses- in any case a troublesome and dangerous +thing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same +thing would have happened without any incendiarism. + +However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin's +ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later +on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is +impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of +the fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house +must burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are +allowed to live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its +inhabitants, it is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not +by those who remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not +remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its +inhabitants abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and +salt, nor bring them the keys of the city. + +CHAPTER XXVII + +The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it +did, only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the +evening of the second of September. + +After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances, +Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely +obsessed by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this +thought had taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of +the past, understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and +heard appeared to him like a dream. + +He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life's +demands that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was +unable to unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexeevich's house, on the +plea of sorting the deceased's books and papers, only in search of +rest from life's turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph +Alexeevich was connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm +thoughts, quite contrary to the restless confusion into which he +felt himself being drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph +Alexeevich's study he really found it. When he sat with his elbows +on the dusty writing table in the deathlike stillness of the study, +calm and significant memories of the last few days rose one after +another in his imagination, particularly of the battle of Borodino and +of that vague sense of his own insignificance and insincerity compared +with the truth, simplicity, and strength of the class of men he +mentally classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his reverie the +idea occurred to him of taking part in the popular defense of Moscow +which he knew was projected. And with that object he had asked Gerasim +to get him a peasant's coat and a pistol, confiding to him his +intentions of remaining in Joseph Alexeevich's house and keeping his +name secret. Then during the first day spent in inaction and +solitude (he tried several times to fix his attention on the Masonic +manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea that had previously +occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of his name in +connection with Bonaparte's more than once vaguely presented itself. +But the idea that he, L'russe Besuhof, was destined to set a limit +to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that +often passed through his mind and left no trace behind. + +When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part +among the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the +Rostovs and Natasha had said to him: "Are you remaining in +Moscow?... How splendid!" the thought flashed into his mind that it +really would be a good thing, even if Moscow were taken, for him to +remain there and do what he was predestined to do. + +Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not +lagging in any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate. +But when he returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be +defended, he suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a +possibility had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He +must remain in Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and +kill him, and either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe- +which it seemed to him was solely due to Napoleon. + +Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte's life in +1809 by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been +shot. And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out +his design excited him still more. + +Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this +purpose. The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and +suffering in view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had + +caused him to go to Mozhaysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way +to the very thick of the battle and had now caused him to run away +from his home and, in place of the luxury and comfort to which he +was accustomed, to sleep on a hard sofa without undressing and eat the +same food as Gerasim. The other was that vague and quite Russian +feeling of contempt for everything conventional, artificial, and +human- for everything the majority of men regard as the greatest +good in the world. Pierre had first experienced this strange and +fascinating feeling at the Sloboda Palace, when he had suddenly felt +that wealth, power, and life- all that men so painstakingly acquire +and guard- if it has any worth has so only by reason the joy with +which it can all be renounced. + +It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his +last penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for +no apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money +he possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions +which from an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it +were, his personal power and strength, affirming the existence of a +higher, nonhuman criterion of life. + +From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the +first time at the Sloboda Palace he had been continuously under its +influence, but only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at +this moment Pierre was supported in his design and prevented from +renouncing it by what he had already done in that direction. If he +were now to leave Moscow like everyone else, his flight from home, the +peasant coat, the pistol, and his announcement to the Rostovs that +he would remain in Moscow would all become not merely meaningless +but contemptible and ridiculous, and to this Pierre was very +sensitive. + +Pierre's physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded +to his mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he +drank during those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty +unchanged linen, two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa +without bedding- all this kept him in a state of excitement +bordering on insanity. + +It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The French had already +entered Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only +thought about his undertaking, going over its minutest details in +his mind. In his fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either +the striking of the blow or the death of Napoleon, but with +extraordinary vividness and melancholy enjoyment imagined his own +destruction and heroic endurance. + +"Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!" he +thought. "Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol +or dagger? But that is all the same! 'It is not I but the hand of +Providence that punishes thee,' I shall say," thought he, imagining +what he would say when killing Napoleon. "Well then, take me and +execute me!" he went on, speaking to himself and bowing his head +with a sad but firm expression. + +While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to +himself in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold +appeared the figure of Makar Alexeevich, always so timid before but +now quite transformed. + +His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He was +obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but +noticing embarrassment on Pierre's face immediately grew bold and, +staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room. + +"They're frightened," he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. "I +say I won't surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?" + +He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it +with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor. + +Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar Alexeevich, stopped +him in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre, +coming out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the +half-crazy old man. Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held +on to the pistol and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic +fancy in his head. + +"To arms! Board them! No, you shan't get it," he yelled. + +"That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness- please, sir, +to let go! Please, sir..." pleaded Gerasim, trying carefully to +steer Makar Alexeevich by the elbows back to the door. + +"Who are you? Bonaparte!..." shouted Makar Alexeevich. + +"That's not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow +me to have the pistol." + +"Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?" shouted Makar +Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. "Board them!" + +"Catch hold!" whispered Gerasim to the porter. + +They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and dragged him to the +door. + +The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a struggle +and of a tipsy, hoarse voice. + +Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated +from the porch and the cook came running into the vestibule. + +"It's them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them, horsemen!" she +cried. + +Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in the now +silent corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front +door could be heard. + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his design he +would disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood +at the half-open door of the corridor, intending to conceal himself as +soon as the French entered. But the French entered and still Pierre +did not retire- an irresistible curiosity kept him there. + +There were two of them. One was an officer- a tall, soldierly, +handsome man- the other evidently a private or an orderly, +sunburned, short, and thin, with sunken cheeks and a dull +expression. The officer walked in front, leaning on a stick and +slightly limping. When he had advanced a few steps he stopped, +having apparently decided that these were good quarters, turned +round to the soldiers standing at the entrance, and in a loud voice of +command ordered them to put up the horses. Having done that, the +officer, lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his +mustache and lightly touched his hat. + +"Bonjour, la compagnie!"~{ "Good day, everybody!" }~ said he gaily, smiling and looking about +him. + +No one gave any reply. + +"Vous etes le bourgeois?"~{ "Are you the master here?" }~ the officer asked Gerasim. + +Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquiring look. + +"Quartier, quartier, logement!" said the officer, looking down at +the little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. "Les +francais sont de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fachons +pas, mon vieux!"~{ "Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good fellows. What +the devil! There, don't let us be cross, old fellow!" }~ added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim +on the shoulder. "Well, does no one speak French in this +establishment?" he asked again in French, looking around and meeting +Pierre's eyes. Pierre moved away from the door. + +Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to show him the +rooms in the house. + +"Master, not here- don't understand... me, you..." said Gerasim, +trying to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them. + +Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before +Gerasim's nose, intimating that he did not understand him either, +and moved, limping, to the door at which Pierre was standing. Pierre +wished to go away and conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makar +Alexeevich appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his +hand. With a madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman, +raised his pistol, and took aim. + +"Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger. +Hearing the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment +Pierre threw himself on the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and +struck up the pistol Makar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the +trigger, there was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a +cloud of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the door. + +Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French, +Pierre, snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to +the officer and addressed him in French. + +"You are not wounded?" he asked. + +"I think not," answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. "But +I have had a lucky escape this time," he added, pointing to the +damaged plaster of the wall. "Who is that man?" said he, looking +sternly at Pierre. + +"Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred," said Pierre +rapidly, quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. "He is +an unfortunate madman who did not know what he was doing." + +The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him by the collar. + +Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about +to fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall. + +"Brigand! You shall pay for this," said the Frenchman, letting go of +him. "We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon +traitors," he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine +energetic gesture. + +Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold +that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence +with the same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with +a smile. For a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome +face assumed a melodramatically gentle expression and he held out +his hand. + +"You have saved my life. You are French," said he. + +For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman +could perform a great deed, and to save his life- the life of M. +Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light Regiment- was undoubtedly a very +great deed. + +But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer's conviction +based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him. + +"I am Russian," he said quickly. + +"Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others," said the officer, waving his +finger before his nose and smiling. "You shall tell me all about +that presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what +are we to do with this man?" he added, addressing himself to Pierre as +to a brother. + +Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that +loftiest of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the +officer's look and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again +explained who Makar Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival +that drunken imbecile had seized the loaded pistol which they had +not had time to recover from him, and begged the officer to let the +deed go unpunished. + +The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with +his arm. + +"You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant +it you. Lead that man away!" said he quickly and energetically, and +taking the arm of Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for +saving his life, he went with him into the room. + +The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage +asking what had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish +the culprits, but the officer sternly checked them. + +"You will be called in when you are wanted," he said. + +The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile +had time to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer. + +"Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen," said +he. "Shall I serve them up?" + +"Yes, and some wine," answered the captain. + +CHAPTER XXIX + +When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter +again thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and +wished to go away, but the officer would not hear of it. He was so +very polite, amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre +for saving his life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat +down with him in the parlor- the first room they entered. To +Pierre's assurances that he was not a Frenchman, the captain, +evidently not understanding how anyone could decline so flattering +an appellation, shrugged his shoulders and said that if Pierre +absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it be so, but for all +that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude for saving his +life. + +Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving +the feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre's +feelings were, the latter would probably have left him, but the +man's animated obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed +Pierre. + +"A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito," said the officer, +looking at Pierre's fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his +finger. "I owe my life to you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman +never forgets either an insult or a service. I offer you my +friendship. That is all I can say." + +There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of +the word) in the officer's voice, in the expression of his face and in +his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the +Frenchman's smile, pressed the hand held out to him. + +"Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the +Legion of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September," he +introduced himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his +lips under his mustache. "Will you now be so good as to tell me with +whom I have the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in +the ambulance with that maniac's bullet in my body?" + +Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing, +began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason +for concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him. + +"Oh, please!" said he. "I understand your reasons. You are an +officer... a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us. +That's not my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am +quite at your service. You belong to the gentry?" he concluded with +a shade of inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. "Your +baptismal name, if you please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you +say.... That's all I want to know." + +When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and +vodka brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a +Russian cellar and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share +his dinner, and himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a +healthy and hungry man, munching his food rapidly with his strong +teeth, continually smacking his lips, and repeating- "Excellent! +Delicious!" His face grew red and was covered with perspiration. +Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the +orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of +claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the +kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known to the French +and had been given a special name. They called it limonade de cochon +(pig's lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de cochon he +had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they had +taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and +applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up to +its neck in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for +Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the +captain still more lively and he chatted incessantly all through +dinner. + +"Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for +saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my +body already. Here is one I got at Wagram" (he touched his side) +"and a second at Smolensk"- he showed a scar on his cheek- "and this +leg which as you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh +at the great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That +deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us +there, my word! You may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of +the cough I caught there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity +those who did not see it." + +"I was there," said Pierre. + +"Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes. +The great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!" continued the Frenchman. +"And you made us pay dear for it. I was at it three times- sure as I +sit here. Three times we reached the guns and three times we were +thrown back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur +Pierre! Your grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close +up their ranks six times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine +fellows! Our King of Naples, who knows what's what, cried 'Bravo!' Ha, +ha! So you are one of us soldiers!" he added, smiling, after a +momentary pause. "So much the better, so much the better, Monsieur +Pierre! Terrible in battle... gallant... with the fair" (he winked and +smiled), "that's what the French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren't they?" + +The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so +pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked +merrily at him. Probably the word "gallant" turned the captain's +thoughts to the state of Moscow. + +"Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left +Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?" + +"Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered +it?" asked Pierre. + +"Ha, ha, ha!" The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle, +patting Pierre on the shoulder. "What a thing to say!" he exclaimed. +"Paris?... But Paris, Paris..." + +"Paris- the capital of the world," Pierre finished his remark for +him. + +The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in +the middle of his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly +eyes. + +"Well, if you hadn't told me you were Russian, I should have wagered +that you were Parisian! You have that... I don't know what, that..." +and having uttered this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence. + +"I have been in Paris. I spent years there," said Pierre. + +"Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn't know +Paris is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is +Talma, la Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards," and +noticing that his conclusion was weaker than what had gone before, +he added quickly: "There is only one Paris in the world. You have been +to Paris and have remained Russian. Well, I don't esteem you the +less for it." + +Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after the days +he had spent alone with his depressing thoughts, Pierre +involuntarily enjoyed talking with this cheerful and good-natured man. + +"To return to your ladies- I hear they are lovely. What a wretched +idea to go and bury themselves in the steppes when the French army +is in Moscow. What a chance those girls have missed! Your peasants, +now- that's another thing; but you civilized people, you ought to know +us better than that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome, +Warsaw, all the world's capitals.... We are feared, but we are +loved. We are nice to know. And then the Emperor..." he began, but +Pierre interrupted him. + +"The Emperor," Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and +embarrassed, "is the Emperor...?" + +"The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius- +that's what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell you so.... I +assure you I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an +emigrant count.... But that man has vanquished me. He has taken hold +of me. I could not resist the sight of the grandeur and glory with +which he has covered France. When I understood what he wanted- when +I saw that he was preparing a bed of laurels for us, you know, I +said to myself: 'That is a monarch,' and I devoted myself to him! So +there! Oh yes, mon cher, he is the greatest man of the ages past or +future." + +"Is he in Moscow?" Pierre stammered with a guilty look. + +The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled. + +"No, he will make his entry tomorrow," he replied, and continued his +talk. + +Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at +the gate and by Morel, who came to say that some Wurttemberg hussars +had come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the +captain's horses were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because +the hussars did not understand what was said to them in French. + +The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern +voice asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding +officer, and by what right he allowed himself to claim quarters that +were already occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the +two first questions by giving the names of his regiment and of his +commanding officer, but in reply to the third question which he did +not understand said, introducing broken French into his own German, +that he was the quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had +ordered him to occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who +knew German, translated what the German said to the captain and gave +the captain's reply to the Wurttemberg hussar in German. When he had +understood what was said to him, the German submitted and took his men +elsewhere. The captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in +a loud voice. + +When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as +before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He +really was suffering at that moment. When the captain went out and +he was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the +position he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken or that +the happy conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him. +Painful as that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the +moment. He was tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The +few glasses of wine he had drunk and the conversation with this +good-natured man had destroyed the mood of concentrated gloom in which +he had spent the last few days and which was essential for the +execution of his design. The pistol, dagger, and peasant coat were +ready. Napoleon was to enter the town next day. Pierre still +considered that it would be a useful and worthy action to slay the +evildoer, but now he felt that he would not do it. He did not know +why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not carry out his +intention. He struggled against the confession of his weakness but +dimly felt that he could not overcome it and that his former gloomy +frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and self-sacrifice, +had been dispersed like dust by contact with the first man he met. + +The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and whistling a +tune. + +The Frenchman's chatter which had previously amused Pierre now +repelled him. The tune he was whistling, his gait, and the gesture +with which he twirled his mustache, all now seemed offensive. "I +will go away immediately. I won't say another word to him," thought +Pierre. He thought this, but still sat in the same place. A strange +feeling of weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go +away, but could not do so. + +The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful. He paced up +and down the room twice. His eyes shone and his mustache twitched as +if he were smiling to himself at some amusing thought. + +"The colonel of those Wurttembergers is delightful," he suddenly +said. "He's a German, but a nice fellow all the same.... But he's a +German." He sat down facing Pierre. "By the way, you know German, +then?" + +Pierre looked at him in silence. + +"What is the German for 'shelter'?" + +"Shelter?" Pierre repeated. "The German for shelter is Unterkunft." + +"How do you say it?" the captain asked quickly and doubtfully. + +"Unterkunft," Pierre repeated. + +"Onterkoff," said the captain and looked at Pierre for some +seconds with laughing eyes. "These Germans are first-rate fools, don't +you think so, Monsieur Pierre?" he concluded. + +"Well, let's have another bottle of this Moscow Bordeaux, shall +we? Morel will warm us up another little bottle. Morel!" he called out +gaily. + +Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at +Pierre by the candlelight and was evidently struck by the troubled +expression on his companion's face. Ramballe, with genuine distress +and sympathy in his face, went up to Pierre and bent over him. + +"There now, we're sad," said he, touching Pierre's hand. "Have I +upset you? No, really, have you anything against me?" he asked Pierre. +"Perhaps it's the state of affairs?" + +Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the Frenchman's +eyes whose expression of sympathy was pleasing to him. + +"Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel friendship for +you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and +death. I say it with my hand on my heart!" said he, striking his +chest. + +"Thank you," said Pierre. + +The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when he learned +that "shelter" was Unterkunft in German, and his face suddenly +brightened. + +"Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!" he cried gaily, +filling two glasses with wine. + +Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe emptied +his too, again pressed Pierre's hand, and leaned his elbows on the +table in a pensive attitude. + +"Yes, my dear friend," he began, "such is fortune's caprice. Who +would have said that I should be a soldier and a captain of dragoons +in the service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him? Yet here I am +in Moscow with him. I must tell you, mon cher," he continued in the +sad and measured tones of a man who intends to tell a long story, +"that our name is one of the most ancient in France." + +And with a Frenchman's easy and naive frankness the captain told +Pierre the story of his ancestors, his childhood, youth, and +manhood, and all about his relations and his financial and family +affairs, "ma pauvre mere" playing of course an important part in the +story. + +"But all that is only life's setting, the real thing is love- +love! Am I not right, Monsieur Pierre?" said he, growing animated. +"Another glass?" + +Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a third. + +"Oh, women, women!" and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at +Pierre, began talking of love and of his love affairs. + +There were very many of these, as one could easily believe, +looking at the officer's handsome, self-satisfied face, and noting the +eager enthusiasm with which he spoke of women. Though all Ramballe's +love stories had the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the +special charm and poetry of love, yet he told his story with such +sincere conviction that he alone had experienced and known all the +charm of love and he described women so alluringly that Pierre +listened to him with curiosity. + +It was plain that l'amour which the Frenchman was so fond of was not +that low and simple kind that Pierre had once felt for his wife, nor +was it the romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for +Natasha. (Ramballe despised both these kinds of love equally: the +one he considered the "love of clodhoppers" and the other the "love of +simpletons.") L'amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted +principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a +combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling. + +Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a +fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a +charming, innocent child of seventeen, daughter of the bewitching +marquise. The conflict of magnanimity between the mother and the +daughter, ending in the mother's sacrificing herself and offering +her daughter in marriage to her lover, even now agitated the +captain, though it was the memory of a distant past. Then he recounted +an episode in which the husband played the part of the lover, and +he- the lover- assumed the role of the husband, as well as several +droll incidents from his recollections of Germany, where "shelter" +is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat sauerkraut and the +young girls are "too blonde." + +Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain's +memory, and which he narrated with rapid gestures and glowing face, +was of how he had saved the life of a Pole (in general, the saving +of life continually occurred in the captain's stories) and the Pole +had entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de coeur) while +himself entering the French service. The captain was happy, the +enchanting Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by +magnanimity, the captain restored the wife to the husband, saying as +he did so: "I have saved your life, and I save your honor!" Having +repeated these words the captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a +shake, as if driving away the weakness which assailed him at this +touching recollection. + +Listening to the captain's tales, Pierre- as often happens late in +the evening and under the influence of wine- followed all that was +told him, understood it all, and at the same time followed a train +of personal memories which, he knew not why, suddenly arose in his +mind. While listening to these love stories his own love for Natasha +unexpectedly rose to his mind, and going over the pictures of that +love in his imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe's +tales. Listening to the story of the struggle between love and duty, +Pierre saw before his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting +with the object of his love at the Sukharev water tower. At the time +of that meeting it had not produced an effect upon him- he had not +even once recalled it. But now it seemed to him that that meeting +had had in it something very important and poetic. + +"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you," he now seemed +to hear the words she had uttered and to see before him her eyes, +her smile, her traveling hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and +there seemed to him something pathetic and touching in all this. + +Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish lady, the +captain asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a similar impulse to +sacrifice himself for love and a feeling of envy of the legitimate +husband. + +Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and felt a need +to express the thoughts that filled his mind. He began to explain that +he understood love for a women somewhat differently. He said that in +all his life he had loved and still loved only one woman, and that she +could never be his. + +"Tiens!" said the captain. + +Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest +years, but that he had not dared to think of her because she was too +young, and because he had been an illegitimate son without a name. +Afterwards when he had received a name and wealth he dared not think +of her because he loved her too well, placing her far above everything +in the world, and especially therefore above himself. + +When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether +he understood that. + +The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not +understand it he begged Pierre to continue. + +"Platonic love, clouds..." he muttered. + +Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of frankness, or +the thought that this man did not, and never would, know any of +those who played a part in his story, or whether it was all these +things together, something loosened Pierre's tongue. Speaking +thickly and with a faraway look in his shining eyes, he told the whole +story of his life: his marriage, Natasha's love for his best friend, +her betrayal of him, and all his own simple relations with her. +Urged on by Ramballe's questions he also told what he had at first +concealed- his own position and even his name. + +More than anything else in Pierre's story the captain was +impressed by the fact that Pierre was very rich, had two mansions in +Moscow, and that he had abandoned everything and not left the city, +but remained there concealing his name and station. + +When it was late at night they went out together into the street. +The night was warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokrovka +a fire glowed- the first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To +the right and high up in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and +opposite to it hung that bright comet which was connected in +Pierre's heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerasim, the cook, and +two Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible +remarks in two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow +seen in the town. + +There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire in the +immense city. + +Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the comet, and at the +glow from the fire, Pierre experienced a joyful emotion. "There now, +how good it is, what more does one need?" thought he. And suddenly +remembering his intention he grew dizzy and felt so faint that he +leaned against the fence to save himself from falling. + +Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate with +unsteady steps and returning to his room lay down on the sofa and +immediately fell asleep. + +CHAPTER XXX + +The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was +watched from the various roads by the fugitive Muscovites and by the +retreating troops, with many different feelings. + +The Rostov party spent the night at Mytishchi, fourteen miles from +Moscow. They had started so late on the first of September, the road +had been so blocked by vehicles and troops, so many things had been +forgotten for which servants were sent back, that they had decided +to spend that night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next +morning they woke late and were again delayed so often that they +only got as far as Great Mytishchi. At ten o'clock that evening the +Rostov family and the wounded traveling with them were all distributed +in the yards and huts of that large village. The Rostovs' servants and +coachmen and the orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to +their masters, had supper, fed the horses, and came out into the +porches. + +In a neighboring hut lay Raevski's adjutant with a fractured +wrist. The awful pain he suffered made him moan incessantly and +piteously, and his moaning sounded terrible in the darkness of the +autumn night. He had spent the first night in the same yard as the +Rostovs. The countess said she had been unable to close her eyes on +account of his moaning, and at Mytishchi she moved into a worse hut +simply to be farther away from the wounded man. + +In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed, above +the high body of a coach standing before the porch, the small glow +of another fire. One glow had long been visible and everybody knew +that it was Little Mytishchi burning- set on fire by Mamonov's +Cossacks. + +"But look here, brothers, there's another fire!" remarked an +orderly. + +All turned their attention to the glow. + +"But they told us Little Mytishchi had been set on fire by Mamonov's +Cossacks." + +"But that's not Mytishchi, it's farther away." + +"Look, it must be in Moscow!" + +Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the coach and +sat down on its steps. + +"It's more to the left, why, Little Mytishchi is over there, and +this is right on the other side." + +Several men joined the first two. + +"See how it's flaring," said one. "That's a fire in Moscow: either +in the Sushchevski or the Rogozhski quarter." + +No one replied to this remark and for some time they all gazed +silently at the spreading flames of the second fire in the distance. + +Old Daniel Terentich, the count's valet (as he was called), came +up to the group and shouted at Mishka. + +"What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The count will be +calling and there's nobody there; go and gather the clothes together." + +"I only ran out to get some water," said Mishka. + +"But what do you think, Daniel Terentich? Doesn't it look as if that +glow were in Moscow?" remarked one of the footmen. + +Daniel Terentich made no reply, and again for a long time they +were all silent. The glow spread, rising and failing, farther and +farther still. + +"God have mercy.... It's windy and dry..." said another voice. + +"Just look! See what it's doing now. O Lord! You can even see the +crows flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!" + +"They'll put it out, no fear!" + +"Who's to put it out?" Daniel Terentich, who had hitherto been +silent, was heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. "Moscow +it is, brothers," said he. "Mother Moscow, the white..." his voice +faltered, and he gave way to an old man's sob. + +And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize the +significance for them of the glow they were watching. Sighs were +heard, words of prayer, and the sobbing of the count's old valet. + +CHAPTER XXXI + +The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that +Moscow was burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to +look. Sonya and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out +with him. Only Natasha and the countess remained in the room. Petya +was no longer with the family, he had gone on with his regiment +which was making for Troitsa. + +The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry. +Natasha, pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the +icons just where she had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to +her father's words. She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of +the adjutant, three houses off. + +"Oh, how terrible," said Sonya returning from the yard chilled and +frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there's an awful +glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it from the window," she said to +her cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind. + +But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to +her and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had +been in this condition of stupor since the morning, when Sonya, to the +surprise and annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable +reason found it necessary to tell Natasha of Prince Andrew's wound and +of his being with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry +with anyone as she was with Sonya. Sonya had cried and begged to be +forgiven and now, as if trying to atone for her fault, paid +unceasing attention to her cousin. + +"Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!" said she. + +"What's burning?" asked Natasha. "Oh, yes, Moscow." + +And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of her, she +turned her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was +evident that she could not see anything, and again settled down in her +former attitude. + +"But you didn't see it!" + +"Yes, really I did," Natasha replied in a voice that pleaded to be +left in peace. + +Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither +Moscow nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of +importance to Natasha. + +The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess +went up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand +as she was wont to do when Natasha was ill, then touched her +forehead with her lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and +finally kissed her. + +"You are cold. You are trembling all over. You'd better lie down," +said the countess. + +"Lie down? All right, I will. I'll lie down at once," said Natasha. + +When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was +seriously wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first +asked many questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it +serious? And could she see him? But after she had been told that she +could not see him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life was +not in danger, she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all, +evidently disbelieving what they told her, and convinced that say what +she might she would still be told the same. All the way she had sat +motionless in a corner of the coach with wide open eyes, and the +expression in them which the countess knew so well and feared so much, +and now she sat in the same way on the bench where she had seated +herself on arriving. She was planning something and either deciding or +had already decided something in her mind. The countess knew this, but +what it might be she did not know, and this alarmed and tormented her. + +"Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed." + +A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame +Schoss and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor. + +"No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor," Natasha replied +irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open +window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She +put her head out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her +slim neck shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame. +Natasha knew it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince +Andrew was in the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut +across the passage; but this dreadful incessant moaning made her +sob. The countess exchanged a look with Sonya. + +"Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet," said the countess, softly +touching Natasha's shoulders. "Come, lie down." + +"Oh, yes... I'll lie down at once," said Natasha, and began +hurriedly undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat. + +When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket, +she sat down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made +up on the floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the +front, and began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers +rapidly unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved +from side to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked +fixedly before her. When her toilet for the night was finished she +sank gently onto the sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the +door. + +"Natasha, you'd better lie in the middle," said Sonya. + +"I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie down," she added +crossly, and buried her face in the pillow. + +The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and lay +down. The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left +in the room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire at Little +Mytishchi a mile and a half away, and through the night came the noise +of people shouting at a tavern Mamonov's Cossacks had set up across +the street, and the adjutant's unceasing moans could still be heard. + +For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds that +reached her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First +she heard her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed +under her, then Madame Schoss' familiar whistling snore and Sonya's +gentle breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha. Natasha did not +answer. + +"I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly. + +After short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one +replied. + +Soon after that Natasha heard her mother's even breathing. Natasha +did not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the +quilt, was growing cold on the bare floor. + +As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in +a crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near +by. The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning of +the adjutant was heard. Natasha sat up. + +"Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?" she whispered. + +No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully, crossed +herself, and stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her +slim, supple, bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping +cautiously from one foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few +steps to the door and grasped the cold door handle. + +It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically +against all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking +with alarm and terror and overflowing with love. + +She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the +cold, damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed +her. With her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over +him, and opened the door into the part of the hut where Prince +Andrew lay. It was dark in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench +beside a bed on which something was lying, stood a tallow candle +with a long, thick, and smoldering wick. + +From the moment she had been told that of Prince Andrew's wound +and his presence there, Natasha had resolved to see him. She did not +know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt +the more convinced that it was necessary. + +All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now +that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might +see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that +incessant moaning of the adjutant's? Yes, he was altogether like that. +In her imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When +she saw an indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees +raised under the quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body +there, and stood still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her +forward. She cautiously took one step and then another, and found +herself in the middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man- +Timokhin- was lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, +and two others- the doctor and a valet- lay on the floor. + +The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by +the pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange +apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and +nightcap. The valet's sleepy, frightened exclamation, "What do you +want? What's the matter?" made Natasha approach more swiftly to what +was lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked, +she must see him. She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle +wick, and she saw Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the +quilt, and such as she had always seen him. + +He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his +glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his +neck, delicate as a child's, revealed by the turn-down collar of his +shirt, gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had +never seen on him before. She went up to him and with a swift, +flexible, youthful movement dropped on her knees. + +He smiled and held out his hand to her. + +CHAPTER XXXII + +Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the +ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the +inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's +opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with +pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that +his temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning. +The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had +remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself +asked to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his +removal into the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose +consciousness. When he had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a +long time motionless with closed eyes. Then he opened them and +whispered softly: "And the tea?" His remembering such a small detail +of everyday life astonished the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse, +and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved. He +was dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient did +not die now, he would do so a little later with greater suffering. +Timokhin, the red-nosed major of Prince Andrew's regiment, had +joined him in Moscow and was being taken along with him, having been +wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino. They were accompanied by +a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his coach. man, and two orderlies. + +They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking +with feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to +understand and remember something. + +"I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked. + +Timokhin crept along the bench to him. + +"I am here, your excellency." + +"How's your wound?" + +"Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?" + +Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something. + +"Couldn't one get a book?" he asked. + +"What book?" + +"The Gospels. I haven't one." + +The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he +was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly +but reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him +as he was uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted +the cloak with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the +noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began +examining that dreadful place. The doctor was very much displeased +about something and made a change in the dressings, turning the +wounded man over so that he groaned again and grew unconscious and +delirious from the agony. He kept asking them to get him the book +and put it under him. + +"What trouble would it be to you?" he said. "I have not got one. +Please get it for me and put it under for a moment," he pleaded in a +piteous voice. + +The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands. + +"You fellows have no conscience," said he to the valet who was +pouring water over his hands. "For just one moment I didn't look after +you... It's such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it." + +"By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under +him!" said the valet. + +The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was +the matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he +asked to be carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at +Mytishchi. After growing confused from pain while being carried into +the hut he again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once +more recalled all that had happened to him, and above all vividly +remembered the moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of +the sufferings of a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to +him which promised him happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague +and indefinite, again possessed his soul. He remembered that he had +now a new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to +do with the Gospels. That was why he asked for a copy of them. The +uncomfortable position in which they had put him and turned him over +again confused his thoughts, and when he came to himself a third +time it was in the complete stillness of the night. Everybody near him +was sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the passage; someone was +shouting and singing in the street; cockroaches rustled on the +table, on the icons, and on the walls, and a big fly flopped at the +head of the bed and around the candle beside him, the wick of which +was charred and had shaped itself like a mushroom. + +His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of, +feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the +power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which +to fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from +the deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in +and can then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew's +mind was not in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of +his mind were more active and clearer than ever, but they acted +apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images occupied him +simultaneously. At times his brain suddenly began to work with a +vigor, clearness, and depth it had never reached when he was in +health, but suddenly in the midst of its work it would turn to some +unexpected idea and he had not the strength to turn it back again. + +"Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be +deprived," he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness of the quiet hut, +gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. "A happiness +lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act +on man- a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving. +Every man can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was +possible only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was +the Son...?" + +And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince +Andrew heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality) +a soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating +"piti-piti-piti," and then "titi," and then again "piti-piti-piti," +and "ti-ti" once more. At the same time he felt that above his face, +above the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being +erected out of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this +whispered music. He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it +was difficult) so that this airy structure should not collapse; but +nevertheless it kept collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound +of whispered rhythmic music- "it stretches, stretches, spreading out +and stretching," said Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to +this whispering and feeling the sensation of this drawing out and +the construction of this edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a +red halo round the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and +the buzzing of the fly that flopped against his pillow and his face. +Each time the fly touched his face it gave him a burning sensation and +yet to his surprise it did not destroy the structure, though it +knocked against the very region of his face where it was rising. But +besides this there was something else of importance. It was +something white by the door- the statue of a sphinx, which also +oppressed him. + +"But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought, "and +that's my legs, and that is the door, but why is it always +stretching and drawing itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti' and 'ti-ti' +and 'piti-piti-piti'...? That's enough, please leave off!" Prince +Andrew painfully entreated someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings +again swam to the surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and +force. + +"Yes- love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love which +loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some +reason, but the love which I- while dying- first experienced when I +saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love +which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an +object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one's neighbors, to +love one's enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His +manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with +human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why +I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has +become of him? Is he alive?... + +"When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but +divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can +destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people +have I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as +I did her." And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as he +had done in the past with nothing but her charms which gave him +delight, but for the first time picturing to himself her soul. And +he understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now +understood for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, +the cruelty of his rupture with her. "If only it were possible for +me to see her once more! Just once, looking into those eyes to say..." + +"Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!" flopped the +fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a +world of reality and delirium in which something particular was +happening. In that world some structure was still being erected and +did not fall, something was still stretching out, and the candle +with its red halo was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay +near the door; but besides all this something creaked, there was a +whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the +door. And that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very +Natasha of whom he had just been thinking. + +"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is," thought Prince +Andrew, trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face +remained before him with the force of reality and drew nearer. +Prince Andrew wished to return that former world of pure thought, +but he could not, and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft +whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed +him and stretched out, and the strange face was before him. Prince +Andrew collected all his strength in an effort to recover his +senses, he moved a little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his +ears, a dimness in his eyes, and like a man plunged into water he lost +consciousness. When he came to himself, Natasha, that same living +Natasha whom of all people he most longed to love with this new pure +divine love that had been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He +realized that it was the real living Natasha, and he was not surprised +but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on her knees (she was unable to +stir), with frightened eyes riveted on him, was restraining her +sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it +something quivered. + +Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand. + +"You?" he said. "How fortunate!" + +With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him on +her knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and +began kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips. + +"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him. +"Forgive me!" + +"I love you," said Prince Andrew. + +"Forgive...!" + +"Forgive what?" he asked. + +"Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha in a +scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more +rapidly, just touching it with her lips. + +"I love you more, better than before," said Prince Andrew, lifting +her face with his hand so as to look into her eyes. + +Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly, +compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face, +with its swollen lips, was more than plain- it was dreadful. But +Prince Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were +beautiful. They heard the sound of voices behind them. + +Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor. +Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had +long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his +bare body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench. + +"What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his bed. "Please go +away, madam!" + +At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her +daughter's absence, knocked at the door. + +Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the +room and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed. + +From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey, at +every halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha never +left the wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit that he had +not expected from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in +nursing a wounded man. + +Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew +die in her daughter's arms during the journey- as, judging by what the +doctor said, it seemed might easily happen- she could not oppose +Natasha. Though with the intimacy now established between the +wounded man and Natasha the thought occurred that should he recover +their former engagement would be renewed, no one- least of all Natasha +and Prince Andrew- spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and +death, which hung not only over Bolkonski but over all Russia, shut +out all other considerations. + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching, +the clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt +uncomfortable on his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness of +something shameful he had done the day before. That something shameful +was his yesterday's conversation with Captain Ramballe. + +It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of +doors. Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an +engraved stock which Gerasim had replaced on the writing table, he +remembered where he was and what lay before him that very day. + +"Am I not too late?" he thought. "No, probably he won't make his +entry into Moscow before noon." + +Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him, +but hastened to act. + +After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to +go out. But it then occurred to him for the first time that he +certainly could not carry the weapon in his hand through the +streets. It was difficult to hide such a big pistol even under his +wide coat. He could not carry it unnoticed in his belt or under his +arm. Besides, it had been discharged, and he had not had time to +reload it. "No matter, dagger will do," he said to himself, though +when planning his design he had more than once come to the +conclusion that the chief mistake made by the student in 1809 had been +to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as his chief aim +consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving to himself +that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he could +to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a +green sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market with the +pistol, and hid it under his waistcoat. + +Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his +head, Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or +meeting the captain, and passed out into the street. + +The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much +indifference the evening before, had greatly increased during the +night. Moscow was on fire in several places. The buildings in Carriage +Row, across the river, in the Bazaar and the Povarskoy, as well as the +barges on the Moskva River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov +Bridge, were all ablaze. + +Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and from +there to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he had long +before decided that the deed should should be done. The gates of +most of the houses were locked and the shutters up. The streets and +lanes were deserted. The air was full of smoke and the smell of +burning. Now and then he met Russians with anxious and timid faces, +and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but of the camp, walking +in the middle of the streets. Both the Russians and the French +looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his height and stoutness, +and the strange morose look of suffering in his face and whole figure, +the Russians stared at Pierre because they could not make out to +what class he could belong. The French followed him with +astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the +other Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid +no attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who +were explaining something to some Russians who did not understand +them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French. + +Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel +standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the +shout was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man's +musket as he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on +the other side of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what +went on around him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror +and haste, like something dreadful and alien to him, for, after the +previous night's experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was +not destined to bring his mood safely to his destination. And even had +he not been hindered by anything on the way, his intention could not +now have been carried out, for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more than +four hours previously on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the +Kremlin, and was now sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal +study in the Kremlin, giving detailed and exact orders as to +measures to be taken immediately to extinguish the fire, to prevent +looting, and to reassure the inhabitants. But Pierre did not know +this; he was entirely absorbed in what lay before him, and was +tortured- as those are who obstinately undertake a task that is +impossible for them not because of its difficulty but because of its +incompatibility with their natures- by the fear of weakening at the +decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem. + +Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by +instinct and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the +Povarskoy. + +As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser- +he even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame +rose from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the +streets and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that +something unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he +was approaching the fire. As he was going along a foot path across a +wide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side and the gardens of +Prince Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the +desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if +awakening from a dream and lifted his head. + +By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of +household goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and +trunks. On the ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer +young, with long, prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and +cap. This woman, swaying to and fro and muttering something, was +choking with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirty +short frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother with a look of +stupefaction on their pale frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy +of about seven, who wore an overcoat and an immense cap evidently +not his own, was crying in his old nurse's arms. A dirty, barefooted +maid was sitting on a trunk, and, having undone her pale-colored +plait, was pulling it straight and sniffing at her singed hair. The +woman's husband, a short, round-shouldered man in the undress +uniform of a civilian official, with sausage-shaped whiskers and +showing under his square-set cap the hair smoothly brushed forward +over his temples, with expressionless face was moving the trunks, +which were placed one on another, and was dragging some garments +from under them. + +As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his +feet. + +"Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends... +help us, somebody," she muttered between her sobs. "My girl... My +daughter! My youngest daughter is left behind. She's burned! Ooh! +Was it for this I nursed you.... Ooh!" + +"Don't, Mary Nikolievna!" said her husband to her in a low voice, +evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. "Sister must +have taken her, or else where can she be?" he added. + +"Monster! Villain!" shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to +weep. "You have no heart, you don't feel for your own child! Another +man would have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and +neither a man nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man," she +went on, addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. "The fire broke +out alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out 'Fire!' and we +rushed to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This is +what we have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all the +rest is lost. We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O +Lord!..." and again she began to sob. "My child, my dear one! +Burned, burned!" + +"But where was she left?" asked Pierre. + +From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man +might help her. + +"Oh, dear sir!" she cried, seizing him by the legs. "My +benefactor, set my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid girl, show +him the way!" she cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and +still farther exposing her long teeth. + +"Show me the way, show me, I... I'll do it," gasped Pierre rapidly. + +The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her +plait, sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre +felt as if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his +head higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swift +steps he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the +Povarskoy. The whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues +of flame here and there broke through that cloud. A great number of +people crowded in front of the conflagration. In the middle of the +street stood a French general saying something to those around him. +Pierre, accompanied by the maid, was advancing to the spot where the +general stood, but the French soldiers stopped him. + +"On ne passe pas!"~{ "You can't pass! }~ cried a voice. + +"This way, uncle," cried the girl. "We'll pass through the side +street, by the Nikulins'!" + +Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with +her. She ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left, +and, passing three houses, turned into a yard on the right. + +"It's here, close by," said she and, running across the yard, opened +a gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small +wooden wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One +of its sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames +issued from the openings of the windows and from under the roof. + +As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air +and involuntarily stopped. + +"Which is it? Which is your house?" he asked. + +"Ooh!" wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. "That's it, that was +our lodging. You've burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my +precious little missy! Ooh!" lamented Aniska, who at the sight of +the fire felt that she too must give expression to her feelings. + +Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he +involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house +that was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and +around which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not +realize what these men, who were dragging something out, were about; +but seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber +and trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood that +looting was going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea. + +The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings, +the whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the +people, and the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick +black clouds and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here +and there dense sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish +scales creeping along the walls), and the heat and smoke and +rapidity of motion, produced on Pierre the usual animating effects +of a conflagration. It had a peculiarly strong effect on him because +at the sight of the fire he felt himself suddenly freed from the ideas +that had weighed him down. He felt young, bright, adroit, and +resolute. He ran round to the other side of the lodge and was about to +dash into that part of it which was still standing, when just above +his head he heard several voices shouting and then a cracking sound +and the ring of something heavy falling close beside him. + +Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some +Frenchmen who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with +metal articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to the +drawer. + +"What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring to +Pierre. + +"There's a child in that house. Haven't you seen a child?" cried +Pierre. + +"What's he talking about? Get along!" said several voices, and one +of the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take +from them some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved +threateningly toward him. + +"A child?" shouted a Frenchman from above. "I did hear something +squealing in the garden. Perhaps it's his brat that the fellow is +looking for. After all, one must be human, you know...." + +"Where is it? Where?" said Pierre. + +"There! There!" shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing to the +garden at the back of the house. "Wait a bit- I'm coming down." + +And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with +a spot on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window +on the ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with +him into the garden. + +"Hurry up, you others!" he called out to his comrades. "It's getting +hot." + +When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman +pulled Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space +where a three-year-old girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat. + +"There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!" said the +Frenchman. "Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you +know!" and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his +comrades. + +Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going +to take her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly, +scrofulous-looking child, unattractively like her mother, began to +yell and run away. Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in his +arms. She screamed desperately and angrily and tried with her little +hands to pull Pierre's hands away and to bite them with her slobbering +mouth. Pierre was seized by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he +had experienced when touching some nasty little animal. But he made an +effort not to throw the child down and ran with her to the large +house. It was now, however, impossible to get back the way he had +come; the maid, Aniska, was no longer there, and Pierre with a feeling +of pity and disgust pressed the wet, painfully sobbing child to +himself as tenderly as he could and ran with her through the garden +seeking another way out. + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back +with his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the +Povarskoy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had +set out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and +goods that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian +families who had taken refuge here from the fire with their +belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety of +clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to find the family +of that civil servant in order to restore the daughter to her mother +and go to save someone else. Pierre felt that he had still much to +do and to do quickly. Glowing with the heat and from running, he +felt at that moment more strongly than ever the sense of youth, +animation, and determination that had come on him when he ran to +save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging with her little +hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about her like some +little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a slight +smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that +frightened, sickly little face. + +He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left +them. He walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various +faces he met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family +consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new, +cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar +type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the +perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched, +black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long, +beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the +crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright +lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown +out onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the +old woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless, +large, almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she +was aware of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck +Pierre and, hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to +look at her. When he had reached the fence, still without finding +those he sought, he stopped and looked about him. + +With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous +than before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered +about him. + +"Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry +yourself, aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked him. + +Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat +who had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked +whether anyone knew where she had gone. + +"Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon, addressing a +pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!" he added +in his customary bass. + +"The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left in the morning. +That must be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!" + +"He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady," remarked a house +serf. + +"Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth," said Pierre. + +"That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden when these +wolves swooped down," said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers. + +"O Lord, have mercy!" added the deacon. + +"Go over that way, they're there. It's she! She kept on lamenting +and crying," continued the woman. "It's she. Here, this way!" + +But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds +been intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was +looking at the Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone +up to them. One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat +tied round the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and +his feet were bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck +Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in +his movements and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a +woman's loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian +boots. The little barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the +Armenians and, saying something, immediately seized the old man by his +legs and the old man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in +the frieze gown stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and +with his hands in his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and +silent. + +"Here, take the child!" said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to +the woman, handing the little girl to her. "Give her back to them, +give her back!" he almost shouted, putting the child, who began +screaming, on the ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the +Armenian family. + +The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had +secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other. +The old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre +caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to +the Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile, swaying slowly from +side to side, had drawn nearer to the young woman and taking his hands +from his pockets had seized her by the neck. + +The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same +attitude, with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or +feel what the soldier was doing to her. + +While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the +Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing +from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the +young woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly. + +"Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious +voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him +aside. + +The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing +down the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward +Pierre. + +"Voyons, Pas de betises!"~{ "Look here, no nonsense!" }~ he cried. + +Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing +and his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted +Frenchman and, before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked +him off his feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval +were heard from the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted +patrol of French Uhlans appeared from round the corner. The Uhlans +came up at a trot to Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them. +Pierre remembered nothing of what happened after that. He only +remembered beating someone and being beaten and finally feeling that +his hands were bound and that a crowd of French soldiers stood +around him and were searching him. + +"Lieutenant, he has a dagger," were the first words Pierre +understood. + +"Ah, a weapon?" said the officer and turned to the barefooted +soldier who had been arrested with Pierre. "All right, you can tell +all about it at the court-martial." Then he turned to Pierre. "Do +you speak French?" + +Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply. +His face probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something +in a whisper and four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves +on both sides of Pierre. + +"Do you speak French?" the officer asked again, keeping at a +distance from Pierre. "Call the interpreter." + +A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks, +and by his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to +be a French salesman from one of the Moscow shops. + +"He does not look like a common man," said the interpreter, after +a searching look at Pierre. + +"Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary," remarked the officer. +"And ask him who he is," he added. + +"Who are you?" asked the interpreter in poor Russian. "You must +answer the chief." + +"I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner- take me!" +Pierre suddenly replied in French. + +"Ah, ah!" muttered the officer with a frown. "Well then, march!" + +A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood +the pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol +started she moved forward. + +"Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said she. "And the +little girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's not +theirs?" said the woman. + +"What does that woman want?" asked the officer. + +Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight +of the little girl he had saved. + +"What does she want?" he murmured. "She is bringing me my daughter +whom I have just saved from the flames," said he. "Good-by!" And +without knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along +with resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers. + +The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various +streets of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage, +and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general +opinion which had that day originated among the higher French +officers, were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching through +a number of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects: +a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant, and a house +serf, besides several looters. But of all these various suspected +characters, Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious of all. +When they had all been brought for the night to a large house on the +Zubov Rampart that was being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed +apart under strict guard. + +BOOK TWELVE: 1812 + +CHAPTER I + +In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was being +carried on with greater heat than ever in the highest circles, between +the parties of Rumyantsev, the French, Marya Fedorovna, the Tsarevich, +and others, drowned as usual by the buzzing of the court drones. But +the calm, luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about +phantoms and reflections of real life, went on in its old way and made +it hard, except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the +difficult position of the Russian people. There were the same +receptions and balls, the same French theater, the same court +interests and service interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the +very highest circles were attempts made to keep in mind the +difficulties of the actual position. Stories were whispered of how +differently the two Empresses behaved in these difficult +circumstances. The Empress Marya, concerned for the welfare of the +charitable and educational institutions under her patronage, had given +directions that they should all be removed to Kazan, and the things +belonging to these institutions had already been packed up. The +Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions she would +be pleased to give- with her characteristic Russian patriotism had +replied that she could give no directions about state institutions for +that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally was +concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg. + +At Anna Pavlovna's on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of +the battle of Borodino, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which +was to be the reading of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when +sending the Emperor an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was +regarded as a model of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince +Vasili himself, famed for his elocution, was to read it. (He used to +read at the Empress'.) The art of his reading was supposed to lie in +rolling out the words, quite independently of their meaning, in a loud +and singsong voice alternating between a despairing wail and a +tender murmur, so that the wail fell quite at random on one word and +the murmur on another. This reading, as was always the case at Anna +Pavlovna's soirees, had a political significance. That evening she +expected several important personages who had to be made ashamed of +their visits to the French theater and aroused to a patriotic +temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna Pavlovna, not +yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room, did not +let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general +conversation. + +The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess +Bezukhova. She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously, +had missed several gatherings of which she was usually ornament, and +was said to be receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated +Petersburg doctors who usually attended her had entrusted herself to +some Italian doctor who was treating her in some new and unusual way. + +They all knew very well that the enchanting countess' illness +arose from an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at +the same time, and that the Italian's cure consisted in removing +such inconvenience; but in Anna Pavlovna's presence no one dared to +think of this or even appear to know it. + +"They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it is +angina pectoris." + +"Angina? Oh, that's a terrible illness!" + +"They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the angina..." +and the word angina was repeated with great satisfaction. + +"The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when the +doctor told him the case was dangerous." + +"Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman." + +"You are speaking of the poor countess?" said Anna Pavlovna, +coming up just then. "I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a +little better. Oh, she is certainly the most charming woman in the +world," she went on, with a smile at her own enthusiasm. "We belong to +different camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she +deserves. She is very unfortunate!" added Anna Pavlovna. + +Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was somewhat lifting the +veil from the secret of the countess' malady, an unwary young man +ventured to express surprise that well known doctors had not been +called in and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan +who might employ dangerous remedies. + +"Your information maybe better than mine," Anna Pavlovna suddenly +and venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, "but I know on +good authority that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He +is private physician to the Queen of Spain." + +And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pavlovna turned to +another group where Bilibin was talking about the Austrians: having +wrinkled up his face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again +and utter one of his mots. + +"I think it is delightful," he said, referring to a diplomatic +note that had been sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners +captured from the French by Wittgenstein, "the hero of Petropol" as he +was then called in Petersburg. + +"What? What's that?" asked Anna Pavlovna, securing silence for the +mot, which she had heard before. + +And Bilibin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch, +which he had himself composed. + +"The Emperor returns these Austrian banners," said Bilibin, +"friendly banners gone astray and found on a wrong path," and his brow +became smooth again. + +"Charming, charming!" observed Prince Vasili. + +"The path to Warsaw, perhaps," Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly +and unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him, understanding what he +meant. Prince Hippolyte himself glanced around with amused surprise. +He knew no more than the others what his words meant. During his +diplomatic career he had more than once noticed that such utterances +were received as very witty, and at every opportunity he uttered in +that way the first words that entered his head. "It may turn out +very well," he thought, "but if not, they'll know how to arrange +matters." And really, during the awkward silence that ensued, that +insufficiently patriotic person entered whom Anna Pavlovna had been +waiting for and wished to convert, and she, smiling and shaking a +finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince Vasili to the table and bringing +him two candles and the manuscript begged him to begin. Everyone +became silent. + +"Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor! " Prince Vasili sternly +declaimed, looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether +anyone had anything to say to the contrary. But no one said +anything. "Moscow, our ancient capital, the New Jerusalem, receives +her Christ"- he placed a sudden emphasis on the word her- "as a mother +receives her zealous sons into her arms, and through the gathering +mists, foreseeing the brilliant glory of thy rule, sings in +exultation, 'Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh!'" + +Prince Vasili pronounced these last words in a tearful voice. + +Bilibin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present +appeared intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna +Pavlovna whispered the next words in advance, like an old woman +muttering the prayer at Communion: "Let the bold and insolent +Goliath..." she whispered. + +Prince Vasili continued. + +"Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of France +encompass the realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble +Faith, the sling of the Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head +in his blood-thirsty pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the +servant of God and zealous champion of old of our country's weal, is +offered to Your Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength +prevents rejoicing in the sight of your most gracious presence. I +raise fervent prayers to Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the race +of the just, and mercifully fulfill the desires of Your Majesty." + +"What force! What a style!" was uttered in approval both of reader +and of author. + +Animated by that address Anna Pavlovna's guests talked for a long +time of the state of the fatherland and offered various conjectures as +to the result of the battle to be fought in a few days. + +"You will see," said Anna Pavlovna, "that tomorrow, on the Emperor's +birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!" + +CHAPTER II + +Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day +during the service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor's +birthday, Prince Volkonski was called out of the church and received a +dispatch from Prince Kutuzov. It was Kutuzov's report, written from +Tatarinova on the day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that the Russians +had not retreated a step, that the French losses were much heavier +than ours, and that he was writing in haste from the field of battle +before collecting full information. It followed that there must have +been a victory. And at once, without leaving the church, thanks were +rendered to the Creator for His help and for the victory. + +Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was justified, and all that morning a +joyously festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the +victory to have been complete, and some even spoke of Napoleon's +having been captured, of his deposition, and of the choice of a new +ruler for France. + +It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real +strength and completeness amid the conditions of court life and far +from the scene of action. General events involuntarily group +themselves around some particular incident. So now the courtiers' +pleasure was based as much on the fact that the news had arrived on +the Emperor's birthday as on the fact of the victory itself. It was +like a successfully arranged surprise. Mention was made in Kutuzov's +report of the Russian losses, among which figured the names of +Tuchkov, Bagration, and Kutaysov. In the Petersburg world this sad +side of the affair again involuntarily centered round a single +incident: Kutaysov's death. Everybody knew him, the Emperor liked him, +and he was young and interesting. That day everyone met with the +words: + +"What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service. But what a +loss Kutaysov is! How sorry I am!" + +"What did I tell about Kutuzov?" Prince Vasili now said with a +prophet's pride. "I always said he was the only man capable of +defeating Napoleon." + +But next day no news arrived from the army and the public mood +grew anxious. The courtiers suffered because of the suffering the +suspense occasioned the Emperor. + +"Fancy the Emperor's position!" said they, and instead of +extolling Kutuzov as they had done the day before, they condemned +him as the cause of the Emperor's anxiety. That day Prince Vasili no +longer boasted of his protege Kutuzov, but remained silent when the +commander in chief was mentioned. Moreover, toward evening, as if +everything conspired to make Petersburg society anxious and uneasy, +a terrible piece of news was added. Countess Helene Bezukhova had +suddenly died of that terrible malady it had been so agreeable to +mention. Officially, at large gatherings, everyone said that +Countess Bezukhova had died of a terrible attack of angina pectoris, +but in intimate circles details were mentioned of how the private +physician of the Queen of Spain had prescribed small doses of a +certain drug to produce a certain effect; but Helene, tortured by +the fact that the old count suspected her and that her husband to whom +she had written (that wretched, profligate Pierre) had not replied, +had suddenly taken a very large dose of the drug, and had died in +agony before assistance could be rendered her. It was said that Prince +Vasili and the old count had turned upon the Italian, but the latter +had produced such letters from the unfortunate deceased that they +had immediately let the matter drop. + +Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts: the Emperor's +lack of news, the loss of Kutuzov, and the death of Helene. + +On the third day after Kutuzov's report a country gentleman +arrived from Moscow, and news of the surrender of Moscow to the French +spread through the whole town. This was terrible! What a position +for the Emperor to be in! Kutuzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasili +during the visits of condolence paid to him on the occasion of his +daughter's death said of Kutuzov, whom he had formerly praised (it was +excusable for him in his grief to forget what he had said), that it +was impossible to expect anything else from a blind and depraved old +man. + +"I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted +to such a man." + +As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible to doubt +it, but the next day the following communication was received from +Count Rostopchin: + +Prince Kutuzov's adjutant has brought me a letter in which he +demands police officers to guide the army to the Ryazan road. He +writes that he is regretfully abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutuzov's +action decides the fate of the capital and of your empire! Russia will +shudder to learn of the abandonment of the city in which her greatness +is centered and in which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I shall +follow the army. I have had everything removed, and it only remains +for me to weep over the fate of my fatherland. + +On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince Volkonski to +Kutuzov with the following rescript: + +Prince Michael Ilarionovich! Since the twenty-ninth of August I have +received no communication from you, yet on the first of September I +received from the commander in chief of Moscow, via Yaroslavl, the sad +news that you, with the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You +can yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me, and your +silence increases my astonishment. I am sending this by +Adjutant-General Prince Volkonski, to hear from you the situation of +the army and the reasons that have induced you to take this melancholy +decision. + +CHAPTER III + +Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from +Kutuzov reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that +event. This messenger was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know +Russian, but who was quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d'ame,~{ Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul. }~ as he +said of himself. + +The Emperor at once received this messenger in his study at the +palace on Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before +the campaign and who did not know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as +he wrote) when he appeared before notre tres gracieux souverain~{ Our most gracious sovereign. }~ +with the news of the burning of Moscow, dont les flammes eclairaient +sa route.~{ Whose flames illumined his route. }~ + +Though the source of M. Michaud's chagrin must have been different +from that which caused Russians to grieve, he had such a sad face when +shown into the Emperor's study that the latter at once asked: + +"Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?" + +"Very sad, sire," replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a sigh. +"The abandonment of Moscow." + +"Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a battle?" asked +the Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing. + +Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutuzov had entrusted +to him, which was that it had been impossible to fight before +Moscow, and that as the only remaining choice was between losing the +army as well as Moscow, or losing Moscow alone, the field marshal +had to choose the latter. + +The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud. + +"Has the enemy entered the city?" he asked. + +"Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in flames," +replied Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing at the Emperor he +was frightened by what he had done. + +The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his lower lip +trembled, and tears instantly appeared in his fine blue eyes. + +But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned, as if blaming +himself for his weakness, and raising his head addressed Michaud in +a firm voice: + +"I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that Providence +requires great sacrifices of us... I am ready to submit myself in +all things to His will; but tell me, Michaud, how did you leave the +army when it saw my ancient capital abandoned without a battle? Did +you not notice discouragement?..." + +Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once more, Michaud also +grew calm, but was not immediately ready to reply to the Emperor's +direct and relevant question which required a direct answer. + +"Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a loyal +soldier?" he asked to gain time. + +"Colonel, I always require it," replied the Emperor. "Conceal +nothing from me, I wish to know absolutely how things are." + +"Sire!" said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible smile on +his lips, having now prepared a well-phrased reply, "sire, I left +the whole army, from its chiefs to the lowest soldier, without +exception in desperate and agonized terror..." + +"How is that?" the Emperor interrupted him, frowning sternly. "Would +misfortune make my Russians lose heart?... Never!" + +Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the phrase he had +prepared. + +"Sire," he said, with respectful playfulness, "they are only +afraid lest Your Majesty, in the goodness of your heart, should +allow yourself to be persuaded to make peace. They are burning for the +combat," declared this representative of the Russian nation, "and to +prove to Your Majesty by the sacrifice of their lives how devoted they +are...." + +"Ah!" said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly gleam in his +eyes, he patted Michaud on the shoulder. "You set me at ease, +Colonel." + +He bent his head and was silent for some time. + +"Well, then, go back to the army," he said, drawing himself up to +his full height and addressing Michaud with a gracious and majestic +gesture, "and tell our brave men and all my good subjects wherever you +go that when I have not a soldier left I shall put myself at the +head of my beloved nobility and my good peasants and so use the last +resources of my empire. It still offers me more than my enemies +suppose," said the Emperor growing more and more animated; "but should +it ever be ordained by Divine Providence," he continued, raising to +heaven his fine eyes shining with emotion, "that my dynasty should +cease to reign on the throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting +all the means at my command, I shall let my beard grow to here" (he +pointed halfway down his chest) "and go and eat potatoes with the +meanest of my peasants, rather than sign the disgrace of my country +and of my beloved people whose sacrifices I know how to appreciate." + +Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly +turned away as if to hide from Michaud the tears that rose to his +eyes, and went to the further end of his study. Having stood there a +few moments, he strode back to Michaud and pressed his arm below the +elbow with a vigorous movement. The Emperor's mild and handsome face +was flushed and his eyes gleamed with resolution and anger. + +"Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here, perhaps we +may recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon or I," said the +Emperor, touching his breast. "We can no longer both reign together. I +have learned to know him, and he will not deceive me any more...." + +And the Emperor paused, with a frown. + +When he heard these words and saw the expression of firm +resolution in the Emperor's eyes, Michaud- quoique etranger, russe +de coeur et d'ame- at that solemn moment felt himself enraptured by +all that he had heard (as he used afterwards to say), and gave +expression to his own feelings and those of the Russian people whose +representative he considered himself to be, in the following words: + +"Sire!" said he, "Your Majesty is at this moment signing the glory +of the nation and the salvation of Europe!" + +With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed him. + +CHAPTER IV + +It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine +that when half Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were +ficeing to distant provinces, and one levy after another was being +raised for the defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the +greatest to the least were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves, +saving their fatherland, or weeping over its downfall. The tales and +descriptions of that time without exception speak only of the +self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion, despair, grief, and the heroism of +the Russians. But it was not really so. It appears so to us because we +see only the general historic interest of that time and do not see all +the personal human interests that people had. Yet in reality those +personal interests of the moment so much transcend the general +interests that they always prevent the public interest from being felt +or even noticed. Most of the people at that time paid no attention +to the general progress of events but were guided only by their +private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at +that period were most useful. + +Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to +take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless +members of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they +did for the common good turned out to be useless and foolish- like +Pierre's and Mamonov's regiments which looted Russian villages, and +the lint the young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded, +and so on. Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing +their feelings, who discussed Russia's position at the time +involuntarily introduced into their conversation either a shade of +pretense and falsehood or useless condemnation and anger directed +against people accused of actions no one could possibly be guilty +of. In historic events the rule forbidding us to eat of the fruit of +the Tree of Knowledge is specially applicable. Only unconscious action +bears fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event never +understands its significance. If he tries to realize it his efforts +are fruitless. + +The more closely a man was engaged in the events then taking place +in Russia the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg +and in the provinces at a distance from Moscow, ladies, and +gentlemen in militia uniforms, wept for Russia and its ancient capital +and talked of self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army which +retired beyond Moscow there was little talk or thought of Moscow, +and when they caught sight of its burned ruins no one swore to be +avenged on the French, but they thought about their next pay, their +next quarters, of Matreshka the vivandiere, and like matters. + +As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostov took a +close and prolonged part in the defense of his country, but did so +casually, without any aim at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked +at what was going on in Russia without despair and without dismally +racking his brains over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the +state of Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to +think about it, that Kutuzov and others were there for that purpose, +but that he had heard that the regiments were to be made up to their +full strength, that fighting would probably go on for a long time yet, +and that things being so it was quite likely he might be in command of +a regiment in a couple of years' time. + +As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he was being +sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his division, not only without +regret at being prevented from taking part in the coming battle, but +with the greatest pleasure- which he did not conceal and which his +comrades fully understood. + +A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nicholas received the +necessary money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in +advance, he set out with post horses for Voronezh. + +Only a man who has experienced it- that is, has passed some months +continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and war- can understand +the delight Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by +the army's foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. When- +free from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp- he saw +villages with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen's country +houses, fields where cattle were grazing, posthouses with +stationmasters asleep in them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this +for the first time. What for a long while specially surprised and +delighted him were the women, young and healthy, without a dozen +officers making up to each of them; women, too, who were pleased and +flattered that a passing officer should joke with them. + +In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel in +Voronezh, ordered things he had long been deprived of in camp, and +next day, very clean-shaven and in a full-dress uniform he had not +worn for a long time, went to present himself to the authorities. + +The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an old man +who was evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He +received Nicholas brusquely (imagining this to be characteristically +military) and questioned him with an important air, as if +considering the general progress of affairs and approving and +disapproving with full right to do so. Nicholas was in such good +spirits that this merely amused him. + +From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The +governor was a brisk little man, very simple and affable. He indicated +the stud farms at which Nicholas might procure horses, recommended +to him a horse dealer in the town and a landowner fourteen miles out +of town who had the best horses, and promised to assist him in every +way. + +"You are Count Ilya Rostov's son? My wife was a great friend of your +mother's. We are at home on Thursdays- today is Thursday, so please +come and see us quite informally," said the governor, taking leave +of him. + +Immediately on leaving the governor's, Nicholas hired post horses +and, taking his squadron quartermaster with him, drove at a gallop +to the landowner, fourteen miles away, who had the stud. Everything +seemed to him pleasant and easy during that first part of his stay +in Voronezh and, as usually happens when a man is in a pleasant +state of mind, everything went well and easily. + +The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor, an old +cavalryman, a horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some +century-old brandy and some old Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery +where he smoked, and who owned some splendid horses. + +In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six +thousand rubles- to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts. +After dining and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine, +Nicholas- having exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was +already on the friendliest terms- galloped back over abominable roads, +in the brightest frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as +to be in time for the governor's party. + +When he had changed, poured water over his head, and scented +himself, Nicholas arrived at the governor's rather late, but with +the phrase "better late than never" on his lips. + +It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but everyone knew +that Catherine Petrovna would play valses and the ecossaise on the +clavichord and that there would be dancing, and so everyone had come +as to a ball. + +Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but with this +difference, that it was livelier in the towns in consequence of the +arrival of many wealthy families from Moscow, and as in everything +that went on in Russia at that time a special recklessness was +noticeable, an "in for a penny, in for a pound- who cares?" spirit, +and the inevitable small talk, instead of turning on the weather and +mutual acquaintances, now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon. + +The society gathered together at the governor's was the best in +Voronezh. + +There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas' Moscow +acquaintances, but there were no men who could at all vie with the +cavalier of St. George, the hussar remount officer, the good-natured +and well-bred Count Rostov. Among the men was an Italian prisoner, +an officer of the French army; and Nicholas felt that the presence +of that prisoner enhanced his own importance as a Russian hero. The +Italian was, as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this, it seemed +to him that everyone regarded the Italian in the same light, and he +treated him cordially though with dignity and restraint. + +As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing +around him a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the +words "better late than never" and heard them repeated several times +by others, people clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he +felt at once that he had entered into his proper position in the +province- that of a universal favorite: a very pleasant position, +and intoxicatingly so after his long privations. At posting +stations, at inns, and in the landowner's snuggery, maidservants had +been flattered by his notice, and here too at the governor's party +there were (as it seemed to Nicholas) an inexhaustible number of +pretty young women, married and unmarried, impatiently awaiting his +notice. The women and girls flirted with him and, from the first +day, the people concerned themselves to get this fine young +daredevil of an hussar married and settled down. Among these was the +governor's wife herself, who welcomed Rostov as a near relative and +called him "Nicholas." + +Catherine Petrovna did actually play valses and the ecossaise, and +dancing began in which Nicholas still further captivated the +provincial society by his agility. His particularly free manner of +dancing even surprised them all. Nicholas was himself rather surprised +at the way he danced that evening. He had never danced like that in +Moscow and would even have considered such a very free and easy manner +improper and in bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him to +astonish them all by something unusual, something they would have to +accept as the regular thing in the capital though new to them in the +provinces. + +All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and +pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials. +With the naive conviction of young men in a merry mood that other +men's wives were created for them, Rostov did not leave the lady's +side and treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style, +as if, without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and +the lady would get on together. The husband, however, did not seem +to share that conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostov. But +the latter's good-natured naivete was so boundless that sometimes even +he involuntarily yielded to Nicholas' good humor. Toward the end of +the evening, however, as the wife's face grew more flushed and +animated, the husband's became more and more melancholy and solemn, as +though there were but a given amount of animation between them and +as the wife's share increased the husband's diminished. + +CHAPTER V + +Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending +closely over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments +with a smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the +position of his legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor +of perfume, and admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines +of his legs in their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the +blonde lady that he wished to run away with a certain lady here in +Voronezh. + +"Which lady?" + +"A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes" (Nicholas looked at his +partner) "are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure" (he glanced +at her shoulders) "like Diana's...." + +The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking +about. + +"Ah, Nikita Ivanych!" cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if +wishing Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he began to tell him of +his intention to elope with a blonde lady. + +The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor's +good-natured wife came up with a look of disapproval. + +"Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas," said she, +pronouncing the name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna +Ignatyevna was a very important person. "Come, Nicholas! You know +you let me call you so?" + +"Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?" + +"Anna Ignatyevna Malvintseva. She has heard from her niece how you +rescued her... Can you guess?" + +"I rescued such a lot of them!" said Nicholas. + +"Her niece, Princess Bolkonskaya. She is here in Voronezh with her +aunt. Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?" + +"Not a bit! Please don't, Aunt!" + +"Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!" + +The governor's wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady +with a blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with +the most important personages of the town. This was Malvintseva, +Princess Mary's aunt on her mother's side, a rich, childless widow who +always lived in Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was +standing settling up for the game. She looked at him and, screwing +up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the general who had won from +her. + +"Very pleased, mon cher," she then said, holding out her hand to +Nicholas. "Pray come and see me." + +After a few words about Princess Mary and her late father, whom +Malvintseva had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas +knew of Prince Andrew, who also was evidently no favorite of hers, the +important old lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation +to come to see her. + +Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he bowed. At the +mention of Princess Mary he experienced a feeling of shyness and +even of fear, which he himself did not understand. + +When he had parted from Malvintseva Nicholas wished to return to the +dancing, but the governor's little wife placed her plump hand on his +sleeve and, saying that she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to +her sitting room, from which those who were there immediately withdrew +so as not to be in her way. + +"Do you know, dear boy," began the governor's wife with a serious +expression on her kind little face, "that really would be the match +for you: would you like me to arrange it?" + +"Whom do you mean, Aunt?" asked Nicholas. + +"I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine Petrovna +speaks of Lily, but I say, no- the princess! Do you want me to do +it? I am sure your mother will be grateful to me. What a charming girl +she is, really! And she is not at all so plain, either." + +"Not at all," replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. "As +befits a soldier, Aunt, I don't force myself on anyone or refuse +anything," he said before he had time to consider what he was saying. + +"Well then, remember, this is not a joke!" + +"Of course not!" + +"Yes, yes," the governor's wife said as if talking to herself. "But, +my dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other, +the blonde. One is sorry for the husband, really...." + +"Oh no, we are good friends with him," said Nicholas in the +simplicity of his heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so +pleasant to himself might not be pleasant to someone else. + +"But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor's wife!" +thought Nicholas suddenly at supper. "She will really begin to arrange +a match... and Soyna...?" And on taking leave of the governor's +wife, when she again smilingly said to him, "Well then, remember!" +he drew her aside. + +"But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..." + +"What is it, my dear? Come, let's sit down here," said she. + +Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate +thoughts (which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or +his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he +afterwards recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable +frankness which had very important results for him, it seemed to +him- as it seems to everyone in such cases- that it was merely some +silly whim that seized him: yet that burst of frankness, together with +other trifling events, had immense consequences for him and for all +his family. + +"You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but +the very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me." + +"Oh yes, I understand," said the governor's wife. + +"But Princess Bolkonskaya- that's another matter. I will tell you +the truth. In the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to +her; and then, after I met her under such circumstances- so strangely, +the idea often occurred to me: 'This is fate.' Especially if you +remember that Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never +happened to meet her before, somehow it had always happened that we +did not meet. And as long as my sister Natasha was engaged to her +brother it was of course out of the question for me to think of +marrying her. And it must needs happen that I should meet her just +when Natasha's engagement had been broken off... and then +everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone and never +will, only to you." + +The governor's wife pressed his elbow gratefully. + +"You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her, +and will do so.... So you see there can be no question about-" said +Nicholas incoherently and blushing. + +"My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sonya has nothing +and you yourself say your Papa's affairs are in a very bad way. And +what about your mother? It would kill her, that's one thing. And +what sort of life would it be for Sonya- if she's a girl with a heart? +Your mother in despair, and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and +Sonya ought to understand that." + +Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these arguments. + +"All the same, Aunt, it is impossible," he rejoined with a sigh, +after a short pause. "Besides, would the princess have me? And +besides, she is now in mourning. How can one think of it!" + +"But you don't suppose I'm going to get you married at once? There +is always a right way of doing things," replied the governor's wife. + +"What a matchmaker you are, Aunt..." said Nicholas, kissing her +plump little hand. + +CHAPTER VI + +On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov, Princess Mary +had found her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince +Andrew giving her instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at +Voronezh. That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her +during her father's illness, since his death, and especially since her +meeting with Rostov was smothered by arrangements for the journey, +anxiety about her brother, settling in a new house, meeting new +people, and attending to her nephew's education. She was sad. Now, +after a month passed in quiet surroundings, she felt more and more +deeply the loss of her father which was associated in her mind with +the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and incessantly tortured by the +thought of the dangers to which her brother, the only intimate +person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was worried too about +her nephew's education for which she had always felt herself +incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace- a +peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal +dreams and hopes that had been on the point of awakening within her +and were related to her meeting with Rostov. + +The day after her party the governor's wife came to see +Malvintseva and, after discussing her plan with the aunt, remarked +that though under present circumstances a formal betrothal was, of +course, not to be thought of, all the same the young people might be +brought together and could get to know one another. Malvintseva +expressed approval, and the governor's wife began to speak of Rostov +in Mary's presence, praising him and telling how he had blushed when +Princess Mary's name was mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a +painful rather than a joyful feeling- her mental tranquillity was +destroyed, and desires, doubts, self-reproach, and hopes reawoke. + +During the two days that elapsed before Rostov called, Princess Mary +continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she +decided not to come to the drawing room when he called to see her +aunt- that it would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to +receive visitors; then she thought this would be rude after what he +had done for her; then it occurred to her that her aunt and the +governor's wife had intentions concerning herself and Rostov- their +looks and words at times seemed to confirm this supposition- then +she told herself that only she, with her sinful nature, could think +this of them: they could not forget that situated as she was, while +still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking would be an insult to +her and to her father's memory. Assuming that she did go down to see +him, Princess Mary imagined the words he would say to her and what she +would say to him, and these words sometimes seemed undeservedly cold +and then to mean too much. More than anything she feared lest the +confusion she felt might overwhelm her and betray her as soon as she +saw him. + +But when on Sunday after church the footman announced in the drawing +room that Count Rostov had called, the princess showed no confusion, +only a slight blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new +and radiant light. + +"You have met him, Aunt?" said she in a calm voice, unable herself +to understand that she could be outwardly so calm and natural. + +When Rostov entered the room, the princess dropped her eyes for an +instant, as if to give the visitor time to greet her aunt, and then +just as Nicholas turned to her she raised her head and met his look +with shining eyes. With a movement full of dignity and grace she +half rose with a smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate +hand to him, and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time +new deep womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in +the drawing room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise. +Herself a consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on +meeting a man she wished to attract. + +"Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has +greatly improved without my having noticed it. And above all, what +tact and grace!" thought Mademoiselle Bourienne. + +Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that moment, she +would have been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the +change that had taken place in herself. From the moment she recognized +that dear, loved face, a new life force took possession of her and +compelled her to speak and act apart from her own will. From the +time Rostov entered, her face became suddenly transformed. It was as +if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern and the +intricate, skillful, artistic work on its sides, that previously +seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless, was suddenly shown up in +unexpected and striking beauty. For the first time all that pure, +spiritual, inward travail through which she had lived appeared on +the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction with herself, +her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her meekness, love, +and self-sacrifice- all this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her +delicate smile, and in every trait of her gentle face. + +Rostov saw all this as clearly as if he had known her whole life. He +felt that the being before him was quite different from, and better +than, anyone he had met before, and above all better than himself. + +Their conversation was very simple and unimportant. They spoke of +the war, and like everyone else unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow +about it; they spoke of their last meeting- Nicholas trying to +change the subject- they talked of the governor's kind wife, of +Nicholas' relations, and of Princess Mary's. + +She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as +soon as her aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she could speak of +Russia's misfortunes with a certain artificiality, but her brother was +too near her heart and she neither could nor would speak lightly of +him. Nicholas noticed this, as he noticed every shade of Princess +Mary's character with an observation unusual to him, and everything +confirmed his conviction that she was a quite unusual and +extraordinary being. Nicholas blushed and was confused when people +spoke to him about the princess (as she did when he was mentioned) and +even when he thought of her, but in her presence he felt quite at +ease, and said not at all what he had prepared, but what, quite +appropriately, occurred to him at the moment. + +When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is +usual when there are children, turned to Prince Andrew's little son, +caressing him and asking whether he would like to be an hussar. He +took the boy on his knee, played with him, and looked round at +Princess Mary. With a softened, happy, timid look she watched the +boy she loved in the arms of the man she loved. Nicholas also +noticed that look and, as if understanding it, flushed with pleasure +and began to kiss the boy with good natured playfulness. + +As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out into society, +and Nicholas did not think it the proper thing to visit her again; but +all the same the governor's wife went on with her matchmaking, passing +on to Nicholas the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and +vice versa, and insisting on his declaring himself to Princess Mary. +For this purpose she arranged a meeting between the young people at +the bishop's house before Mass. + +Though Rostov told the governeor's wife that he would not make any +declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go. + +As at Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt that what +everybody considered right was right, so now, after a short but +sincere struggle between his effort to arrange his life by his own +sense of justice, and in obedient submission to circumstances, he +chose the latter and yielded to the power he felt irresistibly +carrying him he knew not where. He knew that after his promise to +Sonya it would be what he deemed base to declare his feelings to +Princess Mary. And he knew that he would never act basely. But he also +knew (or rather felt at the bottom of his heart) that by resigning +himself now to the force of circumstances and to those who were +guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but was doing +something very important- more important than anything he had ever +done in his life. + +After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his life went on +externally as before, all his former amusements lost their charm for +him and he often thought about her. But he never thought about her +as he had thought of all the young ladies without exception whom he +had met in society, nor as he had for a long time, and at one time +rapturously, thought about Sonya. He had pictured each of those +young ladies as almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is, as +a possible wife, adapting her in his imagination to all the conditions +of married life: a white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his +wife's carriage, little ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to +her, and so on- and these pictures of the future had given him +pleasure. But with Princess Mary, to whom they were trying to get +him engaged, he could never picture anything of future married life. +If he tried, his pictures seemed incongruous and false. It made him +afraid. + +CHAPTER VII + +The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed +and wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow +reached Voronezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having +learned of her brother's wound only from the Gazette and having no +definite news of him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her +again himself) to set off in search of Prince Andrew. + +When he received the news of the battle of Borodino and the +abandonment of Moscow, Rostov was not seized with despair, anger, +the desire for vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but +everything in Voronezh suddenly seemed to him dull and tiresome, and +he experienced an indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The +conversations he heard seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to +judge all these affairs and felt that only in the regiment would +everything again become clear to him. He made haste to finish buying +the horses, and often became unreasonably angry with his servant and +squadron quartermaster. + +A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which +Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian +victory. He stood a little behind the governor and held himself with +military decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of +subjects. When the service was over the governor's wife beckoned him +to her. + +"Have you seen the princess?" she asked, indicating with a +movement of her head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond +the choir. + +Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the +profile he saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude, +timidity, and pity that immediately overcame him. Princess Mary, +evidently engrossed by her thoughts, was crossing herself for the last +time before leaving the church. + +Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he +had seen before, there was the same general expression of refined, +inner, spiritual labor, but now it was quite differently lit up. There +was a pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had +occurred before when she was present, Nicholas went up to her +without waiting to be prompted by the governor's wife and not asking +himself whether or not it was right and proper to address her here +in church, and told her he had heard of her trouble and sympathized +with his whole soul. As soon as she heard his voice a vivid glow +kindled in her face, lighting up both her sorrow and her joy. + +"There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess," said Rostov. +"It is that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikolievich, were not +living, it would have been at once announced in the Gazette, as he +is a colonel." + +The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but +cheered by the expression of regretful sympathy on his face. + +"And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound" (the Gazette +said it was a shell) "either proving fatal at once or being very +slight," continued Nicholas. "We must hope for the best, and I am +sure..." + +Princess Mary interrupted him. + +"Oh, that would be so dread..." she began and, prevented by +agitation from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as +graceful as everything she did in his presence and, looking up at +him gratefully, went out, following her aunt. + +That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home to settle +some accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that +business it was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to +go to bed, and for a long time he paced up and down the room, +reflecting on his life, a thing he rarely did. + +Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on him when he had +met her in Smolensk province. His having encountered her in such +exceptional circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned +her to him as a good match, had drawn his particular attention to her. +When he met her again in Voronezh the impression she made on him was +not merely pleasing but powerful. Nicholas had been struck by the +peculiar moral beauty he observed in her at this time. He was, +however, preparing to go away and it had not entered his head to +regret that he was thus depriving himself of chances of meeting her. +But that day's encounter in church had, he felt, sunk deeper than +was desirable for his peace of mind. That pale, sad, refined face, +that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures, and especially +the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features agitated +him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear to see the +expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not like +Prince Andrew) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy +and dreaminess, but in Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed +the depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to him was an +irresistible attraction. + +"She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!" he said to himself. +"Why am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sonya?" And he +involuntarily compared the two: the lack of spirituality in the one +and the abundance of it in the other- a spirituality he himself lacked +and therefore valued most highly. He tried to picture what would +happen were he free. How he would propose to her and how she would +become his wife. But no, he could not imagine that. He felt awed, +and no clear picture presented itself to his mind. He had long ago +pictured to himself a future with Sonya, and that was all clear and +simple just because it had all been thought out and he knew all +there was in Sonya, but it was impossible to picture a future with +Princess Mary, because he did not understand her but simply loved her. + +Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and playful in them, +but to dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little +frightening. + +"How she prayed!" he thought. "It was plain that her whole soul +was in her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains, +and I am sure her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I +want?" he suddenly thought. "What do I want? To be free, released from +Sonya... She was right," he thought, remembering what the governor's +wife had said: "Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying Sonya. +Muddles, grief for Mamma... business difficulties... muddles, terrible +muddles! Besides, I don't love her- not as I should. O, God! release +me from this dreadful, inextricable position!" he suddenly began to +pray. "Yes, prayer can move mountains, but one must have faith and not +pray as Natasha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn +into sugar- and then run out into the yard to see whether it had +done so. No, but I am not praying for trifles now," he thought as he +put his pipe down in a corner, and folding his hands placed himself +before the icon. Softened by memories of Princess Mary he began to +pray as he had not done for a long time. Tears were in his eyes and in +his throat when the door opened and Lavrushka came in with some +papers. + +"Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?" cried +Nicholas, quickly changing his attitude. + +"From the governor," said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice. "A courier +has arrived and there's a letter for you." + +"Well, all right, thanks. You can go!" + +Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his mother +and the other from Sonya. He recognized them by the handwriting and +opened Sonya's first. He had read only a few lines when he turned pale +and his eyes opened wide with fear and joy. + +"No, it's not possible!" he cried aloud. + +Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding the letter +and reading it. He glanced through it, then read it again, and then +again, and standing still in the middle of the room he raised his +shoulders, stretching out his hands, with his mouth wide open and +his eyes fixed. What he had just been praying for with confidence that +God would hear him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as much +astonished as if it were something extraordinary and unexpected, and +as if the very fact that it had happened so quickly proved that it had +not come from God to whom he had prayed, but by some ordinary +coincidence. + +This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary +letter from Sonya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from +which there had seemed no escape. She wrote that the last +unfortunate events- the loss of almost the whole of the Rostovs' +Moscow property- and the countess' repeatedly expressed wish that +Nicholas should marry Princess Bolkonskaya, together with his +silence and coldness of late, had all combined to make her decide to +release him from his promise and set him completely free. + +It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a cause of +sorrow or discord in the family that has been so good to me (she +wrote), and my love has no aim but the happiness of those I love; +so, Nicholas, I beg you to consider yourself free, and to be assured +that, in spite of everything, no one can love you more than does + +Your Sonya + +Both letters were written from Troitsa. The other, from the +countess, described their last days in Moscow, their departure, the +fire, and the destruction of all their property. In this letter the +countess also mentioned that Prince Andrew was among the wounded +traveling with them; his state was very critical, but the doctor +said there was now more hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing him. + +Next day Nicholas took his mother's letter and went to see +Princess Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about what "Natasha +nursing him" might mean, but thanks to this letter Nicholas suddenly +became almost as intimate with the princess as if they were relations. + +The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her journey to +Yaroslavl, and a few days later left to rejoin his regiment. + +CHAPTER VIII + +Sonya's letter written from Troitsa, which had come as an answer +to Nicholas' prayer, was prompted by this: the thought of getting +Nicholas married to an heiress occupied the old countess' mind more +and more. She knew that Sonya was the chief obstacle to this +happening, and Sonya's life in the countess' house had grown harder +and harder, especially after they had received a letter from +Nicholas telling of his meeting with Princess Mary in Bogucharovo. The +countess let no occasion slip of making humiliating or cruel allusions +to Sonya. + +But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all +that was going on, she called Sonya to her and, instead of reproaching +and making demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself +and repay all that the family had done for her by breaking off her +engagement with Nicholas. + +"I shall not be at peace till you promise me this." + +Sonya burst into hysterical tears and replied through her sobs +that she would do anything and was prepared for anything, but gave +no actual promise and could not bring herself to decide to do what was +demanded of her. She must sacrifice herself for the family that had +reared and brought her up. To sacrifice herself for others was Sonya's +habit. Her position in the house was such that only by sacrifice could +she show her worth, and she was accustomed to this and loved doing it. +But in all her former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily +conscious that they raised her in her own esteem and in that of +others, and so made her more worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more +than anything in the world. But now they wanted her to sacrifice the +very thing that constituted the whole reward for her self-sacrifice +and the whole meaning of her life. And for the first time she felt +bitterness against those who had been her benefactors only to +torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous of Natasha who had +never experienced anything of this sort, had never needed to sacrifice +herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for her and yet was +beloved by everybody. And for the first time Sonya felt that out of +her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling was beginning +to grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue, or religion. +Under the influence of this feeling Sonya, whose life of dependence +had taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered the +countess in vague general terms, avoided talking with her and resolved +to wait till she should see Nicholas, not in order to set him free but +on the contrary at that meeting to bind him to her forever. + +The bustle and terror of the Rostovs' last days in Moscow stifled +the gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sonya. She was glad to find +escape from them in practical activity. But when she heard of Prince +Andrew's presence in their house, despite her sincere pity for him and +for Natasha, she was seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that +God did not intend her to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that +Natasha loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never ceased to love +him. She knew that being thrown together again under such terrible +circumstances they would again fall in love with one another, and that +Nicholas would then not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would +be within the prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror +of what had happened during those last days and during the first +days of their journey, this feeling that Providence was intervening in +her personal affairs cheered Sonya. + +At the Troitsa monastery the Rostovs first broke their journey for a +whole day. + +Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry, +one of which was occupied by Prince Andrew. The wounded man was much +better that day and Natasha was sitting with him. In the next room sat +the count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was +calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery. +Sonya was there too, tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew +and Natasha were talking about. She heard the sound of their voices +through the door. That door opened and Natasha came out, looking +excited. Not noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and was +drawing back the wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sonya +and took her hand. + +"Natasha, what are you about? Come here!" said the countess. + +Natasha went up to the monk for his blessing, and advised her to +pray for aid to God and His saint. + +As soon as the prior withdrew, Natasha took her friend by the hand +and went with her into the unoccupied room. + +"Sonya, will he live?" she asked. "Sonya, how happy I am, and how +unhappy!... Sonya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he +lives! He cannot... because... because... of" and Natasha burst into +tears. + +"Yes! I knew it! Thank God!" murmured Sonya. "He will live." + +Sonya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter's fear and +grief and by her own personal feelings which she shared with no one. +Sobbing, she kissed and comforted Natasha. "If only he lives!" she +thought. Having wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two +friends went together to Prince Andrew's door. Natasha opened it +cautiously and glanced into the room, Sonya standing beside her at the +half-open door. + +Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows. His pale +face was calm, his eyes closed, and they could see his regular +breathing. + +"O, Natasha!" Sonya suddenly almost screamed, catching her +companion's arm and stepping back from the door. + +"What? What is it?" asked Natasha. + +"It's that, that..." said Sonya, with a white face and trembling +lips. + +Natasha softly closed the door and went with Sonya to the window, +not yet understanding what the latter was telling her. + +"You remember," said Sonya with a solemn and frightened +expression. "You remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at +Otradnoe at Christmas? Do you remember what I saw?" + +"Yes, yes!" cried Natasha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely +recalling that Sonya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom +she had seen lying down. + +"You remember?" Sonya went on. "I saw it then and told everybody, +you and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed," said she, making a +gesture with her hand and a lifted finger at each detail, "and that he +had his eyes closed and was covered just with a pink quilt, and that +his hands were folded," she concluded, convincing herself that the +details she had just seen were exactly what she had seen in the +mirror. + +She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the first +thing that came into her head, but what she had invented then seemed +to her now as real as any other recollection. She not only +remembered what she had then said- that he turned to look at her and +smiled and was covered with something red- but was firmly convinced +that she had then seen and said that he was covered with a pink +quilt and that his eyes were closed. + +"Yes, yes, it really was pink!" cried Natasha, who now thought she +too remembered the word pink being used, and saw in this the most +extraordinary and mysterious part of the prediction. + +"But what does it mean?" she added meditatively. + +"Oh, I don't know, it is all so strange," replied Sonya, clutching +at her head. + +A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natasha went to him, +but Sonya, feeling unusually excited and touched, remained at the +window thinking about the strangeness of what had occurred. + +They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the army, and +the countess was writing to her son. + +"Sonya!" said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as +her niece passed, "Sonya, won't you write to Nicholas?" She spoke in a +soft, tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her +spectacles Sonya read all that the countess meant to convey with these +words. Those eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear +of a refusal, and readiness for relentless hatred in case of such +refusal. + +Sonya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand. + +"Yes, Mamma, I will write," said she. + +Sonya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had occurred +that day, especially by the mysterious fulfillment she had just seen +of her vision. Now that she knew that the renewal of Natasha's +relations with Prince Andrew would prevent Nicholas from marrying +Princess Mary, she was joyfully conscious of a return of that +self-sacrificing spirit in which she was accustomed to live and +loved to live. So with a joyful consciousness of performing a +magnanimous deed- interrupted several times by the tears that dimmed +her velvety black eyes- she wrote that touching letter the arrival +of which had so amazed Nicholas. + +CHAPTER IX + +The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with +hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was +taken. In their attitude toward him could still be felt both +uncertainty as to who he might be- perhaps a very important person- +and hostility as a result of their recent personal conflict with him. + +But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for +the new guard- both officers and men- he was not as interesting as +he had been to his captors; and in fact the guard of the second day +did not recognize in this big, stout man in a peasant coat the +vigorous person who had fought so desperately with the marauder and +the convoy and had uttered those solemn words about saving a child; +they saw in him only No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested and +detained for some reason by order of the Higher Command. If they +noticed anything remarkable about Pierre, it was only his unabashed, +meditative concentration and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke +French, which struck them as surprisingly good. In spite of this he +was placed that day with the other arrested suspects, as the +separate room he had occupied was required by an officer. + +All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the lowest class +and, recognizing him as a gentleman, they all avoided him, more +especially as he spoke French. Pierre felt sad at hearing them +making fun of him. + +That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably, +among them) were to be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was +taken with the others to a house where a French general with a white +mustache sat with two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on +their arms. With the precision and definiteness customary in +addressing prisoners, and which is supposed to preclude human frailty, +Pierre like the others was questioned as to who he was, where he had +been, with what object, and so on. + +These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left the +essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility of that +essence's being revealed, and were designed only to form a channel +through which the judges wished the answers of the accused to flow +so as to lead to the desired result, namely a conviction. As soon as +Pierre began to say anything that did not fit in with that aim, the +channel was removed and the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt, +moreover, what the accused always feel at their trial, perplexity as +to why these questions were put to him. He had a feeling that it was +only out of condescension or a kind of civility that this device of +placing a channel was employed. He knew he was in these men's power, +that only by force had they brought him there, that force alone gave +them the right to demand answers to their questions, and that the sole +object of that assembly was to inculpate him. And so, as they had +the power and wish to inculpate him, this expedient of an inquiry +and trial seemed unnecessary. It was evident that any answer would +lead to conviction. When asked what he was doing when he was arrested, +Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner that he was restoring to +its parents a child he had saved from the flames. Why had he fought +the marauder? Pierre answered that he "was protecting a woman," and +that "to protect a woman who was being insulted was the duty of +every man; that..." They interrupted him, for this was not to the +point. Why was he in the yard of a burning house where witnesses had +seen him? He replied that he had gone out to see what was happening in +Moscow. Again they interrupted him: they had not asked where he was +going, but why he was found near the fire? Who was he? they asked, +repeating their first question, which he had declined to answer. Again +he replied that he could not answer it. + +"Put that down, that's bad... very bad," sternly remarked the +general with the white mustache and red flushed face. + +On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski rampart. + +Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a +merchant's house near the Crimean bridge. On his way through the +streets Pierre felt stifled by the smoke which seemed to hang over the +whole city. Fires were visible on all sides. He did not then realize +the significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires +with horror. + +He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and +during that time learned, from the talk of the French soldiers, that +all those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any +day from the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn +from the soldiers. Evidently for them "the marshal" represented a very +high and rather mysterious power. + +These first days, before the eighth of September when the +prisoners were had up for a second examination, were the hardest of +all for Pierre. + +CHAPTER X + +On the eighth of September an officer- a very important one +judging by the respect the guards showed him- entered the coach +house where the prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on +the staff, was holding a paper in his hand, and called over all the +Russians there, naming Pierre as "the man who does not give his name." +Glancing indolently and indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered +the officer in charge to have them decently dressed and tidied up +before taking them to the marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers +arrived and Pierre with thirteen others was led to the Virgin's Field. +It was a fine day, sunny after rain, and the air was unusually pure. +The smoke did not hang low as on the day when Pierre had been taken +from the guardhouse on the Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure +air in columns. No flames were seen, but columns of smoke rose on +all sides, and all Moscow as far as Pierre could see was one vast +charred ruin. On all sides there were waste spaces with only stoves +and chimney stacks still standing, and here and there the blackened +walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed at the ruins and did not +recognize districts he had known well. Here and there he could see +churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not +destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the +belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin +glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly. +These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the +Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate +this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to +be seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when +they saw the French. + +It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but +in place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed, +Pierre unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order +had been established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the +looks of the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and +gaily, were escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the +looks of an important French official in a carriage and pair driven by +a soldier, whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry sounds of +regimental music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt +and realized it especially from the list of prisoners the French +officer had read out when he came that morning. Pierre had been +taken by one set of soldiers and led first to one and then to +another place with dozens of other men, and it seemed that they +might have forgotten him, or confused him with the others. But no: the +answers he had given when questioned had come back to him in his +designation as "the man who does not give his name," and under that +appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were now leading +him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces that he and +all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted and that +they were being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself to be +an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose +action he did not understand but which was working well. + +He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the +Virgin's Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not +far from the convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov's house, where +Pierre had often been in other days, and which, as he learned from the +talk of the soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of +Eckmuhl (Davout). + +They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one. +Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass +gallery, an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a +long low study at the door of which stood an adjutant. + +Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end +of the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently +consulting a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without +raising his eyes, he said in a low voice: + +"Who are you?" + +Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word. To +him Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious for +his cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern +schoolmaster who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre +felt that every instant of delay might cost him his life; but he did +not know what to say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at +his first examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was +dangerous and embarrassing. So he was silent. But before he had +decided what to do, Davout raised his head, pushed his spectacles back +on his forehead, screwed up his eyes, and looked intently at him. + +"I know that man," he said in a cold, measured tone, evidently +calculated to frighten Pierre. + +The chill that had been running down Pierre's back now seized his +head as in a vise. + +"You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you..." + +"He is a Russian spy," Davout interrupted, addressing another +general who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed. + +Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his voice +Pierre rapidly began: + +"No, monseigneur," he said, suddenly remembering that Davout was a +duke. "No, monseigneur, you cannot have known me. I am a militia +officer and have not quitted Moscow." + +"Your name?" asked Davout. + +"Bezukhov." + +"What proof have I that you are not lying?" + +"Monseigneur!" exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended but in a +pleading voice. + +Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they +looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from +conditions of war and law, that look established human relations +between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things passed +dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were +both children of humanity and were brothers. + +At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head from the +papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre +was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without +burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a +human being. He reflected for a moment. + +"How can you show me that you are telling the truth?" said Davout +coldly. + +Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his regiment and the +street where the house was. + +"You are not what you say," returned Davout. + +In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing proofs of +the truth of his statements. + +But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported something to +Davout. + +Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought, and began +buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had quite forgotten +Pierre. + +When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he jerked his head +in Pierre's direction with a frown and ordered him to be led away. But +where they were to take him Pierre did not know: back to the coach +house or to the place of execution his companions had pointed out to +him as they crossed the Virgin's Field. + +He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting another +question to Davout. + +"Yes, of course!" replied Davout, but what this "yes" meant, +Pierre did not know. + +Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went, whether it was +far, or in which direction. His faculties were quite numbed, he was +stupefied, and noticing nothing around him went on moving his legs +as the others did till they all stopped and he stopped too. The only +thought in his mind at that time was: who was it that had really +sentenced him to death? Not the men on the commission that had first +examined him- not one of them wished to or, evidently, could have done +it. It was not Davout, who had looked at him in so human a way. In +another moment Davout would have realized that he was doing wrong, but +just then the adjutant had come in and interrupted him. The +adjutant, also, had evidently had no evil intent though he might +have refrained from coming in. Then who was executing him, killing +him, depriving him of life- him, Pierre, with all his memories, +aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And Pierre +felt that it was no one. + +It was a system- a concurrence of circumstances. + +A system of some sort was killing him- Pierre- depriving him of +life, of everything, annihilating him. + +CHAPTER XI + +From Prince Shcherbatov's house the prisoners were led straight down +the Virgin's Field, to the left of the nunnery, as far as a kitchen +garden in which a post had been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit +had been dug in the ground, and near the post and the pit a large +crowd stood in a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few Russians and +many of Napoleon's soldiers who were not on duty- Germans, Italians, +and Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of +the post stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with red +epaulets and high boots and shakos. + +The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according to the +list (Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums +suddenly began to beat on both sides of them, and at that sound Pierre +felt as if part of his soul had been torn away. He lost the power of +thinking or understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had only +one wish- that the frightful thing that had to happen should happen +quickly. Pierre looked round at his fellow prisoners and scrutinized +them. + +The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One was tall and +thin, the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with a flat nose. The +third was a domestic serf, about forty-five years old, with grizzled +hair and a plump, well-nourished body. The fourth was a peasant, a +very handsome man with a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes. +The fifth was a factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen +in a loose coat. + +Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them +separately or two at a time. "In couples," replied the officer in +command in a calm voice. There was a stir in the ranks of the soldiers +and it was evident that they were all hurrying- not as men hurry to do +something they understand, but as people hurry to finish a necessary +but unpleasant and incomprehensible task. + +A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right of the row of +prisoners and read out the sentence in Russian and in French. + +Then two pairs of Frenchmen approached the criminals and at the +officer's command took the two convicts who stood first in the row. +The convicts stopped when they reached the post and, while sacks +were being brought, looked dumbly around as a wounded beast looks at +an approaching huntsman. One crossed himself continually, the other +scratched his back and made a movement of the lips resembling a smile. +With hurried hands the soldiers blindfolded them, drawing the sacks +over their heads, and bound them to the post. + +Twelve sharpshooters with muskets stepped out of the ranks with a +firm regular tread and halted eight paces from the post. Pierre turned +away to avoid seeing what was going to happen. Suddenly a crackling, +rolling noise was heard which seemed to him louder than the most +terrific thunder, and he looked round. There was some smoke, and the +Frenchmen were doing something near the pit, with pale faces and +trembling hands. Two more prisoners were led up. In the same way and +with similar looks, these two glanced vainly at the onlookers with +only a silent appeal for protection in their eyes, evidently unable to +understand or believe what was going to happen to them. They could not +believe it because they alone knew what their life meant to them, +and so they neither understood nor believed that it could be taken +from them. + +Again Pierre did not wish to look and again turned away; but again +the sound as of a frightful explosion struck his ear, and at the +same moment he saw smoke, blood, and the pale, scared faces of the +Frenchmen who were again doing something by the post, their +trembling hands impeding one another. Pierre, breathing heavily, +looked around as if asking what it meant. The same question was +expressed in all the looks that met his. + +On the faces of all the Russians and of the French soldiers and +officers without exception, he read the same dismay, horror, and +conflict that were in his own heart. "But who, after all, is doing +this? They are all suffering as I am. Who then is it? Who?" flashed +for an instant through his mind. + +"Sharpshooters of the 86th, forward!" shouted someone. The fifth +prisoner, the one next to Pierre, was led away- alone. Pierre did +not understand that he was saved, that he and the rest had been +brought there only to witness the execution. With ever-growing horror, +and no sense of joy or relief, he gazed at what was taking place. +The fifth man was the factory lad in the loose cloak. The moment +they laid hands on him he sprang aside in terror and clutched at +Pierre. (Pierre shuddered and shook himself free.) The lad was +unable to walk. They dragged him along, holding him up under the arms, +and he screamed. When they got him to the post he grew quiet, as if he +suddenly understood something. Whether he understood that screaming +was useless or whether he thought it incredible that men should kill +him, at any rate he took his stand at the post, waiting to be +blindfolded like the others, and like a wounded animal looked around +him with glittering eyes. + +Pierre was no longer able to turn away and close his eyes. His +curiosity and agitation, like that of the whole crowd, reached the +highest pitch at this fifth murder. Like the others this fifth man +seemed calm; he wrapped his loose cloak closer and rubbed one bare +foot with the other. + +When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted the knot +which hurt the back of his head; then when they propped him against +the bloodstained post, he leaned back and, not being comfortable in +that position, straightened himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned +back again more comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and +did not miss his slightest movement. + +Probably a word of command was given and was followed by the reports +of eight muskets; but try as he would Pierre could not afterwards +remember having heard the slightest sound of the shots. He only saw +how the workman suddenly sank down on the cords that held him, how +blood showed itself in two places, how the ropes slackened under the +weight of the hanging body, and how the workman sat down, his head +hanging unnaturally and one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the +post. No one hindered him. Pale, frightened people were doing +something around the workman. The lower jaw of an old Frenchman with a +thick mustache trembled as he untied the ropes. The body collapsed. +The soldiers dragged it awkwardly from the post and began pushing it +into the pit. + +They all plainly and certainly knew that they were criminals who +must hide the traces of their guilt as quickly as possible. + +Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad was lying +with his knees close up to his head and one shoulder higher than the +other. That shoulder rose and fell rhythmically and convulsively, +but spadefuls of earth were already being thrown over the whole +body. One of the soldiers, evidently suffering, shouted gruffly and +angrily at Pierre to go back. But Pierre did not understand him and +remained near the post, and no one drove him away. + +When the pit had been filled up a command was given. Pierre was +taken back to his place, and the rows of troops on both sides of the +post made a half turn and went past it at a measured pace. The +twenty-four sharpshooters with discharged muskets, standing in the +center of the circle, ran back to their places as the companies passed +by. + +Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters who ran in +couples out of the circle. All but one rejoined their companies. +This one, a young soldier, his face deadly pale, his shako pushed +back, and his musket resting on the ground, still stood near the pit +at the spot from which he had fired. He swayed like a drunken man, +taking some steps forward and back to save himself from falling. An +old, noncommissioned officer ran out of the ranks and taking him by +the elbow dragged him to his company. The crowd of Russians and +Frenchmen began to disperse. They all went away silently and with +drooping heads. + +"That will teach them to start fires," said one of the Frenchmen. + +Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was a soldier +who was trying to find some relief after what had been done, but was +not able to do so. Without finishing what he had begun to say he +made a hopeless movement with his arm and went away. + +CHAPTER XII + +After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest of the +prisoners and placed alone in a small, ruined, and befouled church. + +Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered with two soldiers +and told him that he had been pardoned and would now go to the +barracks for the prisoners of war. Without understanding what was said +to him, Pierre got up and went with the soldiers. They took him to the +upper end of the field, where there were some sheds built of charred +planks, beams, and battens, and led him into one of them. In the +darkness some twenty different men surrounded Pierre. He looked at +them without understanding who they were, why they were there, or what +they wanted of him. He heard what they said, but did not understand +the meaning of the words and made no kind of deduction from or +application of them. He replied to questions they put to him, but +did not consider who was listening to his replies, nor how they +would understand them. He looked at their faces and figures, but +they all seemed to him equally meaningless. + +From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders +committed by men who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the +mainspring of his life, on which everything depended and which made +everything appear alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything +had collapsed into a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though he did not +acknowledge it to himself, his faith in the right ordering of the +universe, in humanity, in his own soul, and in God, had been +destroyed. He had experienced this before, but never so strongly as +now. When similar doubts had assailed him before, they had been the +result of his own wrongdoing, and at the bottom of his heart he had +felt that relief from his despair and from those doubts was to be +found within himself. But now he felt that the universe had crumbled +before his eyes and only meaningless ruins remained, and this not by +any fault of his own. He felt that it was not in his power to regain +faith in the meaning of life. + +Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something +about him interested them greatly. They were telling him something and +asking him something. Then they led him away somewhere, and at last he +found himself in a corner of the shed among men who were laughing +and talking on all sides. + +"Well, then, mates... that very prince who..." some voice at the +other end of the shed was saying, with a strong emphasis on the word +who. + +Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against the wall, +Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed his eyes. But as soon +as he closed them he saw before him the dreadful face of the factory +lad- especially dreadful because of its simplicity- and the faces of +the murderers, even more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he +opened his eyes again and stared vacantly into the darkness around +him. + +Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of whose +presence he was first made aware by a strong smell of perspiration +which came from him every time he moved. This man was doing +something to his legs in the darkness, and though Pierre could not see +his face he felt that the man continually glanced at him. On growing +used to the darkness Pierre saw that the man was taking off his leg +bands, and the way he did it aroused Pierre's interest. + +Having unwound the string that tied the band on one leg, he +carefully coiled it up and immediately set to work on the other leg, +glancing up at Pierre. While one hand hung up the first string the +other was already unwinding the band on the second leg. In this way, +having carefully removed the leg bands by deft circular motions of his +arm following one another uninterruptedly, the man hung the leg +bands up on some pegs fixed above his head. Then he took out a +knife, cut something, closed the knife, placed it under the head of +his bed, and, seating himself comfortably, clasped his arms round +his lifted knees and fixed his eyes on Pierre. The latter was +conscious of something pleasant, comforting, and well rounded in these +deft movements, in the man's well-ordered arrangements in his +corner, and even in his very smell, and he looked at the man without +taking his eyes from him. + +"You've seen a lot of trouble, sir, eh?" the little man suddenly +said. + +And there was so much kindliness and simplicity in his singsong +voice that Pierre tried to reply, but his jaw trembled and he felt +tears rising to his eyes. The little fellow, giving Pierre no time +to betray his confusion, instantly continued in the same pleasant +tones: + +"Eh, lad, don't fret!" said he, in the tender singsong caressing +voice old Russian peasant women employ. "Don't fret, friend- 'suffer +an hour, live for an age!' that's how it is, my dear fellow. And +here we live, thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too, +there are good men as well as bad," said he, and still speaking, he +turned on his knees with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and +went off to another part of the shed. + +"Eh, you rascal!" Pierre heard the same kind voice saying at the +other end of the shed. "So you've come, you rascal? She remembers... +Now, now, that'll do!" + +And the soldier, pushing away a little dog that was jumping up at +him, returned to his place and sat down. In his hands he had something +wrapped in a rag. + +"Here, eat a bit, sir," said he, resuming his former respectful tone +as he unwrapped and offered Pierre some baked potatoes. "We had soup +for dinner and the potatoes are grand!" + +Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the potatoes seemed +extremely pleasant to him. He thanked the soldier and began to eat. + +"Well, are they all right?" said the soldier with a smile. "You +should do like this." + +He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the potato into +two equal halves on the palm of his hand, sprinkled some salt on it +from the rag, and handed it to Pierre. + +"The potatoes are grand!" he said once more. "Eat some like that!" + +Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted better. + +"Oh, I'm all right," said he, "but why did they shoot those poor +fellows? The last one was hardly twenty." + +"Tss, tt...!" said the little man. "Ah, what a sin... what a sin!" +he added quickly, and as if his words were always waiting ready in his +mouth and flew out involuntarily he went on: "How was it, sir, that +you stayed in Moscow?" + +"I didn't think they would come so soon. I stayed accidentally," +replied Pierre. + +"And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your house?" + +"No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me there, and +tried me as an incendiary." + +"Where there's law there's injustice," put in the little man. + +"And have you been here long?" Pierre asked as he munched the last +of the potato. + +"I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in Moscow." + +"Why, are you a soldier then?" + +"Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of +fever. We weren't told anything. There were some twenty of us lying +there. We had no idea, never guessed at all." + +"And do you feel sad here?" Pierre inquired. + +"How can one help it, lad? My name is Platon, and the surname is +Karataev," he added, evidently wishing to make it easier for Pierre to +address him. "They call me 'little falcon' in the regiment. How is one +to help feeling sad? Moscow- she's the mother of cities. How can one +see all this and not feel sad? But 'the maggot gnaws the cabbage, +yet dies first'; that's what the old folks used to tell us," he +added rapidly. + +"What? What did you say?" asked Pierre. + +"Who? I?" said Karataev. "I say things happen not as we plan but +as God judges," he replied, thinking that he was repeating what he had +said before, and immediately continued: + +"Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a house? So you +have abundance, then? And a housewife? And your old parents, are +they still living?" he asked. + +And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that a +suppressed smile of kindliness puckered the soldier's lips as he put +these questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had no parents, +especially that he had no mother. + +"A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but there's none +as dear as one's own mother!" said he. "Well, and have you little +ones?" he went on asking. + +Again Pierre's negative answer seemed to distress him, and he +hastened to add: + +"Never mind! You're young folks yet, and please God may still have +some. The great thing is to live in harmony...." + +"But it's all the same now," Pierre could not help saying. + +"Ah, my dear fellow!" rejoined Karataev, "never decline a prison +or a beggar's sack!" + +He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently +preparing to tell a long story. + +"Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home," he began. "We +had a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants lived well and +our house was one to thank God for. When Father and we went out mowing +there were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It so +happened..." + +And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into +someone's copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper, +had been tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier. + +"Well, lad," and a smile changed the tone of his voice "we thought +it was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If it had not been +for my sin, my brother would have had to go as a soldier. But he, my +younger brother, had five little ones, while I, you see, only left a +wife behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a +soldier. I come home on leave and I'll tell you how it was, I look and +see that they are living better than before. The yard full of +cattle, the women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only +Michael the youngest, at home. Father, he says, 'All my children are +the same to me: it hurts the same whichever finger gets bitten. But if +Platon hadn't been shaved for a soldier, Michael would have had to +go.' called us all to him and, will you believe it, placed us in front +of the icons. 'Michael,' he says, 'come here and bow down to his feet; +and you, young woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also +bow down before him! Do you understand?' he says. That's how it is, +dear fellow. Fate looks for a head. But we are always judging, 'that's +not well- that's not right!' Our luck is like water in a dragnet: +you pull at it and it bulges, but when you've drawn it out it's empty! +That's how it is." + +And Platon shifted his seat on the straw. + +After a short silence he rose. + +"Well, I think you must be sleepy," said he, and began rapidly +crossing himself and repeating: + +"Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus +Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ, +have mercy on us and save us!" he concluded, then bowed to the ground, +got up, sighed, and sat down again on his heap of straw. "That's the +way. Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf," he +muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him. + +"What prayer was that you were saying?" asked Pierre. + +"Eh?" murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep. "What was I +saying? I was praying. Don't you pray?" + +"Yes, I do," said Pierre. "But what was that you said: Frola and +Lavra?" + +"Well, of course," replied Platon quickly, "the horses' saints. +One must pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now you've curled up +and got warm, you daughter of a bitch!" said Karataev, touching the +dog that lay at his feet, and again turning over he fell asleep +immediately. + +Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere in the distance +outside, and flames were visible through the cracks of the shed, but +inside it was quiet and dark. For a long time Pierre did not sleep, +but lay with eyes open in the darkness, listening to the regular +snoring of Platon who lay beside him, and he felt that the world +that had been shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a +new beauty and on new and unshakable foundations. + +CHAPTER XIII + +Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were +confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he +remained for four weeks. + +When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures +to him except Platon Karataev, who always remained in his mind a +most vivid and precious memory and the personification of everything +Russian, kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next +morning at dawn the first impression of him, as of something round, +was fully confirmed: Platon's whole figure- in a French overcoat +girdled with a cord, a soldier's cap, and bast shoes- was round. His +head was quite round, his back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms, +which he held as if ever ready to embrace something, were rounded, his +pleasant smile and his large, gentle brown eyes were also round. + +Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of +campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did not +himself know his age and was quite unable to determine it. But his +brilliantly white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken +semicircles when he laughed- as he often did- were all sound and good, +there was not a gray hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole +body gave an impression of suppleness and especially of firmness and +endurance. + +His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of +innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But the chief +peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. It +was evident that he never considered what he had said or was going +to say, and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation +had an irresistible persuasiveness. + +His physical strength and agility during the first days of his +imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue and +sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: "Lord, lay +me down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!" and every morning on +getting up, he said: "I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake +myself." And indeed he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a +stone, and he only had to shake himself, to be ready without a +moment's delay for some work, just as children are ready to play +directly they awake. He could do everything, not very well but not +badly. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed, and mended boots. He was +always busy, and only at night allowed himself conversation- of +which he was fond- and songs. He did not sing like a trained singer +who knows he is listened to, but like the birds, evidently giving vent +to the sounds in the same way that one stretches oneself or walks +about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were always +high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at +such times was very serious. + +Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow, he +seemed to have thrown off all that had been forced upon him- +everything military and alien to himself- and had returned to his +former peasant habits. + +"A soldier on leave- a shirt outside breeches," he would say. + +He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though he did +not complain, and often mentioned that he had not been flogged once +during the whole of his army service. When he related anything it +was generally some old and evidently precious memory of his +"Christian" life, as he called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of +which his talk was full, were for the most part not the coarse and +indecent saws soldiers employ, but those folk sayings which taken +without a context seem so insignificant, but when used appositely +suddenly acquire a significance of profound wisdom. + +He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a +previous occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he +talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with +folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief +charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest events- sometimes +just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of them- +assumed in Karataev's a character of solemn fitness. He liked to +hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell of an evening +(they were always the same), but most of all he liked to hear +stories of real life. He would smile joyfully when listening to such +stories, now and then putting in a word or asking a question to make +the moral beauty of what he was told clear to himself. Karataev had no +attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but +loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in +contact with, particularly with man- not any particular man, but those +with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his comrades, the +French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt that in spite +of Karataev's affectionate tenderness for him (by which he +unconsciously gave Pierre's spiritual life its due) he would not +have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to +feel in the same way toward Karataev. + +To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most ordinary +soldier. They called him "little falcon" or "Platosha," chaffed him +good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always +remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable, +rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and +truth. + +Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he +began to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude. + +Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask +him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a +moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of +his favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred +in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of +it. He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart +from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation +of an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he +regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only +as part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and +actions flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as +fragrance exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value +or significance of any word or deed taken separately. + +CHAPTER XIV + +When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her brother was with the +Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once prepared to go there, in spite of her +aunt's efforts to dissuade her- and not merely to go herself but to +take her nephew with her. Whether it were difficult or easy, +possible or impossible, she did not ask and did not want to know: it +was her duty not only herself to be near her brother who was perhaps +dying, but to do everything possible to take his son to him, and so +she prepared to set off. That she had not heard from Prince Andrew +himself, Princess Mary attributed to his being too weak to write or to +his considering the long journey too hard and too dangerous for her +and his son. + +In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her equipages were +the huge family coach in which she had traveled to Voronezh, a +semiopen trap, and a baggage cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle +Bourienne, little Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three +maids, Tikhon, and a young footman and courier her aunt had sent to +accompany her. + +The usual route through Moscow could not be thought of, and the +roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk, +Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not +everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the +French were said to have shown themselves was even dangerous. + +During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne, Dessalles, and +Princess Mary's servants were astonished at her energy and firmness of +spirit. She went to bed later and rose earlier than any of them, and +no difficulties daunted her. Thanks to her activity and energy, +which infected her fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslavl by +the end of the second week. + +The last days of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest of her +life. Her love for Rostov no longer tormented or agitated her. It +filled her whole soul, had become an integral part of herself, and she +no longer struggled against it. Latterly she had become convinced that +she loved and was beloved, though she never said this definitely to +herself in words. She had become convinced of it at her last interview +with Nicholas, when he had come to tell her that her brother was +with the Rostovs. Not by a single word had Nicholas alluded to the +fact that Prince Andrew's relations with Natasha might, if he +recovered, be renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face that he +knew and thought of this. + +Yet in spite of that, his relation to her- considerate, delicate, +and loving- not only remained unchanged, but it sometimes seemed to +Princess Mary that he was even glad that the family connection between +them allowed him to express his friendship more freely. She knew +that she loved for the first and only time in her life and felt that +she was beloved, and was happy in regard to it. + +But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did not +prevent her feeling grief for her brother with full force; on the +contrary, that spiritual tranquility on the one side made it the +more possible for her to give full play to her feeling for her +brother. That feeling was so strong at the moment of leaving +Voronezh that those who saw her off, as they looked at her careworn, +despairing face, felt sure she would fall ill on the journey. But +the very difficulties and preoccupations of the journey, which she +took so actively in hand, saved her for a while from her grief and +gave her strength. + +As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary thought only of +the journey itself, forgetting its object. But as she approached +Yaroslavl the thought of what might await her there- not after many +days, but that very evening- again presented itself to her and her +agitation increased to its utmost limit. + +The courier who had been sent on in advance to find out where the +Rostovs were staying in Yaroslavl, and in what condition Prince Andrew +was, when he met the big coach just entering the town gates was +appalled by the terrible pallor of the princess' face that looked +out at him from the window. + +"I have found out everything, your excellency: the Rostovs are +staying at the merchant Bronnikov's house, in the Square not far +from here, right above the Volga," said the courier. + +Princess Mary looked at him with frightened inquiry, not +understanding why he did not reply to what she chiefly wanted to know: +how was her brother? Mademoiselle Bourienne put that question for her. + +"How is the prince?" she asked. + +"His excellency is staying in the same house with them." + +"Then he is alive," thought Princess Mary, and asked in a low voice: +"How is he?" + +"The servants say he is still the same." + +What "still the same" might mean Princess Mary did not ask, but with +an unnoticed glance at little seven-year-old Nicholas, who was sitting +in front of her looking with pleasure at the town, she bowed her +head and did not raise it again till the heavy coach, rumbling, +shaking and swaying, came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as +they were let down. + +The carriage door was opened. On the left there was water- a great +river- and on the right a porch. There were people at the entrance: +servants, and a rosy girl with a large plait of black hair, smiling as +it seemed to Princess Mary in an unpleasantly affected way. (This +was Sonya.) Princess Mary ran up the steps. "This way, this way!" said +the girl, with the same artificial smile, and the princess found +herself in the hall facing an elderly woman of Oriental type, who came +rapidly to meet her with a look of emotion. This was the countess. She +embraced Princess Mary and kissed her. + +"Mon enfant!" she muttered, "je vous aime et vous connais depuis +longtemps."~{ "My child! I love you and have known you a long time." }~ + +Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this was the +countess and that it was necessary to say something to her. Hardly +knowing how she did it, she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in +French in the same tone as those that had been addressed to her, and +asked: "How is he?" + +"The doctor says that he is not in danger," said the countess, but +as she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her gesture conveyed +a contradiction of her words. + +"Where is he? Can I see him- can I?" asked the princess. + +"One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this his son?" said +the countess, turning to little Nicholas who was coming in with +Dessalles. "There will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh, +what a lovely boy!" + +The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room, where Sonya +was talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The countess caressed the +boy, and the old count came in and welcomed the princess. He had +changed very much since Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had +been a brisk, cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful, +bewildered person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually +looked round as if asking everyone whether he was doing the right +thing. After the destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out +of his accustomed groove he seemed to have lost the sense of his own +significance and to feel that there was no longer a place for him in +life. + +In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as possible, +and her vexation that at the moment when all she wanted was to see him +they should be trying to entertain her and pretending to admire her +nephew, the princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt +the necessity of submitting, for a time, to this new order of things +which she had entered. She knew it to be necessary, and though it +was hard for her she was not vexed with these people. + +"This is my niece," said the count, introducing Sonya- "You don't +know her, Princess?" + +Princess Mary turned to Sonya and, trying to stifle the hostile +feeling that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed her. But she +felt oppressed by the fact that the mood of everyone around her was so +far from what was in her own heart. + +"Where is he?" she asked again, addressing them all. + +"He is downstairs. Natasha is with him," answered Sonya, flushing. +"We have sent to ask. I think you must be tired, Princess." + +Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary's eyes. She +turned away and was about to ask the countess again how to go to +him, when light, impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard +at the door. The princess looked round and saw Natasha coming in, +almost running- that Natasha whom she had liked so little at their +meeting in Moscow long since. + +But hardly had the princess looked at Natasha's face before she +realized that here was a real comrade in her grief, and consequently a +friend. She ran to meet her, embraced her, and began to cry on her +shoulder. + +As soon as Natasha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew's bed, +heard of Princess Mary's arrival, she softly left his room and +hastened to her with those swift steps that had sounded buoyant to +Princess Mary. + +There was only one expression on her agitated face when she ran into +the drawing room- that of love- boundless love for him, for her, and +for all that was near to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for +others, and passionate desire to give herself entirely to helping +them. It was plain that at that moment there was in Natasha's heart no +thought of herself or of her own relations with Prince Andrew. + +Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all this at +the first glance at Natasha's face, and wept on her shoulder with +sorrowful pleasure. + +"Come, come to him, Mary," said Natasha, leading her into the +other room. + +Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to +Natasha. She felt that from her she would be able to understand and +learn everything. + +"How..." she began her question but stopped short. + +She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in words. +Natasha's face eyes would eyes would have to tell her all more clearly +and profoundly. + +Natasha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt whether to +say all she knew or not; she seemed to feel that before those luminous +eyes which penetrated into the very depths of her heart, it was +impossible not to tell the whole truth which she saw. And suddenly, +Natasha's lips twitched, ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth, and +covering her face with her hands she burst into sobs. + +Princess Mary understood. + +But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did not trust: + +"But how is his wound? What is his general condition?" + +"You, you... will see," was all Natasha could say. + +They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they had +left off crying and were able to go to him with calm faces. + +"How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew worse? +When did this happen?" Princess Mary inquired. + +Natasha told her that at first there had been danger from his +feverish condition and the pain he suffered, but at Troitsa that had +passed and the doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger +had also passed. When they reached Yaroslavl the wound had begun to +fester (Natasha knew all about such things as festering) and the +doctor had said that the festering might take a normal course. Then +fever set in, but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious. + +"But two days ago this suddenly happened," said Natasha, +struggling with her sobs. "I don't know why, but you will see what +he is like." + +"Is he weaker? Thinner?" asked the princess. + +"No, it's not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is too +good, he cannot, cannot live, because..." + +CHAPTER XV + +When Natasha opened Prince Andrew's door with a familiar movement +and let Princess Mary pass into the room before her, the princess felt +the sobs in her throat. Hard as she had tried to prepare herself, +and now tried to remain tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to +look at him without tears. + +The princess understood what Natasha had meant by the words: "two +days ago this suddenly happened." She understood those words to mean +that he had suddenly softened and that this softening and gentleness +were signs of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she +already saw in imagination Andrew's face as she remembered it in +childhood, a gentle, mild, sympathetic face which he had rarely shown, +and which therefore affected her very strongly. She was sure he +would speak soft, tender words to her such as her father had uttered +before his death, and that she would not be able to bear it and +would burst into sobs in his presence. Yet sooner or later it had to +be, and she went in. The sobs rose higher and higher in her throat +as she more and more clearly distinguished his form and her +shortsighted eyes tried to make out his features, and then she saw his +face and met his gaze. + +He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan, +surrounded by pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin, +translucently white hand he held a handkerchief, while with the +other he stroked the delicate mustache he had grown, moving his +fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them as they entered. + +On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary's pace +suddenly slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She +suddenly felt guilty and grew timid on catching the expression of +his face and eyes. + +"But in what am I to blame?" she asked herself. And his cold, +stern look replied: "Because you are alive and thinking of the living, +while I..." + +In the deep the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but +inwards there was an almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded +his sister and Natasha. + +He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont. + +"How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?" said he in a +voice as calm and aloof as his look. + +Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such +horror into Princess Mary's heart as the tone of his voice. + +"And have you brought little Nicholas?" he asked in the same slow, +quiet manner and with an obvious effort to remember. + +"How are you now?" said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she +was saying. + +"That, my dear, you must ask the doctor," he replied, and again +making an evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips +only (his words clearly did not correspond to his thoughts): + +"Merci, chere amie, d'etre venue."~{ "Thank you for coming, my dear." }~ + +Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just +perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She +now understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words, +his tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look +could be felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world, +terrible in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he +understand anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to +understand, not because he lacked the power to do so but because he +understood something else- something the living did not and could +not understand- and which wholly occupied his mind. + +"There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together," said +he, breaking the silence and pointing to Natasha. "She looks after +me all the time." + +Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how he could say such +a thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince Andrew, how could he say +that, before her whom he loved and who loved him? Had he expected to +live he could not have said those words in that offensively cold tone. +If he had not known that he was dying, how could he have failed to +pity her and how could he speak like that in her presence? The only +explanation was that he was indifferent, because something else, +much more important, had been revealed to him. + +The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke +off. + +"Mary came by way of Ryazan," said Natasha. + +Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and +only after calling her so in his presence did Natasha notice it +herself. + +"Really?" he asked. + +"They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that..." + +Natasha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain that he was +making an effort to listen, but could not do so. + +"Yes, they say it's burned," he said. "It's a great pity," and he +gazed straight before him, absently stroking his mustache with his +fingers. + +"And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?" Prince Andrew suddenly +said, evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to them. "He wrote here +that he took a great liking to you," he went on simply and calmly, +evidently unable to understand all the complex significance his +words had for living people. "If you liked him too, it would be a good +thing for you to get married," he added rather more quickly, as if +pleased at having found words he had long been seeking. + +Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning for her, +except as a proof of how far away he now was from everything living. + +"Why talk of me?" she said quietly and glanced at Natasha. + +Natasha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three were +again silent. + +"Andrew, would you like..." Princess Mary suddenly said in a +trembling voice, "would you like to see little Nicholas? He is +always talking about you!" + +Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first time, but +Princess Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with horror that he +did not smile with pleasure or affection for his son, but with +quiet, gentle irony because he thought she was trying what she +believed to be the last means of arousing him. + +"Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?" + +When little Nicholas was brought into Prince Andrew's room he looked +at his father with frightened eyes, but did not cry, because no one +else was crying. Prince Andrew kissed him and evidently did not know +what to say to him. + +When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary again went up to +her brother, kissed him, and unable to restrain her tears any longer +began to cry. + +He looked at her attentively. + +"Is it about Nicholas?" he asked. + +Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping. + +"Mary, you know the Gosp..." but he broke off. + +"What did you say?" + +"Nothing. You mustn't cry here," he said, looking at her with the +same cold expression. + +When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that she was crying +at the thought that little Nicholas would be left without a father. +With a great effort he tried to return to life and to see things +from their point of view. + +"Yes, to them it must seem sad!" he thought. "But how simple it is. + +"The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Father +feedeth them," he said to himself and wished to say to Princess +Mary; "but no, they will take it their own way, they won't understand! +They can't understand that all those feelings they prize so- all our +feelings, all those ideas that seem so important to us, are +unnecessary. We cannot understand one another," and he remained +silent. + +Prince Andrew's little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and +knew nothing. After that day he lived through many things, gaining +knowledge, observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the +faculties he afterwards acquired, he could not have had a better or +more profound understanding of the meaning of the scene he had +witnessed between his father, Mary, and Natasha, than he had then. +He understood it completely, and, leaving the room without crying, +went silently up to Natasha who had come out with him and looked shyly +at her with his beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted, rosy +upper lip trembled and leaning his head against her he began to cry. + +After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him +and either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natasha +of whom he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them +quietly and shyly. + +When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully understood +what Natasha's face had told her. She did not speak any more to +Natasha of hopes of saving his life. She took turns with her beside +his sofa, and did not cry any more, but prayed continually, turning in +soul to that Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the +dying man was now so evident. + +CHAPTER XVI + +Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he felt that he +was dying and was already half dead. He was conscious of an +aloofness from everything earthly and a strange and joyous lightness +of existence. Without haste or agitation he awaited what was coming. +That inexorable, eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which +he had felt continually all his life- was now near to him and, by +the strange lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible and +palpable... + +Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that +terribly tormenting fear of death- the end- but now he no longer +understood that fear. + +He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a top +before him, and he looked at the fallow field, the bushes, and the +sky, and knew that he was face to face with death. When he came to +himself after being wounded and the flower of eternal, unfettered love +had instantly unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage +of life that had restrained it, he no longer feared death and ceased +to think about it. + +During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he +spent after he was wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new +principle of eternal love revealed to him, the more he unconsciously +detached himself from earthly life. To love everything and everybody +and always to sacrifice oneself for love meant not to love anyone, not +to live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with that +principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more +completely he destroyed that dreadful barrier which- in the absence of +such love- stands between life and death. When during those first days +he remembered that he would have to die, he said to himself: "Well, +what of it? So much the better!" + +But after the night in Mytishchi when, half delirious, he had seen +her for whom he longed appear before him and, having pressed her +hand to his lips, had shed gentle, happy tears, love for a +particular woman again crept unobserved into his heart and once more +bound him to life. And joyful and agitating thoughts began to occupy +his mind. Recalling the moment at the ambulance station when he had +seen Kuragin, he could not now regain the feeling he then had, but was +tormented by the question whether Kuragin was alive. And he dared +not inquire. + +His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natasha +referred to when she said: "This suddenly happened," had occurred +two days before Princess Mary arrived. It was the last spiritual +struggle between life and death, in which death gained the victory. It +was the unexpected realization of the fact that he still valued life +as presented to him in the form of his love for Natasha, and a last, +though ultimately vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown. + +It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish, +and his thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sonya was sitting by +the table. He began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized +him. + +"Ah, she has come!" thought he. + +And so it was: in Sonya's place sat Natasha who had just come in +noiselessly. + +Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced +this physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an +armchair placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from +him, and was knitting a stocking. She had learned to knit stockings +since Prince Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick +so well as old nurses who knit stockings, and that there is +something soothing in the knitting of stockings. The needles clicked +lightly in her slender, rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see +the thoughtful profile of her drooping face. She moved, and the ball +rolled off her knees. She started, glanced round at him, and screening +the candle with her hand stooped carefully with a supple and exact +movement, picked up the ball, and regained her former position. + +He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a +deep breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed +cautiously. + +At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had +told her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound +which had brought them together again, but after that they never spoke +of the future. + +"Can it or can it not be?" he now thought as he looked at her and +listened to the light click of the steel needles. "Can fate have +brought me to her so strangely only for me to die?... Is it possible +that the truth of life has been revealed to me only to show me that +I have spent my life in falsity? I love her more than anything in +the world! But what am I to do if I love her?" he thought, and he +involuntarily groaned, from a habit acquired during his sufferings. + +On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking, leaned nearer +to him, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to +him and bent over him. + +"You are not asleep?" + +"No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in. +No one else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do... +that light. I want to weep for joy." + +Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy. + +"Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world." + +"And I!"- She turned away for an instant. "Why too much?" she asked. + +"Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your +soul, your whole soul- shall I live? What do you think?" + +"I am sure of it, sure!" Natasha almost shouted, taking hold of both +his hands with a passionate movement. + +He remained silent awhile. + +"How good it would be!" and taking her hand he kissed it. + +Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this +would not do and that he had to be quiet. + +"But you have not slept," she said, repressing her joy. "Try to +sleep... please!" + +He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to the candle +and sat down again in her former position. Twice she turned and looked +at him, and her eyes met his beaming at her. She set herself a task on +her stocking and resolved not to turn round till it was finished. + +Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not sleep +long and suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold perspiration. + +As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now +always occupied his mind- about life and death, and chiefly about +death. He felt himself nearer to it. + +"Love? What is love?" he thought. + +"Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I +understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, +everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it +alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall +return to the general and eternal source." These thoughts seemed to +him comforting. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking +in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and +brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity. He +fell asleep. + +He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but +that he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and +insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and +discussed something trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere. +Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had +more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by +empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to +disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded +all else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything +depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went, +and tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he +would not be in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all +his powers. He was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was +the fear of death. It stood behind the door. But just when he was +clumsily creeping toward the door, that dreadful something on the +other side was already pressing against it and forcing its way in. +Something not human- death- was breaking in through that door, and had +to be kept out. He seized the door, making a final effort to hold it +back- to lock it was no longer possible- but his efforts were weak and +clumsy and the door, pushed from behind by that terror, opened and +closed again. + +Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts +were vain and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It +entered, and it was death, and Prince Andrew died. + +But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was +asleep, and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he +awoke. + +"Yes, it was death! I died- and woke up. Yes, death is an +awakening!" And all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil +that had till then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual +vision. He felt as if powers till then confined within him had been +liberated, and that strange lightness did not again leave him. + +When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan, +Natasha went up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer +and looked at her strangely, not understanding. + +That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary's +arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting +fever assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did +not interest Natasha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her +were more convincing. + +From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew +together with his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration +of life it did not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep +compared to the duration of a dream. + +There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow +awakening. + +His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both +Princess Mary and Natasha, who did not leave him, felt this. They +did not weep or shudder and during these last days they themselves +felt that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he +had left them) but on what reminded them most closely of him- his +body. Both felt this so strongly that the outward and terrible side of +death did not affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment +their grief. Neither in his presence nor out of it did they weep, +nor did they ever talk to one another about him. They felt that they +could not express in words what they understood. + +They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and +deeper, away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so +and that it was right. + +He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of +him. When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the +boy's and turned away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess +Mary and Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it was +all that was required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy, +he did what was demanded and looked round as if asking whether there +was anything else he should do. + +When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving, +occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were present. + +"Is it over?" said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes +lain motionless, growing cold before them. Natasha went up, looked +at the dead eyes, and hastened to close them. She closed them but +did not kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of +him- his body. + +"Where has he gone? Where is he now?..." + +When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table, +everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept. + +Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful +perplexity. The countess and Sonya cried from pity for Natasha and +because he was no more. The old count cried because he felt that +before long, he, too, must take the same terrible step. + +Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their +own personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion +which had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of +the simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in +their presence. + +BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812 + +CHAPTER I + +Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their +completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in +man's soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of +the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the +cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to +him intelligible and says: "This is the cause!" In historical events +(where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the first +and most primitive approximation to present itself was the will of the +gods and, after that, the will of those who stood in the most +prominent position- the heroes of history. But we need only +penetrate to the essence of any historic event- which lies in the +activity of the general mass of men who take part in it- to be +convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the +actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may +seem to be a matter of indifference whether we understand the +meaning of historical events this way or that; yet there is the same +difference between a man who says that the people of the West moved on +the East because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this +happened because it had to happen, as there is between those who +declared that the earth was stationary and that the planets moved +round it and those who admitted that they did not know what upheld the +earth, but knew there were laws directing its movement and that of the +other planets. There is, and can be, no cause of an historical event +except the one cause of all causes. But there are laws directing +events, and some of these laws are known to us while we are +conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery of these +laws is only possible when possible when we have quite abandoned the +attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man, just as the +discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was possible only +when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the earth. + +The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the +occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the +most important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the +Russian army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino +camp- the so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River. They +ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men and +dispute as to whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians, +including the French, acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders +when they speak of that flank march. But it is hard to understand +why military writers, and following them others, consider this flank +march to be the profound conception of some one man who saved Russia +and destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to understand +where the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not much +mental effort was needed to see that the best position for an army +when it is not being attacked is where there are most provisions; +and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best +position for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on +the Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoning +the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver was a +profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why +they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and +destroy the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded, +accompanied, or followed by other circumstances, might have proved +ruinous to the Russians and salutary for the French. If the position +of the Russian army really began to improve from the time of that +march, it does not at all follow that the march was the cause of it. + +That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to +the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its +destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If +Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained +inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given battle as +Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French +attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhra? What +would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had +attacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when +he attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the +French moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank +march that brought salvation might have proved disastrous. + +The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying +history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be +attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in +reality, like the retreat from Fili, it did not suggest itself to +anyone in its entirety, but resulted- moment by moment, step by +step, event by event- from an endless number of most diverse +circumstances and was only seen in its entirety when it had been +accomplished and belonged to the past. + +At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds of the +Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, +a direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In proof of this there is the +fact that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and +above all there is the well-known conversation after the council, +between the commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the +commissariat department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chief +that the army supplies were for the most part stored along the Oka +in the Tula and Ryazan provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhni +the army would be separated from its supplies by the broad river +Oka, which cannot be crossed early in winter. This was the first +indication of the necessity of deviating from what had previously +seemed the most natural course- a direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod. +The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer to +its supplies. Subsequently the in activity of the French (who even +lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the arsenal +at Tula, and especially the advantages of drawing nearer to its +supplies caused the army to turn still further south to the Tula road. +Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the Tula road beyond the +Pakhra, the Russian commanders intended to remain at Podolsk and had +no thought of the Tarutino position; but innumerable circumstances and +the reappearance of French troops who had for a time lost touch with +the Russians, and projects of giving battle, and above all the +abundance of provisions in Kaluga province, obliged our army to turn +still more to the south and to cross from the Tula to the Kaluga +road and go to Tarutino, which was between the roads along which those +supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to say when it was decided to +abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say precisely when, or by whom, +it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only when the army had got +there, as the result of innumerable and varying forces, did people +begin to assure themselves that they had desired this movement and +long ago foreseen its result. + +CHAPTER II + +The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the +advance of the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been +continually retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated +from that direct course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally +drawn toward the district where supplies were abundant. + +If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading +the Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could +not have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow, +describing an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be +found and where the country was richest. + +That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga +roads was so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that +direction, and demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutuzov to take +his army that way. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a +reprimand from the Emperor for having moved his army along the +Ryazan road, and the Emperor's letter indicated to him the very +position he had already occupied near Kaluga. + +Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by +the whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian army- +when the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push +was received- assumed the position natural to it. + +Kutuzov's merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as +it is called, but in the fact that he alone understood the +significance of what had happened. He alone then understood the +meaning of the French army's inactivity, he alone continued to +assert that the battle of Borodino had been a victory, he alone- who +as commander in chief might have been expected to be eager to +attack- employed his whole strength to restrain the Russian army +from useless engagements. + +The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had +left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and +merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was +heard to moan. + +The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed +its calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov's +camp with overtures for peace. + +Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head +was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him, +though they were meaningless. + +MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending one of my +adjutants-general to discuss several interesting questions with you. I +beg your Highness to credit what he says to you, especially when he +expresses the sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long +entertained for your person. This letter having no other object, I +pray God, monsieur le Prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and +gracious protection! + +NAPOLEON + +MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812 + +Kutuzov replied: "I should be cursed by posterity were I looked on +as the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is the present +spirit of my nation." But he continued to exert all his powers to +restrain his troops from attacking. + +During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and +the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had +taken place in the relative strength of the two armies- both in spirit +and in number- as a result of which the superiority had passed to +the Russian side. Though the condition and numbers of the French +army were unknown to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the +need of attacking at once showed itself by countless signs. These +signs were: Lauriston's mission; the abundance of provisions at +Tarutino; the reports coming in from all sides of the inactivity and +disorder of the French; the flow of recruits to our regiments; the +fine weather; the long rest the Russian soldiers had enjoyed, and +the impatience to do what they had been assembled for, which usually +shows itself in an army that has been resting; curiosity as to what +the French army, so long lost sight of, was doing; the boldness with +which our outposts now scouted close up to the French stationed at +Tarutino; the news of easy successes gained by peasants and +guerrilla troops over the French, the envy aroused by this; the desire +for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as the +French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every +soldier's mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed +and that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial +change in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable. +And at once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the +minute hand has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an +increased activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres. + +CHAPTER III + +The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and his staff, and also by +the Emperor from Petersburg. Before the news of the abandonment of +Moscow had been received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole +campaign had been drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance. +Though this plan had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow +was still in our hands, it was approved by the staff and accepted as a +basis for action. Kutuzov only replied that movements arranged from +a distance were always difficult to execute. So fresh instructions +were sent for the solution of difficulties that might be +encountered, as well as fresh people who were to watch Kutuzov's +actions and report upon them. + +Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now +reorganized. The posts left vacant by Bagration, who had been +killed, and by Barclay, who had gone away in dudgeon, had to be +filled. Very serious consideration was given to the question whether +it would be better to put A in B's place and B in D's, or on the +contrary to put D in A's place, and so on- as if anything more than +A's or B's satisfaction depended on this. + +As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, his +Chief of Staff, the presence of confidential representatives of the +Emperor, and these transfers, a more than usually complicated play +of parties was going on among the staff of the army. A was undermining +B, D was undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and +permutations. In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was +generally the conduct of the war, which all these men believed they +were directing; but this affair of the war went on independently of +them, as it had to go: that is, never in the way people devised, but +flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses. Only in +the highest spheres did all these schemes, crossings, and +interminglings appear to be a true reflection of what had to happen. + +Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of +October in a letter that reached Kutuzov after the battle at Tarutino) +Since September 2 Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last +reports were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not +only has no action been taken against the enemy or for the relief of +the ancient capital, but according to your last report you have even +retreated farther. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy +detachment and Tula with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the +army, is in danger. From General Wintzingerode's reports, I see that +an enemy corps of ten thousand men is moving on the Petersburg road. +Another corps of several thousand men is moving on Dmitrov. A third +has advanced along the Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather +considerable detachment is stationed between Ruza and Mozhaysk. +Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as the twenty-fifth. In view of +all this information, when the enemy has scattered his forces in large +detachments, and with Napoleon and his Guards in Moscow, is it +possible that the enemy's forces confronting you are so considerable +as not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the contrary, he is +probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with an army +corps much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem +that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might +advantageously attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at least +oblige him to retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the +provinces now occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger +from Tula and other towns in the interior. You will be responsible +if the enemy is able to direct a force of any size against +Petersburg to threaten this capital in which it has not been +possible to retain many troops; for with the army entrusted to you, +and acting with resolution and energy, you have ample means to avert +this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still to answer to our +offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have experienced my +readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken in me, but I +and Russia have a right to expect from you all the zeal, firmness, and +success which your intellect, military talent, and the courage of +the troops you command justify us in expecting. + +But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation +of the forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg, was +dispatched, Kutuzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain +the army he commanded from attacking and a battle had taken place. + +On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who was out +scouting, killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded +hare he made his way far into the forest and came upon the left +flank of Murat's army, encamped there without any precautions. The +Cossack laughingly told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the +hands of the French. A cornet, hearing the story, informed his +commander. + +The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished +to take advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of +the superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities, +reported the incident to a general on the staff. The state of +things on the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov had +been to see Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to +use his influence with the commander in chief to induce him to take +the offensive. + +"If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you +are asking for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure +to do the opposite," replied Bennigsen. + +The Cossack's report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent +out, was the final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled +spring was released, the clock began to whirr and the chimes to +play. Despite all his supposed power, his intellect, his experience, +and his knowledge of men, Kutuzov- having taken into consideration the +Cossack's report, a note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to +the Emperor, the wishes he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the +fact that all the generals expressed the same wish- could no longer +check the inevitable movement, and gave the order to do what he +regarded as useless and harmful- gave his approval, that is, to the +accomplished fact. + +CHAPTER IV + +Bennigsen's note and the Cossack's information that the left flank +of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it +was necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of +October. + +On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov signed the +dispositions. Toll read them to Ermolov, asking him to attend to the +further arrangements. + +"All right- all right. I haven't time just now," replied Ermolov, +and left the hut. + +The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the +Austerlitz dispositions, it was written- though not in German this +time: + +"The First Column will march here and here," "the Second Column will +march there and there," and so on; and on paper, all these columns +arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy. +Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions, +and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at +the appointed time. + +When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been +prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to +Ermolov to deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutuzov's +orderly, pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him, +went to Ermolov's quarters. + +"Gone away," said Ermolov's orderly. + +The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom +Ermolov was often to be found. + +"No, and the general's out too." + +The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else. + +"No, he's gone out." + +"If only they don't make me responsible for this delay! What a +nuisance it is!" thought the officer, and he rode round the whole +camp. One man said he had seen Ermolov ride past with some other +generals, others said he must have returned home. The officer searched +till six o'clock in the evening without even stopping to eat. +Ermolov was nowhere to be found and no one knew where he was. The +officer snatched a little food at a comrade's, and rode again to the +vanguard to find Miloradovich. Miloradovich too was away, but here +he was told that he had gone to a ball at General Kikin's and that +Ermolov was probably there too. + +"But where is it?" + +"Why, there, over at Echkino," said a Cossack officer, pointing to a +country house in the far distance. + +"What, outside our line?" + +"They've put two regiments as outposts, and they're having such a +spree there, it's awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!" + +The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino. While still at a +distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier's dance +song proceeding from the house. + +"In the meadows... in the meadows!" he heard, accompanied by +whistling and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by +shouts. These sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he +was afraid that he would be blamed for not having executed sooner +the important order entrusted to him. It was already past eight +o'clock. He dismounted and went up into the porch of a large country +house which had remained intact between the Russian and French forces. +In the refreshment room and the hall, footmen were bustling about with +wine and viands. Groups of singers stood outside the windows. The +officer was admitted and immediately saw all the chief generals of the +army together, and among them Ermolov's big imposing figure. They +all had their coats unbuttoned and were standing in a semicircle +with flushed and animated faces, laughing loudly. In the middle of the +room a short handsome general with a red face was dancing the trepak +with much spirit and agility. + +"Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!" + +The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a +moment he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait; +but one of the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come +about, informed Ermolov. + +Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what +the officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word. + +"You think he went off just by chance?" said a comrade, who was on +the staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards, +referring to Ermolov. "It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get +Konovnitsyn into trouble. You'll see what a mess there'll be +tomorrow." + +CHAPTER V + +Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to be called +early, said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant +consciousness of having to direct a battle he did not approve of, +got into his caleche and drove from Letashovka (a village three and +a half miles from Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns +were to meet. He sat in the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns, +and listening for any sound of firing on the right as an indication +that the action had begun. But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn +morning was just dawning. On approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed +cavalrymen leading their horses to water across the road along which +he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them searchingly, stopped his +carriage, and inquired what regiment they belonged to. They belonged +to a column that should have been far in front and in ambush long +before then. "It may be a mistake," thought the old commander in +chief. But a little further on he saw infantry regiments with their +arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed, eating their rye +porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The officer +reported that no order to advance had been received. + +"How! Not rec..." Kutuzov began, but checked himself immediately and +sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his caleche, he waited +with drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down. +When Eykhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned, +appeared, Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because that officer +was to blame for the mistake, but because he was an object of +sufficient importance for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and +panting the old man fell into that state of fury in which he sometimes +used to roll on the ground, and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him +with his hands, shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another +man, Captain Brozin, who happened to turn up and who was not at all to +blame, suffered the same fate. + +"What sort of another blackguard are you? I'll have you shot! +Scoundrels!" yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and +reeling. + +He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene +Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever +had in Russia, to be placed in this position- made the laughingstock +of the whole army! "I needn't have been in such a hurry to pray +about today, or have kept awake thinking everything over all night," +thought he to himself. "When I was a chit of an officer no one would +have dared to mock me so... and now!" He was in a state of physical +suffering as if from corporal punishment, and could not avoid +expressing it by cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon +began to fail him, and looking about him, conscious of having said +much that was amiss, he again got into his caleche and drove back in +silence. + +His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he +listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not come to +see him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen, +Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should +be executed next day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent. + +CHAPTER VI + +Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the +evening and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with +dark purple clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy, +and the troops advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of +the artillery could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk +out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried +to prevent their horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking +heightened its charm and they marched gaily. Some columns, +supposing. they had reached their destination, halted, piled arms, and +settled down on the cold ground, but the majority marched all night +and arrived at places where they evidently should not have been. + +Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least important +detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time. +This detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path +leading from the village of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk. + +Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off, was awakened by +a deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a +Polish sergeant of Poniatowski's corps, who explained in Polish that +he had come over because he had been slighted in the service: that +he ought long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver +than any of them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them +out. He said that Murat was spending the night less than a mile from +where they were, and that if they would let him have a convoy of a +hundred men he would capture him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov +consulted his fellow officers. + +The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go +and everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and +arguing, Major-General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to go +with the Polish sergeant. + +"Now, remember," said Count Orlov-Denisov to the sergeant at +parting, "if you have been lying I'll have you hanged like a dog; +but if it's true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!" + +Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and +rode away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They +disappeared into the forest, and Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen +Grekov off, returned, shivering from the freshness of the early dawn +and excited by what he had undertaken on his own responsibility, and +began looking at the enemy camp, now just visible in the deceptive +light of dawn and the dying campfires. Our columns ought to have begun +to appear on an open declivity to his right. He looked in that +direction, but though the columns would have been visible quite far +off, they were not to be seen. It seemed to the count that things were +beginning to stir in the French camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant +confirmed this. + +"Oh, it is really too late," said Count Orlov, looking at the camp. + +As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before +our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the +sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian +attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which he +would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a +commander in chief from among such a mass of troops! + +"I am sure that rascal was lying," said the count. + +"They can still be called back," said one of his suite, who like +Count Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the +enemy's camp. + +"Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?" + +"Will you have them fetched back?" + +"Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov with sudden +determination, looking at his watch. "It will be too late. It is quite +light." + +And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov. When +Grekov returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited both by the abandoned +attempt and by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not +appear, as well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. +All his men felt the same excitement. + +"Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and +crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's aid!" + +"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack +companies, trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if +poured out of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp. + +One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw +the Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just +waking up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and +horses. + +Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind +and around them, they would have captured Murat and everything +there. That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to +make the Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners. +None of them listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and +thirty-eight guns were taken on the spot, besides standards and +(what seemed most important to the Cossacks) horses, saddles, +horsecloths, and the like. All this had to be dealt with, the +prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided- not without some +shouting and even a little themselves- and it was on this that the +Cossacks all busied themselves. + +The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover +themselves: they formed into detachments and began firing. +Orlov-Denisov, still waiting for the other columns to arrive, advanced +no further. + +Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the First +Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated columns, +commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due +order and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their +appointed places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully, +began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and +finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about, +shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and +were late, gave vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and +went forward, simply to get somewhere. "We shall get somewhere or +other!" And they did indeed get somewhere, though not to their right +places; a few eventually even got to their right place, but too late +to be of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this +battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped +assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside down +everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut's corps in a wood when it +was already broad daylight, though the corps should long before have +joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing +that someone must be responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the +commander of the corps and began upbraiding him severely, saying +that he ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of +placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay, confusion, +and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise and quite +contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things to Toll. + +"I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men +as well as anybody," he said, and advanced with a single division. + +Coming out onto a field under the enemy's fire, this brave general +went straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering +in his agitation whether going into action now, with a single +division, would be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets +were just what he needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets +killed him, and other bullets killed many of his men. And his division +remained under fire for some time quite uselessly. + +CHAPTER VII + +Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the +front, but Kutuzov accompanied that column. He well knew that +nothing but confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his +will, and as far as was in his power held the troops back. He did +not advance. + +He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering +suggestions that they should attack. + +"The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don't see that we +are unable to execute complicated maneuvers," said he to +Miloradovich who asked permission to advance. + +"We couldn't take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in +time, and nothing can be done now!" he replied to someone else. + +When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rear- where according +to the reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody- there +were now two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov +who was behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous +day. + +"You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds, +but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy, +forewarned, takes measures accordingly." + +Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these +words. He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that +Kutuzov would content himself with that hint. + +"He's having a little fun at my expense," said Ermolov softly, +nudging with his knee Raevski who was at his side. + +Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully +remarked: + +"It is not too late yet, your Highness- the enemy has not gone away- +if you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as +see a little smoke." + +Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat's +troops were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every +hundred paces he halted for three quarters of an hour. + +The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov's Cossacks had +done: the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly. + +In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration, +and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also +received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various +grades, and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff. + +"That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the +Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be +understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that +we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today. +But people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking +about or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle- Tarutino, +Borodino, or Austerlitz- takes place as those who planned it +anticipated. That is an essential condition. + +A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than +during a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence +the course taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in +advance and never coincides with the direction of any one force. + +If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a +given body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one +of those forces, but will always be a mean- what in mechanics is +represented by the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces. + +If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French +ones, we find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with +previously formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those +descriptions are false. + +The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had +in view- to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the +dispositions; nor that which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had in view- +to take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the +whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor +the aim of the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish +himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got, +and so on. But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and +what all the Russians of that day desired- to drive the French out +of Russia and destroy their army- it is quite clear that the battle of +Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was +wanted at that stage of the campaign. It would be difficult and even +impossible to imagine any result more opportune than the actual +outcome of this battle. With a minimum of effort and insignificant +losses, despite the greatest confusion, the most important results +of the whole campaign were attained: the transition from retreat to +advance, an exposure of the weakness of the French, and the +administration of that shock which Napoleon's army had only awaited to +begin its flight. + +CHAPTER VIII + +Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa; +there can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in +the hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their +ancient capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and +incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon's hands. The Russian army, only +half the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to +attack for a whole month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. He +can either fall on the Russian army with double its strength and +destroy it; negotiate an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal +make a menacing move on Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse, +return to Smolensk or Vilna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special +genius would seem to be required to retain the brilliant position +the French held at that time. For that, only very simple and easy +steps were necessary: not to allow the troops to loot, to prepare +winter clothing- of which there was sufficient in Moscow for the whole +army- and methodically to collect the provisions, of which +(according to the French historians) there were enough in Moscow to +supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon, that greatest of +all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of the army, took +none of these steps. + +He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used +his power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses +open to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in +Moscow, advancing on Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or retiring +by a more northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutuzov +afterwards took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined +than what he actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting +the troops plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a +garrison behind him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutuzov without +joining battle, turned to the right and reached Malo-Yaroslavets, +again without attempting to break through and take the road Kutuzov +took, but retiring instead to Mozhaysk along the devastated Smolensk +road. Nothing more stupid than that could have been devised, or more +disastrous for the army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon's aim been +to destroy his army, the most skillful strategist could hardly have +devised any series of actions that would so completely have +accomplished that purpose, independently of anything the Russian +army might do. + +Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he +destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very +stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to +Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a +genius. + +In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the +personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws +that guided the event. + +The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon's faculties as +having weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did +not justify his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to +do the best he could for himself and his army, as he had done +previously and as he did subsequently in 1813. His activity at that +time was no less astounding than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in +Austria, and in Prussia. We do not know for certain in how far his +genius was genuine in Egypt- where forty centuries looked down upon +his grandeur- for his great exploits there are all told us by +Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius in Austria or +Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French or German +sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps without +fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans to +recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on +in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius in +order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the +matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right. + +His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as +elsewhere. Order after order order and plan after plan were issued +by him from the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The +absence of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of +Moscow, did not disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the +welfare of his army or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare +of the people of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or +of diplomatic considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated +peace. + +CHAPTER IX + +With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry +into Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the +movements of the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different +roads, and charged Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful +directions about the fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a +brilliant plan for a future campaign over the whole map of Russia. + +With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain +Yakovlev, who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how +to get out of Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and +his magnanimity, and having written a letter to the Emperor +Alexander in which he considered it his duty to inform his Friend +and Brother that Rostopchin had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he +dispatched Yakovlev to Petersburg. + +Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to +Tutolmin, he dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate. + +With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave +orders to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel +Rostopchin was punished by an order to burn down his houses. + +With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a +constitution. A municipality was established and the following +announcement issued: + +INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW! + +Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King +desires to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you +how he punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been +taken to put an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A +paternal administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form +your municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of +your needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished +by a red ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city +will wear a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only +wear a red ribbon round the left arm. + +The city police is established on its former footing, and better +order already prevails in consequence of its activity. The +government has appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of +police, and twenty commissaries or captains of wards have been +appointed to the different wards of the city. You will recognize +them by the white ribbon they will wear on the left arm. Several +churches of different denominations are open, and divine service is +performed in them unhindered. Your fellow citizens are returning every +day to their homes. and orders have been given that they should find +in them the help and protection due to their misfortunes. These are +the measures the government has adopted to re-establish order and +relieve youp condition. But to achieve this aim it is necessary that +you should add your efforts and should, if possible, forget the +misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain the hope of a less +cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death +awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or on what remains +of your property, and finally that you should not doubt that these +will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest and most +just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you may +be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of a +state, live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to +another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the +military and civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to +flow! + +With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all +the troops in turn should enter Moscow a la maraude~{ As looters. }~ to obtain +provisions for themselves, so that the army might have its future +provided for. + +With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be +brought back and services to be again performed in the churches. + +With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the +following was placarded everywhere: + +PROCLAMATION! + +You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom +misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of +the soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen! +Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being +restored in it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from +their hiding places on finding that they are respected. Any violence +to them or to their property is promptly punished. His Majesty the +Emperor and King protects them, and considers no one among you his +enemy except those who disobey his orders. He desires to end your +misfortunes and restore you to your homes and families. Respond, +therefore, to his benevolent intentions and come to us without fear. +Inhabitants, return with confidence to your abodes! You will soon find +means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen and industrious artisans, +return to your work, your houses, your shops, where the protection +of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay for your work. +And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where you are +hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full +assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in +the city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the +products of the soil. The government has taken the following steps +to ensure freedom of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants, +husbandmen, and those living in the neighborhood of Moscow may without +any danger bring their supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets, +of which one is on the Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision +Market. (2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices as +seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a +fair price he will be free to take his goods back to his village and +no one may hinder him under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday +of each week are appointed as the chief market days and to that end +a sufficient number of troops will be stationed along the highroads on +Tuesdays and Saturdays at such distances from the town as to protect +the carts. (4) Similar measures will be taken that peasants with their +carts and horses may meet with no hindrance on their return journey. +(5) Steps will immediately be taken to re-establish ordinary trading. + +Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and +artisans, to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry +out the paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to +co-operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and +confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us! + +With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the +people, reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The +Emperor rode through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and, +despite his preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the +theaters that were established by his order. + +In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads, +Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma +Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining +tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He +visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by +him to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then, +as Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in +forged Russian money which he had prepared: "Raising the use of +these means by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let +relief be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food +was too precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part +enemies, Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to +purchase food from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them." + +With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being +issued to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military +duties and to suppress robbery. + +CHAPTER X + +But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans- which +were not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances- did +not affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock +detached from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless +way without engaging the cogwheels. + +With reference to the military side- the plan of campaign- that work +of genius of which Thiers remarks that, "His genius never devised +anything more profound, more skillful, or more admirable," and +enters into a polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius +must be referred not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October- +that plan never was or could be executed, for it was quite out of +touch with the facts of the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for +which la Mosquee (as Napoleon termed the church of Basil the +Beatified) was to have been razed to the ground, proved quite useless. +The mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon's +wish that it should be blown up when he left Moscow- as a child +wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to be beaten. The pursuit +of the Russian army, about which Napoleon was so concerned, produced +an unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch with the +Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to Thiers it was +only eventually found, like a lost pin, by the skill- and apparently +the genius- of Murat. + +With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon's arguments as to his +magnanimity and justice, both to Tutolmin and to Yakovlev (whose chief +concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless; +Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their +embassage. + +With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed +incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down. + +With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a +municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain +people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of +preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from +being looted. + +With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so +easily been settled by Napoleon's visit to a mosque, no results were +achieved. Two or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to +carry out Napoleon's wish, but one of them was slapped in the face +by a French soldier while conducting service, and a French official +reported of another that: "The priest whom I found and invited to +say Mass cleaned and locked up the church. That night the doors were +again broken open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and +other disorders perpetrated." + +With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious +workmen and to peasants evoked no response. There were no +industrious workmen, and the peasants caught the commissaries who +ventured too far out of town with the proclamation and killed them. + +As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the +troops, these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in +the Kremlin and in Posnyakov's house were closed again at once because +the actors and actresses were robbed. + +Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as +well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The +French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the +paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to +the unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold. + +But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders +given by the authorities at that time was Napoleon's attempt to stop +the looting and re-establish discipline. + +This is what the army authorities were reporting: + +"Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order +is not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade +in a lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they +sell stolen goods." + +"The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of +the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate +inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have +the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly +witnessed." + +"Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and pillaging- +October 9." + +"Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our +district who ought to be arrested by a strong force- October 11." + +"The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict +orders to stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually +seen returning to the Kremlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and +pillage were renewed more violently than ever yesterday evening, +last night, and today. The Emperor sees with regret that the picked +soldiers appointed to guard his person, who should set an example of +discipline, carry disobedience to such a point that they break into +the cellars and stores containing army supplies. Others have disgraced +themselves to the extent of disobeying sentinels and officers, and +have abused and beaten them." + +"The Grand Marshal of the palace," wrote the governor, "complains +bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to +commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows +of the Emperor." + +That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot +the provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated +and perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it +did not go away. + +It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused +by the capture of transport trains on the Smolensk road, and by the +battle of Tarutino. The news of that battle of Tarutino, +unexpectedly received by Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a +desire to punish the Russians (Thiers says), and he issued the order +for departure which the whole army was demanding. + +Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they +had stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal tresor, but +on seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers +says) horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not +order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with +those of a certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the +caleches and carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that +it was a very good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry +provisions, the sick, and the wounded. + +The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal +which feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To +study the skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from +the time it entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying +the dying leaps and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very +often a wounded animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the +hunter's gun, runs forward and back again, and hastens its own end. +Napoleon, under pressure from his whole army, did the same thing. +The rustle of the battle of Tarutino frightened the beast, and it +rushed forward onto the hunter's gun, reached him, turned back, and +finally- like any wild beast- ran back along the most +disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent was familiar. + +During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have +been the leader of all these movements- as the figurehead of a ship +may seem to a savage to guide the vessel- acted like a child who, +holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving +it. + +CHAPTER XI + +Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of +the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little +blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped +about him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside +Karataev at night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but +always returned again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it +still belonged to nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor; +the soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and others +called it Gray, or sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name, +or even of a breed or any definite color did not seem to trouble the +blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round +as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it would often +gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily and quickly on three +legs, as if disdaining to use all four. Everything pleased it. Now +it would roll on its back, yelping with delight, now bask in the sun +with a thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic about playing with +a chip of wood or a straw. + +Pierre's attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only +remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by +Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and +a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this +time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of +solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache +covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested +with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes +was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The +former slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now +replaced by an energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet +were bare. + +Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and +horsemen were passing that morning, then into the distance across +the river, then at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about +biting him, and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in +various positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he +looked at his bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction +flitted across his face. The sight of them reminded him of all he +had experienced and learned during these weeks and this recollection +was pleasant to him. + +For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts +in the mornings- what is called an "old wives' summer." + +In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly +pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in +the air. + +On everything- far and near- lay the magic crystal glitter seen only +at that time autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance, +with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare +trees, the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green +church spire, and the corners of the white house in the distance, +all stood out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with +unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a +half-burned mansion occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still +showing dark green beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled +house- which in dull weather was repulsively ugly- seemed quietly +beautiful now, in the clear, motionless brilliance. + +A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a +skullcap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from +behind a corner of the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly +wink. + +"What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!" (Their name for Pierre.) "Eh? +Just like spring!" + +And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his +pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it. + +"To be on the march in such weather..." he began. + +Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the +corporal told him that nearly all the troops were starting and there +ought to be an order about the prisoners that day. Sokolov, one of the +soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the +corporal that something should be done about him. The corporal replied +that Pierre need not worry about that as they had an ambulance and a +permanent hospital and arrangements would be made for the sick, and +that in general everything that could happen had been foreseen by +the authorities. + +"Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the +captain, you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to +the captain when he makes his round, he will do anything for you." + +(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with +Pierre and showed him all sorts of favors.) + +"'You see, St. Thomas,' he said to me the other day. 'Monsieur Kiril +is a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who +has had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what's what.... If he +wants anything and asks me, he won't get a refusal. When one has +studied, you see, one likes education and well-bred people.' It is for +your sake I mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not +been for you that affair would have ended ill." + +And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The +affair he had alluded to had happened a few days before- a fight +between the prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had +succeeded in pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had +heard Pierre talking to the corporal immediately asked what the +Frenchman had said. While Pierre was repeating what he had been told +about the army leaving Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier +came up to the door of the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his +fingers to his forehead by way of greeting, he asked Pierre whether +the soldier Platoche to whom he had given a shirt to sew was in that +shed. + +A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to +them, which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into +boots and shirts for them. + +"Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly +folded shirt. + +Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at +work, was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot. +His hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree +bast, and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever. + +"A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here +it is, ready," said Platon, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had +sewn. + +The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his +hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had +a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin +bare body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking +on would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly. +None of the prisoners said a word. + +"See, it fits well!" Platon kept repeating, pulling the shirt +straight. + +The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without +raising his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams. + +"You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper +tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse," +said Platon with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his +work. + +"It's good, quite good, thank you," said the Frenchman, in French, +"but there must be some linen left over. + +"It will fit better still when it sets to your body," said Karataev, +still admiring his handiwork. "You'll be nice and comfortable...." + +"Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?" said the +Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note +and gave it to Karataev. "But give me the pieces that are over." + +Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what the Frenchman +was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked the +Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The +Frenchman insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over +and asked Pierre to translate what he said. + +"What does he want the bits for?" said Karataev. "They'd make fine +leg bands for us. Well, never mind." + +And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression, +took a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the +Frenchman without looking at him. "Oh dear!" muttered Karataev and +went away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment, +then looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre's look had told +him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice: + +"Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!" And handing back the +odd bits he turned and went out. + +"There, look at that," said Karataev, swaying his head. "People said +they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It's what the old +folk used to say: 'A sweating hand's an open hand, a dry hand's +close.' He's naked, but yet he's given it back." + +Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the +pieces. + +"But they'll make grand leg bands, dear friend," he said, and went +back into the shed. + +CHAPTER XII + +Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and +though the French had offered to move him from the men's to the +officers' shed, he had stayed in the shed where he was first put. + +In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the +extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his +physical strength and health, of which he had till then been +unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact that the privations +came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he +endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this +time he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly +striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that +tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in +the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in +philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in +wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for +Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning- and all these quests and +experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had +found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death, +through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev. + +Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as +it were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the +agitating thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important. +It did not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or +politics, or Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things +were no business of his, and that he was not called on to judge +concerning them and therefore could not do so. "Russia and summer +weather are not bound together," he thought, repeating words of +Karataev's which he found strangely consoling. His intention of +killing Napoleon and his calculations of the cabalistic number of +the beast of the Apocalypse now seemed to him meaningless and even +ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his name should +not be smirched now seemed not merely trivial but even amusing. What +concern was it of his that somewhere or other that woman was leading +the life she preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and +especially to him, whether or not they found out that their prisoner's +name was Count Bezukhov? + +He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and +quite agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew's thoughts +somewhat differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that +happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of +bitterness and irony as though he was really saying that all desire +for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and +never be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental +reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs +and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is, +of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's +highest happiness. Here and now for the first time he fully +appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking +when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth +when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to talk +and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one's needs- good food, +cleanliness, and freedom- now that he was deprived of all this, seemed +to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of +occupation, that is, of his way of life- now that that was so +restricted- seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a +superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying +one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation- such +freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had +given him in his own life- is just what makes the choice of occupation +insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of +having an occupation. + +All Pierre's daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free. +Yet subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke +with enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable, +strong, joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind +and inner freedom which he experienced only during those weeks. + +When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn, +and saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still +dark at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, +and the wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple +distance, when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the +noise of the crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when +afterwards light gleamed from the east and the sun's rim appeared +solemnly from behind a cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the +hoarfrost, the distance and the river, all began to sparkle in the +glad light- Pierre felt a new joy and strength in life such as he +had never before known. And this not only stayed with him during the +whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in strength as the +hardships of his position increased. + +That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still +further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners +formed of him soon after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge +of languages, the respect shown him by the French, his simplicity, his +readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance +of three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength, which +he showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut; +his gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still +and thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them +incomprehensible), he appeared to them a rather mysterious and +superior being. The very qualities that had been a hindrance, if not +actually harmful, to him in the world he had lived in- his strength, +his disdain for the comforts of life, his absent-mindedness and +simplicity- here among these people gave him almost the status of a +hero. And Pierre felt that their opinion placed responsibilities +upon him. + +CHAPTER XIII + +The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and +seventh of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts +loaded, and troops and baggage trains started. + +At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing +shakos and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in +front of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses +sounded all along the lines. + +In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only +awaited the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolov, pale and thin +with dark shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot +and not dressed. His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his +face, gazed inquiringly at his comrades who were paying no attention +to him, and he moaned regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so +much his sufferings that caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as +his fear and grief at being left alone. + +Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes +Karataev had made for him from some leather a French soldier had +torn off a tea chest and brought to have his boots mended with, went +up to the sick man and squatted down beside him. + +"You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away! They have a +hospital here. You may be better off than we others," said Pierre. + +"O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!" moaned the man +in a louder voice. + +"I'll go and ask them again directly," said Pierre, rising and going +to the door of the shed. + +Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him +a pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal +and soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had +metal straps, and these changed their familiar faces. + +The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The +prisoners had to be counted before being let out. + +"Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?..." Pierre began. + +But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal +he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that +moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of +drums was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at +Pierre's words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door. +The shed became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two +sides drowned the sick man's groans. + +"There it is!... It again!..." said Pierre to himself, and an +involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal's changed +face, in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise +of the drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which +compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men- that +force the effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To +fear or to try to escape that force, to address entreaties or +exhortations to those who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre +knew this now. One had to wait and endure. He did not again go to +the sick man, nor turn to look at him, but stood frowning by the +door of the hut. + +When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one +another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed +his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal +had assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also +in marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which +Pierre had recognized in the corporal's words and in the roll of the +drums. + +"Pass on, pass on!" the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and +looking at the prisoners who thronged past him. + +Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain. + +"What now?" the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing +Pierre. + +Pierre told him about the sick man. + +"He'll manage to walk, devil take him!" said the captain. "Pass +on, pass on!" he continued without looking at Pierre. + +"But he is dying," Pierre again began. + +"Be so good..." shouted the captain, frowning angrily. + +"Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam..." rattled the drums, and Pierre +understood that this mysterious force completely controlled these +men and that it was now useless to say any more. + +The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to +march in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among +them, and about three hundred men. + +The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all +strangers to Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at +him and at his shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him +walked a fat major with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing +a Kazan dressing grown tied round with a towel, and who evidently +enjoyed the respect of his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in +which he clasped his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing +gown and held the stem of his pipe firmly with the other. Panting +and puffing, the major grumbled and growled at everybody because he +thought he was being pushed and that they were all hurrying when +they had nowhere to hurry to and were all surprised at something +when there was nothing to be surprised at. Another, a thin little +officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing where they were now +being taken and how far they would get that day. An official in felt +boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side to side +and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his observations +as to what had been burned down and what this or that part of the city +was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent was a +Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was +mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow. + +"What are you disputing about?" said the major angrily. "What does +it matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it's +burned down, and there's an end of it.... What are you pushing for? +Isn't the road wide enough?" said he, turning to a man behind him +who was not pushing him at all. + +"Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?" the prisoners on one side and +another were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. "All +beyond the river, and Zubova, and in the Kremlin.... Just look! +There's not half of it left. Yes, I told you- the whole quarter beyond +the river, and so it is." + +"Well, you know it's burned, so what's the use of talking?" said the +major. + +As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of the few +unburned quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly +started to one side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard. + +"Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And +smeared with something!" + +Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked +these exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the +palings surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw +better than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set +upright against the palings with its face smeared with soot. + +"Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!..." the +convoy guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh +virulence, drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who +were gazing at the dead man. + +CHAPTER XIV + +Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter the prisoners +marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons +belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they +came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with +private vehicles. + +At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get +across. From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving +baggage trains before and behind them. To the right, where the +Kaluga road turns near Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts +stretched away into the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais' +corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the +riverside and across the Stone Bridge, were Ney's troops and +transport. + +Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing +the Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga +road. But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of +Beauharnais' train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the +Kaluga road when the vanguard of Ney's army was already emerging +from the Great Ordynka Street. + +When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few +steps forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles +and men crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few +hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking +more than an hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the +streets of the Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and +the prisoners jammed close together had to stand for some hours at +that crossway. From all sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard +the rattle of wheels, the tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger +and abuse. Pierre stood pressed against the wall of a charred house, +listening to that noise which mingled in his imagination with the roll +of the drums. + +To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the +wall of the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning. + +"What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They've loaded goods +even on the cannon! Look there, those are furs!" they exclaimed. "Just +see what the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one +has behind in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some +icons, by heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has +loaded himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they've even grabbed +those chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks.... +Heavens! They're fighting." + +"That's right, hit him on the snout- on his snout! Like this, we +shan't get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be +Napoleon's own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown! +It's like a portable house.... That fellow's dropped his sack and +doesn't see it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not +bad-looking either! Yes, I dare say, that's the way they'll let you +pass... Just look, there's no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, +so they are! In carriages- see how comfortably they've settled +themselves!" + +Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general curiosity +bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to +his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted +their curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts, +closely squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in +glaring colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices. + +From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the +mysterious force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful: +neither the corpse smeared with soot for fun nor these women +hurrying away nor the burned ruins of Moscow. All that he now +witnessed scarcely made an impression on him- as if his soul, making +ready for a hard struggle, refused to receive impressions that might +weaken it. + +The women's vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts, +soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers, +ammunition carts, more soldiers, and now and then women. + +Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement. + +All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some +invisible power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came +flowing from the different streets with one and the same desire to get +on quickly; they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to +fight, white teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of +abuse flew from side to side, and all the faces bore the same +swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck +Pierre that morning on the corporal's face when the drums were +beating. + +It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the +escort collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way +in among the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all +sides, emerged onto the Kaluga road. + +They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the +sun began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men +began to prepare for their night's rest. They all appeared angry and +dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could +be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran +into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole. +Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat +the carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others +fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly +wounded on the head by a sword. + +It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid +fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and +the same feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and +eagerness to push on that had seized them at the start. Once at a +standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet know +where they were going, and that much that was painful and difficult +awaited them on this journey. + +During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than +they had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the +first time received horseflesh for their meat ration. + +From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what +seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in +unexpected contrast to their former friendly relations. + +This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of +prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one +Russian soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had +escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for +straying too far from the road, and heard his friend the captain +reprimand and threaten to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on +account of the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer's +excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer +replied that the order was to shoot those who lagged behind. Pierre +felt that that fatal force which had crushed him during the +executions, but which be had not felt during his imprisonment, now +again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but he felt that in +proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush him, there grew +and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent of it. + +He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with +his comrades. + +Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen +in Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of +the order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in +reaction against the worsening of their position they were all +particularly animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences, +of amusing scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and +avoided all talk of their present situation. + +The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in +the sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon +from the rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely +in the gray haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night +had not yet come. Pierre got up and left his new companions, +crossing between the campfires to the other side of the road where +he had been told the common soldier prisoners were stationed. He +wanted to talk to them. On the road he was stopped by a French +sentinel who ordered him back. + +Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an +unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him +and dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of +the cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. +Suddenly he burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured +laughter, so loud that men from various sides turned with surprise +to see what this strange and evidently solitary laughter could mean. + +"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: "The +soldier did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me +captive. What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!..." and +he laughed till tears started to his eyes. + +A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing +at all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther +away from the inquisitive man, and looked around him. + +The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the +crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the +red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the +light sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, +unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, +beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless +distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the +twinkling stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that +is within me, and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all +that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!" He smiled, and +went and lay down to sleep beside his companions. + +CHAPTER XV + +In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a +letter from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow, +though Napoleon was already not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga +road. Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one +formerly brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no +question of peace. + +Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla +detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of +Broussier's division had been seen at Forminsk and that being +separated from the rest of the French army they might easily be +destroyed. The soldiers and officers again demanded action. Generals +on the staff, excited by the memory of the easy victory at Tarutino, +urged Kutuzov to carry out Dorokhov's suggestion. Kutuzov did not +consider any offensive necessary. The result was a compromise which +was inevitable: a small detachment was sent to Forminsk to attack +Broussier. + +By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most +difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhturov- that same +modest little Dokhturov whom no one had described to us as drawing +up plans of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering +crosses on batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was +spoken of as undecided and undiscerning- but whom we find commanding +wherever the position was most difficult all through the +Russo-French wars from Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he +remained last at the Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what +was possible when all were flying and perishing and not a single +general was left in the rear guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk +with twenty thousand men to defend the town against Napoleon's whole +army. In Smolensk, at the Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in +a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the bombardment of the +town- and Smolensk held out all day long. At the battle of Borodino, +when Bagration was killed and nine tenths of the men of our left flank +had fallen and the full force of the French artillery fire was +directed against it, the man sent there was this same irresolute and +undiscerning Dokhturov- Kutuzov hastening to rectify a mistake he +had made by sending someone else there first. And the quiet little +Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the greatest glory of +the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in verse and +prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has been said. + +It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk and from there +to Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the last battle with the French +was fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army +began; and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of +the campaign, but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said and that +dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is the clearest +testimony to his merit. + +It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a +machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance +and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most +important part. The man who does not understand the construction of +the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which +revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine, +and not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working. + +On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone halfway to +Forminsk and stopped at the village of Aristovo, preparing +faithfully to execute the orders he had received, the whole French +army having, in its convulsive movement, reached Murat's position +apparently in order to give battle- suddenly without any reason turned +off to the left onto the new Kaluga road and began to enter +Forminsk, where only Broussier had been till then. At that time +Dokhturov had under his command, besides Dorokhov's detachment, the +two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and Seslavin. + +On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the Aristovo +headquarters with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner +said that the troops that had entered Forminsk that day were the +vanguard of the whole army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army +had left Moscow four days previously. That same evening a house serf +who had come from Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering +the town. Some Cossacks of Dokhturov's detachment reported having +sighted the French Guards marching along the road to Borovsk. From all +these reports it was evident that where they had expected to meet a +single division there was now the whole French army marching from +Moscow in an unexpected direction- along the Kaluga road. Dokhturov +was unwilling to undertake any action, as it was not clear to him +now what he ought to do. He had been ordered to attack Forminsk. But +only Broussier had been there at that time and now the whole French +army was there. Ermolov wished to act on his own judgment, but +Dokhturov insisted that he must have Kutuzov's instructions. So it was +decided to send a dispatch to the staff. + +For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was chosen, who +was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering a +written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the +dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff +accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses. + +CHAPTER XVI + +It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four +days. Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour +and a half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka +after one o'clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle +fence hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he +entered a dark passage. + +"The general on duty, quick! It's very important!" said he to +someone who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage. + +"He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third +night he has not slept," said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper. +"You should wake the captain first." + +"But this is very important, from General Dokhturov," said +Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in +the dark. + +The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody. + +"Your honor, your honor! A courier." + +"What? What's that? From whom?" came a sleepy voice. + +"From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is at Forminsk," +said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but +guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnitsyn. + +The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself. + +"I don't like waking him," he said, fumbling for something. "He is +very ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor." + +"Here is the dispatch," said Bolkhovitinov. "My orders are to give +it at once to the general on duty." + +"Wait a moment, I'll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you +always hide it?" said the voice of the man who was stretching himself, +to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn's adjutant.) +"I've found it, I've found it!" he added. + +The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was fumbling for +something on the candlestick. + +"Oh, the nasty beasts!" said he with disgust. + +By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin's +youthful face as he held the candle, and the face of another man who +was still asleep. This was Konovnitsyn. + +When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned +up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle, from +the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were +running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was +bespattered all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it +with his sleeve. + +"Who gave the report?" inquired Shcherbinin, taking the envelope. + +"The news is reliable," said Bolkhovitinov. "Prisoners, Cossacks, +and the scouts all say the same thing." + +"There's nothing to be done, we'll have to wake him," said +Shcherbinin, rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay +covered by a greatcoat. "Peter Petrovich!" said he. (Konovnitsyn did +not stir.) "To the General Staff!" he said with a smile, knowing +that those words would be sure to arouse him. + +And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On +Konovnitsyn's handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever, +there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote +from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face +assumed its habitual calm and firm appearance. + +"Well, what is it? From whom?" he asked immediately but without +hurry, blinking at the light. + +While listening to the officer's report Konovnitsyn broke the seal +and read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his +legs in their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began +putting on his boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair +over his temples, and donned his cap. + +"Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness." + +Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of +great importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or +ask himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest +him. He regarded the whole business of the war not with his +intelligence or his reason but by something else. There was within him +a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one +must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only +attend to one's own work. And he did his work, giving his whole +strength to the task. + +Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to have been +included merely for propriety's sake in the list of the so-called +heroes of 1812- the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and +Miloradoviches. Like Dokhturov he had the reputation of being a man of +very limited capacity and information, and like Dokhturov he never +made plans of battle but was always found where the situation was most +difficult. Since his appointment as general on duty he had always +slept with his door open, giving orders that every messenger should be +allowed to wake him up. In battle he was always under fire, so that +Kutuzov reproved him for it and feared to send him to the front, and +like Dokhturov he was one of those unnoticed cogwheels that, without +clatter or noise, constitute the most essential part of the machine. + +Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn frowned- +partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at the unpleasant +thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest of influential +men on the staff would be stirred up by this news, especially +Bennigsen, who ever since Tarutino had been at daggers drawn with +Kutuzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel, issue orders, +and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him +though he knew it could not be helped. + +And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news, +immediately began to expound his plans to a general sharing his +quarters, until Konovnitsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded +him that they must go to see his Highness. + +CHAPTER XVII + +Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often +fell asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his +bed without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking. + +So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred +head on his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and +peering into the darkness. + +Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more +influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him, +Kutuzov was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his +troops being obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The +lesson of the Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which +Kutuzov remembered with pain, must, he thought, have some effect on +others too. + +"They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive. +Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutuzov. +He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will +fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, +the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an +experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was wounded, and +wounded as only the whole strength of Russia could have wounded it, +but whether it was mortally wounded or not was still an undecided +question. Now by the fact of Lauriston and Barthelemi having been +sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutuzov was almost sure +that the wound was mortal. But he needed further proofs and it was +necessary to wait. + +"They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall +see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!" thought he. "What +for? Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are +like children from whom one can't get any sensible account of what has +happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But +that's not what is needed now. + +"And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to +them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he +remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have +foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless." + +The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodino +was mortal or not had hung over Kutuzov's head for a whole month. On +the one hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt +assured with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and +all the Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal. +But in any case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for +them and grew more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed +during those sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those +younger generals for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible +contingencies, just like the younger men, but with this difference, +that he saw thousands of contingencies instead of two or three and +based nothing on them. The longer he thought the more contingencies +presented themselves. He imagined all sorts of movements of the +Napoleonic army as a whole or in sections- against Petersburg, or +against him, or to outflank him. He thought too of the possibility +(which he feared most of all) that Napoleon might fight him with his +own weapon and remain in Moscow awaiting him. Kutuzov even imagined +that Napoleon's army might turn back through Medyn and Yukhnov, but +the one thing he could not foresee was what happened- the insane, +convulsive stampede of Napoleon's army during its first eleven days +after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made possible what Kutuzov +had not yet even dared to think of- the complete extermination of +the French. Dorokhov's report about Broussier's division, the +guerrillas' reports of distress in Napoleon's army, rumors of +preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that +the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were +only suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not +to Kutuzov. With his sixty years' experience he knew what value to +attach to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group +all news so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew +how readily in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary. +And the more he desired it the less he allowed himself to believe +it. This question absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to +him only life's customary routine. To such customary routine +belonged his conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from +Tarutino to Madame de Stael, the reading of novels, the distribution +of awards, his correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But the +destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw, was his heart's one +desire. + +On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm +and thinking of that. + +There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll, +Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov. + +"Eh, who's there? Come in, come in! What news?" the field marshal +called out to them. + +While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the +substance of the news. + +"Who brought it?" asked Kutuzov with a look which, when the candle +was lit, struck Toll by its cold severity. + +"There can be no doubt about it, your Highness." + +"Call him in, call him here." + +Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big +paunch resting against the other which was doubled under him. He +screwed up his seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more +carefully, as if wishing to read in his face what preoccupied his +own mind. + +"Tell me, tell me, friend," said he to Bolkhovitinov in his low, +aged voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his +chest, "come nearer- nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That +Napoleon has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?" + +Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he +had been told to report. + +"Speak quicker, quicker! Don't torture me!" Kutuzov interrupted him. + +Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting +instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutuzov +checked him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered +and wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side +of the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there. + +"O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer..." said he in a +tremulous voice with folded hands. "Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O +Lord!" and he wept. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all +Kutuzov's activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by +authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers, +or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to +Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army and gave +orders for the evacuation of Kaluga- a retreat beyond which town +seemed to him quite possible. + +Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for +his retreat fled in the opposite direction. + +Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at +Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would +have happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich +southern provinces. + +But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from +advancing into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did +not bar his way), the historians forget that nothing could have +saved his army, for then already it bore within itself the germs of +inevitable ruin. How could that army- which had found abundant +supplies in Moscow and had trampled them underfoot instead of +keeping them, and on arriving at Smolensk had looted provisions +instead of storing them- how could that army recuperate in Kaluga +province, which was inhabited by Russians such as those who lived in +Moscow, and where fire had the same property of consuming what was set +ablaze? + +That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodino +and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were, +the chemical elements of dissolution. + +The members of what had once been an army- Napoleon himself and +all his soldiers fled- without knowing whither, each concerned only to +make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the +hopelessness of which they were all more or less vaguely conscious. + +So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets, when the +generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all +mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier +Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing +needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even +Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all +recognized. + +But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away, +there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must +flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this +shock came in due time. It was what the French called "le hourra de +l'Empereur." + +The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out +early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of +marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and +the scene of the previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks +on the prowl for booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly +captured him. If the Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what +saved him was the very thing that was destroying the French army, +the booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they went +after plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed +after the plunder and Napoleon managed to escape. + +When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor +himself in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was +nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible along the nearest, +familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old stomach understood +that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and under +the influence of the fright the Cossacks had given him he at once +agreed with Mouton and issued orders- as the historians tell us- to +retreat by the Smolensk road. + +That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated, +does not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces +which influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozhaysk +(that is, the Smolensk) road acted simultaneously on him also. + +CHAPTER XIX + +A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to +go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him +at the end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a +promised land to have the strength to move. + +The promised land for the French during their advance had been +Moscow, during their retreat it was their native land. But that native +land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is +absolutely necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to +himself: "Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I +shall rest and spend the night," and during the first day's journey +that resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his +hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are always +magnified in a crowd. + +For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final +goal- their native land- was too remote, and their immediate goal +was Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously +intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that +much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they +were told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon +himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this +alone could give them strength to move on and endure their present +privations. So both those who knew and those who did not know deceived +themselves, and pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised land. + +Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising +energy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on. +Besides the common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French +into one mass and supplied them with a certain energy, there was +another cause binding them together- their great numbers. As with +the physical law of gravity, their enormous mass drew the individual +human atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they moved +like a whole nation. + +Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a +prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one +hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew +each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps +could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed +themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to +surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not +always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swift +movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only +difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to +which the French were directing all their energies. Beyond a certain +limit no mechanical disruption of the body could hasten the process of +decomposition. + +A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a +certain limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt +the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the +remaining snow becomes. + +Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this. When the +flight of the French army along the Smolensk road became well defined, +what Konovnitsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of +October began to occur. The superior officers all wanted to +distinguish themselves, to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to +overthrow the French, and all clamored for action. + +Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited +in the case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack. + +He could not tell them what we say now: "Why fight, why block the +road, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate +wretches? What is the use of that, when a third of their army has +melted away on the road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?" But +drawing from his aged wisdom what they could understand, he told +them of the golden bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him, +flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the dying beast. + +Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity to the French +near Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up +two French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov +they sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope. + +And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked, +trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to +the attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost +thousands of men. + +But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army, +closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily +melting away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk. + +BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812 + +CHAPTER I + +The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow that +followed it and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is +one of the most instructive phenomena in history. + +All historians agree that the external activity of states and +nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars, +and that as a direct result of greater or less success in war the +political strength of states and nations increases or decreases. + +Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or +emperor, having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his +enemy's army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten +thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several +millions, all the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm +the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one +army against another is the cause, or at least an essential +indication, of an increase or decrease in the strength of the +nation- even though it is unintelligible why the defeat of an army- +a hundredth part of a nation- should oblige that whole nation to +submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the rights of the +conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the defeated. +An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its rights +in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army +suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated. + +So according to history it has been found from the most ancient +times, and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon's wars serve to +confirm this rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army +Austria loses its rights, and the rights and the strength of France +increase. The victories of the French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy +the independent existence of Prussia. + +But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow +is taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia +that ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and +then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of +history: to say that the field of battle at Borodino remained in the +hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles +that destroyed Napoleon's army, is impossible. + +After the French victory at Borodino there was no general engagement +nor any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist. +What does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of +China, we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is +the historians' usual expedient when anything does not fit their +standards); if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which +only a small number of troops took part, we might treat it as an +exception; but this event occurred before our fathers' eyes, and for +them it was a question of the life or death of their fatherland, and +it happened in the greatest of all known wars. + +The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodino to +the expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does +not produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of +conquest; it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples +lies not in the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in +something else. + +The French historians, describing the condition of the French army +before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army, +except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport- there was no +forage for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one +could remedy, for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather +than let the French have it. + +The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the +peasants Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow +drove in their carts to pillage the town, and in general personally +failed to manifest any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable +multitude of such peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for +the high price offered them, but burned it instead. + +Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with +rapiers according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The +fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants, +feeling himself wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke +but concerns his life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first +cudgel that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine +that the combatant who so sensibly employed the best and simplest +means to attain his end was at the same time influenced by +traditions of chivalry and, desiring to conceal the facts of the case, +insisted that he had gained his victory with the rapier according to +all the rules of art. One can imagine what confusion and obscurity +would result from such an account of the duel. + +The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of +fencing was the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier +and snatched up the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to +explain the matter according to the rules of fencing are the +historians who have described the event. + +After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did not follow any +previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the +retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodino and the renewed +retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the +seizure of transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures +from the rules. + +Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing +attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent's rapier saw a cudgel +raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and +to the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to +all the rules- as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite +of the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the +rules, in spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it +seemed rather disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to +assume a pose en quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and +to make an adroit thrust en prime, and so on- the cudgel of the +people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic strength, +and without consulting anyone's tastes or rules and regardless of +anything else, it rose and fell with stupid simplicity, but +consistently, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had +perished. + +And it is well for a people who do not- as the French did in 1813- +salute according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt +of their rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their +magnanimous conqueror, but at the moment of trial, without asking what +rules others have adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick +up the first cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the +feeling of resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of +contempt and compassion. + +CHAPTER II + +One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the +so-called laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men +pressed together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that +take on a national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds +opposing each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when +attacked by stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers. +This was done by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in +the Caucasus, and by the Russians in 1812. + +People have called this kind of war "guerrilla warfare" and assume +that by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a +war does not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a +well-known rule of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That +rule says that an attacker should concentrate his forces in order to +be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict. + +Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly +infringes that rule. + +This contradiction arises from the fact that military science +assumes the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. +Military science says that the more troops the greater the strength. +Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison.~{ Large battalions are always victorious. }~ + +For military science to say this is like defining momentum in +mechanics by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are +equal or unequal to each other simply because the masses involved +are equal or unequal. + +Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity. + +In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its +mass and some unknown x. + +Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the +fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and +that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the +existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover it- now in a +geometric formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most +usually, in the genius of the commanders. But the assignment of +these various meanings to the factor does not yield results which +accord with the historic facts. + +Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to +gratify the "heroes") of the efficacy of the directions issued in +wartime by commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity. + +That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the +greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the +men composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are +not, fighting under the command of a genius, in two- or three-line +formation, with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a +minute. Men who want to fight will always put themselves in the most +advantageous conditions for fighting. + +The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass +gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance of +this unknown factor- the spirit of an army- is a problem for science. + +This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to +substitute for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that +force becomes apparent- such as the commands of the general, the +equipment employed, and so on- mistaking these for the real +significance of the factor, and if we recognize this unknown +quantity in its entirety as being the greater or lesser desire to +fight and to face danger. Only then, expressing known historic facts +by equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor, +can we hope to define the unknown. + +Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions, +or divisions, conquer- that is, kill or take captive- all the +others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and +on the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to +the fifteen, and therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This +equation does not give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us +a ratio between two unknowns. And by bringing variously selected +historic units (battles, campaigns, periods of war) into such +equations, a series of numbers could be obtained in which certain laws +should exist and might be discovered. + +The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when +attacking, and in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms +the truth that the strength of an army depends on its spirit. To +lead men forward under fire more discipline (obtainable only by +movement in masses) is needed than is needed to resist attacks. But +this rule which leaves out of account the spirit of the army +continually proves incorrect and is in particularly striking +contrast to the facts when some strong rise or fall in the spirit of +the troops occurs, as in all national wars. + +The French, retreating in 1812- though according to tactics they +should have separated into detachments to defend themselves- +congregated into a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen +that only the mass held the army together. The Russians, on the +contrary, ought according to tactics to have attacked in mass, but +in fact they split up into small units, because their spirit had so +risen that separate individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the +French without needing any compulsion to induce them to expose +themselves to hardships and dangers. + +CHAPTER III + +The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into +Smolensk. + +Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the +government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had +been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off +as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denis +Davydov, with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the +value of this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of +military science destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit +for taking the first step toward regularizing this method of warfare. + +On August 24 Davydov's first partisan detachment was formed and then +others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more +numerous these detachments became. + +The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the +fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree- +the French army- and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October, +when the French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were hundreds of +such companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some +that adopted all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, +and the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack +cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and +groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan +commanded one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the +course of a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village +elder, who slew hundreds of the French. + +The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of +October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves, +amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded and +captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling, +hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the +end of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had +become clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what +could not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and +moving according to rules at a distance from the French, still +regarded many things as impossible. The small bands that had started +their activities long before and had already observed the French +closely considered things possible which the commanders of the big +detachments did not dare to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who +crept in among the French now considered everything possible. + +On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the irregulars) was with +his group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early +morning he and his party had been on the move. All day long he had +been watching from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French +convoy of cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the +rest of the army, which- as was learned from spies and prisoners- +was moving under a strong escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and +Dolokhov (who also led a small party and moved in Denisov's vicinity), +the commanders of some large divisions with staffs also knew of this +convoy and, as Denisov expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for +it. Two of the commanders of large parties- one a Pole and the other a +German- sent invitations to Denisov almost simultaneously, +requesting him to join up with their divisions to attack the convoy. + +"No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself," said Denisov on +reading these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite +his heartfelt desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general, +he had to forgo that pleasure because he was already under the command +of the Polish general. To the Polish general he replied to the same +effect, informing him that he was already under the command of the +German. + +Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov intended, without +reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that +convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from +the village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of the +road between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were large forests, +extending in some places up to the road itself though in others a mile +or more back from it. Through these forests Denisov and his party rode +all day, sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to +the very edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That +morning, Cossacks of Denisov's party had seized and carried off into +the forest two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck +in the mud not far from Mikulino where the forest ran close to the +road. Since then, and until evening, the party had the movements of +the French without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach +Shamshevo quietly without alarming them and then, after joining +Dolokhov who was to come that evening to a consultation at a +watchman's hut in the forest less than a mile from Shamshevo, to +surprise the French at dawn, falling like an avalanche on their +heads from two sides, and rout and capture them all at one blow. + +In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where the forest +came right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any +fresh columns of French should show themselves. + +Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road in the same +way, to find out at what distance there were other French troops. They +reckoned that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two +hundred, and Dolokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of +numbers did not deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was what +troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"- that +is, a man from the enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons +had been made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all +been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he +was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about the troops +in that column. + +Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear +of putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tikhon +Shcherbaty, a peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at +least one of the French quartermasters who had been sent on in +advance. + +CHAPTER IV + +It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both +the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and +then suddenly heavy slanting rain came down. + +Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain +ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides. +Like his horse, which turned its head and laid its ears back, he +shrank from the driving rain and gazed anxiously before him. His +thin face with its short, thick black beard looked angry. + +Beside Denisov rode an esaul,~{ A captain of Cossacks. }~ Denisov's fellow worker, also in felt +cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse. + +Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow, +pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm +self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to +say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first +glance at the esaul and Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and +uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the +esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always +and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was +one with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold +strength. + +A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and +wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap. + +A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with an +enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a +blue French overcoat. + +Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform +and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on +to the hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed +about him with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that +morning. + +Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars +in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in +French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The +horses, being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether +chestnut or bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes, +looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles, +reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the +fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying not +to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled to their bodies and +not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking in under their +seats, their knees, and at the back of their necks. In the midst of +the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French horses +and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched on in front, +rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed through the +water that lay in the ruts. + +Denisov's horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and +bumped his rider's knee against a tree. + +"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Denisov angrily, and showing his teeth he +struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and +his comrades with mud. + +Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from +hunger (none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more +because he still had no news from Dolokhov and the man sent to capture +a "tongue" had not returned. + +"There'll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as +today. It's too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it +off till another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will +snatch the prey from under our noses," thought Denisov, continually +peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from Dolokhov. + +On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to +the right, Denisov stopped. + +"There's someone coming," said he. + +The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated. + +"There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not +presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself," said the +esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not know. + +The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer +visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary +gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and +drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him, +standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young +lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denisov +and handed him a sodden envelope. + +"From the general," said the officer. "Please excuse its not being +quite dry." + +Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it. + +"There, they kept telling us: 'It's dangerous, it's dangerous,'" +said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov was reading the +dispatch. "But Komarov and I"- he pointed to the Cossack- "were +prepared. We have each of us two pistols.... But what's this?" he +asked, noticing the French drummer boy. "A prisoner? You've already +been in action? May I speak to him?" + +"Wostov! Petya!" exclaimed Denisov, having run through the dispatch. +"Why didn't you say who you were?" and turning with a smile he held +out his hand to the lad. + +The officer was Petya Rostov. + +All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave with +Denisov as befitted a grownup man and an officer- without hinting at +their previous acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled at him +Petya brightened up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner +he had been rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already +been in a battle near Vyazma and how a certain hussar had +distinguished himself there. + +"Well, I am glad to see you," Denisov interrupted him, and his +face again assumed its anxious expression. + +"Michael Feoklitych," said he to the esaul, "this is again fwom that +German, you know. He"- he indicated Petya- "is serving under him." + +And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a +repetition of the German general's demand that he should join forces +with him for an attack on the transport. + +"If we don't take it tomowwow, he'll snatch it fwom under our +noses," he added. + +While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya- abashed by +Denisov's cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition +of his trousers- furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat +so that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air +as possible. + +"Will there be any orders, your honor?" he asked Denisov, holding +his hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general +for which he had prepared himself, "or shall I remain with your +honor?" + +"Orders?" Denisov repeated thoughtfully. "But can you stay till +tomowwow?" + +"Oh, please... May I stay with you?" cried Petya. + +"But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?" +asked Denisov. + +Petya blushed. + +"He gave me no instructions. I think I could?" he returned, +inquiringly. + +"Well, all wight," said Denisov. + +And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting +place arranged near the watchman's hut in the forest, and told the +officer on the Kirghiz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant) +to go and find out where Dolokhov was and whether he would come that +evening. Denisov himself intended going with the esaul and Petya to +the edge of the forest where it reached out to Shamshevo, to have a +look at the part of the French bivouac they were to attack next day. + +"Well, old fellow," said he to the peasant guide, "lead us to +Shamshevo." + +Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and +the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to +the edge of the forest. + +CHAPTER V + +The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from +the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode silently, following +the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned +toes and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet +leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest. + +He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to +where the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree +that had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously +to them with his hand. + +Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant +was standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, +on a downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a +steep ravine, was a small village and a landowner's house with a +broken roof. In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well, +by the pond, over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill +from the bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred +yards away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist. +Their un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining +uphill with the carts, and their calls to one another, could be +clearly heard. + +"Bwing the prisoner here," said Denisov in a low voice, not taking +his eyes off the French. + +A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to +Denisov. Pointing to the French troops, Denisov asked him what these +and those of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his +pockets and lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but +in spite of an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused +answers, merely assenting to everything Denisov asked him. Denisov +turned away from him frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his +own conjectures to him. + +Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, +now at Denisov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village +and along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance. + +"Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?" said +Denisov with a merry sparkle in his eyes. + +"It is a very suitable spot," said the esaul. + +"We'll send the infantwy down by the swamps," Denisov continued. +"They'll cweep up to the garden; you'll wide up fwom there with the +Cossacks"- he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village- "and +I with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot..." + +"The hollow is impassable- there's a swamp there," said the esaul. +"The horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left...." + +While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded +from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, +then another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French +voices shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment +Denisov and the esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought +they were the cause of the firing and shouting. But the firing and +shouting did not relate to them. Down below, a man wearing something +red was running through the marsh. The French were evidently firing +and shouting at him. + +"Why, that's our Tikhon," said the esaul. + +"So it is! It is!" + +"The wascal!" said Denisov. + +"He'll get away!" said the esaul, screwing up his eyes. + +The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the stream, plunged +in so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared +for an instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet, +and ran on. The French who had been pursuing him stopped. + +"Smart, that!" said the esaul. + +"What a beast!" said Denisov with his former look of vexation. "What +has he been doing all this time?" + +"Who is he?" asked Petya. + +"He's our plastun. I sent him to capture a 'tongue.'" + +"Oh, yes," said Petya, nodding at the first words Denisov uttered as +if he understood it all, though he really did not understand +anything of it. + +Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable men in their +band. He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near the river Gzhat. When +Denisov had come to Pokrovsk at the beginning of his operations and +had as usual summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew +about the French, the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied, +as all village elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything +of them. But when Denisov explained that his purpose was to kill the +French, and asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied +that some "more-orderers" had really been at their village, but that +Tikhon Shcherbaty was the only man who dealt with such matters. +Denisov had Tikhon called and, having praised him for his activity, +said a few words in the elder's presence about loyalty to the Tsar and +the country and the hatred of the French that all sons of the +fatherland should cherish. + +"We don't do the French any harm," said Tikhon, evidently frightened +by Denisov's words. "We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you +know! We killed a score or so of 'more-orderers,' but we did no harm +else..." + +Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having quite forgotten +about this peasant, it was reported to him that Tikhon had attached +himself to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it. +Denisov gave orders to let him do so. + +Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching +water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking +and aptitude for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for +booty and always brought back French clothing and weapons, and when +told to would bring in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him +from drudgery and began taking him with him when he went out on +expeditions and had him enrolled among the Cossacks. + +Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging +behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried +rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf +uses its teeth, with equal case picking fleas out of its fur or +crunching thick bones. Tikhon with equal accuracy would split logs +with blows at arm's length, or holding the head of the ax would cut +thin little pegs or carve spoons. In Denisov's party he held a +peculiar and exceptional position. When anything particularly +difficult or nasty had to be done- to push a cart out of the mud +with one's shoulders, pull a horse out of a swamp by its tail, skin +it, slink in among the French, or walk more than thirty miles in a +day- everybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon. + +"It won't hurt that devil- he's as strong as a horse!" they said +of him. + +Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at +him and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which +Tikhon treated only with internal and external applications of +vodka) was the subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment- +jokes in which Tikhon readily joined. + +"Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?" the Cossacks would +banter him. And Tikhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended +to be angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only +effect of this incident on Tikhon was that after being wounded he +seldom brought in prisoners. + +He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found +more opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more +Frenchmen, and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the +Cossacks and hussars and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been +sent by Denisov overnight to Shamshevo to capture a "tongue." But +whether because he had not been content to take only one Frenchman +or because he had slept through the night, he had crept by day into +some bushes right among the French and, as Denisov had witnessed +from above, had been detected by them. + +CHAPTER VI + +After talking for some time with the esaul about next day's +attack, which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he +seemed to have definitely decided on, Denisov turned his horse and +rode back. + +"Now, my lad, we'll go and get dwy," he said to Petya. + +As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped, peering into +the forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging +arms, wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazan hat, was +approaching with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his +shoulder and an ax stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denisov he +hastily threw something into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its +floppy brim, and approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled +and pockmarked face and narrow little eyes beamed with +self-satisfied merriment. He lifted his head high and gazed at Denisov +as if repressing a laugh. + +"Well, where did you disappear to?" inquired Denisov. + +"Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen," answered Tikhon +boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice. + +"Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well, +why haven't you taken one?" + +"Oh, I took one all right," said Tikhon. + +"Where is he?" + +"You see, I took him first thing at dawn," Tikhon continued, +spreading out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes. +"I took him into the forest. Then I see he's no good and think I'll go +and fetch a likelier one." + +"You see?... What a wogue- it's just as I thought," said Denisov +to the esaul. "Why didn't you bwing that one?" + +"What was the good of bringing him?" Tikhon interrupted hastily +and angrily- "that one wouldn't have done for you. As if I don't +know what sort you want!" + +"What a bwute you are!... Well?" + +"I went for another one," Tikhon continued, "and I crept like this +through the wood and lay down." (He suddenly lay down on his stomach +with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) "One turned up and +I grabbed him, like this." (He jumped up quickly and lightly.) +"'Come along to the colonel,' I said. He starts yelling, and +suddenly there were four of them. They rushed at me with their +little swords. So I went for them with my ax, this way: 'What are +you up to?' says I. 'Christ be with you!'" shouted Tikhon, waving +his arms with an angry scowl and throwing out his chest. + +"Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the +puddles!" said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes. + +Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained +from laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tikhon's face to the +esaul's and Denisov's, unable to make out what it all meant. + +"Don't play the fool!" said Denisov, coughing angrily. "Why didn't +you bwing the first one?" + +Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other, +then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin, +disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called +Shcherbaty- the gap-toothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a +peal of merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined. + +"Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing," said Tikhon. "The +clothes on him- poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your +honor! Why, he says: 'I'm a general's son myself, I won't go!' he +says." + +"You are a bwute!" said Denisov. "I wanted to question..." + +"But I questioned him," said Tikhon. "He said he didn't know much. +'There are a lot of us,' he says, 'but all poor stuff- only soldiers +in name,' he says. 'Shout loud at them,' he says, 'and you'll take +them all,'" Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into +Denisov's eyes. + +"I'll give you a hundwed sharp lashes- that'll teach you to play the +fool!" said Denisov severely. + +"But why are you angry?" remonstrated Tikhon, "just as if I'd +never seen your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I'll +fetch you any of them you want- three if you like." + +"Well, let's go," said Denisov, and rode all the way to the +watchhouse in silence and frowning angrily. + +Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with +him and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the +bushes. + +When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon's words and +smile had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon +had killed a man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive +drummer boy and felt a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted +only a moment. He felt it necessary to hold his head higher, to +brace himself, and to question the esaul with an air of importance +about tomorrow's undertaking, that he might not be unworthy of the +company in which he found himself. + +The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on the way with +the news that Dolokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him. + +Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him, said: "Well, +tell me about yourself." + +CHAPTER VII + +Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow, +joined his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general +commanding a large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his +commission, and especially since he had joined the active army and +taken part in the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state +of blissful excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic +hurry not to miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was +highly delighted with what he saw and experienced in the army, but +at the same time it always seemed to him that the really heroic +exploits were being performed just where he did not happen to be. +And he was always in a hurry to get where he was not. + +When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish +to send somebody to Denisov's detachment, Petya begged so piteously to +be sent that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he +recalled Petya's mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead +of riding by the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had +galloped to the advanced line under the fire of the French and had +there twice fired his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade +his taking part in any action whatever of Denisov's. That was why +Petya had blushed and grown confused when Denisov asked him whether he +could stay. Before they had ridden to the outskirts of the forest +Petya had considered he must carry out his instructions strictly and +return at once. But when he saw the French and saw Tikhon and +learned that there would certainly be an attack that night, he +decided, with the rapidity with which young people change their views, +that the general, whom he had greatly respected till then, was a +rubbishy German, that Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and Tikhon +a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave them at a +moment of difficulty. + +It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and the esaul +rode up to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be +seen, and Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the +glade and were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest +where the French could not see the smoke. In the passage of the +small watchhouse a Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some +mutton. In the room three officers of Denisov's band were converting a +door into a tabletop. Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to +be dried, and at once began helping the officers to fix up the +dinner table. + +In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the +table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt. + +Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton +with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Petya was in an +ecstatic childish state of love for all men, and consequently of +confidence that others loved him in the same way. + +"So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?" said he to Denisov. +"It's all right my staying a day with you?" And not waiting for a +reply he answered his own question: "You see I was told to find out- +well, I am finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the +chief... I don't want a reward... But I want..." + +Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head +and flourishing his arms. + +"Into the vewy chief..." Denisov repeated with a smile. + +"Only, please let me command something, so that I may really +command..." Petya went on. "What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a +knife?" he said, turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a +piece of mutton. + +And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it. + +"Please keep it. I have several like it," said Petya, blushing. +"Heavens! I was quite forgetting!" he suddenly cried. "I have some +raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We have a new sutler +and he has such capital things. I bought ten pounds. I am used to +something sweet. Would you like some?..." and Petya ran out into the +passage to his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained +about five pounds of raisins. "Have some, gentlemen, have some!" + +"You want a coffeepot, don't you?" he asked the esaul. "I bought a +capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he's very +honest, that's the chief thing. I'll be sure to send it to you. Or +perhaps your flints are giving out, or are worn out- that happens +sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me, here they are"- +and he showed a bag- "a hundred flints. I bought them very cheap. +Please take as many as you want, or all if you like...." + +Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Petya stopped and +blushed. + +He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that +was foolish. And running over the events of the day he remembered +the French drummer boy. "It's capital for us here, but what of him? +Where have they put him? Have they fed him? Haven't they hurt his +feelings?" he thought. But having caught himself saying too much about +the flints, he was now afraid to speak out. + +"I might ask," he thought, "but they'll say: 'He's a boy himself and +so he pities the boy.' I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy. Will +it seem odd if I ask?" Petya thought. "Well, never mind!" and +immediately, blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see +if they appeared ironical, he said: + +"May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him +something to eat?... Perhaps..." + +"Yes, he's a poor little fellow," said Denisov, who evidently saw +nothing shameful in this reminder. "Call him in. His name is Vincent +Bosse. Have him fetched." + +"I'll call him," said Petya. + +"Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow," Denisov repeated. + +Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this. He slipped in +between the officers, came close to Denisov, and said: + +"Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!" + +And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut. + +"Bosse! Vincent!" Petya cried, stopping outside the door. + +"Who do you want, sir?" asked a voice in the darkness. + +Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured +that day. + +"Ah, Vesenny?" said a Cossack. + +Vincent, the boy's name, had already been changed by the Cossacks +into Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by the peasants and soldiers. +In both these adaptations the reference to spring (vesna) matched +the impression made by the young lad. + +"He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesenya! +Vesenya!- Vesenny!" laughing voices were heard calling to one +another in the darkness. + +"He's a smart lad," said an hussar standing near Petya. "We gave him +something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!" + +The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the +darkness, and the drummer boy came to the door. + +"Ah, c'est vous!" said Petya. "Voulez-vous manger? N'ayez pas +peur, on ne vous fera pas de mal,"~{ "Ah, it's you! Do you want something to eat? Don't be afraid, +they won't hurt you." }~ he added shyly and affectionately, +touching the boy's hand. "Entrez, entrez."~{ "Come in, come in." }~ + +"Merci, monsieur,"~{ "Thank you, sir." }~ said the drummer boy in a trembling almost +childish voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet on the threshold. + +There were many things Petya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but +did not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then +in the darkness he took the boy's hand and pressed it. + +"Come in, come in!" he repeated in a gentle whisper. "Oh, what can I +do for him?" he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in +first. + +When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a distance +from him, considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to +him. But he fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it +would seem ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy. + +CHAPTER VIII + +The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya's attention from the +drummer boy, to whom Denisov had had some mutton and vodka given, +and whom he had had dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept +with their band and not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya +had heard in the army many stories of Dolokhov's extraordinary bravery +and of his cruelty to the French, so from the moment he entered the +hut Petya did not take his eyes from him, but braced himself up more +and more and held his head high, that he might not be unworthy even of +such company. + +Dolokhov's appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity. + +Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas +the Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and +everything he did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in +Moscow had worn a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most +correct officer of the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a +Guardsman's padded coat with an Order of St. George at his +buttonhole and a plain forage cap set straight on his head. He took +off his wet felt cloak in a corner of the room, and without greeting +anyone went up to Denisov and began questioning him about the matter +in hand. Denisov told him of the designs the large detachments had +on the transport, of the message Petya had brought, and his own +replies to both generals. Then he told him all he knew of the French +detachment. + +"That's so. But we must know what troops they are and their +numbers," said Dolokhov. "It will be necessary to go there. We can't +start the affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I +like to work accurately. Here now- wouldn't one of these gentlemen +like to ride over to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare +uniform." + +"I, I... I'll go with you!" cried Petya. + +"There's no need for you to go at all," said Denisov, addressing +Dolokhov, "and as for him, I won't let him go on any account." + +"I like that!" exclaimed Petya. "Why shouldn't I go?" + +"Because it's useless." + +"Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and +that's all. You'll take me, won't you?" he said, turning to Dolokhov. + +"Why not?" Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of +the French drummer boy. "Have you had that youngster with you long?" +he asked Denisov. + +"He was taken today but he knows nothing. I'm keeping him with me." + +"Yes, and where do you put the others?" inquired Dolokhov. + +"Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them," shouted +Denisov, suddenly flushing. "And I say boldly that I have not a single +man's life on my conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send +thirty or thwee hundwed men to town under escort, instead of staining- +I speak bluntly- staining the honor of a soldier?" + +"That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count +of sixteen," said Dolokhov with cold irony, "but it's time for you +to drop it." + +"Why, I've not said anything! I only say that I'll certainly go with +you," said Petya shyly. + +"But for you and me, old fellow, it's time to drop these amenities," +continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking +of this subject which irritated Denisov. "Now, why have you kept +this lad?" he went on, swaying his head. "Because you are sorry for +him! Don't we know those 'receipts' of yours? You send a hundred men +away, and thirty get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So +isn't it all the same not to send them?" + +The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly. + +"That's not the point. I'm not going to discuss the matter. I do not +wish to take it on my conscience. You say they'll die. All wight. Only +not by my fault!" + +Dolokhov began laughing. + +"Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if +they did catch me they'd string me up to an aspen tree, and with all +your chivalry just the same." He paused. "However, we must get to +work. Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms +in it. Well, are you coming with me?" he asked Petya. + +"I? Yes, yes, certainly!" cried Petya, blushing almost to tears +and glancing at Denisov. + +While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov what should be done +with prisoners, Petya had once more felt awkward and restless; but +again he had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about. +"If grown-up, distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and +right," thought he. "But above all Denisov must not dare to imagine +that I'll obey him and that he can order me about. I will certainly go +to the French camp with Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!" + +And to all Denisov's persuasions, Petya replied that he too was +accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that +he never considered personal danger. + +"For you'll admit that if we don't know for sure how many of them +there are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are +only two of us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go, +so don't hinder me," said he. "It will only make things worse..." + +CHAPTER IX + +Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov +rode to the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitered the French +camp, and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended +into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks +accompanying him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot +along the road to the bridge. Petya, his heart in his mouth with +excitement, rode by his side. + +"If we're caught, I won't be taken alive! I have a pistol," +whispered he. + +"Don't talk Russian," said Dolokhov in a hurried whisper, and at +that very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui +vive?"~{ "Who goes there?" }~ and the click of a musket. + +The blood rushed to Petya's face and he grasped his pistol. + +"Lanciers du 6-me,"~{ "Lancers of the 6th Regiment." }~ replied Dolokhov, neither hastening nor +slackening his horse's pace. + +The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge. + +"Mot d'ordre."~{ "Password." }~ + +Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk. + +"Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?"~{ "Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?" }~ he asked. + +"Mot d'ordre," repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not +replying. + +"Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas +le mot d'ordre..." cried Dolokhov suddenly flaring up and riding +straight at the sentinel. "Je vous demande si le colonel est ici."~{ "When an officer is making his round, sentinels don't ask him for +the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is here." }~ + +And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped +aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a walk. + +Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov +stopped him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The +man, a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up +to Dolokhov's horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply +and in a friendly way that the commander and the officers were +higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he +called the landowner's house. + +Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk +could be heard around the campfires, Dolokhov turned into the +courtyard of the landowner's house. Having ridden in, he dismounted +and approached a big blazing campfire, around which sat several men +talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge +of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by +the fire, was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod. + +"Oh, he's a hard nut to crack," said one of the officers who was +sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire. + +"He'll make them get a move on, those fellows!" said another, +laughing. + +Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of +Dolokhov's and Petya's steps as they advanced to the fire leading +their horses. + +"Bonjour, messieurs!"~{ "Good day, gentlemen." }~ said Dolokhov loudly and clearly. + +There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire, +and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up +to Dolokhov. + +"Is that you, Clement?" he asked. "Where the devil...? But, noticing +his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dolokhov as +a stranger, asking what he could do for him. + +Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake +their regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether +they knew anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything, +and Petya thought the officers were beginning to look at him and +Dolokhov with hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were +silent. + +"If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too +late," said a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh. + +Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on +farther that night. + +He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot +and squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the +long neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dolokhov and +again asked to what regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not +heard the question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe +which he took from his pocket began asking the officer in how far +the road before them was safe from Cossacks. + +"Those brigands are everywhere," replied an officer from behind +the fire. + +Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers +such as his companion and himself, "but probably they would not dare +to attack large detachments?" he added inquiringly. No one replied. + +"Well, now he'll come away," Petya thought every moment as he +stood by the campfire listening to the talk. + +But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and +began putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the +battalion, how many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about +the Russian prisoners with that detachment, Dolokhov said: + +"A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would +be better to shoot such rabble," and burst into loud laughter, so +strange that Petya thought the French would immediately detect their +disguise, and involuntarily took a step back from the campfire. + +No one replied a word to Dolokhov's laughter, and a French officer +whom they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and +whispered something to a companion. Dolokhov got up and called to +the soldier who was holding their horses. + +"Will they bring our horses or not?" thought Petya, instinctively +drawing nearer to Dolokhov. + +The horses were brought. + +"Good evening, gentlemen," said Dolokhov. + +Petya wished to say "Good night" but could not utter a word. The +officers were whispering together. Dolokhov was a long time mounting +his horse which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at +a footpace. Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see +whether or no the French were running after them, but not daring to. + +Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back across the +open country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and +listened. "Do you hear?" he asked. Petya recognized the sound of +Russian voices and saw the dark figures of Russian prisoners round +their campfires. When they had descended to the bridge Petya and +Dolokhov rode past the sentinel, who without saying a word paced +morosely up and down it, then they descended into the hollow where the +Cossacks awaited them. + +"Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, 'at the first shot at +daybreak,'" said Dolokhov and was about to ride away, but Petya seized +hold of him. + +"Really!" he cried, "you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how +splendid! How I love you!" + +"All right, all right!" said Dolokhov. But Petya did not let go of +him and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that Petya was bending toward +him and wanted to kiss him. Dolokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his +horse, and vanished into the darkness. + +CHAPTER X + +Having returned to the watchman's hut, Petya found Denisov in the +passage. He was awaiting Petya's return in a state of agitation, +anxiety, and self-reproach for having let him go. + +"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Yes, thank God!" he repeated, +listening to Petya's rapturous account. "But, devil take you, I +haven't slept because of you! Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can +still get a nap before morning." + +"But... no," said Petya, "I don't want to sleep yet. Besides I +know myself, if I fall asleep it's finished. And then I am used to not +sleeping before a battle." + +He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his +expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would happen next +day. + +Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and went out of +doors. + +It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were +still falling from the trees. Near the watchman's hut the black shapes +of the Cossacks' shanties and of horses tethered together could be +seen. Behind the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their +horses beside them were discernible, and in the hollow the dying +campfire gleamed red. Not all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep; +here and there, amid the sounds of falling drops and the munching of +the horses near by, could be heard low voices which seemed to be +whispering. + +Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons. +Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses +munching their oats. In the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which +he called "Karabakh" though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to +it. + +"Well, Karabakh! We'll do some service tomorrow," said he, +sniffing its nostrils and kissing it. + +"Why aren't you asleep, sir?" said a Cossack who was sitting under a +wagon. + +"No, ah... Likhachev- isn't that your name? Do you know I have +only just come back! We've been into the French camp." + +And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride +but also of his object, and why he considered it better to risk his +life than to act "just anyhow." + +"Well, you should get some sleep now," said the Cossack. + +"No, I am used to this," said Petya. "I say, aren't the flints in +your pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don't you want any? You +can have some." + +The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look +at Petya. + +"Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately," said +Petya. "Some fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and +then they're sorry for it afterwards. I don't like that." + +"Just so," said the Cossack. + +"Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen +my saber for me? It's got bl..." (Petya feared to tell a lie, and +the saber never had been sharpened.) "Can you do it?" + +"Of course I can." + +Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the +warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat +on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon. + +"I say! Are the lads asleep?" asked Petya. + +"Some are, and some aren't- like us." + +"Well, and that boy?" + +"Vesenny? Oh, he's thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast +asleep after his fright. He was that glad!" + +After that Petya remained silent for a long time, listening to the +sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure +appeared. + +"What are you sharpening?" asked a man coming up to the wagon. + +"Why, this gentleman's saber." + +"That's right," said the man, whom Petya took to be an hussar. +"Was the cup left here?" + +"There, by the wheel!" + +The hussar took the cup. + +"It must be daylight soon," said he, yawning, and went away. + +Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denisov's +guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon +captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under +it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark +blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below +to the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had +come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew +nor waited to know anything of all this. He was in a fairy kingdom +where nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be +the watchman's hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very +depths of the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be +the eye of an enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a +wagon, but it might very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon +but on a terribly high tower from which, if he fell, he would have +to fall for a whole day or a whole month, or go on falling and never +reach the bottom. Perhaps it was just the Cossack, Likhachev, who +was sitting under the wagon, but it might be the kindest, bravest, +most wonderful, most splendid man in the world, whom no one knew of. +It might really have been that the hussar came for water and went back +into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply vanished- disappeared +altogether and dissolved into nothingness. + +Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was +in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible. + +He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the +earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were +swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if +the clouds were passing, and a clear black sky appeared. Sometimes +it seemed as if the black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed +to be rising high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low +that one could touch it with one's hand. + +Petya's eyes began to close and he swayed a little. + +The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed +and jostled one another. Someone snored. + +"Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg..." hissed the saber against the +whetstone, and suddenly Petya heard an harmonious orchestra playing +some unknown, sweetly solemn hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha and +more so than Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about +it, and so the melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him +particularly fresh and attractive. The music became more and more +audible. The melody grew and passed from one instrument to another. +And what was played was a fugue- though Petya had not the least +conception of what a fugue is. Each instrument- now resembling a +violin and now a horn, but better and clearer than violin or horn- +played its own part, and before it had finished the melody merged with +another instrument that began almost the same air, and then with a +third and a fourth; and they all blended into one and again became +separate and again blended, now into solemn church music, now into +something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant. + +"Oh- why, that was in a dream!" Petya said to himself, as he lurched +forward. "It's in my ears. But perhaps it's music of my own. Well, +go on, my music! Now!..." + +He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance, +sounds fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again +all mingled into the same sweet and solemn hymn. "Oh, this is +delightful! As much as I like and as I like!" said Petya to himself. +He tried to conduct that enormous orchestra. + +"Now softly, softly die away!" and the sounds obeyed him. "Now +fuller, more joyful. Still more and more joyful!" And from an +unknown depth rose increasingly triumphant sounds. "Now voices join +in!" ordered Petya. And at first from afar he heard men's voices and +then women's. The voices grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and +Petya listened to their surpassing beauty in awe and joy. + +With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from +the trees, and the hissing of the saber, "Ozheg-zheg-zheg..." and +again the horses jostled one another and neighed, not disturbing the +choir but joining in it. + +Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all +the time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no +one to share it. He was awakened by Likhachev's kindly voice. + +"It's ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!" + +Petya woke up. + +"It's getting light, it's really getting light!" he exclaimed. + +The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to +their very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare +branches. Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket +and gave it to Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and +sheathed it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening +their saddle girths. + +"And here's the commander," said Likhachev. + +Denisov came out of the watchman's hut and, having called Petya, +gave orders to get ready. + +CHAPTER XI + +The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness, +tightened their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood +by the watchman's hut giving final orders. The infantry of the +detachment passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid the +trees in the mist of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through +the mud. The esaul gave some orders to his men. Petya held his horse +by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face, +having been bathed in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were +particularly brilliant. Cold shivers ran down his spine and his +whole body pulsed rhythmically. + +"Well, is ev'wything weady?" asked Denisov. "Bwing the horses." + +The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the Cossack +because the saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted. +Petya put his foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to +nip his leg, but Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of +his own weight and, turning to look at the hussars starting in the +darkness behind him, rode up to Denisov. + +"Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for +God's sake...!" said he. + +Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya's very existence. He turned +to glance at him. + +"I ask one thing of you," he said sternly, "to obey me and not shove +yourself forward anywhere." + +He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence all the +way. When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably +growing light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with the +esaul and the Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they had +all ridden by, Denisov touched his horse and rode down the hill. +Slipping onto their haunches and sliding, the horses descended with +their riders into the ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov, the pulsation +of his body constantly increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter, +but the mist still hid distant objects. Having reached the valley, +Denisov looked back and nodded to a Cossack beside him. + +"The signal!" said he. + +The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the +tramp of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from +various sides, and then more shots. + +At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya lashed his +horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denisov who +shouted at him. It seemed to Petya that at the moment the shot was +fired it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge. +Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of him. On the +bridge he collided with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he +galloped on. In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were +running from right to left across the road. One of them fell in the +mud under his horse's feet. + +Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the +midst of that crowd terrible screams arose. Petya galloped up, and the +first thing he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman, +clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him. + +"Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!" shouted Petya, and giving rein to his +excited horse he galloped forward along the village street. + +He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged +Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road, +were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking +Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red +face, had been defending himself against the hussars. When Petya +galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen. "Too late again!" +flashed through Petya's mind and he galloped on to the place from +which the rapid firing could be heard. The shots came from the yard of +the landowner's house he had visited the night before with Dolokhov. +The French were making a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden +thickly overgrown with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who +crowded at the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the +gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint, +shouting to his men. "Go round! Wait for the infantry!" he exclaimed +as Petya rode up to him. + +"Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!" shouted Petya, and without pausing a moment +galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the +smoke was thickest. + +A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others +plashed against something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after +Petya into the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke +some of the French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes +to meet the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the +pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead of +holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly and +strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his saddle. His +horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was smoldering in the +morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily on to the +wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked rapidly +though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his skull. + +After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the +house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that +they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted and went up to Petya, who lay +motionless with outstretched arms. + +"Done for!" he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet +Denisov who was riding toward him. + +"Killed?" cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the +unmistakably lifeless attitude- very familiar to him- in which Petya's +body was lying. + +"Done for!" repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these words +afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who +were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. "We won't take +them!" he called out to Denisov. + +Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with +trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained, +mud-bespattered face which had already gone white. + +"I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!" +he recalled Petya's words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise +at the sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denisov turned +away, walked to the wattle fence, and seized hold of it. + +Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and Dolokhov was +Pierre Bezukhov. + +CHAPTER XII + +During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been +issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners +among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party +was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it +had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled +the first stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other +half had gone on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had +marched in front of the prisoners was left; they had all +disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them +during the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot's enormous +baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a +cavalry baggage train. + +From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in +three columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder +that Pierre had noticed at their first halting place after leaving +Moscow had now reached the utmost limit. + +The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead +horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments +continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again +lagging behind it. + +Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the +soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run +headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and +abused each other for their causeless panic. + +These three groups traveling together- the cavalry stores, the +convoy of prisoners, and Junot's baggage train- still constituted a +separate and united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly +melting away. + +Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred +and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been +captured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also had been captured +or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers +from Davout's corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned +that a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to +the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had +been shot by the marshal's own order because a silver spoon +belonging to the marshal had been found in his possession. + +The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three +hundred and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a +hundred now remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort +than even the cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage. They understood that +the saddles and Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that cold +and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally cold and +hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case +the order was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but +revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition +they themselves were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the +prisoners and so rendering their own plight still worse, treated +them with particular moroseness and severity. + +At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the +prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores, +several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away, +but were recaptured by the French and shot. + +The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer +prisoners should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been +abandoned. All who could walk went together, and after the third stage +Pierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that +had chosen Karataev for its master. + +On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell ill with +the fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he +grew gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know +why, but since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an +effort to go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning +with which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and when +he smelled the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than +before, Pierre moved farther away and did not think about him. + +While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his +intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is +created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the +satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises +not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last +three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory +truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that +as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely +free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack +freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and +that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed +of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, +sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while +the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes +he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet +that were covered with sores- his footgear having long since fallen to +pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife- of his own +free will as it had seemed to him- he had been no more free than now +when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself +subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he +scarcely felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, and +scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing, +the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder they used instead of salt was +even pleasant; there was no great cold, it was always warm walking +in the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that +devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at first hard to +bear was his feet. + +After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by the +campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when +everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up, +walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more +terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now, +but thought of other things. + +Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the +saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to +another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows +superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain +limit. + +He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who +lagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did +not think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would +soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about +himself. The harder his position became and the more terrible the +future, the more independent of that position in which he found +himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and +imaginings that came to him. + +CHAPTER XIII + +At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill +along the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the +roughness of the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd +around him and then again at his feet. The former and the latter +were alike familiar and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran +merrily along the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its +agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along +on three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark at +the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier and sleeker +than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the flesh of different +animals- from men to horses- in various stages of decomposition; and +as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the dog could eat all +it wanted. + +It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment +it might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began +raining harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed +the water, which ran along the ruts in streams. + +Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps +in threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally +addressing the rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go on! Pelt +harder!" + +It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and +deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and +comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction +from a conversation with Karataev the day before. + +At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying +campfire, Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was +burning better. There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up- head and +all- with his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers +in his effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre +knew. It was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually +free of his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the +fire and heard Platon's voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his +pathetic face brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at +his heart. His feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he +wished to go away, but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down, +trying not to look at Platon. + +"Well, how are you?" he asked. + +"How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death," +replied Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun. + +"And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on his pale +emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his eyes, " you +see, brother..." + +Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had told +it to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially +joyful emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that +tale as to something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev evidently +felt as he told it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was +of an old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing life with his +family, and who went once to the Nizhni fair with a companion- a +rich merchant. + +Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning +his companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained +knife was found under the old merchant's pillow. He was tried, +knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as +Karataev put it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia. + +"And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre came up), "ten +years or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict, +submitting as he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God +for death. Well, one night the convicts were gathered just as we +are, with the old man among them. And they began telling what each was +suffering for, and how they had sinned against God. One told how he +had taken a life, another had taken two, a third had set a house on +fire, while another had simply been a vagrant and had done nothing. So +they asked the old man: 'What are you being punished for, Daddy?'- 'I, +my dear brothers,' said he, 'am being punished for my own and other +men's sins. But I have not killed anyone or taken anything that was +not mine, but have only helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant, +my dear brothers, and had much property. 'And he went on to tell +them all about it in due order. 'I don't grieve for myself,' he +says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my old +wife and the children,' and the old man began to weep. Now it happened +that in the group was the very man who had killed the other +merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When, and in what +month?' He asked all about it and his heart began to ache. So he comes +up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet! 'You are +perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says. 'It's quite true, lads, that +this man,' he says, 'is being tortured innocently and for nothing! I,' +he says, 'did that deed, and I put the knife under your head while you +were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,' he says, 'for Christ's sake!'" + +Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and +he drew the logs together. + +"And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are all sinners +in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept bitter tears. +Well, and what do you think, dear friends?" Karataev continued, his +face brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he +now had to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his +story: "What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to +the authorities. 'I have taken six lives,' he says (he was a great +sinner), 'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let +him suffer because of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down +and the papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and +while they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in +the papers all in due form- the authorities I mean- time passed. The +affair reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came: to +set the merchant free and give him a compensation that had been +awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the old man. +'Where is the old man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A +paper has come from the Tsar!' so they began looking for him," here +Karataev's lower jaw trembled, "but God had already forgiven him- he +was dead! That's how it was, dear fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat +for a long time silent, gazing before him with a smile. + +And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story +itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that +lit up Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of +that joy. + +CHAPTER XIV + +"A vos places!"~{ "To your places." }~ suddenly cried a voice. + +A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something +joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the +prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left +came smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the +prisoners at a trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension +people feel at the approach of those in authority. The prisoners +thronged together and were pushed off the road. The convoy formed up. + +"The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!" and hardly had +the sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses +rattled by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat +with a tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of +the marshals. His eye fell on Pierre's large and striking figure, +and in the expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre +thought he detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy. + +The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with +a red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several +officers formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their +faces all looked excited and worried. + +"What did he say? What did he say?" Pierre heard them ask. + +While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in +a crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev whom he had not yet seen that +morning. He sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On +his face, besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday +while telling the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently, +there was now an expression of quiet solemnity. + +Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with +tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say +something to him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself. +He made as if he did not notice that look and moved hastily away. + +When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round. +Karataev was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch +tree and two Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look +round again but went limping up the hill. + +From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came the sound of a +shot. Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that +he had not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to +Smolensk- a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And +he again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one +of whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale, +and in the expression on their faces- one of them glanced timidly at +Pierre- there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of +the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and +remembered that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt +while drying it at the fire and how they had laughed at him. + +Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog began to +howl. "What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?" thought Pierre. + +His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided +looking back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog +was howling, just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their +faces. + +CHAPTER XV + +The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal's baggage train stopped +at the village of Shamshevo. The men crowded together round the +campfires. Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh, +lay down with his back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He +again slept as he had done at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino. + +Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or +another, gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same +thoughts that had been expressed in his dream at Mozhaysk. + +"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and +that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in +consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and +more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, +in innocent sufferings." + +"Karataev!" came to Pierre's mind. + +And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly +old man who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a +bit," said the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was +alive- a vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface +consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved +and changed places, sometimes several of them merging into one, +sometimes one dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out and +occupy as much space as possible, but others striving to do the same +compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it. + +"That is life," said the old teacher. + +"How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it I did not +know it before?" + +"God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect +Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from +the surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now, +Karataev has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?" +said the teacher. + +"Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up. + +He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a +Russian soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting +a piece of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and +his sinewy, hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned +the ramrod. His brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly +visible by the glow of the charcoal. + +"It's all the same to him," he muttered, turning quickly to a +soldier who stood behind him. "Brigand! Get away!" + +And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned +away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier +the Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting +something with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the +blue-gray dog, sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail. + +"Ah, he's come?" said Pierre. "And Plat-" he began, but did not +finish. + +Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his +fancy- of the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of +the shot heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty +faces of the two Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and +smoking gun, and of Karataev's absence at this halt- and he was on the +point of realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that +instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his mind of a +summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish lady on the +veranda of his house in Kiev. And without linking up the events of the +day or drawing a conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes, +seeing a vision of the country in summertime mingled with memories +of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into +water so that it closed over his head. + +Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid +firing. French soldiers were running past him. + +"The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of +Russians surrounded Pierre. + +For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him. +All around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy. + +"Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!" old soldiers exclaimed, weeping, +as they embraced Cossacks and hussars. + +The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered +them clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he +sat among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier +who approached him, and kissed him, weeping. + +Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd of +disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had +happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed +Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched +them with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent. +On the opposite side stood Dolokhov's Cossack, counting the +prisoners and marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate. + +"How many?" Dolokhov asked the Cossack. + +"The second hundred," replied the Cossack. + +"Filez, filez!"~{ "Get along, get along!" }~ Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this +expression from the French, and when his eyes met those of the +prisoners they flashed with a cruel light. + +Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some +Cossacks who were carrying the body of Petya Rostov to a hole that had +been dug in the garden. + +CHAPTER XVI + +After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight +of the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men +freezing, or roasting themselves to death at the campfires, while +carriages with people dressed in furs continued to drive past, +carrying away the property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings, +and dukes; but the process of the flight and disintegration of the +French army went on essentially as before. + +From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventy-three thousand +men not reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but +pillage) was reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five +thousand had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding +terms of the progression could be determined mathematically. The +French army melted away and perished at the same rate from Moscow to +Vyazma, from Vyazma to Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina, and +from the Berezina to Vilna- independently of the greater or lesser +intensity of the cold, the pursuit, the barring of the way, or any +other particular conditions. Beyond Vyazma the French army instead +of moving in three columns huddled together into one mass, and so went +on to the end. Berthier wrote to his Emperor (we know how far +commanding officers allow themselves to diverge from the truth in +describing the condition of an army) and this is what he said: + +I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the +various corps I have had occasion to observe during different stages +of the last two or three days' march. They are almost disbanded. +Scarcely a quarter of the soldiers remain with the standards of +their regiments, the others go off by themselves in different +directions hoping to find food and escape discipline. In general +they regard Smolensk as the place where they hope to recover. During +the last few days many of the men have been seen to throw away their +cartridges and their arms. In such a state of affairs, whatever your +ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your Majesty's service +demands that the army should be rallied at Smolensk and should first +of all be freed from ineffectives, such as dismounted cavalry, +unnecessary baggage, and artillery material that is no longer in +proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out +with hunger and fatigue, need these supplies as well as a few days' +rest. Many have died last days on the road or at the bivouacs. This +state of things is continually becoming worse and makes one fear +that unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no longer be +under control in case of an engagement. + +November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk. + +After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them a promised land, +the French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own +stores, and when everything had been plundered fled farther. + +They all went without knowing whither or why they were going. +Still less did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any +orders to him. But still he and those about him retained their old +habits: wrote commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day; +called one another sire, mon cousin, prince d'Eckmuhl, roi de +Naples, and so on. But these orders and reports were only on paper, +nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out, +and though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or +Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who had +done much evil for which they had now to pay. And though they +pretended to be concerned about the army, each was thinking only of +himself and of how to get away quickly and save himself. + +CHAPTER XVII + +The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign +from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian +blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them +occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his +whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into +a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to +escape runs straight into his opponent's arms. + +At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga road, +Napoleon's armies made their presence known, but later when they +reached the Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell +tight- and often thinking they were escaping ran right into the +Russians. + +Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit +and the consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of +approximately ascertaining the enemy's position- by cavalry +scouting- was not available. Besides, as a result of the frequent +and rapid change of position by each army, even what information was +obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was received one +day that the enemy had been in a certain position the day before, by +the third day when something could have been done, that army was +already two days' march farther on and in quite another position. + +One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolensk there were +several different roads available for the French, and one would have +thought that during their stay of four days they might have learned +where the enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan +and undertaken something new. But after a four days' halt the mob, +with no maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten +track, neither to the right nor to the left but along the old- the +worst- road, through Krasnoe and Orsha. + +Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French +separated in their flight and spread out over a distance of +twenty-four hours. In front of them all fled the Emperor, then the +kings, then the dukes. The Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take +the road to the right beyond the Dnieper- which was the only +reasonable thing for him to do- themselves turned to the right and +came out onto the highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of +blindman's buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing their enemy +unexpectedly the French fell into confusion and stopped short from the +sudden fright, but then they resumed their flight, abandoning their +comrades who were farther behind. Then for three days separate +portions of the French army- first Murat's (the vice-king's), then +Davout's, and then Ney's- ran, as it were, the gauntlet of the Russian +army. They abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy baggage, +their artillery, and half their men, and fled, getting past the +Russians by night by making semicircles to the right. + +Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of +Smolensk which were in nobody's way, because despite the unfortunate +plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor +against which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of +ten thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one thousand men +left, having abandoned all the rest and all his cannon, and having +crossed the Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot. + +From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna, still +playing at blindman's buff with the pursuing army. At the Berezina +they again became disorganized, many were drowned and many +surrendered, but those who got across the river fled farther. Their +supreme chief donned a fur coat and, having seated himself in a +sleigh, galloped on alone, abandoning his companions. The others who +could do so drove away too, leaving those who could not to surrender +or die. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which +they did all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they +turned onto the Kaluga road to the day their leader fled from the +army, none of the movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might +have thought that regarding this period of the campaign the +historians, who attributed the actions of the mass to the will of +one man, would have found it impossible to make the story of the +retreat fit their theory. But no! Mountains of books have been written +by the historians about this campaign, and everywhere are described +Napoleon's arrangements, the maneuvers, and his profound plans which +guided the army, as well as the military genius shown by his marshals. + +The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free road into a +well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along +which Kutuzov afterwards pursued him- this unnecessary retreat along a +devastated road- is explained to us as being due to profound +considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for his +retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is +described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle +and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick +and said: + +"J'ai assez fait l'empereur; il est temps de faire le general,"~{ "I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act the +general." }~ but +nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the +scattered fragments of the army he left behind. + +Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals, +especially of Ney- a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he +made his way by night around through the forest and across the Dnieper +and escaped to Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths +of his men. + +And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic +army is presented to us by the historians as something great and +characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in +ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child is +taught to be ashamed of- even that act finds justification in the +historians' language. + +When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of +historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly +contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians +produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems, +excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing +is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed. + +"C'est grand!"~{ "It is great." }~ say the historians, and there no longer exists +either good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good, +not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of +some special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a +warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his +comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que +c'est grand,~{ That it is great. }~ and his soul is tranquil. + +"Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n'y +a qu'un pas,"~{ "From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step." }~ said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been +repeating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule +il n'y a qu'un pas. + +And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not +commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to +admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness. + +For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no +human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where +simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent. + +CHAPTER XIX + +What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign +of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret, +dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is +that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three +armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered +French, hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the +historians relate) the aim of the Russians was to stop the French, +to cut them off, and capture them all? + +How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than +the French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purpose +when it had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim +was to capture them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us +that when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not +beat them? How could that happen? + +History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions +says that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov, +and this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers... + +But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were +guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried +and punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and +others were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still +incomprehensible why, the position of the Russian army being what it +was at Krasnoe and at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior +forces), the French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not +captured, if that was what the Russians aimed at. + +The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military +historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) is +unfounded, for we know that he could not restrain the troops from +attacking at Vyazma and Tarutino. + +Why was the Russian army- which with inferior forces had withstood +the enemy in full strength at Borodino- defeated at Krasnoe and the +Berezina by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was +numerically superior? + +If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing +Napoleon and his marshals- and that aim was not merely frustrated +but all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled- then +this last period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the +French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered +victorious by Russian historians. + +The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims +of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical +rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit +that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for +Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov. + +But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a +conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French +victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series of +Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the +liberation of their country. + +The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the +historians studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns +and the generals, from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth, +have attributed to this last period of the war of 1812 an aim that +never existed, namely that of cutting off and capturing Napoleon +with his marshals and his army. + +There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have +been senseless and its attainment quite impossible. + +It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon's +disorganized army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that +is to say, was doing just what every Russian desired. So what was +the use of performing various operations on the French who were +running away as fast as they possibly could? + +Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men +whose whole energy was directed to flight. + +Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one's own +troops in order to destroy the French army, which without external +interference was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its +path was not blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than +it actually did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original +army. + +Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the +Emperor, kings, and dukes- whose capture would have been in the +highest degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit +diplomatists of the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized. +Still more senseless would have been the wish to capture army corps of +the French, when our own army had melted away to half before +reaching Krasnoe and a whole division would have been needed to convoy +the corps of prisoners, and when our men were not always getting +full rations and the prisoners already taken were perishing of hunger. + +All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon +and his army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving +out of his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had +planted, should run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The +only thing to be said in excuse of that gardener would be that he +was very angry. But not even that could be said for those who drew +up this project, for it was not they who had suffered from the +trampled beds. + +But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would +have been senseless, it was impossible. + +It was impossible first because- as experience shows that a +three-mile movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with +the plans- the probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein +effecting a junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as to +be tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when +he received the plan remarked that diversions planned over great +distances do not yield the desired results. + +Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with +which Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than +the Russians possessed would have been required. + +Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term "to cut off" +has no meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army. +To cut off an army- to bar its road- is quite impossible, for there is +always plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night when +nothing can be seen, as the military scientists might convince +themselves by the example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only +possible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it +is only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Men +can only be taken prisoners if they surrender according to the rules +of strategy and tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops +quite rightly did not consider that this suited them, since death by +hunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike. + +Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the +world began has a war been fought under such conditions as those +that obtained in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the +French strained its strength to the utmost and could not have done +more without destroying itself. + +During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe +it lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to +the population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of +the army without a battle. + +And it is of this period of the campaign- when the army lacked boots +and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and +was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees +of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and +the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be +maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where +discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for +months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and +cold, when half the army perished in a single month- it is of this +period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich +should have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov to +another place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more than +knee-deep in snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so "routed" and +"cut off" the French and so on and so on. + +The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should +have been done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not +to blame because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed +that they should do what was impossible. + +All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between +the facts and the historical accounts only arises because the +historians dealing with the matter have written the history of the +beautiful words and sentiments of various generals, and not the +history of the events. + +To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do +their surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but +the question of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals +and in graves does not even interest them, for it does not come within +the range of their investigation. + +Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans +and consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who +took a direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed +insoluble easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution. + +The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in +the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it +was senseless and unattainable. + +The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion. +That aim was attained in the first place of itself, as the French +ran away, and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight. +Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying +the French, and thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was +following the French, ready to use its strength in case their movement +stopped. + +The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the +experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a +menace than to strike the running animal on the head. + +BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13 + +CHAPTER I + +When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror: +substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it +is a beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this +horror at the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual +wound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes +heals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch. + +After Prince Andrew's death Natasha and Princess Mary alike felt +this. Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing +cloud of death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the +face. They carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough and +painful contact. Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street, +a summons to dinner, the maid's inquiry what dress to prepare, or +worse still any word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an +insult, painfully irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary +quiet in which they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful +choir that still resounded in their imagination, and hindered their +gazing into those mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant +had opened out before them. + +Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and +pain. They spoke little even to one another, and when they did it +was of very unimportant matters. + +Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of +a future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did +they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them +that what they had lived through and experienced could not be +expressed in words, and that any reference to the details of his +life infringed the majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been +accomplished before their eyes. + +Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of +everything that might lead up to the subject- this halting on all +sides at the boundary of what they might not mention- brought before +their minds with still greater purity and clearness what they were +both feeling. + +But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete +joy. Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent +arbiter of her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was +the first to be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which +she had dwelt for the first fortnight. She received letters from her +relations to which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas +had been put was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych came to +Yaroslavl with reports on the state of their affairs and with advice +and suggestions that they should return to Moscow to the house on +the Vozdvizhenka Street, which had remained uninjured and needed +only slight repairs. Life did not stand still and it was necessary +to live. Hard as it was for Princess Mary to emerge from the realm +of secluded contemplation in which she had lived till then, and +sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave Natasha alone, yet the +cares of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily yielded +to them. She went through the accounts with Alpatych, conferred with +Dessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and made preparations +for the journey to Moscow. + +Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making +preparations for departure, held aloof from her too. + +Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with her to +Moscow, and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw +their daughter losing strength every day and thought that a change +of scene and the advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her. + +"I am not going anywhere," Natasha replied when this was proposed to +her. "Do please just leave me alone!" And she ran out of the room, +with difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritation +rather than of sorrow. + +After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her +grief, Natasha spent most of the time in her room by herself, +sitting huddled up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing and +twisting something with her slender nervous fingers and gazing +intently and fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This +solitude exhausted and tormented her but she was in absolute need of +it. As soon as anyone entered she got up quickly, changed her position +and expression, and picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting +impatiently for the intruder to go. + +She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that +on which- with a terrible questioning too great for her strength- +her spiritual gaze was fixed. + +One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and thin, dressed +in a black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a +knot, was crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously +crumpling and smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at +a corner of the door. + +She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone- to the other +side of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never +before thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and +improbable, was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible +than this side of life, where everything was either emptiness and +desolation or suffering and indignity. + +She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine +him otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he +had been at Mytishchi, at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl. + +She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own, +and sometimes devised other words they might have spoken. + +There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning +his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his +shoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and +a wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs +twitches just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he is +struggling with terrible pain. "What is that pain like? Why does he +have that pain? What does he feel? How does it hurt him?" thought +Natasha. He noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began to +speak seriously: + +"One thing would be terrible," said he: "to bind oneself forever +to a suffering man. It would be continual torture." And he looked +searchingly at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to +think what she would say. She said: "This can't go on- it won't. You +will get well- quite well." + +She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what +she had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at +those words and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in +that protracted gaze. + +"I agreed," Natasha now said to herself, "that it would be +dreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then only because +it would have been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently. +He thought it would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to live +and feared death. And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not +say what I meant. I thought quite differently. Had I said what I +thought, I should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to die +continually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared with +what I am now. Now there is nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No, +he did not and never will know it. And now it will never, never be +possible to put it right." And now he again seemed to be saying the +same words to her, only in her imagination Natasha this time gave +him a different answer. She stopped him and said: "Terrible for you, +but not for me! You know that for me there is nothing in life but you, +and to suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me," and he +took her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terrible +evening four days before his death. And in her imagination she said +other tender and loving words which she might have said then but +only spoke now: "I love thee!... thee! I love, love..." she said, +convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a desperate +effort... + +She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in +her eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this. +Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again +with a strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And +now, now it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at +the instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing +itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her +ears. Dunyasha, her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a +frightened look on her face and showing no concern for her mistress. + +"Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange, +excited look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," she +finished with a sob. + +CHAPTER II + +Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha was feeling +a special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of +them- her father, mother, and Sonya- were so near to her, so familiar, +so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult +to the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not +merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard +Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not +grasp them. + +"What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live +their own old, quiet, and commonplace life," thought Natasha. + +As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of +her mother's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He had +evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were +choking him. When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and +burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round +face. + +"Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling..." and weeping like a +child and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost +fell into it, covering his face with his hands. + +Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natasha's whole +being. Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache +as if something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But +the pain was immediately followed by a feeling of release from the +oppressive constraint that had prevented her taking part in life. +The sight of her father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that +she heard through the door, made her immediately forget herself and +her own grief. + +She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to +her mother's door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came +out from that room and taking Natasha by the arm said something to +her. Natasha neither saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid +steps, pausing at the door for an instant as if struggling with +herself, and then ran to her mother. + +The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward +position, stretching out and beating her head against the wall. +Sonya and the maids were holding her arms. + +"Natasha! Natasha!..." cried the countess. "It's not true... it's +not true... He's lying... Natasha!" she shrieked, pushing those around +her away. "Go away, all of you; it's not true! Killed!... ha, ha, +ha!... It's not true!" + +Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother, +embraced her, and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face +toward herself, and clung to her. + +"Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy," she kept on +whispering, not pausing an instant. + +She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her, +demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her +mother's dress. + +"My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!..." she whispered +incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her +own irrepressible and streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks. + +The countess pressed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and +became quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed +swiftness, glanced vacantly around her, and seeing Natasha began to +press her daughter's head with all her strength. Then she turned +toward her daughter's face which was wincing with pain and gazed +long at it. + +"Natasha, you love me?" she said in a soft trustful whisper. +"Natasha, you would not deceive me? You'll tell me the whole truth?" + +Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look +there was nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness. + +"My darling Mummy!" she repeated, straining all the power of her +love to find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that +crushed her mother. + +And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing +to believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in +the bloom of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium. + +Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the +next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother. +Her persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the +countess every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling +her to life. + +During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few +minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her chair and +closed her eyes, but opened them again on hearing the bedstead +creak. The countess was sitting up in bed and speaking softly. + +"How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won't you have some +tea?" Natasha went up to her. "You have improved in looks and grown +more manly," continued the countess, taking her daughter's hand. + +"Mamma! What are you saying..." + +"Natasha, he is no more, no more!" + +And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first +time. + +CHAPTER III + +Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the count tried +to replace Natasha but could not. They saw that she alone was able +to restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks +Natasha remained constantly at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge +chair in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her +incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones +soothed her mother. + +The mother's wounded spirit could not could not heal. Petya's +death had torn from her half her life. When the news of Petya's +death had come she had been a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a +month later she left her room a listless old woman taking no +interest in life. But the same blow that almost killed the countess, +this second blow, restored Natasha to life. + +A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is +like a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep +wound may heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike +can yet heal completely only as the result of a vital force from +within. + +Natasha's wound healed in that way. She thought her life was +ended, but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the +essence of life- love- was still active within her. Love awoke and +so did life. + +Prince Andrew's last days had bound Princess Mary and Natasha +together; this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another. +Princess Mary put off her departure, and for three weeks looked +after Natasha as if she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed +in her mother's bedroom had strained Natasha's physical strength. + +One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever, Princess Mary +took her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natasha lay +down, but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away +she called her back. + +"I don't want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little." + +"You are tired- try to sleep." + +"No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me." + +"She is much better. She spoke so well today," said Princess Mary. + +Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned +Princess Mary's face. + +"Is she like him?" thought Natasha. "Yes, like and yet not like. But +she is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me. +What is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind +like? What does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!" + +"Mary," she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary's hand to herself, +"Mary, you mustn't think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love +you! Let us be quite, quite friends." + +And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making +Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her +feelings. + +From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only +between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha. +They were continually kissing and saying tender things to one +another and spent most of their time together. When one went out the +other became restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt +more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself +when alone. A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them; +an exclusive feeling of life being possible only in each other's +presence. + +Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were +already in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They +spoke most of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her +childhood, of her mother, her father, and her daydreams; and +Natasha, who with a passive lack of understanding had formerly +turned away from that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry +of Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess +Mary by affection, learned to love her past too and to understand a +side of life previously incomprehensible to her. She did not think +of applying submission and self-abnegation to her own life, for she +was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood and loved in +another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For Princess +Mary, listening to Natasha's tales of childhood and early youth, there +also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of life: belief +in life and its enjoyment. + +Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they +thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him +had the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without +being conscious of it. + +Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all +talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was +suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness, +and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm +carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her +drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed +to her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad. + +One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath. +Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and +then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result. + +Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she +called again- though she could hear Dunyasha coming- called her in the +deep chest tones in which she had been wont to sing, sing, and +listened attentively to herself. + +She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the +layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable, +delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking +root would so cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed +her down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound +had begun to heal from within. + +At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count +insisted on Natasha's going with her to consult the doctors. + +CHAPTER IV + +After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to hold +back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy +and so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the +Russians who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a +battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing the +French could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke +down, and the information received of the movements of the French +was never reliable. + +The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous +marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not +go any faster. + +To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only +necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not +losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino and +less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that +place a hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty +thousand. + +The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our +army as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference +was that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of +destruction as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen +were left behind in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind +were among their own people. The chief cause of the wastage of +Napoleon's army was the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing +proof of this is the corresponding decrease of the Russian army. + +Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the +movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian +army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at +Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of +our army. + +But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of +the army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident, +another reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself +to Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French. +The road the French would take was unknown, and so the closer our +troops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to cover. +Only by following at some distance could one cut across the zigzag +path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals +meant fresh movements of the army and a lengthening of its marches, +whereas the only reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To +that end Kutuzov's activity was directed during the whole campaign +from Moscow to Vilna- not casually or intermittently but so +consistently that he never once deviated from it. + +Kutuzov felt and knew- not by reasoning or science but with the +whole of his Russian being- what every Russian soldier felt: that +the French were beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven +out; but at the same time he like the soldiers realized all the +hardship of this march, the rapidity of which was unparalleled for +such a time of the year. + +But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian +army, who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody, +and for some reason to capture a king or a duke- it seemed that now- +when any battle must be horrible and senseless- was the very time to +fight and conquer somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when +one after another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with +those soldiers- ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved- who +within a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half +their number, and who at the best if the flight continued would have +to go a greater distance than they had already traversed, before +they reached the frontier. + +This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow, +and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians +stumbled on the French army. + +So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the three +French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen +thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous +encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob +of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three +days. + +Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and +so," etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the +disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the +French crowds that were running past, and demanded reinforcements +which did not arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and +hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round as +best they could, and continued their flight. + +Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the +commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found +when he was wanted- that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche~{ Knight without fear and without reproach. }~ as he +styled himself- who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys +demanding their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was +ordered to do. + +"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops and +pointing out the French to the cavalry. + +And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could +scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented to +them- that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold, +frost-bitten, and starving- and the column that had been presented +to them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been +anxious to do. + +At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several +hundred cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," and disputed +as to who had distinguished himself and were pleased with their +achievement- though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon, +or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one +another and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so. + +These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of +the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes +and imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable +deed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the +campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he +thought nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from +the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that at +Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning that Napoleon was +there he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that he had +an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so +on, and so on. + +Not only did his contempories, carried away by their passions, +talk in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as +grand, while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty, +dissolute, weak old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite- +a sort of puppet useful only because he had a Russian name. + +CHAPTER V + +In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The +Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written +by order of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a +cunning court liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by +his blunders at Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian +army of the glory of complete victory over the French.~{ History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and +reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krasnoe, +by Bogdanovich. }~ + +Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian +mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary +individuals who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their +personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish +such men for discerning the higher laws. + +For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon- +that most insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in +exile, showed human dignity- Napoleon is the object of adulation and +enthusiasm; he is grand. But Kutuzov- the man who from the beginning +to the end of his activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or +deed from Borodino to Vilna, presented an example exceptional in +history of self-sacrifice and a present conciousness of the future +importance of what was happening- Kutuzov seems to them something +indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year +1812 they always seem a little ashamed. + +And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose +activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be +difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the +will of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find +an instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being +so completely accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov's efforts were +directed in 1812. + +Kutuzov never talked of "forty centuries looking down from the +Pyramids," of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what +he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said +nothing about himself, adopted no prose, always appeared to be the +simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most +ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de +Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with +generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who +tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchin at the Yauza +bridge galloped up to Kutuzov with personal reproaches for having +caused the destruction of Moscow, and said: "How was it you promised +not to abandon Moscow without a battle?" Kutuzov replied: "And I shall +not abandon Moscow without a battle," though Moscow was then already +abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that +Ermolov ought to be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied: +"Yes, I was just saying so myself," though a moment before he had said +quite the contrary. What did it matter to him- who then alone amid a +senseless crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what +was happening- what did it matter to him whether Rostopchin attributed +the calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it +matter to him who was appointed chief of the artillery. + +Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man- who by +experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the +words serving as their expression are not what move people- use +quite meaningless words that happened to enter his head. + +But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the +whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single +aim toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite +of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his +real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be +understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his +disagreement with those about him began, he alone said that the battle +of Borodino was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in +his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone +said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to +Lauriston's proposal of peace, he said: There can be no peace, for +such is the people's will. He alone during the retreat of the French +said that all our maneuvers are useless, everything is being +accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy +must be offered "a golden bridge"; that neither the Tarutino, the +Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that we must keep some +force to reach the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a +single Russian for ten Frenchmen. + +And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakcheev +to please the Emperor, he alone- incurring thereby the Emperor's +displeasure- said in Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier +is useless and harmful. + +Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of +the events. His actions- without the smallest deviation- were all +directed to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his +strength for conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3) +to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the +sufferings of our people and of our army. + +This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was "Patience and Time," +this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodino, investing +the preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutuzov +who before the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be +lost, he alone, in contradiction to everyone else, declared till his +death that Borodino was a victory, despite the assurance of generals +that the battle was lost and despite the fact that for an army to have +to retire after winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during +the whole retreat insisted that battles, which were useless then, +should not be fought, and that a new war should not be begun nor the +frontiers of Russia crossed. + +It is easy now to understand the significance of these events- if +only we abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that +existed only in the heads of a dozen individuals- for the events and +results now lie before us. + +But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general +opinion, so truly discern the importance of the people's view of the +events that in all his activity he was never once untrue to it? + +The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of +the events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he +possessed in full purity and strength. + +Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling +caused the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar's wish, +to select him- an old man in disfavor- to be their representative in +the national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest +human pedestal from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all +his powers not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing +pity on them. + +That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not +be cast in the false mold of a European hero- the supposed ruler of +men- that history has invented. + +To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception +of greatness. + +CHAPTER VI + +The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle +of Krasnoe. Toward evening- after much disputing and many mistakes +made by generals who did not go to their proper places, and after +adjutants had been sent about with counterorders- when it had become +plain that the enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and +would be no battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither +his headquarters had that day been transferred. + +The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on his plump +little white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented +generals who whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the +road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven +thousand of them) were crowding to warm themselves at campfires. +Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with +talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they had been able to get +hold of, were standing in the road beside a long row of unharnessed +French guns. At the approach of the commander in chief the buzz of +talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on Kutuzov who, wearing a white +cap with a red band and a padded overcoat that bulged on his round +shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his white horse. One of +the generals was reporting to him where the guns and prisoners had +been captured. + +Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general +was saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he +gazed attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a +specially wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by +frost-bitten noses and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and +festering eyes. + +One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them, +one of whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of +raw flesh with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial +in the fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the +malevolent expression with which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the +soldier with the sores immediately turned away and went on with what +he was doing. + +Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He +puckered his face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head. +At another spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a +Frenchman on the shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly +manner, and Kutuzov with the same expression on his face again +swayed his head. + +"What were you saying?" he asked the general, who continuing his +report directed the commander in chief's attention to some standards +captured from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhensk +regiment. + +"Ah, the standards!" said Kutuzov, evidently detaching himself +with difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him. + +He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at +him from all sides awaiting a word from him. + +He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment, sighed deeply, +and closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers +carrying the standards to advance and surround the commander in +chief with them. Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds and then, +submitting with evident reluctance to the duty imposed by his +position, raised his head and began to speak. A throng of officers +surrounded him. He looked attentively around at the circle of +officers, recognizing several of them. + +"I thank you all!" he said, addressing the soldiers and then again +the officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words +were distinctly heard. "I thank you all for your hard and faithful +service. The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor +to you forever." + +He paused and looked around. + +"Lower its head, lower it!" he said to a soldier who had +accidentally lowered the French eagle he was holding before the +Preobrazhensk standards. "Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah lads!" he +added, addressing the men with a rapid movement of his chin. + +"Hur-r-rah!" roared thousands of voices. + +While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his +saddle and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and +apparently ironic gleam. + +"You see, brothers..." said he when the shouts had ceased... and all +at once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no +longer the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who +wanted to tell his comrades something very important. + +There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of +the soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was +going to say. + +"You see, brothers, I know it's hard for you, but it can't be +helped! Bear up; it won't be for long now! We'll see our visitors +off and then we'll rest. The Tsar won't forget your service. It is +hard for you, but still you are at home while they- you see what +they have come to," said he, pointing to the prisoners. "Worse off +than our poorest beggars. While they were strong we didn't spare +ourselves, but now we may even pity them. They are human beings too. +Isn't it so, lads?" + +He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze +fixed upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew +brighter and brighter with an old man's mild smile, which drew the +corners of his lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased +speaking and bowed his head as if in perplexity. + +"But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody +bastards!" he cried, suddenly lifting his head. + +And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first +time during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the +soldiers laughing joyfully and shouting "Hurrah!" + +Kutuzov's words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could +have repeated the field marshal's address, begun solemnly and then +changing into an old man's simplehearted talk; but the hearty +sincerity of that speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined +with pity for the foe and consciousness of the justice of our cause, +exactly expressed by that old man's good-natured expletives, was not +merely understood but lay in the soul of every soldier and found +expression in their joyous and long-sustained shouts. Afterwards +when one of the generals addressed Kutuzov asking whether he wished +his caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in answering unexpectedly gave a +sob, being evidently greatly moved. + +CHAPTER VII + +When the troops reached their night's halting place on the eighth of +November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already +growing dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional +lightly falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the +falling snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost +grew keener. + +An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three thousand strong +but now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that +night at its halting place- a village on the highroad. The +quartermasters who met the regiment announced that all the huts were +full of sick and dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff. +There was only one hut available for the regimental commander. + +The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the +village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts. + +Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its +lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep +through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village, +and immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of +branches, and merry voices could be heard from there. Another +section amid the regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a +group was busy getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the +horses. A third section scattered through the village arranging +quarters for the staff officers, carrying out the French corpses +that were in the huts, and dragging away boards, dry wood, and +thatch from the roofs, for the campfires, or wattle fences to serve +for shelter. + +Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle +wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed. + +"Now then, all together- shove!" cried the voices, and the huge +surface of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost, +was seen swaying in the gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked +more and more and at last the wall fell, and with it the men who had +been pushing it. Loud, coarse laughter and joyous shouts ensued. + +"Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That's it... Where +are you shoving to?" + +"Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a song!" + +All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to +sing. At the end of the third verse as the last note died away, twenty +voices roared out at once: "Oo-oo-oo-oo! That's it. All together! +Heave away, boys!..." but despite their united efforts the wattle +hardly moved, and in the silence that followed the heavy breathing +of the men was audible. + +"Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are! Lend a hand... +will you? You may want us one of these days." + +Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into +the village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about +thirty-five feet long an seven feet high, moved forward along the +village street, swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of +the gasping men. + +"Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now..." + +Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely. + +"What are you up to?" suddenly came the authoritative voice of a +sergeant major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden. +"There are gentry here; the general himself is in that hut, and you +foul-mouthed devils, you brutes, I'll give it to you!" shouted he, +hitting the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the back. +"Can't you make less noise?" + +The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and +wiped his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling +against the wattle. + +"There, how that devil hits out! He's made my face all bloody," said +he in a frightened whisper when the sergeant major had passed on. + +"Don't you like it?" said a laughing voice, and moderating their +tones the men moved forward. + +When they were out of the village they began talking again as loud +as before, interlarding their talk with the same aimless expletives. + +In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers had gathered +and were in animated talk over their tea about the events of the day +and the maneuvers suggested for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a +flank march to the left, cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture +him. + +By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to its place +the campfires were blazing on all sides ready for cooking, the wood +crackled, the snow was melting, and black shadows of soldiers +flitted to and fro all over the occupied space where the snow had been +trodden down. + +Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything was done without +any orders being given. Stores of wood were brought for the night, +shelters were rigged up for the officers, caldrons were being +boiled, and muskets and accouterments put in order. + +The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by +the Eighth Company as a shelter from the north, propped up by musket +rests, and a campfire was built before it. They beat the tattoo, +called the roll, had supper, and settled down round the fires for +the night- some repairing their footgear, some smoking pipes, and some +stripping themselves naked to steam the lice out of their shirts. + +CHAPTER VIII + +One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched +conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time- lacking warm +boots and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the +snow with eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations +(the commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)- they +would have presented a very sad and depressing spectacle. + +On the contrary, the army had never under the best material +conditions presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was +because all who began to grow depressed or who lost strength were +sifted out of the army day by day. All the physically or morally +weak had long since been left behind and only the flower of the +army- physically and mentally- remained. + +More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company +than anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and +their campfire blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by +their wattle they demanded contributions of fuel. + +"Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you +lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a +red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking +because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you, +Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said he to another soldier. + +This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being +robust he ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier they +called "Jackdaw," a thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose +obediently and was about to go but at that instant there came into the +light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier +carrying a load of wood. + +"Bring it here- that's fine!" + +They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew at it with +their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their greatcoats, +making the flames hiss and crackle. The men drew nearer and lit +their pipes. The handsome young soldier who had brought the wood, +setting his arms akimbo, began stamping his cold feet rapidly and +deftly on the spot where he stood. + +"Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It's well that I'm a +musketeer..." he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable. + +"Look out, your soles will fly off!" shouted the red-haired man, +noticing that the sole of the dancer's boot was hanging loose. "What a +fellow you are for dancing!" + +The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw +it on the fire. + +"Right enough, friend," said he, and, having sat down, took out of +his knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his +foot. "It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out +his feet toward the fire. + +"They'll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we've +finished hammering them, we're to receive double kits!" + +"And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after all, it +seems," said one sergeant major. + +"I've had an eye on him this long while," said the other. + +"Well, he's a poor sort of soldier..." + +"But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday." + +"Yes, it's all very well, but when a man's feet are frozen how can +he walk?" + +"Eh? Don't talk nonsense!" said a sergeant major. + +"Do you want to be doing the same?" said an old soldier, turning +reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet. + +"Well, you know," said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in +a squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the +fire, "a plump man gets thin, but for a thin one it's death. Take +me, now! I've got no strength left," he added, with sudden +resolution turning to the sergeant major. "Tell them to send me to +hospital; I'm aching all over; anyway I shan't be able to keep up." + +"That'll do, that'll do!" replied the sergeant major quietly. + +The soldier said no more and the talk went on. + +"What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is +that not one of them had what you might call real boots on," said a +soldier, starting a new theme. "They were no more than make-believes." + +"The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing the hut for +the colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, boys," +put in the dancer. "As they turned them over one seemed still alive +and, would you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo." + +"But they're a clean folk, lads," the first man went on; "he was +white- as white as birchbark- and some of them are such fine +fellows, you might think they were nobles." + +"Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there." + +"But they don't understand our talk at all," said the dancer with +a puzzled smile. "I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in +his own way. A queer lot!" + +"But it's strange, friends," continued the man who had wondered at +their whiteness, "the peasants at Mozhaysk were saying that when +they began burying the dead- where the battle was you know- well, +those dead had been lying there for nearly a month, and says the +peasant, 'they lie as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell +as a puff of powder smoke.'" + +"Was it from the cold?" asked someone. + +"You're a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If +it had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. 'But,' +he says, 'go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,' he +says, 'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as +we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,' he says, 'are +white as paper and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.'" + +All were silent. + +"It must be from their food," said the sergeant major. "They used to +gobble the same food as the gentry." + +No one contradicted him. + +"That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said the men were +all called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days +and still didn't finish carting the dead away. And as for the +wolves, he says..." + +"That was a real battle," said an old soldier. "It's the only one +worth remembering; but since that... it's only been tormenting folk." + +"And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them +and, my word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw +down their muskets and went on their knees. 'Pardon!' they say. That's +only one case. They say Platov took 'Poleon himself twice. But he +didn't know the right charm. He catches him and catches him- no +good! He turns into a bird in his hands and flies away. And there's no +way of killing him either." + +"You're a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at you!" + +"Liar, indeed! It's the real truth." + +"If he fell into my hands, when I'd caught him I'd bury him in the +ground with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he's +ruined!" + +"Well, anyhow we're going to end it. He won't come here again," +remarked the old soldier, yawning. + +The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling down to +sleep. + +"Look at the stars. It's wonderful how they shine! You would think +the women had spread out their linen," said one of the men, gazing +with admiration at the Milky Way. + +"That's a sign of a good harvest next year." + +"We shall want some more wood." + +"You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That's queer." + +"O Lord!" + +"What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look how he's +sprawling!" + +In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had fallen +asleep could be heard. Others turned over and warmed themselves, now +and again exchanging a few words. From a campfire a hundred paces +off came a sound of general, merry laughter. + +"Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!" said one of the +soldiers, and what a lot of them there are!" + +One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company. + +"They're having such fun," said he, coming back. "Two Frenchies have +turned up. One's quite frozen and the other's an awful swaggerer. He's +singing songs...." + +"Oh, I'll go across and have a look...." + +And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company. + +CHAPTER IX + +The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of the forest. +A huge campfire was blazing brightly in the midst of the snow, +lighting up the branches of trees heavy with hoarfrost. + +About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the snow of the +forest, and the crackling of dry branches. + +"A bear, lads," said one of the men. + +They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest into +the bright firelight stepped two strangely clad human figures clinging +to one another. + +These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They +came up to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our +soldiers did not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an +officer's hat and seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he +had been going to sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy +soldier with a shawl tied round his head, was stronger. He raised +his companion and said something, pointing to his mouth. The +soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen, spread a greatcoat on the ground +for the sick man, and brought some buckwheat porridge and vodka for +both of them. + +The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his +head wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly. + +When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he +suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the +soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and +resting his head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire, +looking at the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally +he emitted a long-drawn groan and then again became silent. Morel, +pointing to his shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact +that Ramballe was an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer +who had come up to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would +not take a French officer into his hut to warm him, and when the +messenger returned and said that the colonel wished the officer to +be brought to him, Ramballe was told to go. He rose and tried to walk, +but staggered and would have fallen had not a soldier standing by held +him up. + +"You won't do it again, eh?" said one of the soldiers, winking and +turning mockingly to Ramballe. + +"Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are- a real peasant!" +came rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier. + +They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two +soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around +their necks while they carried him and began wailing plaintively: + +"Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh, +my brave, kind friends," and he leaned his head against the shoulder +of one of the men like a child. + +Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire, +surrounded by the soldiers. + +Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes, +was wearing a woman's cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round +his head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a +French song in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the +nearest soldier. The soldiers simply held their sides as they +watched him. + +"Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I'll soon pick it up. How +is it?" said the man- a singer and a wag- whom Morel was embracing. + +"Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!" sang Morel, winking. "Ce +diable a quatre..."~{ "Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy devil." }~ + +"Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!" repeated the soldier, +flourishing his arm and really catching the tune. + +"Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!" rose their rough, joyous laughter from all +sides. + +Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too. + +"Well, go on, go on!" + +``` block + "Qui eut le triple talent, +De boire, de battre, +Et d'etre un vert galant."~{ Who had a triple talent }~ +``` + +_1 For drinking, for fighting, + +_1 And for being a gallant old boy... + +"It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!" + +"Ke..." Zaletaev, brought out with effort: "ke-e-e-e," he drawled, +laboriously pursing his lips, "le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e +de-tra-va-ga-la " he sang. + +"Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to +eat?" + +"Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after +starving." + +They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a laugh set to +work on his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they +watched him. The older men, who thought it undignified to amuse +themselves with such nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side +of the fire, but one would occasionally raise himself on an elbow +and glance at Morel with a smile. + +"They are men too," said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his +coat. "Even wormwood grows on its own root." + +"O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard +frost...." + +They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was +looking at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now +flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering +something gladsome and mysterious to one another. + +CHAPTER X + +The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical +progression; and that crossing of the Berezina about which so much has +been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and +not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been +and still is written about the Berezina, on the French side this is +only because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities +their army had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated +at one moment into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory, +and on the Russian side merely because in Petersburg- far from the +seat of war- a plan (again one of Pfuel's) had been devised to catch +Napoleon in a strategic trap at the Berezina River. Everyone assured +himself that all would happen according to plan, and therefore +insisted that it was just the crossing of the Berezina that +destroyed the French army. In reality the results of the crossing were +much less disastrous to the French- in guns and men lost- than Krasnoe +had been, as the figures show. + +The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies in the fact +that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans +for cutting off the enemy's retreat and the soundness of the only +possible line of action- the one Kutuzov and the general mass of the +army demanded- namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd +fled at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed +to reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was +impossible to block its path. This was shown not so much by the +arrangements it made for crossing as by what took place at the +bridges. When the bridges broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from +Moscow and women with children who were with the French transport, +all- carried on by vis inertiae- pressed forward into boats and into +the ice-covered water and did not, surrender. + +That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of +pursuers was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own +people each might hope for help from his fellows and the definite +place he held among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining +in the same pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share +in the necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed +of the fact that half the prisoners- with whom the Russians did not +know what to do- perished of cold and hunger despite their captors' +desire to save them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The +most compassionate Russian commanders, those favorable to the +French- and even the Frenchmen in the Russian service- could do +nothing for the prisoners. The French perished from the conditions +to which the Russian army was itself exposed. It was impossible to +take bread and clothes from our hungry and indispensable soldiers to +give to the French who, though not harmful, or hated, or guilty, +were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did that, but they were +exceptions. + +Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was +hope. Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in +collective flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was +concentrated. + +The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the +remnant, especially after the Berezina, on which (in consequence of +the Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians, +and the keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, blamed one +another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of +the Petersburg Berezina plan would be attributed to Kutuzov led to +dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly +expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a +respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was to +blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or +asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable +formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at +every turn. + +Because they could not understand him all these people assumed +that it was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never +grasp the profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his +phrases (which they thought were mere phrases) about a "golden +bridge," about the impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd +of tatterdemalions, and so forth. They had heard all that before. +And all he said- that it was necessary to await provisions, or that +the men had no boots- was so simple, while what they proposed was so +complicated and clever, that it was evident that he was old and stupid +and that they, though not in power, were commanders of genius. + +After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and +Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff +reached their maximum. Kutuzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged +his shoulders. Only once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get +angry and write to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the +Emperor) the following letter: + +"On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency +please be so good as to set off for Kaluga on receipt of this, and +there await further commands and appointments from His Imperial +Majesty." + +But after Bennigsen's departure, the Grand Duke Tsarevich +Constantine Pavlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the +beginning of the campaign but had subsequently been removed from the +army by Kutuzov. Now having come to the army, he informed Kutuzov of +the Emperor's displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the +slowness of their advance. The Emperor intended to join the army +personally in a few days' time. + +The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs- +this same Kutuzov who in August had been chosen commander in chief +against the sovereign's wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke +and heir- apparent from the army- who on his own authority and +contrary to the Emperor's will had decided on the abandonment of +Moscow, now realized at once that his day was over, that his part +was played, and that the power he was supposed to hold was no longer +his. And he understood this not merely from the attitude of the court. +He saw on the one hand that the military business in which he had +played his part was ended and felt that his mission was +accomplished; and at the same time he began to be conscious of the +physical weariness of his aged body and of the necessity of physical +rest. + +On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered Vilna- his "dear +Vilna" as he called it. Twice during his career Kutuzov had been +governor of Vilna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured, +he found old friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of +which he had so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the +cares of army and state and, as far as the passions that seethed +around him allowed, immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had +formerly been accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that +had still to be done in the realm of history did not concern him at +all. + +Chichagov, one of the most zealous "cutters-off" and +"breakers-up," who had first wanted to effect a diversion in Greece +and then in Warsaw but never wished to go where he was sent: +Chichagov, noted for the boldness with which he spoke to the +Emperor, and who considered Kutuzov to be under an obligation to him +because when he was sent to make peace with Turkey in 1811 +independently of Kutuzov, and found that peace had already been +concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of securing +that peace was really Kutuzov's; this Chichagov was the first to +meet Kutuzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress +naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he +handed Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The +contemptuously respectful attitude of the younger men to the old man +in his dotage was expressed in the highest degree by the behavior of +Chichagov, who knew of the accusations that were being directed +against Kutuzov. + +When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally mentioned that +the vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at +Borisov had been recovered and would be restored to him. + +"You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the +contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give +dinner parties," warmly replied Chichagov, who tried by every word +he spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov +to be animated by the same desire. + +Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle +penetrating smile: "I meant merely to say what I said." + +Contrary to the Emperor's wish Kutuzov detained the greater part +of the army at Vilna. Those about him said that he became +extraordinarily slack and physically feeble during his stay in that +town. He attended to army affairs reluctantly, left everything to +his generals, and while awaiting the Emperor's arrival led a +dissipated life. + +Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his suite- +Count Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and others- the Emperor +reached Vilna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove +straight to the castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred +generals and staff officers in full parade uniform stood in front of +the castle, as well as a guard of honor of the Semenov regiment. + +A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with +three foam-flecked horses, shouted "Coming!" and Konovnitsyn rushed +into the vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall +porter's little lodge. + +A minute later the old man's large stout figure in full-dress +uniform, his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his +stomach, waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its +peaks to the sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking +with an effort sideways down the steps to the level of the street, +took in his hand the report he had prepared for the Emperor. + +There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka +furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh +in which the figures of the Emperor and Volkonski could already be +descried. + +From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating +effect on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all +over, readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up +and, at the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the +sleigh, lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began +speaking in his smooth, ingratiating voice. + +The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot, +frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to +the old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too, +owing to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings, +had its usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a sob. + +The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov guard, and again +pressing the old man's hand went with him into the castle. + +When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his +dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and at the mistakes +made at Krasnoe and the Berezina, and informed him of his intentions +for a future campaign abroad. Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The +same submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the +Emperor's commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years before +settled on his face now. + +When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered head was +crossing the ballroom with his heavy waddling gait, he was arrested by +someone's voice saying: + +"Your Serene Highness!" + +Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of +Count Tolstoy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which +lay a small object. Kutuzov seemed not to understand what was expected +of him. + +Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible smile flashed +across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the +object that lay on the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the +First Class. + +CHAPTER XI + +Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which the +Emperor honored by his presence. Kutuzov had received the Order of St. +George of the First Class and the Emperor showed him the highest +honors, but everyone knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him. +The proprieties were observed and the Emperor was the first to set +that example, but everybody understood that the old man was +blameworthy and good-for-nothing. When Kutuzov, conforming to a custom +of Catherine's day, ordered the standards that had been captured to be +lowered at the Emperor's feet on his entering the ballroom, the +Emperor made a wry face and muttered something in which some people +caught the words, "the old comedian." + +The Emperor's displeasure with Kutuzov was specially increased at +Vilna by the fact that Kutuzov evidently could not or would not +understand the importance of the coming campaign. + +When on the following morning the Emperor said to the officers +assembled about him: "You have not only saved Russia, you have saved +Europe!" they all understood that the war was not ended. + +Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion +that no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of +Russia, but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that +Russia had gained. He tried to prove to the Emperor the +impossibility of levying fresh troops, spoke of the hardships +already endured by the people, of the possibility of failure and so +forth. + +This being the field marshal's frame of mind he was naturally +regarded as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war. + +To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the natural +method was to do what had been done with him at Austerlitz and with +Barclay at the beginning of the Russian campaign- to transfer the +authority to the Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under +the commander in chief's feet without upsetting the old man by +informing him of the change. + +With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its +real strength removed and transferred to the Emperor. Toll, +Konovnitsyn, and Ermolov received fresh appointments. Everyone spoke +loudly of the field marshal's great weakness and failing health. + +His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away and given to +another. And in fact his health was poor. + +So naturally, simply, and gradually- just as he had come from Turkey +to the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to +the army when he was needed there- now when his part was played out, +Kutuzov's place was taken by a new and necessary performer. + +The war 1812, besides its national significance dear to every +Russian heart, was now to assume another, a European, significance. + +The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a +movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war +another leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing +from Kutuzov's and animated by different motives. + +Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from +east to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutuzov had +been for the salvation and glory of Russia. + +Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or +Napoleon meant. He could not understand it. For the representative +of the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia +had been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was +nothing left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the +representative of the national war but to die, and Kutuzov died. + +CHAPTER XII + +As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the +physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until +after they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel, and on the +third day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was +laid up for three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious +fever." But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, +and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered. + +Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that +happened to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He +remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy, +internal physical distress, and pains in his feet and side. He +remembered a general impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of +people and of being worried by the curiosity of officers and +generals who questioned him, he also remembered his difficulty in +procuring a conveyance and horses, and above all he remembered his +incapacity to think and feel all that time. On the day of his rescue +he had seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same day he had learned +that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodino for more +than a month had recently died in the Rostovs' house at Yaroslavl, and +Denisov who told him this news also mentioned Helene's death, +supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at the +time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its +significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly +as possible from places where people were killing one another, to some +peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over +all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel he +immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw +in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty and Vaska, who had +come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had +been living on his estate at Elets and hearing of his rescue and +illness had come to look after him. + +It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost +the impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months +and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere +tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he +would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long +time in his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of +captivity. In the same way little by little he came to understand +the news he had been told after his rescue, about the death of +Prince Andrew, the death of his wife, and the destruction of the +French. + +A joyous feeling of freedom- that complete inalienable freedom +natural to man which he had first experienced at the first halt +outside Moscow- filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He +was surprised to find that this inner freedom, which was independent +of external conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of +external liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without +acquaintances. No one demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere. +He had all he wanted: the thought of his wife which had been a +continual torment to him was no longer there, since she was no more. + +"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid +table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down +for the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the +French had gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how +splendid!" + +And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what +then? What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the +answer: "Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!" + +The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he +had continually sought to find- the aim of life- no longer existed for +him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared +temporarily- he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not +present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the +complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at +this time. + +He could not see an aim, for he now had faith- not faith in any kind +of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living, +ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set +himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God, +and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning +but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God +is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in +Karataev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than in the +Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a +man who after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds +what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over the +heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in +front of him without straining his eyes. + +In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable +infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere +and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had +only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had +equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space, +where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed +to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. +And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and +philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as +he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances +and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and +senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal, +and infinite in everything, and therefore- to see it and enjoy its +contemplation- he naturally threw away the telescope through which +he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly regarded the +ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around +him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became. +That dreadful question, "What for?" which had formerly destroyed all +his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question, +"What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: "Because +there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from +a man's head." + +CHAPTER XIII + +In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance +he was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and +seemed occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something +special of his own. The difference between his former and present self +was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was +said to him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly +seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At present he still +forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before +his eyes, but he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and +seemingly ironic smile at what was before him and listened to what was +said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different. +Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so +people had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of +life always played round his lips, and sympathy for others, shone in +his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as +contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his presence. + +Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he +talked, and seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in +conversation and knew how to listen so that people readily told him +their most intimate secrets. + +The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly +hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him +after the old count's death, now after staying a short time in Orel- +where she had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his +ingratitude she considered it her duty to nurse him- felt to her +surprise and vexation that she had become fond of him. Pierre did +not in any way seek her approval, he merely studied her with interest. +Formerly she had felt that he regarded her with indifference and +irony, and so had shrunk into herself as she did with others and had +shown him only the combative side of her nature; but now he seemed +to be trying to understand the most intimate places of her heart, and, +mistrustfully at first but afterwards gratefully, she let him see +the hidden, kindly sides of her character. + +The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more +successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and +showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre's cunning consisted simply in +finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered, +hard, and (in her own way) proud princess. + +"Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence +of bad people but of people such as myself," thought she. + +His servants too- Terenty and Vaska- in their own way noticed the +change that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had +become much "simpler." Terenty, when he had helped him undress and +wished him good night, often lingered with his master's boots in his +hands and clothes over his arm, to see whether he would not start a +talk. And Pierre, noticing that Terenty wanted a chat, generally +kept him there. + +"Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?" he would ask. + +And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of +the old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and +talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre's stories, and then would go +out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master +and affection for him. + +The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though +he considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every +moment was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with +Pierre telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on +the characters of his patients in general, and especially of the +ladies. + +"It's a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our +provincials," he would say. + +There were several prisoners from the French army in Orel, and the +doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre. + +This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make +fun of the tenderness the Italian expressed for him. + +The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk +with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love, and +pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially +against Napoleon. + +"If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight +such a nation," he said to Pierre. "You, who have suffered so from the +French, do not even feel animosity toward them." + +Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely +by evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so +doing. + +During the last days of Pierre's stay in Orel his old Masonic +acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in +1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress +who had a large estate in Orel province, and he occupied a temporary +post in the commissariat department in that town. + +Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though they had +never been intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship +and intimacy that people who meet in a desert generally express for +one another. Willarski felt dull in Orel and was pleased to meet a man +of his own circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests. + +But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged +much behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself, +into apathy and egotism. + +"You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow," he said. + +But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had +been formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To +Pierre as he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to +think that he had been like that himself but a short time before. + +Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family +affairs, his wife's affairs, and his official duties. He regarded +all these occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that +they were all contemptible because their aim was the welfare of +himself and his family. Military, administrative, political, and +Masonic interests continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre, +without trying to change the other's views and without condemning him, +but with the quiet, joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him, +was interested in this strange though very familiar phenomenon. + +There was a new feature in Pierre's relations with Willarski, with +the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, +which gained for him the general good will. This was his +acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by +words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, +feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This +legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and +irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and +the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes +complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and +between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an amused +and gentle smile. + +In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a +center of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary +questions, especially requests for money to which, as an extremely +wealthy man, he was very exposed, produced in him a state of +hopeless agitation and perplexity. "To give or not to give?" he had +asked himself. "I have it and he needs it. But someone else needs it +still more. Who needs it most? And perhaps they are both impostors?" +In the old days he had been unable to find a way out of all these +surmises and had given to all who asked as long as he had anything +to give. Formerly he had been in a similar state of perplexity with +regard to every question concerning his property, when one person +advised one thing and another something else. + +Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt +or perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a +judge who by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should +not be done. + +He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he +felt certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first +time he had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a +colonel, came to him and, after talking a great deal about his +exploits, concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre +should give him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children. +Pierre refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was +afterwards surprised how simple and easy had been what used to +appear so insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused +the colonel's demand he made up his mind that he must have recourse to +artifice when leaving Orel, to induce the Italian officer to accept +some money of which he was evidently in need. A further proof to +Pierre of his own more settled outlook on practical matters was +furnished by his decision with regard to his wife's debts and to the +rebuilding of his houses in and near Moscow. + +His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him +his diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according +to the head steward's calculation, about two million rubles. + +To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an +estimate showing that despite these losses his income would not be +diminished but would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife's +debts which he was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild +his Moscow house and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had +cost him eighty thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing. + +"Yes, of course that's true," said Pierre with a cheerful smile. +"I don't need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much +richer." + +But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave him an account +of the state of things there, and spoke of the estimate an architect +had made of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses, +speaking of this as of a settled matter. About the same time he +received letters from Prince Vasili and other Petersburg acquaintances +speaking of his wife's debts. And Pierre decided that the steward's +proposals which had so pleased him were wrong and that he must go to +Petersburg and settle his wife's affairs and must rebuild in Moscow. +Why this was necessary he did not know, but he knew for certain that +it was necessary. His income would be reduced by three fourths, but he +felt it must be done. + +Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel together. + +During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel Pierre had +experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when during his +journey he found himself in the open world and saw hundreds of new +faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt +like a schoolboy on holiday. Everyone- the stagecoach driver, the +post-house overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the villages- +had a new significance for him. The presence and remarks of +Willarski who continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia +and its backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre's +pleasure. Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary +strength and vitality- the strength which in that vast space amid +the snows maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique +people. He did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree +with him- an apparent agreement being the simplest way to avoid +discussions that could lead to nothing- and he smiled joyfully as he +listened to him. + +CHAPTER XIV + +It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap has +been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of +rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they +jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally +difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of +the French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But +when we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity, +energy, and immense number of the delving insects prove that despite +the destruction of the heap, something indestructible, which though +intangible is the real strength of the colony, still exists; and +similarly, though in Moscow in the month of October there was no +government no churches, shrines, riches, or houses- it was still the +Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed, except something +intangible yet powerful and indestructible. + +The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after +it had been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and +at first for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all +had in common: a desire to get to the place that had been called +Moscow, to apply their activities there. + +Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in +a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the +number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in +1812. + +The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of +Wintzingerode's detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and +residents who had fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its +vicinity. The Russians who entered Moscow, finding it plundered, +plundered it in their turn. They continued what the French had +begun. Trains of peasant carts came to Moscow to carry off to the +villages what had been abandoned in the ruined houses and the streets. +The Cossacks carried off what they could to their camps, and the +householders seized all they could find in other houses and moved it +to their own, pretending that it was their property. + +But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third +contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and +more difficult and assumed more definite forms. + +The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations +of regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and +craftsmanship, with luxury, and governmental and religious +institutions. These forms were lifeless but still existed. There +were bazaars, shops, warehouses, market stalls, granaries- for the +most part still stocked with goods- and there were factories and +workshops, palaces and wealthy houses filled with luxuries, hospitals, +prisons, government offices, churches, and cathedrals. The longer +the French remained the more these forms of town life perished, +until finally all was merged into one confused, lifeless scene of +plunder. + +The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the +wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But +plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city +began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater +the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth +of the city and its regular life restored. + +Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by +curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-interest- house +owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and +peasants- streamed into Moscow as blood flows to the heart. + +Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off +plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses +out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades' +discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat +down one another's prices to below what they had been in former +days. Gangs of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow +every day, and on all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built, +and old, charred ones repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths. +Cookshops and taverns were opened in partially burned houses. The +clergy resumed the services in many churches that had not been burned. +Donors contributed Church property that had been stolen. Government +clerks set up their baize-covered tables and their pigeonholes of +documents in small rooms. The higher authorities and the police +organized the distribution of goods left behind by the French. The +owners of houses in which much property had been left, brought there +from other houses, complained of the injustice of taking everything to +the Faceted Palace in the Kremlin; others insisted that as the +French had gathered things from different houses into this or that +house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to keep all that was +found there. They abused the police and bribed them, made out +estimates at ten times their value for government stores that had +perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin +wrote proclamations. + +CHAPTER XV + +At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex +of his house which had not been burned. He called on Count +Rostopchin and on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he +intended to leave for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was +celebrating the victory, everything was bubbling with life in the +ruined but reviving city. Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone +wished to meet him, and everyone questioned him about what he had +seen. Pierre felt particularly well disposed toward them all, but +was now instinctively on his guard for fear of binding himself in +any way. To all questions put to him- whether important or quite +trifling- such as: Where would he live? Was he going to rebuild? +When was he going to Petersburg and would he mind taking a parcel +for someone?- he replied: "Yes, perhaps," or, "I think so," and so on. + +He had heard that the Rostovs were at Kostroma but the thought of +Natasha seldom occurred to him. If it did it was only as a pleasant +memory of the distant past. He felt himself not only free from +social obligations but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him, +he had aroused in himself. + +On the third day after his arrival he heard from the Drubetskoys +that Princess Mary was in Moscow. The death, sufferings, and last days +of Prince Andrew had often occupied Pierre's thoughts and now recurred +to him with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary +was in Moscow and living in her house- which had not been burned- in +Vozdvizhenka Street, he drove that same evening to see her. + +On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince Andrew, of +their friendship, of his various meetings with him, and especially +of the last one at Borodino. + +"Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then +in? Is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him +before he died?" thought Pierre. He recalled Karataev and his death +and involuntarily began to compare these two men, so different, and +yet so similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the +love he felt for both of them. + +Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most serious +mood. The house had escaped the fire; it showed signs of damage but +its general aspect was unchanged. The old footman, who met Pierre with +a stern face as if wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence +of the old prince had not disturbed the order of things in the +house, informed him that the princess had gone to her own +apartments, and that she received on Sundays. + +"Announce me. Perhaps she will see me," said Pierre. + +"Yes, sir," said the man. "Please step into the portrait gallery." + +A few minutes later the footman returned with Dessalles, who brought +word from the princess that she would be very glad to see Pierre if he +would excuse her want of ceremony and come upstairs to her apartment. + +In a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess and with her +another person dressed in black. Pierre remembered that the princess +always had lady companions, but who they were and what they were +like he never knew or remembered. "This must be one of her +companions," he thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress. + +The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand. + +"Yes," she said, looking at his altered face after he had kissed her +hand, "so this is how we meet again. He of spoke of you even at the +very last," she went on, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion +with a shyness that surprised him for an instant. + +"I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first piece of +good news we had received for a long time." + +Again the princess glanced round at her companion with even more +uneasiness in her manner and was about to add something, but Pierre +interrupted her. + +"Just imagine- I knew nothing about him!" said he. "I thought he had +been killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only +know that he fell in with the Rostovs.... What a strange coincidence!" + +Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced once at the +companion's face, saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him, and, +as often happens when one is talking, felt somehow that this companion +in the black dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would +not hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary. + +But when he mentioned the Rostovs, Princess Mary's face expressed +still greater embarrassment. She again glanced rapidly from Pierre's +face to that of the lady in the black dress and said: + +"Do you really not recognize her?" + +Pierre looked again at the companion's pale, delicate face with +its black eyes and peculiar mouth, and something near to him, long +forgotten and more than sweet, looked at him from those attentive +eyes. + +"But no, it can't be!" he thought. "This stern, thin, pale face that +looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely reminds me of her." +But at that moment Princess Mary said, "Natasha!" And with difficulty, +effort, and stress, like the opening of a door grown rusty on its +hinges, a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and from +that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused Pierre +with a happiness he had long forgotten and of which he had not even +been thinking- especially at that moment. It suffused him, seized him, +and enveloped him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer +possible, it was Natasha and he loved her. + +At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to Princess +Mary, and above all to himself, a secret of which he himself had +been unaware. He flushed joyfully yet with painful distress. He +tried to hide his agitation. But the more he tried to hide it the more +clearly- clearer than any words could have done- did he betray to +himself, to her, and to Princess Mary that he loved her. + +"No, it's only the unexpectedness of it," thought Pierre. But as +soon as he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with +Princess Mary he again glanced at Natasha, and a still-deeper flush +suffused his face and a still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and +fear seized his soul. He became confused in his speech and stopped +in the middle of what he was saying. + +Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not at all expect +to see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the +change in her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin +and pale, but that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was +unrecognizable at the moment he entered because on that face whose +eyes had always shone with a suppressed smile of the joy of life, +now when he first entered and glanced at her there was not the least +shadow of a smile: only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly +interrogative. + +Pierre's confusion was not reflected by any confusion on Natasha's +part, but only by the pleasure that just perceptibly lit up her +whole face. + +CHAPTER XVI + +"She has come to stay with me," said Princess Mary. "The count and +countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a dreadful +state; but it was necessary for Natasha herself to see a doctor. +They insisted on her coming with me." + +"Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?" said Pierre, +addressing Natasha. "You know it happened the very day we were +rescued. I saw him. What a delightful boy he was!" + +Natasha looked at him, and by way of answer to his words her eyes +widened and lit up. + +"What can one say or think of as a consolation?" said Pierre. +"Nothing! Why had such a splendid boy, so full of life, to die?" + +"Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without faith..." +remarked Princess Mary. + +"Yes, yes, that is really true," Pierre hastily interrupted her. + +"Why is it true?" Natasha asked, looking attentively into Pierre's +eyes. + +"How can you ask why?" said Princess Mary. "The thought alone of +what awaits..." + +Natasha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish again looked +inquiringly at Pierre. + +"And because," Pierre continued, "only one who believes that there +is a God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers and... yours." + +Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly +stopped. Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and again addressed +Princess Mary, asking about his friend's last days. + +Pierre's confusion had now almost vanished, but at the same time +he felt that his freedom had also completely gone. He felt that +there was now a judge of his every word and action whose judgment +mattered more to him than that of all the rest of the world. As he +spoke now he was considering what impression his words would make on +Natasha. He did not purposely say things to please her, but whatever +he was saying he regarded from her standpoint. + +Princess Mary- reluctantly as is usual in such cases- began +telling of the condition in which she had found Prince Andrew. But +Pierre's face quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager +restless expression, gradually compelled her to go into details +which she feared to recall for her own sake. + +"Yes, yes, and so...? " Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her +with his whole body and eagerly listened to her story. "Yes, yes... so +he grew tranquil and softened? With all his soul he had always +sought one thing- to be perfectly good- so he could not be afraid of +death. The faults he had- if he had any- were not of his making. So he +did soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you again," he added, +suddenly turning to Natasha and looking at her with eyes full of +tears. + +Natasha's face twitched. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a +moment. She hesitated for an instant whether to speak or not. + +"Yes, that was happiness," she then said in her quiet voice with its +deep chest notes. "For me it certainly was happiness." She paused. +"And he... he... he said he was wishing for it at the very moment I +entered the room...." + +Natasha's voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped hands on her +knees, and then controlling herself with an evident effort lifted +her head and began to speak rapidly. + +"We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I did not dare +to ask about him. Then suddenly Sonya told me he was traveling with +us. I had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I +wanted was to see him and be with him," she said, trembling, and +breathing quickly. + +And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell what she +had never yet mentioned to anyone- all she had lived through during +those three weeks of their journey and life at Yaroslavl. + +Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed upon her full +of tears. As he listened he did not think of Prince Andrew, nor of +death, nor of what she was telling. He listened to her and felt only +pity for her, for what she was suffering now while she was speaking. + +Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her tears, sat +beside Natasha, and heard for the first time the story of those last +days of her brother's and Natasha's love. + +Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful tale. + +She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate +secrets of her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish. +Several times she repeated the same thing twice. + +Dessalles' voice was heard outside the door asking whether little +Nicholas might come in to say good night. + +"Well, that's all- everything," said Natasha. + +She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran to the +door which was hidden by curtains, struck her head against it, and +rushed from the room with a moan either of pain or sorrow. + +Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did +not understand why he suddenly felt all alone in the world. + +Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his +attention to her nephew who had entered the room. + +At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas' face, which +resembled his father's, affected Pierre so much that when he had +kissed the boy he got up quickly, took out his handkerchief, and +went to the window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but +she would not let him go. + +"No, Natasha and I sometimes don't go to sleep till after two, so +please don't go. I will order supper. Go downstairs, we will come +immediately." + +Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: "This is the +first time she has talked of him like that." + +CHAPTER XVII + +Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room; a few +minutes later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary entered with +Natasha. Natasha was calm, though a severe and grave expression had +again settled on her face. They all three of them now experienced that +feeling of awkwardness which usually follows after a serious and +heartfelt talk. It is impossible to go back to the same +conversation, to talk of trifles is awkward, and yet the desire to +speak is there and silence seems like affectation. They went +silently to table. The footmen drew back the chairs and pushed them up +again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin and, resolving to break +the silence, looked at Natasha and at Princess Mary. They had +evidently both formed the same resolution; the eyes of both shone with +satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life also has joy. + +"Do you take vodka, Count?" asked Princess Mary, and those words +suddenly banished the shadows of the past. "Now tell us about +yourself," said she. "One hears such improbable wonders about you." + +"Yes," replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to +him. "They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Mary +Abramovna invited me to her house and kept telling me what had +happened, or ought to have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also +instructed me how I ought to tell of my experiences. In general I have +noticed that it is very easy to be an interesting man (I am an +interesting man now); people invite me out and tell me all about +myself." + +Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking. + +"We have been told," Princess Mary interrupted her, "that you lost +two millions in Moscow. Is that true?" + +"But I am three times as rich as before," returned Pierre. + +Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his +wife's debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that +he had become three times as rich as before. + +"What I have certainly gained is freedom," he began seriously, but +did not continue, noticing that this theme was too egotistic. + +"And are you building?" + +"Yes. Savelich says I must!" + +"Tell me, you did not know of the countess' death when you decided +to remain in Moscow?" asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed, +noticing that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed +to his words a meaning he had perhaps not intended. + +"No," answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning +Princess Mary had given to his words. "I heard of it in Orel and you +cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple," he +added quickly, glancing at Natasha and noticing on her face +curiosity as to how he would speak of his wife, "but her death shocked +me terribly. When two people quarrel they are always both in fault, +and one's own guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other +is no longer alive. And then such a death... without friends and +without consolation! I am very, very sorry for her," he concluded, and +was pleased to notice a look of glad approval on Natasha's face. + +"Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor," said +Princess Mary. + +Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time tried not to +look at Natasha. When he ventured to glance her way again her face was +cold, stern, and he fancied even contemptuous. + +"And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we have been +told?" said Princess Mary. + +Pierre laughed. + +"No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being taken +prisoner means being Napoleon's guest. Not only did I never see him +but I heard nothing about him- I was in much lower company!" + +Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his +captivity was gradually led on to do so. + +"But it's true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?" +Natasha asked with a slight smile. "I guessed it then when we met at +the Sukharev tower, do you remember?" + +Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by +Princess Mary's questions and especially by Natasha's into giving a +detailed account of his adventures. + +At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary +with him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he +came to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was +unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed +emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he +has lived through. + +Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at +Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his +goodness. Natasha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face +constantly changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an +attention that never wandered- evidently herself experiencing all that +he described. Not only her look, but her exclamations and the brief +questions she put, showed Pierre that she understood just what he +wished to convey. It was clear that she understood not only what he +said but also what he wished to, but could not, express in words. +The account Pierre gave of the incident with the child and the woman +for protecting whom he was arrested was this: "It was an awful +sight- children abandoned, some in the flames... One was snatched +out before my eyes... and there were women who had their things +snatched off and their earrings torn out..." he flushed and grew +confused. "Then a patrol arrived and all the men- all those who were +not looting, that is- were arrested, and I among them." + +"I am sure you're not telling us everything; I am sure you did +something..." said Natasha and pausing added, "something fine?" + +Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass +over the horrible details, but Natasha insisted that he should not +omit anything. + +Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this time he had +risen from the table and was pacing the room, Natasha following him +with her eyes. Then he added: + +"No, you can't understand what I learned from that illiterate man- +that simple fellow." + +"Yes, yes, go on!" said Natasha. "Where is he?" + +"They killed him almost before my eyes." + +And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to tell of +the last days of their retreat, of Karataev's illness and his death. + +He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled them. He now, +as it were, saw a new meaning in all he had gone through. Now that +he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which +a man has when women listen to him- not clever women who when +listening either try to remember what they hear to enrich their +minds and when opportunity offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt +it to some thought of their own and promptly contribute their own +clever comments prepared in their little mental workshop- but the +pleasure given by real women gifted with a capacity to select and +absorb the very best a man shows of himself. Natasha without knowing +it was all attention: she did not lose a word, no single quiver in +Pierre's voice, no look, no twitch of a muscle in his face, nor a +single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its flight and +took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret meaning of +all Pierre's mental travail. + +Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized with him, but she +now saw something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the +possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre, and +the first thought of this filled her heart with gladness. + +It was three o'clock in the morning. The footmen came in with sad +and stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them. + +Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at him intently +with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as if trying to +understand something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre +in shamefaced and happy confusion glanced occasionally at her, and +tried to think what to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess +Mary was silent. It occurred to none of them that it was three o'clock +and time to go to bed. + +"People speak of misfortunes and sufferings," remarked Pierre, +"but if at this moment I were asked: 'Would you rather be what you +were before you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?' +then for heaven's sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh! +We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is +lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While +there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us. I say +this to you," he added, turning to Natasha. + +"Yes, yes," she said, answering something quite different. "I too +should wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning." + +Pierre looked intently at her. + +"Yes, and nothing more." said Natasha. + +"It's not true, not true!" cried Pierre. "I am not to blame for +being alive and wishing to live- nor you either." + +Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and +began to cry. + +"What is it, Natasha?" said Princess Mary. + +"Nothing, nothing." She smiled at Pierre through her tears. "Good +night! It is time for bed." + +Pierre rose and took his leave. + +Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked +of what Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her +opinion of Pierre nor did Natasha speak of him. + +"Well, good night, Mary!" said Natasha. "Do you know, I am often +afraid that by not speaking of him" (she meant Prince Andrew) "for +fear of not doing justice to our feelings, we forget him." + +Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice +of Natasha's remark, but she did not express agreement in words. + +"Is it possible to forget?" said she. + +"It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard +and painful, but good, very good!" said Natasha. "I am sure he +really loved him. That is why I told him... Was it all right?" she +added, suddenly blushing. + +"To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!" said +Princess Mary. + +"Do you know, Mary..." Natasha suddenly said with a mischievous +smile such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long +time, "he has somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh- as if he +had just come out of a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral +bath. Isn't it true?" + +"Yes," replied Princess Mary. "He has greatly improved." + +"With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well, just as +if he had come straight from the bath... Papa used to..." + +"I understand why he" (Prince Andrew) "liked no one so much as him," +said Princess Mary. + +"Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are friends when +they are quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike +him- in everything." + +"Yes, but he's wonderful." + +"Well, good night," said Natasha. + +And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her +face as if it had been forgotten there. + +CHAPTER XVIII + +It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He +paced up and down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult +problem and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and +wincing, and now smiling happily. + +He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of their love, +at one moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that +feeling. It was already six in the morning and he still paced up and +down the room. + +"Well, what's to be done if it cannot be avoided? What's to be done? +Evidently it has to be so," said he to himself, and hastily undressing +he got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or +indecision. + +"Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do +everything that she and I may be man and wife," he told himself. + +A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on +the Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday, Savelich came to ask him +about packing for the journey. + +"What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in +Petersburg?" he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. "Oh, yes, +long ago before this happened I did for some reason mean to go to +Petersburg," he reflected. "Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good +fellow he is and how attentive, and how he remembers everything," he +thought, looking at Savelich's old face, "and what a pleasant smile he +has!" + +"Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?" +Pierre asked him. + +"What's the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under +the late count- the kingdom of heaven be his!- and we have lived under +you too, without ever being wronged." + +"And your children?" + +"The children will live just the same. With such masters one can +live." + +"But what about my heirs?" said Pierre. "Supposing I suddenly +marry... it might happen," he added with an involuntary smile. + +"If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good +thing." + +"How easy he thinks it," thought Pierre. "He doesn't know how +terrible it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is +terrible!" + +"So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?" asked +Savelich. + +"No, I'll put it off for a bit. I'll tell you later. You must +forgive the trouble I have put you to," said Pierre, and seeing +Savelich smile, he thought: "But how strange it is that he should +not know that now there is no Petersburg for me, and that that must be +settled first of all! But probably he knows it well enough and is only +pretending. Shall I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?" +Pierre reflected. "No, another time." + +At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had +been to see Princess Mary the day before and had there met- "Whom do +you think? Natasha Rostova!" + +The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than +if he had seen Anna Semenovna. + +"Do you know her?" asked Pierre. + +"I have seen the princess," she replied. "I heard that they were +arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It would be a very good +thing for the Rostovs, they are said to be utterly ruined." + +"No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?" + +"I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great +pity." + +"No, she either doesn't understand or is pretending," thought +Pierre. "Better not say anything to her either." + +The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre's journey. + +"How kind they all are," thought Pierre. "What is surprising is that +they should trouble about these things now when it can no longer be of +interest to them. And all for me!" + +On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him +to send a representative to the Faceted Palace to recover things +that were to be returned to their owners that day. + +"And this man too," thought Pierre, looking into the face of the +Chief of Police. "What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind. +Fancy bothering about such trifies now! And they actually say he is +not honest and takes bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn't +he take bribes? That's the way he was brought up, and everybody does +it. But what a kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at +me." + +Pierre went to Princess Mary's to dinner. + +As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned +down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The +picturesqueness of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the +burned-out quarters of the town, stretching out and concealing one +another, reminded him of the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he +met and their passengers, the carpenters cutting the timber for new +houses with axes, the women hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked +at him with cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to say: "Ah, there he +is! Let's see what will come of it!" + +At the entrance to Princess Mary's house Pierre felt doubtful +whether he had really been there the night before and really seen +Natasha and talked to her. "Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall +go in and find no one there." But he had hardly entered the room +before he felt her presence with his whole being by the loss of his +sense of freedom. She was in the same black dress with soft folds +and her hair was done the same way as the day before, yet she was +quite different. Had she been like this when he entered the day before +he could not for a moment have failed to recognize her. + +She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince +Andrew's fiancee. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on +her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression. + +Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there, +but Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house +with her. + +Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening. +Though Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently glad to see their +visitor and though all Pierre's interest was now centered in that +house, by the evening they had talked over everything and the +conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and repeatedly +broke off. He stayed so long that Princess Mary and Natasha +exchanged glances, evidently wondering when he would go. Pierre +noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat +on because he simply could not get up and take his leave. + +Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and +complaining of a headache began to say good night. + +"So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?" she asked. + +"No, I am not going," Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone +and as though offended. "Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow- but I +won't say good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any +commissions for me," said he, standing before Princess Mary and +turning red, but not taking his departure. + +Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other +hand instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly +and intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she had +plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and +long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk. + +When Natasha left the room Pierre's confusion and awkwardness +immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly +moved an armchair toward Princess Mary. + +"Yes, I wanted to tell you," said he, answering her look as if she +had spoken. "Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess, +my dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of +her, I know it's impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a +brother to her. No, not that, I don't, I can't..." + +He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands. + +"Well," he went on with an evident effort at self-control and +coherence. "I don't know when I began to love her, but I have loved +her and her alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine +life without her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the +thought that perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be +missing that possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell +me, can I hope? Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!" he added +after a pause, and touched her hand as she did not reply. + +"I am thinking of what you have told me," answered Princess Mary. +"This is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love +at present..." + +Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love +was impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden +change in Natasha two days before that she would not only not be +hurt if Pierre spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she +wished for. + +"To speak to her now wouldn't do," said the princess all the same. + +"But what am I to do? + +"Leave it to me," said Princess Mary. "I know..." + +Pierre was looking into Princess Mary's eyes. + +"Well?... Well?..." he said. + +"I know that she loves... will love you," Princess Mary corrected +herself. + +Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a +frightened expression seized Princess Mary's hand. + +"What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?" + +"Yes, I think so," said Princess Mary with a smile. "Write to her +parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it +to happen and my heart tells me it will." + +"No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can't be.... How happy I +am! No, it can't be!" Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess +Mary's hands. + +"Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you," +she said. + +"To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I'll go. But I may come again +tomorrow?" + +Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less animated +than she had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her +Pierre sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor +she existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. "Is it +possible? No, it can't be," he told himself at every look, gesture, +and word that filled his soul with joy. + +When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could +not help holding it a little longer in his own. + +"Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this +treasure of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that +it will one day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to +myself?... No, that's impossible!..." + +"Good-by, Count," she said aloud. "I shall look forward very much to +your return," she added in a whisper. + +And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face +which accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of +inexhaustible memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for +Pierre. "'I shall look forward very much to your return....' Yes, yes, +how did she say it? Yes, 'I shall look forward very much to your +return.' Oh, how happy I am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!" +said Pierre to himself. + +CHAPTER XIX + +There was nothing in Pierre's soul now at all like what had troubled +it during his courtship of Helene. + +He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the +words he had spoken, or say: "Oh, why did I not say that?" and, +"Whatever made me say 'Je vous aime'?" On the contrary, he now +repeated in imagination every word that he or Natasha had spoken and +pictured every detail of her face and smile, and did not wish to +diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and again. There +was now not a shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what he had +undertaken was right or wrong. Only one terrible doubt sometimes +crossed his mind: "Wasn't it all a dream? Isn't Princess Mary +mistaken? Am I not too conceited and self-confident? I believe all +this- and suddenly Princess Mary will tell her, and she will be sure +to smile and say: 'How strange! He must be deluding himself. Doesn't +he know that he is a man, just a man, while I...? I am something +altogether different and higher.'" + +That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now +make any plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable +that if only he could attain it, it would be the end of all things. +Everything ended with that. + +A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself +incapable, possessed him. The whole meaning of life- not for him alone +but for the whole world- seemed to him centered in his love and the +possibility of being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to +be occupied with one thing only- his future happiness. Sometimes it +seemed to him that other people were all as pleased as he was +himself and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to be +busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw +allusions to his happiness. He often surprised those he met by his +significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to express a +secret understanding between him and them. And when he realized that +people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them with his +whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them that all that +occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention. + +When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service, +or when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the +assumption that everybody's welfare depended on this or that issue +of events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and +surprise people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw +everybody- both those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning +of life (that is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who +evidently did not understand it- in the bright light of the emotion +that shone within himself, and at once without any effort saw in +everyone he met everything that was good and worthy of being loved. + +When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her +memory aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the +bliss he now knew. Prince Vasili, who having obtained a new post and +some fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed +to him a pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied. + +Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity. +All the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained +true for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently, +but when he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the +views he had held at this time of his madness and they always proved +correct. + +"I may have appeared strange and queer then," he thought, "but I was +not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had +more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is +worth understanding in life, because... because I was happy." + +Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to +discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in +people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, +and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes +for loving them. + +CHAPTER XX + +After Pierre's departure that first evening, when Natasha had said +to Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: "He looks just, yes, just +as if he had come out of a Russian bath- in a short coat and with +his hair cropped," something hidden and unknown to herself, but +irrepressible, awoke in Natasha's soul. + +Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered. +To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to +the surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to +have forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer +complained of her position, did not say a word about the past, and +no longer feared to make happy plans for the future. She spoke +little of Pierre, but when Princess Mary mentioned him a +long-extinguished light once more kindled in her eyes and her lips +curved with a strange smile. + +The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised Princess +Mary; but when she understood its meaning it grieved her. "Can she +have loved my brother so little as to be able to forget him so +soon?" she thought when she reflected on the change. But when she +was with Natasha she was not vexed with her and did not reproach +her. The reawakened power of life that had seized Natasha was so +evidently irrepressible and unexpected by her that in her presence +Princess Mary felt that she had no right to reproach her even in her +heart. + +Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling +that she did not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad, +but bright and cheerful. + +When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk +with Pierre, Natasha met her on the threshold. + +"He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?" she repeated. + +And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness +for her joy settled on Natasha's face. + +"I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me." + +Understandable and touching as the look with which Natasha gazed +at her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her +agitation, these words pained her for a moment. She remembered her +brother and his love. + +"But what's to be done? She can't help it," thought the princess. + +And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha all that +Pierre had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natasha +was astounded. + +"To Petersburg!" she repeated as if unable to understand. + +But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary's face she +guessed the reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry. + +"Mary," said she, "tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being +bad. Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...." + +"You love him?" + +"Yes," whispered Natasha. + +"Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake," said Princess +Mary, who because of those tears quite forgave Natasha's joy. + +"It won't be just yet- someday. Think what fun it will be when I +am his wife and you marry Nicholas!" + +"Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about +you." + +They were silent awhile. + +"But why go to Petersburg?" Natasha suddenly asked, and hastily +replied to her own question. "But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He +must...." + +FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20 + +CHAPTER I + +Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had +subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the +mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of +their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate. + +Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the +movement of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time. +Various groups of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation +and dissolution of kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in +course of preparation. + +The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to +shore as previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures +were not borne by the waves from one shore to another as before. +They now seemed to rotate on one spot. The historical figures at the +head of armies, who formerly reflected the movement of the masses by +ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless +movement by political and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties. + +The historians call this activity of the historical figures "the +reaction." + +In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical +personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the +reaction. All the well-known people of that period, from Alexander and +Napoleon to Madame de Stael, Photius, Schelling, Fichte, +Chateaubriand, and the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and +are acquitted or condemned according to whether they conduced to +progress or to reaction. + +According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in +Russia also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who +according to them was the chief cause of the liberal movement at the +commencement of his reign, being the savior of Russia. + +There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist +to learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander +for things he did wrong at this period of his reign. + +"He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he +did well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning +of his reign and during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution +to Poland, forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakcheev, +favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkov and +Photius. He also acted badly by concerning himself with the active +army and disbanding the Semenov regiment." + +It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the +historians address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good +for humanity. + +What do these reproaches mean? + +Do not the very actions for which the historians praise Alexander +I (the liberal attempts at the beginning of his reign, his struggle +with Napoleon, the firmness he displayed in 1812 and the campaign of +1813) flow from the same sources- the circumstances of his birth, +education, and life- that made his personality what it was and from +which the actions for which they blame him (the Holy Alliance, the +restoration of Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later) also +flowed? + +In what does the substance of those reproaches lie? + +It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I, +standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human power with the +blinding light of history focused upon him; a character exposed to +those strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and +self-deception inseparable from power; a character who at every moment +of his life felt a responsibility for all that was happening in +Europe; and not a fictitious but a live character who like every man +had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, +beauty, and truth- that this character- though not lacking in virtue +(the historians do not accuse him of that)- had not the same +conception of the welfare of humanity fifty years ago as a present-day +professor who from his youth upwards has been occupied with +learning: that is, with books and lectures and with taking notes +from them. + +But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was +mistaken in his view of what was good for the people, we must +inevitably assume that the historian who judges Alexander will also +after the lapse of some time turn out to be mistaken in his view of +what is good for humanity. This assumption is all the more natural and +inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we see that +every year and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good for +mankind changes; so that what once seemed good, ten years later +seems bad, and vice versa. And what is more, we find at one and the +same time quite contradictory views as to what is bad and what is good +in history: some people regard giving a constitution to Poland and +forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in Alexander, while others +regard it as blameworthy. + +The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be called useful +or harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or +harmful. If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it +does not agree with his limited understanding of what is good. Whether +the preservation of my father's house in Moscow, or the glory of the +Russian arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg and other +universities, or the freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia, +or the balance of power in Europe, or a certain kind of European +culture called "progress" appear to me to be good or bad, I must admit +that besides these things the action of every historic character has +other more general purposes inaccessible to me. + +But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all +contradictions and possesses an unchanging standard of good and bad by +which to try historic characters and events; let us say that Alexander +could have done everything differently; let us say that with +guidance from those who blame him and who profess to know the ultimate +aim of the movement of humanity, he might have arranged matters +according to the program his present accusers would have given him- of +nationality, freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover +the ground). Let us assume that this program was possible and had then +been formulated, and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then +have become of the activity of all those who opposed the tendency that +then prevailed in the government- an activity that in the opinion of +the historians was good and beneficent? Their activity would not +have existed: there would have been no life, there would have been +nothing. + +If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the +possibility of life is destroyed. + +CHAPTER II + +If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to +the attainment of certain ends- the greatness of Russia or of +France, the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas +of the Revolution general progress or anything else- then it is +impossible to explain the facts of history without introducing the +conceptions of chance and genius. + +If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth +century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have +been accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the +invasion. If the aim wag the aggrandizement of France, that might have +been attained without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the +aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have +accomplished that much better than warfare. If the aim was the +progress of civilization, it is easy to see that there are other +ways of diffusing civilization more expedient than by the +destruction of wealth and of human lives. + +Why did it happen in this and not in some other way? + +Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation; genius +utilized it," says history. + +But what is chance? What is genius? + +The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing +thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a +certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a +certain event occurs; I think that I cannot know it; so I do not try +to know it and I talk about chance. I see a force producing effects +beyond the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not understand why +this occurs and I talk of genius. + +To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a +special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the +others must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing +conjunction of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances +that this ram, who instead of getting into the general fold every +evening goes into a special enclosure where there are oats- that +this very ram, swelling with fat, is killed for meat. + +But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to +them happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they +need only admit that what happens to them may also have purposes +beyond their ken, and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence +in what happened to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not +know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least know +that all that happened to the ram did not happen accidentally, and +will no longer need the conceptions of chance or genius. + +Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately +intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond +our ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of +historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they +produce (incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then +the words chance and genius become superfluous. + +We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European +convulsions and that we know only the facts- that is, the murders, +first in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria, +in Spain, and in Russia- and that the movements from the west to the +east and from the east to the west form the essence and purpose of +these events, and not only shall we have no need to see exceptional +ability and genius in Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be unable +to consider them to be anything but like other men, and we shall not +be obliged to have recourse to chance for an explanation of those +small events which made these people what they were, but it will be +clear that all those small events were inevitable. + +By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall +clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for +any single plant better suited to it than those it produces, so it +is impossible to imagine any two people more completely adapted down +to the smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than +Napoleon and Alexander with all their antecedents. + +CHAPTER III + +The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of +the beginning of the nineteenth century lies in the movement of the +mass of the European peoples from west to east and afterwards from +east to west. The commencement of that movement was the movement +from west to east. For the peoples of the west to be able to make +their warlike movement to Moscow it was necessary: (1) that they +should form themselves into a military group of a size able to +endure a collision with the warlike military group of the east, (2) +that they should abandon all established traditions and customs, and +(3) that during their military movement they should have at their head +a man who could justify to himself and to them the deceptions, +robberies, and murders which would have to be committed during that +movement. + +And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately +large group was destroyed, as well as the old habits and traditions, +and step by step a group was formed of larger dimensions with new +customs and traditions, and a man was produced who would stand at +the head of the coming movement and bear the responsibility for all +that had to be done. + +A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions, +without a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges- by what seem the +strangest chances- from among all the seething French parties, and +without joining any one of them is borne forward to a prominent +position. + +The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance +of his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling +and self-confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of +the army. The brilliant qualities of the soldiers of the army sent +to Italy, his opponents' reluctance to fight, and his own childish +audacity and self-confidence secure him military fame. Innumerable +so called chances accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into which he +falls with the rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts +to avoid his predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received +into the Russian service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes +to nothing. During the war in Italy he is several times on the verge +of destruction and each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing +to various diplomatic considerations the Russian armies- just those +which might have destroyed his prestige- do not appear upon the +scene till he is no longer there. + +On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a +process of dissolution in which all those who are in it are inevitably +wiped out and destroyed. And by chance an escape from this dangerous +position presents itself in the form of an aimless and senseless +expedition to Africa. Again so-called chance accompanies him. +Impregnable Malta surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes +are crowned with success. The enemy's fleet, which subsequently did +not let a single boat pass, allows his entire army to elude it. In +Africa a whole series of outrages are committed against the almost +unarmed inhabitants. And the men who commit these crimes, especially +their leader, assure themselves that this is admirable, this is glory- +it resembles Caesar and Alexander the Great and is therefore good. + +This ideal of glory and grandeur- which consists not merely in +considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on +every crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible +supernatural significance- that ideal, destined to guide this man +and his associates, had scope for its development in Africa. +Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The +cruelty of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His +childishly rash, uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from Africa, +leaving his comrades in distress, is set down to his credit, and again +the enemy's fleet twice lets him slip past. When, intoxicated by the +crimes he has committed so successfully, he reaches Paris, the +dissolution of the republican government, which a year earlier might +have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his presence there +now as a newcomer free from party entanglements can only serve to +exalt him- and though he himself has no plan, he is quite ready for +his new role. + +He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties +snatched at him and demanded his participation. + +He alone- with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy +and Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and +frankness in lying- he alone could justify what had to be done. + +He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from +his will and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his +mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and +the conspiracy is crowned with success. + +He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes +to flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon +and says senseless things that should have ruined him. But the once +proud and shrewd rulers of France, feeling that their part is played +out, are even more bewildered than he, and do not say the words they +should have said to destroy him and retain their power. + +Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by +agreement co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the +characters of the rulers of France, who submit to him; chance forms +the character of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government; +chance contrives a plot against him which not only fails to harm him +but confirms his power. Chance puts the Duc d'Enghien in his hands and +unexpectedly causes him to kill him- thereby convincing the mob more +forcibly than in any other way that he had the right, since he had the +might. Chance contrives that though he directs all his efforts to +prepare an expedition against England (which would inevitably have +ruined him) he never carries out that intention, but unexpectedly +falls upon Mack and the Austrians, who surrender without a battle. +Chance and genius give him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance +all men, not only the French but all Europe- except England which does +not take part in the events about to happen- despite their former +horror and detestation of his crimes, now recognize his authority, the +title he has given himself, and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which +seems excellent and reasonable to them all. + +As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement, +the western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806, +1807, and 1809, gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of +people that had formed in France unites into one group with the +peoples of Central Europe. The strength of the justification of the +man who stands at the head of the movement grows with the increased +size of the group. During the ten-year preparatory period this man had +formed relations with all the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited +rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate +Napoleonic ideal of glory and grandeur. One after another they +hasten to display their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia +sends his wife to seek the great man's mercy; the Emperor of Austria +considers it a favor that this man receives a daughter the Caesars +into his bed; the Pope, the guardian of all that the nations hold +sacred, utilizes religion for the aggrandizement of the great man. +It is not Napoleon who prepares himself for the accomplishment of +his role, so much as all those round him who prepare him to take on +himself the whole responsibility for what is happening and has to +happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud he commits, which in +the mouths of those around him is not at once represented as a great +deed. The most suitable fete the Germans can devise for him is a +celebration of Jena and Auerstadt. Not only is he great, but so are +his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his brothers-in-law. +Everything is done to deprive him of the remains of his reason and +to prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so too +are the forces. + +The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal- Moscow. +That city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the +opposing armies had suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to +Wagram. But suddenly instead of those chances and that genius which +hitherto had so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of +successes to the predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of +inverse chances occur- from the cold in his head at Borodino to the +sparks which set Moscow on fire, and the frosts- and instead of +genius, stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident. + +The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are +now not for Napoleon but always against him. + +A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a +remarkable resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east. +Attempted drives from east to west- similar to the contrary +movements of 1805, 1807, and 1809- precede the great westward +movement; there is the same coalescence into a group of enormous +dimensions; the same adhesion of the people of Central Europe to the +movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same increasing rapidity +as the goal is approached. + +Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government +and army are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no longer of any +account; all his actions are evidently pitiful and mean, but again +an inexplicable chance occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they +regard as the cause of their sufferings. Deprived of power and +authority, his crimes and his craft exposed, he should have appeared +to them what he appeared ten years previously and one year later- an +outlawed brigand. But by some strange chance no one perceives this. +His part is not yet ended. The man who ten years before and a year +later was considered an outlawed brigand is sent to an island two +days' sail from France, which for some reason is presented to him as +his dominion, and guards are given to him and millions of money are +paid him. + +CHAPTER IV + +The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The +waves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies +are formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have +caused the floods to abate. + +But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The +diplomatists think that their disagreements are the cause of this +fresh pressure of natural forces; they anticipate war between their +sovereigns; the position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they +feel to be rising does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises +again from the same point as before- Paris. The last backwash of the +movement from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the +apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the military +movement of that period of history. + +The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without +any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but +by strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man +they cursed the day before and will curse again a month later. + +This man is still needed to justify the final collective act. + +That act is performed. + +The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off +his powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more. + +And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to +himself in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues +and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to +the whole world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as +long as an unseen hand directed his actions. + +The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the +actor shows him to us. + +"See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was +not he but I who moved you?" + +But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people +understood this. + +Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of +Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from +east to west. + +What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head +of that movement from east to west? + +What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with +European affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests; +a moral superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated +with him; a mild and attractive personality; and a personal +grievance against Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; all +this had been prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life: +his education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded +him, and by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt. + +During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed. +But as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented +itself he appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the +nations of Europe, led them to the goal. + +The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses +all possible power. How does he use it? + +Alexander I- the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early +years had striven only for his people's welfare, the originator of the +liberal innovations in his fatherland- now that he seemed to possess +the utmost power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing +about the welfare of his peoples- at the time when Napoleon in exile +was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made +mankind happy had he retained power- Alexander I, having fulfilled his +mission and feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes +the insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it, and +gives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he despises, saying +only: + +"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like +the rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of +God." + +As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, +and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to +comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet +has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man. + +A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is +afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet +admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it +exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee +collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it +exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life +of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed +the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate +its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of +a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this +the purpose of the bee's existence. Another, observing the migration +of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that +in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the +bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes +the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in +the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the +ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension. + +All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee +to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of +historic characters and nations. + +CHAPTER V + +Natasha's wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in 1813, was the +last happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov +died that same year and, as always happens, after the father's death +the family group broke up. + +The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the +flight from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha's despair, Petya's +death, and the old countess' grief fell blow after blow on the old +count's head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning of +all these events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if +expecting and inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed +now frightened and distraught and now unnaturally animated and +enterprising. + +The arrangements for Natasha's marriage occupied him for a while. He +ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful, +but his cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the +contrary it evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him. + +When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to +complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his +bed. He realized from the first that he would not get up again, +despite the doctor's encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in +an armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave +him his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last +day, sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for +having dissipated their property- that being the chief fault of +which he was conscious. After receiving communion and unction he +quietly died; and next day a throng of acquaintances who came to pay +their last respects to the deceased filled the house rented by the +Rostovs. All these acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at +his house and had so often laughed at him, now said, with a common +feeling of self-reproach and emotion, as if justifying themselves: +"Well, whatever he may have been he was a most worthy man. You don't +meet such men nowadays.... And which of us has not weaknesses of his +own?" + +It was just when the count's affairs had become so involved that +it was impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year +that he unexpectedly died. + +Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his +father's death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and +without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went +to Moscow. The state of the count's affairs became quite obvious a +month after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total of +small debts the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts +amounted to double the value of the property. + +Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance. +But he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father's memory, which +he held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing and +accepted the inheritance together with the obligation to pay the +debts. + +The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague but +powerful influence exerted on them while he lived by the count's +careless good nature, all proceeded to enforce their claims at once. +As always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should +get paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given +them as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors. +Nicholas was allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had seemed +to pity the old man- the cause of their losses (if they were +losses)- now remorselessly pursued the young heir who had +voluntarily undertaken the debts and was obviously not guilty of +contracting them. + +Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold +by auction for half its value, and half the debts still remained +unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles offered him by his +brother-in-law Bezukhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely +due for value received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the +remainder, as the creditors threatened, he re-entered the government +service. + +He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel +at the next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold +on life; and so despite his reluctant to remain in Moscow among people +who had known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil +service, he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the +uniform of which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and Sonya +to a small house on the Sivtsev Vrazhek. + +Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had +no clear idea of Nicholas' circumstances. Having borrowed money from +his brother-in-law, Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from +him. His position was the more difficult because with his salary of +twelve hundred rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and +Sonya, but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their poverty. +The countess could not conceive of life without the luxurious +conditions she had been used to from childhood and, unable to +realize how hard it was for her son, kept demanding now a carriage +(which they did not keep) to send for a friend, now some expensive +article of food for herself, or wine for her son, or money to buy a +present as a surprise for Natasha or Sonya, or for Nicholas himself. + +Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her +whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their +poverty from the old countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably +indebted to Sonya for all she was doing for his mother and greatly +admired her patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her. + +He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and +because there was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that +people are valued for, but little that could have made him love her. +He felt that the more he valued her the less he loved her. He had +taken her at her word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now +behaved as if all that had passed between them had been long forgotten +and could never in any case be renewed. + +Nicholas' position became worse and worse. The idea of putting +something aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he +not save anything, but to comply with his mother's demands he even +incurred some small debts. He could see no way out of this +situation. The idea of marrying some rich woman, which was suggested +to him by his female relations, was repugnant to him. The other way +out- his mother's death- never entered his head. He wished for nothing +and hoped for nothing, and deep in his heart experienced a gloomy +and stern satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his +position. He tried to avoid his old acquaintances with their +commiseration and offensive offers of assistance; he avoided all +distraction and recreation, and even at home did nothing but play +cards with his mother, pace silently up and down the room, and smoke +one pipe after another. He seemed carefully to cherish within +himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled him to endure his +position. + +CHAPTER VI + +At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From +reports current in town she learned how the Rostovs were situated, and +how "the son has sacrificed himself for his mother," as people were +saying. + +"I never expected anything else of him," said Princess Mary to +herself, feeling a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her +friendly relations with all the Rostovs which had made her almost a +member of the family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But +remembering her relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she was shy +about doing so. Making a great effort she did however go to call on +them a few weeks after her arrival in Moscow. + +Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess' room could only +be reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure +as she had expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a +cold, stiff, proud expression she had not seen on it before. He +inquired about her health, led the way to his mother, and having sat +there for five minutes left the room. + +When the princess came out of the countess' room Nicholas met her +again, and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to +the anteroom. To her remarks about his mother's health he made no +reply. "What's that to you? Leave me in peace," his looks seemed to +say. + +"Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can't bear +these ladies and all these civilities!" said he aloud in Sonya's +presence, evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the +princess' carriage had disappeared. + +"Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?" cried Sonya, hardly able +to conceal her delight. "She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!" + +Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess +any more. But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several +times a day. + +She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her, +expressed a wish to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored +when she began to talk about her. + +Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the +princess, but his silence irritated her. + +"She is a very admirable and excellent young woman," said she, +"and you must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing +somebody, and I think it must be dull for you only seeing us." + +"But I don't in the least want to, Mamma." + +"You used to want to, and now you don't. Really I don't understand +you, my dear. One day you are dull, and the next you refuse to see +anyone." + +"But I never said I was dull." + +"Why, you said yourself you don't want even to see her. She is a +very admirable young woman and you always liked her, but now +suddenly you have got some notion or other in your head. You hide +everything from me." + +"Not at all, Mamma." + +"If I were asking you to do something disagreeable now- but I only +ask you to return a call. One would think mere politeness required +it.... Well, I have asked you, and now I won't interfere any more +since you have secrets from your mother." + +"Well, then, I'll go if you wish it." + +"It doesn't matter to me. I only wish it for your sake." + +Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards for a +patience, trying to divert his mother's attention to another topic. + +The same conversation was repeated next day and the day after, and +the day after that. + +After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly chilly reception +by Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been +right in not wishing to be the first to call. + +"I expected nothing else," she told herself, calling her pride to +her aid. "I have nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the +old lady, who was always kind to me and to whom I am under many +obligations." + +But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling +akin to remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she +had firmly resolved not to call on the Rostovs again and to forget the +whole matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position. +And when she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit +that it was her relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did not +express his feeling for her (she knew that) but it concealed +something, and until she could discover what that something was, she +felt that she could not be at ease. + +One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her +nephew's lessons, she was informed that Rostov had called. With a firm +resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she +sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room. + +Her first glance at Nicholas' face told her that he had only come to +fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain +the tone in which he addressed her. + +They spoke of the countess' health, of their mutual friends, of +the latest war news, and when the ten minutes required by propriety +had elapsed after which a visitor may rise, Nicholas got up to say +good-by. + +With Mademoiselle Bourienne's help the princess had maintained the +conversation very well, but at the very last moment, just when he +rose, she was so tired of talking of what did not interest her, and +her mind was so full of the question why she alone was granted so +little happiness in life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat +still, her luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing +that he had risen. + +Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to notice her +abstraction, made some remark to Mademoiselle Bourienne and then again +looked at the princess. She still sat motionless with a look of +suffering on her gentle face. He suddenly felt sorry for her and was +vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the sadness her face +expressed. He wished to help her and say something pleasant, but could +think of nothing to say. + +"Good-by, Princess!" said he. + +She started, flushed, and sighed deeply. + +"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said as if waking up. "Are you going +already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the +countess!" + +"Wait a moment, I'll fetch it," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she +left the room. + +They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another. + +"Yes, Princess," said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, "it doesn't +seem long ago since we first met at Bogucharovo, but how much water +has flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then, +yet I would give much to bring back that time... but there's no +bringing it back." + +Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous +ones as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden +meaning of his words which would explain his feeling for her. + +"Yes, yes," said she, "but you have no reason to regret the past, +Count. As I understand your present life, I think you will always +recall it with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills +it now..." + +"I cannot accept your praise," he interrupted her hurriedly. "On the +contrary I continually reproach myself.... But this is not at all an +interesting or cheerful subject." + +His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the +princess had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved, +and it was to him that she now spoke. + +"I thought you would allow me to tell you this," she said. "I had +come so near to you... and to all your family that I thought you would +not consider my sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken," and +suddenly her voice trembled. "I don't know why," she continued, +recovering herself, "but you used to be different, and..." + +"There are a thousand reasons why," laying special emphasis on the +why. "Thank you, Princess," he added softly. "Sometimes it is hard." + +"So that's why! That's why!" a voice whispered in Princess Mary's +soul. "No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only +that handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble, +resolute, self-sacrificing spirit too," she said to herself. "Yes, +he is poor now and I am rich.... Yes, that's the only reason.... +Yes, were it not for that..." And remembering his former tenderness, +and looking now at his kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood +the cause of his coldness. + +"But why, Count, why?" she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer +to him. "Why? Tell me. You must tell me!" + +He was silent. + +"I don't understand your why, Count," she continued, "but it's +hard for me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of +our former friendship. And that hurts me." There were tears in her +eyes and in her voice. "I have had so little happiness in life that +every loss is hard for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!" and +suddenly she began to cry and was hurrying from the room. + +"Princess, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, trying to stop her. +"Princess!" + +She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one +another's eyes- and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly +became possible, inevitable, and very near. + +CHAPTER VII + +In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to +Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya. + +Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without +selling any of his wife's property, and having received a small +inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as +well. + +In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs +that he was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was +negotiating to buy back Otradnoe- that being his pet dream. + +Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it +that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas +was a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the +English ones then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical +treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising of +expensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not +make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He +always had before his mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any +particular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was not the +nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor manures, nor +special plows, but that most important agent by which nitrogen, +oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective- the peasant laborer. +When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its +different branches, it was the serf who especially attracted his +attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a tool, but also a +judge of farming and an end in himself. At first he watched the serfs, +trying to understand their aims and what they considered good and bad, +and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in reality +learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and their +judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood the +peasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their +language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to +them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform +toward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas' management +produced very brilliant results. + +Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the +estates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and +delegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they +had the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before +analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit and +credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattle +the peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. He +kept the peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not +allowing the family groups to divide into separate households. He +was hard alike on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to +get them expelled from the commune. + +He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants' hay and +corn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown and +harvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as did +Nicholas. + +He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs- the +"drones" as he called them- and everyone said he spoiled them by his +laxity. When a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf, +especially if one had to be punished, he always felt undecided and +consulted everybody in the house; but when it was possible to have a +domestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he did so without +the least hesitation. He never felt any hesitation in dealing with the +peasants. He knew that his every decision would be approved by them +all with very few exceptions. + +He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to +make things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined +to do so. He could not have said by what standard he judged what he +should or should not do, but the standard was quite firm and +definite in his own mind. + +Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he +would say: "What can one do with our Russian peasants?" and imagined +that he could not bear them. + +Yet he loved "our Russian peasants" and their way of life with his +whole soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated +the one way and manner of farming which produced good results. + +Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband's and +regretted that she could not share it; but she could not understand +the joys and vexations he derived from that world, to her so remote +and alien. She could not understand why he was so particularly +animated and happy when, after getting up at daybreak and spending the +whole morning in the fields or on the threshing floor, he returned +from the sowing or mowing or reaping to have tea with her. She did not +understand why he spoke with such admiration and delight of the +farming of the thrifty and well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermishin, who +with his family had carted corn all night; or of the fact that his +(Nicholas') sheaves were already stacked before anyone else had his +harvest in. She did not understand why he stepped out from the +window to the veranda and smiled under his mustache and winked so +joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry and thirsty +shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind carried away a +threatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return from the +barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and +gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would say: +"Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants' will all be under +cover." + +Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready +to anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she +brought him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed +to her to be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should +obstinately refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what +was not her business. She felt he had a world apart, which he loved +passionately and which had laws she had not fathomed. + +Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work +he was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: "Not in the +least; it never entered my head and I wouldn't do that for their good! +That's all poetry and old wives' talk- all that doing good to one's +neighbor! What I want is that our children should not have to go +begging. I must put our affairs in order while I am alive, that's all. +And to do that, order and strictness are essential.... That's all +about it!" said he, clenching his vigorous fist. "And fairness, of +course," he added, "for if the peasant is naked and hungry and has +only one miserable horse, he can do no good either for himself or +for me." + +And all Nicholas did was fruitful- probably just because he +refused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for +virtue's sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring +estates came to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the +memory of his administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs. +"He was a master... the peasants' affairs first and then his own. Of +course he was not to be trifled with either- in a word, he was a +real master!" + +CHAPTER VIII + +One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas, +and that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of +making free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in +this, but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form +of punishment suddenly changed. + +Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, a +man who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused +of dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the +porch to question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few +replies the sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch +Nicholas went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low over +her embroidery frame, and as usual began to tell her what he had +been doing that morning. Among other things he spoke of the +Bogucharovo elder. Countess Mary turned red and then pale, but +continued to sit with head bowed and lips compressed and gave her +husband no reply. + +"Such an insolent scoundrel!" he cried, growing hot again at the +mere recollection of him. "If he had told me he was drunk and did +not see... But what is the matter with you, Mary?" he suddenly asked. + +Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked +down again and her lips puckered. + +"Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?" + +The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved when she was in +tears. She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow +or pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible +charm. + +The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain +herself and began to cry. + +"Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!" +and she covered her face with her hands. + +Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and +paced up and down the room. He understood what she was weeping +about, but could not in his heart at once agree with her that what +he had regarded from childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong. +"Is it just sentimentality, old wives' tales, or is she right?" he +asked himself. Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her +face filled with love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she +was right and that he had long been sinning against himself. + +"Mary," he said softly, going up to her, "it will never happen +again; I give you my word. Never," he repeated in a trembling voice +like a boy asking for forgiveness. + +The tears flowed faster still from the countess' eyes. She took +his hand and kissed it. + +"Nicholas, when when did you break your cameo?" she asked to +change the subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with +a cameo of Laocoon's head. + +"Today- it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don't remind me of it!" +and again he flushed. "I give you my word of honor it shan't occur +again, and let this always be a reminder to me," and he pointed to the +broken ring. + +After that, when in discussions with his village elders or +stewards the blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench, +Nicholas would turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his +eyes before the man who was making him angry. But he did forget +himself once or twice within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and +confess to his wife, and would again promise that this should really +be the very last time. + +"Mary, you must despise me!" he would say. "I deserve it." + +"You should go, go away at once, if you don't feel strong enough +to control yourself," she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her +husband. + +Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not +liked. He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class, +and consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid. +The whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with +the work on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the +same business like seriousness- leaving home for a month, or even two, +with his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his +time reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on +these he spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he +said, a serious library, and he made it a rule to read through all the +books he bought. He would sit in his study with a grave air, +reading- a task he first imposed upon himself as a duty, but which +afterwards became a habit affording him a special kind of pleasure and +a consciousness of being occupied with serious matters. In winter, +except for business excursions, he spent most of his time at home +making himself one with his family and entering into all the details +of his children's relations with their mother. The harmony between him +and his wife grew closer and closer and he daily discovered fresh +spiritual treasures in her. + +From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before +that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself +and Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess +Mary to be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized +the wrong he had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and +imagined that her wealth had influenced Nicholas' choice. She could +not find fault with Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her, +but often felt ill-will toward her which she could not overcome. + +Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about +her own injustice toward her. + +"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal- +there is a passage in them that just fits Sonya." + +"What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised. + +"'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not +shall be taken away.' You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I +don't know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is +taken away, and everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am +dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to +marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would not +come off. She is a sterile flower, you know- like some strawberry +blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she +doesn't feel it as you or I would." + +Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel +must be understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with +Natasha's explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her +position trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a +sterile flower. She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of +the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the +people but to the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and +spoiled the children, was always ready to render the small services +for which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted from +her with insufficient gratitude. + +The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the +same scale as under the old prince. + +The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more +than simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of +wood, plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished +with very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by +their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was +spacious and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for +visitors. Whole families of the Rostovs' and Bolkonskis' relations +sometimes came to Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of +servants and stayed for months. Besides that, four times a year, on +the name days and birthdays of the hosts, as many as a hundred +visitors would gather there for a day or two. The rest of the year +life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary occupations, and +its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers, provided out of the +produce of the estate. + +CHAPTER IX + +It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha +had been staying at her brother's with her husband and children +since early autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his +own for three weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven +weeks and was expected back every minute. + +Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas' old friend the retired +General Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this +fifth of December. + +On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of +visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for +a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to +the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would +come to congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about +the elections of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to +spend the eve of that day in his usual way. He examined the +bailiff's accounts of the village in Ryazan which belonged to his +wife's nephew, wrote two business letters, and walked over to the +granaries, cattle yards and stables before dinner. Having taken +precautions against the general drunkenness to be expected on the +morrow because it was a great saint's day, he returned to dinner, +and without having time for a private talk with his wife sat down at +the long table laid for twenty persons, at which the whole household +had assembled. At that table were his mother, his mother's old lady +companion Belova, his wife, their three children with their +governess and tutor, his wife's nephew with his tutor, Sonya, Denisov, +Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael +Ivanovich, the late prince's architect, who was living on in +retirement at Bald Hills. + +Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband +took his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after +taking up his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass +standing before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the +case when he came in to dinner straight from the farm- especially +before the soup. Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when +she herself was in a good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had +his soup and then began to talk to him and make him admit that there +was no cause for his ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and +was hurt that he should be angry with her without any reason, and +she felt unhappy. She asked him where he had been. He replied. She +again inquired whether everything was going well on the farm. Her +unnatural tone made him wince unpleasantly and he replied hastily. + +"Then I'm not mistaken," thought Countess Mary. "Why is he cross +with me?" She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and +wished to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded +unnatural, but could not refrain from asking some more questions. + +Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon became general +and lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the +table and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary +held out her hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was +angry with her. + +"You always have such strange fancies! I didn't even think of +being angry," he replied. + +But the word always seemed to her to imply: "Yes, I am angry but I +won't tell you why." + +Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya +and the old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to +disagree, could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they +had their moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always +just after they had been happiest together, they suddenly had a +feeling of estrangement and hostility, which occurred most +frequently during Countess Mary's pregnancies, and this was such a +time. + +"Well, messieurs et mesdames," said Nicholas loudly and with +apparent cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on +purpose to vex her), "I have been on my feet since six this morning. +Tomorrow I shall have to suffer, so today I'll go and rest." + +And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room +and lay down on the sofa. + +"That's always the way," thought Countess Mary. "He talks to +everyone except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him, +especially when I am in this condition." She looked down at her +expanded figure and in the glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face +in which her eyes now looked larger than ever. + +And everything annoyed her- Denisov's shouting and laughter, +Natasha's talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her. + +Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling +irritated. + +Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything +of what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the +nursery. + +The children were playing at "going to Moscow" in a carriage made of +chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with +them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable +crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with +difficulty, went to the small sitting room. + +"Perhaps he is not asleep; I'll have an explanation with him," she +said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his +mother, followed her on tiptoe. She not notice him. + +"Mary, dear, I think he is asleep- he was so tired," said Sonya, +meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that +she crossed her path everywhere). "Andrew may wake him." + +Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt +that Sonya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with +evident difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made +no reply, but to avoid obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow +her quietly and went to the door. Sonya went away by another door. +From the room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his +even breathing, every slightest tone of which was familiar to his +wife. As she listened to it she saw before her his smooth handsome +forehead, his mustache, and his whole face, as she had so often seen +it in the stillness of the night when he slept. Nicholas suddenly +moved and cleared his throat. And at that moment little Andrew shouted +from outside the door: "Papa! Mamma's standing here!" Countess Mary +turned pale with fright and made signs to the boy. He grew silent, and +quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to Countess Mary. She knew how +Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through the door she heard +Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and his voice said +crossly: + +"I can't get a moment's peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you +bring him here?" + +"I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me..." + +Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the +door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little +black-eyed three-year-old Natasha, her father's pet, having learned +from her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting +room, ran to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little +girl boldly opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with +energetic steps of her sturdy little legs, and having examined the +position of her father, who was asleep with his back to her, rose on +tiptoe and kissed the hand which lay under his head. Nicholas turned +with a tender smile on his face. + +"Natasha, Natasha!" came Countess Mary's frightened whisper from the +door. "Papa wants to sleep." + +"No, Mamma, he doesn't want to sleep," said little Natasha with +conviction. "He's laughing." + +Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms. + +"Come in, Mary," he said to his wife. + +She went in and sat down by her husband. + +"I did not notice him following me," she said timidly. "I just +looked in." + +Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife +and, seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and +kissed her hair. + +"May I kiss Mamma?" he asked Natasha. + +Natasha smiled bashfully. + +"Again!" she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the +spot where Nicholas had placed the kiss. + +"I don't know why you think I am cross," said Nicholas, replying +to the question he knew was in his wife's mind. + +"You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are +like that. It always seems to me... " + +"Mary, don't talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he +said gaily. + +"It seems to be that you can't love me, that I am so plain... +always... and now... in this cond..." + +"Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it's love +that makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and women of that kind +who are loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don't love +her, but... I don't know how to put it. Without you, or when something +comes between us like this, I seem lost and can't do anything. Now +do I love my finger? I don't love it, but just try to cut it off! + +"I'm not like that myself, but I understand. So you're not angry +with me?" + +"Awfully angry!" he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing +his hair he began to pace the room. + +"Do you know, Mary, what I've been thinking?" he began, +immediately thinking aloud in his wife's presence now that they had +made it up. + +He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A +thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he +told her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till +spring. + +Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and +in her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the +children. + +"You can see the woman in her already," she said in French, pointing +to little Natasha. "You reproach us women with being illogical. Here +is our logic. I say: 'Papa wants to sleep!' but she says, 'No, he's +laughing.' And she was right," said Countess Mary with a happy smile. + +"Yes, yes." And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong +hand, lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the +legs, and paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree +happiness on the faces of both father and daughter. + +"But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one," +his wife whispered in French. + +"Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..." + +At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps +in the hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived. + +"Somebody has come." + +"I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see," said Countess Mary +and left the room. + +In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little +daughter a gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took the +laughing child quickly from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart. +His capers reminded him of dancing, and looking at the child's round +happy little face he thought of what she would be like when he was +an old man, taking her into society and dancing the mazurka with her +as his old father had danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter. + +"It is he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering +the room a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You +should have seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed +away so long. Well, come along now, quick, quick! It's time you two +were parted," she added, looking smilingly at the little girl who +clung to her father. + +Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand. + +Countess Mary remained in the sitting room. + +"I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy," +she whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time +she sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though +she felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of +happiness unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily +thought at that instant. + +CHAPTER X + +Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already +had three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she +was now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was +difficult to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively +Natasha of former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm, +soft, and serene expression. In her face there was none of the +ever-glowing animation that had formerly burned there and +constituted its charm. Now her face and body were of all that one saw, +and her soul was not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a +strong, handsome, and fertile woman. The old fire very rarely +kindled in her face now. That happened only when, as was the case that +day, her husband returned home, or a sick child was convalescent, or +when she and Countess Mary spoke of Prince Andrew (she never mentioned +him to her husband, who she imagined was jealous of Prince Andrew's +memory), or on the rare occasions when something happened to induce +her to sing, a practice she had quite abandoned since her marriage. At +the rare moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome, fully +developed body she was even more attractive than in former days. + +Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in +Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is +to say, in Nicholas' house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often +seen in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her +and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked +solitude- she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even +thought that she did not- but with her pregnancies, her +confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of +her husband's life, she had demands on her time which could be +satisfied only by renouncing society. All who had known Natasha before +her marriage wondered at the change in her as at something +extraordinary. Only the old countess with her maternal instinct had +realized that all Natasha's outbursts had been due to her need of +children and a husband- as she herself had once exclaimed at +Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest- and her mother was now +surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never +understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that +Natasha would make an exemplary wife and mother. + +"Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all +bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd." + +Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk, +especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let +herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, +should be even more careful of her appearance than when she was +unmarried, and should fascinate her husband as much as she did +before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once +abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually +powerful part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully +seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with of speech, or +with her toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her most +becoming attitudes, or to avoid inconveniencing him by being too +exacting. She acted in contradiction to all those rules. She felt that +the allurements instinct had formerly taught her to use would now be +merely ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had from the +first moment given herself up entirely- that is, with her whole +soul, leaving no corner of it hidden from him. She felt that her unity +with her husband was not maintained by the poetic feelings that had +attracted him to her, but by something else- indefinite but firm as +the bond between her own body and soul. + +To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing +romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange +as to adorn herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others +might perhaps have been agreeable- she did not know- but she had no +time at all for it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to +singing, to dress, or to choosing her words was that she really had no +time to spare for these things. + +We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed +in a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject +so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's +entire attention is devoted to it. + +The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha's attention was her +family: that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should +belong entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she +had to bear, bring into the world, nurse, and bring up. + +And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her +whole soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the +larger did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did +her powers appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one +thing and yet was unable to accomplish all that she considered +necessary. + +There were then as now conversations and discussions about women's +rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and +rights, though these themes were not yet termed questions as they +are now; but these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha, +she positively did not understand them. + +These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing +in marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that +is, only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance, +which lies in the family. + +Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the +question of how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner, +did not then and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of +a dinner is the nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is +the family. + +If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats +two dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain +his purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners. + +If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to +have many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in +that case will not have a family. + +If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is +the family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more +than one can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are +needed for the family- that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha +needed a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a family. +And she not only saw no need of any other or better husband, but as +all the powers of her soul were intent on serving that husband and +family, she could not imagine and saw no interest in imagining how +it would be if things were different. + +Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the +society of her relatives- Countess Mary, and her brother, her +mother, and Sonya. She valued the company of those to whom she could +come striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and +with joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby's +napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect +that baby was much better. + +To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way she +dressed and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy- +she was jealous of Sonya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty +or plain- were habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The +general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife's thumb, which +was really true. From the very first days of their married life +Natasha had announced her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his +wife's view, to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his +life belonged to her and to the family. His wife's demands +astonished him, but they also flattered him, and he submitted to them. + +Pierre's subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not +flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman; +did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money a +whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except +on business- in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits, +which she did not in the least understand but to which she +attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had +the right to regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as +he chose. At home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to +her husband, and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was +occupied- that is, was reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but +to show a partiality for anything to get just what he liked done +always. He had only to express a wish and Natasha would jump up and +run to fulfill it. + +The entire household was governed according to Pierre's supposed +orders, that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried to guess. Their way +of life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties, +Natasha's occupations, the children's upbringing, were all selected +not merely with regard to Pierre's expressed wishes, but to what +Natasha from the thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his +wishes to be. And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite +correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them +tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to change his mind she would +fight him with his own weapons. + +Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of +their first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet +nurse three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day +told her of Rousseau's view, with which he quite agreed, that to +have a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was +born, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of +her husband himself- who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing +her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious- +she insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her +babies herself. + +It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and +wife would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his +surprise and delight would find in his wife's ideas and actions the +very thought against which she had argued, but divested of +everything superfluous that in the excitement of the dispute he had +added when expressing his opinion. + +After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm +consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he +saw himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within +himself inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really +good in him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was +rejected. And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a +direct and mysterious reflection. + +CHAPTER XI + +Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the +Rostovs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to +come to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were +being discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the +principal founders. + +On reading that letter (she always read her husband's letters) +Natasha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though +she would feel his absence very acutely. She attributed immense +importance to all her husband's intellectual and abstract interests +though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a +hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre's timid look of inquiry +after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to fix a +definite date for his return. He was given four weeks' leave of +absence. + +Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a +fortnight before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm, +depression, and irritability. + +Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied +with the present state of affairs, had arrived during that +fortnight. He looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad +likeness of a person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies, +and talk about the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former +enchantress. + +Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her +mother, her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to +console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay +in returning. + +"It's all nonsense, all rubbish- those discussions which lead to +nothing and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very +affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed. + +And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one +else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this +little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she +was conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his +little nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous, +you would like to pay him out, you are afraid- but here am I! And I am +he..." and that was unanswerable. It was more than true. + +During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for +comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him +and he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was +just what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety +about her husband more easily. + +She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre's sleigh was +heard at the front door, and the old nurse- knowing how to please +her mistress- entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a +beaming face. + +"Has he come?" Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move +lest she should rouse the dozing baby. + +"He's come, ma'am," whispered the nurse. + +The blood rushed to Natasha's face and her feet involuntarily moved, +but she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his +eyes and looked at her. "You're here?" he seemed to be saying, and +again lazily smacked his lips. + +Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him a little, +handed him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door. +But at the door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for +having in her joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round. +The nurse with raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of +his cot. + +"Go, ma'am! Don't worry, go!" she whispered, smiling, with the +kind of familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress. + +Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom. + +Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with +his pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natasha. A flood +of brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face. + +"He's come!" she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov felt that he +too was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had +returned. + +On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat +unwinding his scarf. "It's he! It's really he! He has come!" she +said to herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head +to her breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy, +happy face, covered with hoarfrost. "Yes, it is he, happy and +contented..." + +Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had +experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her +face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of +reproaches and angry words. + +"Yes, it's all very well for you. You are pleased, you've had a good +time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown +consideration for the children. I am nursing and my milk was +spoiled.... Petya was at death's door. But you were enjoying yourself. +Yes, enjoying..." + +Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come +sooner; he knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a +minute or two; above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy. +He wanted to smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a +piteous, frightened face and bent down. + +"I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?" + +"All right now. Come along! I wonder you're not ashamed! If only you +could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!" + +"You are well?" + +"Come, come!" she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went +to their rooms. + +When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the +nursery holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right +palm and dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby's +broad face with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since +over and there was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha's face as she +gazed tenderly at her husband and child. + +"And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?" she +asked. + +"Yes, capitally." + +"You see, he holds it up." (She meant the baby's head.) "But how +he did frighten me... You've seen the princess? Is it true she's in +love with that..." + +"Yes, just fancy..." + +At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the +baby on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries. +But in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the +baby with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all +his attention. + +"How sweet!" said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the +baby. "Now, Nicholas," she added, turning to her husband, "I can't +understand how it is you don't see the charm of these delicious +marvels." + +"I don't and can't," replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby. +"A lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!" + +"And yet he's such an affectionate father," said Countess Mary, +vindicating her husband, "but only after they are a year old or so..." + +"Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha. "He says his +hand is just made for a baby's seat. Just look!" + +"Only not for this..." Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and +shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse. + +CHAPTER XII + +As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several +perfectly distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole, +though each retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the +others. Every event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house +was important to all these worlds, but each had its own special +reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence independently of the +others. + +For instance, Pierre's return was a joyful and important event and +they all felt it to be so. + +The servants- the most reliable judges of their masters because they +judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their +acts and way of life- were glad of Pierre's return because they knew +that when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day +attend to the estate, and would would be in better spirits and temper, +and also because they would all receive handsome presents for the +holidays. + +The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return +because no one else drew them into the social life of the household as +he did. He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only +piece) to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced, +and they felt sure he had brought presents for them all. + +Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent, +with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted +because Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his +rapturous and passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this +love for Pierre whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had +brought him up had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she +loved him, and little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him +with just a shade of contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did +not want to be an hussar or a Knight of St. George like his uncle +Nicholas; he wanted to be learned, wise, and kind like Pierre. In +Pierre's presence his face always shone with pleasure and he flushed +and was breathless when Pierre spoke to him. He did not miss a +single word he uttered, and would afterwards, with Dessalles or by +himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had +said. Pierre's past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of which +young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from some words he +had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity, Platon +Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha +(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially +Pierre's friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not +remember- all this made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint. + +From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion +with which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful, +reverent tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who +was only just beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that +his father had loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his +friend. But the father whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a +divinity who could not be pictured, and of whom he never thought +without a swelling heart and tears of sadness and rapture. So the +boy also was happy that Pierre had arrived. + +The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and +unite any company he was in. + +The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were +pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more +smoothly and peacefully. + +The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and +especially that Natasha would now be herself again. + +Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and +made haste to satisfy all their expectations. + +Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the +aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not +forgetting his mother- and brother-in-law's commissions, nor the dress +material for a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife's nephews. +In the early days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that +his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the things +he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious +annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time +he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natasha asked nothing for +herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself +had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and +childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the +house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natasha's censure +it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other +defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were +qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added +stinginess. + +From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing +entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he +spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs- which had +been in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's debts- +had begun to improve. + +Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive +luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no +longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had +now been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not +in his power, and so that way of life proved economical. + +With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases. + +"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff +like a shopman. + +Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on +her lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the +things he showed her. + +"That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the +material. "It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?" + +Pierre told her the price. + +"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be +and Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added, +unable to suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb +set with pearls, of a kind then just coming into fashion. + +"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned +Pierre. + +"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair. +"When I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be +fashionable again by then. Well, let's go now." + +And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and +then to the old countess' rooms. + +The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing +grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing +room with parcels under their arms. + +The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with +a frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper +lip had sunk in, and her eyes were dim. + +After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession, +she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left +without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or +kept awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She +wanted nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity +only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on +living, that is, to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in +very young children and very old people was particularly evident in +her. Her life had no external aims- only a need to exercise her +various functions and inclinations was apparent. She had to eat, +sleep, think, speak, weep, work, give vent to her anger, and so on, +merely because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a +liver. She did these things not under any external impulse as people +in the full vigor of life do, when behind the purpose for which they +strive that of exercising their functions remains unnoticed. She +talked only because she physically needed to exercise her tongue and +lungs. She cried as a child does, because her nose had to be +cleared, and so on. What for people in their full vigor is an aim +was for her evidently merely a pretext. + +Thus in the morning- especially if she had eaten anything rich the +day before- she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the +handiest pretext Belova's deafness. + +She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other +end of the room. + +"It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur. + +And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they've come," she would mutter +angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!" + +Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or +too damp or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability +her face would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible +symptoms when Belova would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the +countess' face yellow. Just as she needed to work off her spleen so +she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of +thinking- and the pretext for that was a game of patience. When she +needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext. When she +wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext, +and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be +Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was +usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner rest +in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same +stories over and over again to the same audience. + +The old lady's condition was understood by the whole household +though no one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible +effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a +sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the +common understanding of her condition expressed. + +But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had +played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole +self, that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to +yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being +formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be +pitied. "Memento mori," said these glances. + +Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and +the little children failed to understand this and avoided her. + +CHAPTER XIII + +When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was +in one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion +of playing patience, and so- though by force of habit she greeted +him with the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned +after an absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of +waiting for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with +another customary remark: "It's not the gift that's precious, my dear, +but that you give it to me, an old woman..."- yet it was evident +that she was not pleased by Pierre's arrival at that moment when it +diverted her attention from the unfinished game. + +She finished her game of patience and only then examined the +presents. They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid +workmanship, a bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses +depicted on it and with a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count's +portrait on the lid which Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in +Petersburg. The countess had long wished for such a box, but as she +did not want to cry just then she glanced indifferently at the +portrait and gave her attention chiefly to the box for cards. + +"Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always +did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back- for I never +saw anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are +we to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away. +Doesn't see anything, doesn't remember anything," she went on, +repeating her usual phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her +companion, "see what a box for cards my son has brought us!" + +Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress +material. + +Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had +much to talk about that they could not discuss before the old +countess- not that anything was hidden from her, but because she had +dropped so far behindhand in many things that had they begun to +converse in her presence they would have had to answer inopportune +questions and to repeat what they had already told her many times: +that so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she would +again be unable to remember- yet they sat at tea round the samovar +in the drawing room from habit, and Pierre answered the countess' +questions as to whether Prince Vasili had aged and whether Countess +Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings and still thought of them, and other +matters that interested no one and to which she herself was +indifferent. + +Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable, +continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the +family were assembled near the round tea table at which Sonya presided +beside the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had +had tea and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all +sat in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small +table where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi +bitch (daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray face and +large black eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the +armchair beside him; Denisov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers +had turned half gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general's +tunic unbuttoned; Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He +spoke of what he knew might interest the old lady and that she could +understand. He told her of external social events and of the people +who had formed the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a +real, living, and distinct group, but who were now for the most part +scattered about the world and like herself were garnering the last +ears of the harvests they had sown in earlier years. But to the old +countess those contemporaries of hers seemed to be the only serious +and real society. Natasha saw by Pierre's animation that his visit had +been interesting and that he had much to tell them but dare not say it +before the old countess. Denisov, not being a member of the family, +did not understand Pierre's caution and being, as a malcontent, much +interested in what was occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre +to tell them about what had happened in the Semenovsk regiment, then +about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible Society. Once or twice +Pierre was carried away and began to speak of these things, but +Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the health of Prince +Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna. + +"Well, and all this idiocy- Gossner and Tatawinova?" Denisov +asked. "Is that weally still going on?" + +"Going on?" Pierre exclaimed. "Why more than ever! The Bible Society +is the whole government now!" + +"What is that, mon cher ami?" asked the countess, who had +finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry +after her meal. "What are you saying about the government? I don't +understand." + +"Well, you know, Maman," Nicholas interposed, knowing how to +translate things into his mother's language, "Prince Alexander +Golitsyn has founded a society and in consequence has great influence, +they say." + +"Arakcheev and Golitsyn," incautiously remarked Pierre, "are now the +whole government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere +and are afraid of everything." + +"Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most +estimable man. I used to meet him at Mary Antonovna's," said the +countess in an offended tone; and still more offended that they all +remained silent, she went on: "Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel +Society! Well, and what harm is there in that?" and she rose +(everybody else got up too) and with a severe expression sailed back +to her table in the sitting room. + +The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the +children's voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some +jolly excitement was going on there. + +"Finished, finished!" little Natasha's gleeful yell rose above +them all. + +Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natasha he +never lost sight of) and smiled happily. + +"That's delightful music!" said he. + +"It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her stocking," said +Countess Mary. + +"Oh, I'll go and see," said Pierre, jumping up. "You know," he +added, stopping at the door, "why I'm especially fond of that music? +It is always the first thing that tells me all is well. When I was +driving here today, the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I +grew. As I entered the anteroom I heard Andrusha's peals of laughter +and that meant that all was well." + +"I know! I know that feeling," said Nicholas. "But I mustn't go +there- those stockings are to be a surprise for me." + +Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew +still louder. + +"Come, Anna Makarovna," Pierre's voice was heard saying, "come +here into the middle of the room and at the word of command, 'One, +two,' and when I say 'three'... You stand here, and you in my arms- +well now! One, two!..." said Pierre, and a silence followed: +"three!" and a rapturously breathless cry of children's voices +filled the room. "Two, two!" they shouted. + +This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to +herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same +needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly +drew, one out of the other, in the children's presence. + +CHAPTER XIV + +Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They +kissed everyone, the tutors and governesses made their bows, and +they went out. Only young Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles +whispered to the boy to come downstairs. + +"No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay," replied +Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper. + +"Ma tante, please let me stay," said he, going up to his aunt. + +His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary +glanced at him and turned to Pierre. + +"When you are here he can't tear himself away," she said. + +"I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good +night!" said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned +to young Nicholas with a smile. "You and I haven't seen anything of +one another yet... How like he is growing, Mary!" he added, addressing +Countess Mary. + +"Like my father?" asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up +at Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes. + +Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the +children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork; +Natasha did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov +rose, asked for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from +Sonya- who sat weary but resolute at the samovar- and questioned +Pierre. The curly-headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed +in a corner, starting every now and then and muttering something to +himself, and evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he +turned his curly head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down +collar, toward the place where Pierre sat. + +The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in +power, in which most people see the chief interest of home politics. +Denisov, dissatisfied with the government on account of his own +disappointments in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done +in Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and +sharp comments on what Pierre told them. + +"One used to have to be a German- now one must dance with Tatawinova +and Madame Kwudener, and wead Ecka'tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they +should let that fine fellow Bonaparte lose- he'd knock all this +nonsense out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment +to a fellow like that Schwa'tz!" he cried. + +Nicholas, though free from Denisov's readiness to find fault with +everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a +very serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been +appointed Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that +the Emperor had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed +to him very important. And so he thought it necessary to take an +interest in these things and to question Pierre. The questions put +by these two kept the conversation from changing its ordinary +character of gossip about the higher government circles. + +But Natasha, knowing all her husband's ways and ideas, saw that he +had long been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation +to another channel and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake +of which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend +Prince Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his affairs with +Prince Theodore had gone. + +"What was it about?" asked Nicholas. + +"Always the same thing," said Pierre, looking round at his +listeners. "Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they +cannot be allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of all decent +men to counteract it as far as they can." + +"What can decent men do?" Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly. +"What can be done?" + +"Why, this..." + +"Come into my study," said Nicholas. + +Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby, +now heard the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary +followed her. The men went into the study and little Nicholas +Bolkonski followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the +writing table in a shady corner by the window. + +"Well, what would you do?" asked Denisov. + +"Always some fantastic schemes," said Nicholas. + +"Why this," began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room, +sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: "the position in +Petersburg is this: the Emperor does not look into anything. He has +abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism" (Pierre could not +tolerate mysticism in anyone now). "He seeks only for peace, and +only these people sans foi ni loi~{ Without faith or law. }~ can give it him- people who +recklessly hack at and strangle everything- Magnitski, Arakcheev, +and tutti quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after +your estates yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your +steward was the more readily your object might be attained," he said +to Nicholas. + +"Well, what does that lead up to?" said Nicholas. + +"Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law courts, in +the army nothing but flogging, drilling, and Military Settlements; the +people are tortured, enlightenment is suppressed. All that is young +and honest is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on. +Everything is strained to such a degree that it will certainly break," +said Pierre (as those who examine the actions of any government have +always said since governments began). "I told them just one thing in +Petersburg." + +"Told whom?" + +"Well, you know whom," said Pierre, with a meaning glance from under +his brows. "Prince Theodore and all those. To encourage culture and +philanthropy is all very well of course. The aim is excellent but in +the present circumstances something else is needed." + +At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his nephew. His face +darkened and he went up to the boy. + +"Why are you here?" + +"Why? Let him be," said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the arm and +continuing. "That is not enough, I told them. Something else is +needed. When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at +any moment, when everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe, +as many as possible must join hands as closely as they can to +withstand the general calamity. Everything that is young and strong is +being enticed away and depraved. One is lured by women, another by +honors, a third by ambition or money, and they go over to that camp. +No independent men, such as you or I, are left. What I say is widen +the scope of our society, let the mot d'ordre be not virtue alone +but independence and action as well!" + +Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up an +armchair, sat down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing +discontentedly and frowning more and more. + +"But action with what aim?" he cried. "And what position will you +adopt toward the government?" + +"Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be secret +if the government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to +government, but it is a society of true conservatives- a society of +gentlemen in the full meaning of that word. It is only to prevent some +Pugachev or other from killing my children and yours, and Arakcheev +from sending me off to some Military Settlement. We join hands only +for the public welfare and the general safety." + +"Yes, but it's a secret society and therefore a hostile and +harmful one which can only cause harm." + +"Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe" (they did not then +venture to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) "do any harm? The +Tugendbund is an alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it +is what Christ preached on the Cross." + +Natasha, who had come in during the conversation, looked joyfully at +her husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased her- that +did not even interest her, for it seemed to her that was all extremely +simple and that she had known it a long time (it seemed so to her +because she knew that it sprang from Pierre's whole soul), but it +was his animated and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad. + +The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turn-down collar- +whom everyone had forgotten- gazed at Pierre with even greater and +more rapturous joy. Every word of Pierre's burned into his heart, +and with a nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke +the sealing wax and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle's +table. + +"It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German +Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing." + +"No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the sausage +eaters, but I don't understand it and can't even pwonounce it," +interposed Denisov in a loud and resolute voice. "I agwee that +evewything here is wotten and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don't +understand. If we're not satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own. +That's all wight. Je suis vot'e homme!"~{ "I'm your man." }~ + +Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his +brows still more and began proving to Pierre that there was no +prospect of any great change and that all the danger he spoke of +existed only in his imagination. Pierre maintained the contrary, and +as his mental faculties were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas +felt himself cornered. This made him still angrier, for he was fully +convinced, not by reasoning but by something within him stronger +than reason, of the justice of his opinion. + +"I will tell you this," he said, rising and trying with nervously +twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally +abandoning the attempt. "I can't prove it to you. You say that +everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don't see +it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional +matter, and to that I reply: 'You are my best friend, as you know, but +if you formed a secret society and began working against the +government- be it what it may- I know it is my duty to obey the +government. And if Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you +and cut you down, I should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.' +And you may argue about that as you like!" + +An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to +speak, defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense +was weak and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was +resumed, and no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas' +last remark. + +When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkonski +went up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes. + +"Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree +with you?" he asked. + +And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex, +and powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in +this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said +he regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to +give him an answer. + +"Yes, I think so," he said reluctantly, and left the study. + +The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what +he had done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to +Nicholas. + +"Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally," he said, +pointing to the broken sealing wax and pens. + +Nicholas started angrily. + +"All right, all right," he said, throwing the bits under the table. + +And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned +away from the boy. + +"You ought not to have been here at all," he said. + +CHAPTER XV + +The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies, +but turned on the subject Nicholas liked best- recollections of +1812. Denisov started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable +and amusing about them. The family separated on the most friendly +terms. + +After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given +instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to +the bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her +table, writing. + +"What are you writing, Mary?" Nicholas asked. + +Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing +would not be understood or approved by her husband. + +She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at +the same time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would +now have to tell him. + +"A diary, Nicholas," she replied, handing him a blue exercise book +filled with her firm, bold writing. + +"A diary?" Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up +the book. + +It was in French. + +December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy) woke up he did +not wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was +naughty and obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then +I took the matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse's +help to get the other children up, telling him that I did not love +him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped +out of bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not +calm him for a long time. It was plain that what troubled him most was +that he had grieved me. Afterwards in the evening when I gave him +his ticket, he again began crying piteously and kissing me. One can do +anything with him by tenderness. + +"What is a 'ticket'?" Nicholas inquired. + +"I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how +they have behaved." + +Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and +continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down +everything in the children's lives that seemed noteworthy to their +mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections +on educational methods. They were for the most part quite +insignificant trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the +father either, now that he read this diary about his children for +the first time. + +Under the date "5" was entered: + +Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding. +He had none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others +while they were eating! I think that punishment by depriving +children of sweets only develops their greediness. Must tell +Nicholas this. + +Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant +eyes gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her +diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of +his admiration for his wife. + +Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or +even done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of +which the sole aim was the children's moral welfare delighted him. Had +Nicholas been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that +his steady, tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling +of wonder at her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost +beyond his reach, in which she had her being. + +He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own +insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the +more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part +of himself. + +"I quite, quite approve, my dearest!" said he with a significant +look, and after a short pause he added: "And I behaved badly today. +You weren't in the study. We began disputing- Pierre and I- and I lost +my temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don't know what would +become of him if Natasha didn't keep him in hand.... Have you any idea +why he went to Petersburg? They have formed..." + +"Yes, I know," said Countess Mary. "Natasha told me." + +"Well, then, you know," Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere +recollection of their discussion, "he wanted to convince me that it is +every honest man's duty to go against the government, and that the +oath of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren't there. They +all fell on me- Denisov and Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she +rules over him! And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no +words of her own but only repeats his sayings..." added Nicholas, +yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge +those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying +about Natasha could have been applied word for word to himself in +relation to his wife. + +"Yes, I have noticed that," said Countess Mary. + +"When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he +started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there- what +would you have said?" + +"As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so. Pierre +says everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that +it is our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there," +said Countess Mary, "but he forgets that we have other duties nearer +to us, duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might +expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children." + +"Yes, that's it! That's just what I said to him," put in Nicholas, +who fancied he really had said it. "But they insisted on their own +view: love of one's neighbor and Christianity- and all this in the +presence of young Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all +my things." + +"Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little +Nicholas," said Countess Mary. "He is such an exceptional boy. I am +afraid I neglect him in favor of my own: we all have children and +relations while he has no one. He is constantly alone with his +thoughts." + +"Well, I don't think you need reproach yourself on his account. +All that the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are +doing for him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine +lad! This evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and +fancy- as we were going in to supper I looked and he had broken +everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it himself at +once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!" +repeated Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but +was always anxious to recognize that he was a fine lad. + +"Still, I am not the same as his own mother," said Countess Mary. "I +feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am +dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have +companions." + +"Well it won't be for long. Next summer I'll take him to +Petersburg," said Nicholas. "Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and +always will be," he continued, returning to the talk in the study +which had evidently disturbed him. "Well, what business is it of +mine what goes on there- whether Arakcheev is bad, and all that? +What business was it of mine when I married and was so deep in debt +that I was threatened with prison, and had a mother who could not +see or understand it? And then there are you and the children and +our affairs. Is it for my own pleasure that I am at the farm or in the +office from morning to night? No, but I know I must work to comfort my +mother, to repay you, and not to leave the children such beggars as +I was." + +Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread +alone and that he attached too much importance to these matters. But +she knew she must not say this and that it would be useless to do +so. She only took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of +approval and a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few +minutes' reflection continued to think aloud. + +"You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych" (this was his overseer) +"came back from the Tambov estate and told me they are already +offering eighty thousand rubles for the forest." + +And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of +repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and added: "Another ten years of +life and I shall leave the children... in an excellent position." + +Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood all that he +told her. She knew that when he thought aloud in this way he would +sometimes ask her what he had been saying, and be vexed if he +noticed that she had been thinking about something else. But she had +to force herself to attend, for what he was saying did not interest +her at all. She looked at him and did not think, but felt, about +something different. She felt a submissive tender love for this man +who would never understand all that she understood, and this seemed to +make her love for him still stronger and added a touch of passionate +tenderness. Besides this feeling which absorbed her altogether and +hindered her from following the details of her husband's plans, +thoughts that had no connection with what he was saying flitted +through her mind. She thought of her nephew. Her husband's account +of the boy's agitation while Pierre was speaking struck her +forcibly, and various traits of his gentle, sensitive character +recurred to her mind; and while thinking of her nephew she thought +also of her own children. She did not compare them with him, but +compared her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and felt +with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for +young Nicholas. + +Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose from the +difference in their ages, but she felt herself to blame toward him and +promised in her heart to do better and to accomplish the impossible- +in this life to love her husband, her children, little Nicholas, and +all her neighbors, as Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary's soul +always strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute, +and could therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the +lofty, secret suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on her +face. Nicholas gazed at her. "O God! What will become of us if she +dies, as I always fear when her face is like that?" thought he, and +placing himself before the icon he began to say his evening prayers. + +CHAPTER XVI + +Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband +and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity, +understanding and expressing each other's thoughts in ways contrary to +all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions, +and in a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind of +talk with her husband that for her it was the surest sign of something +being wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical +reasoning. When he began proving anything, or talking +argumentatively and calmly and she, led on by his example, began to do +the same, she knew that they were on the verge of a quarrel. + +From the moment they were alone and Natasha came up to him with +wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her +bosom, saying: "Now you are all mine, mine! You won't escape!"- from +that moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic +and contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked +about at one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of many +topics did not prevent a clear understanding but on the contrary was +the surest sign that they fully understood one another. + +Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and +contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this +intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves +were not consecutive and clear but only the feeling that prompted +them. + +Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother's life and doings, of +how she had suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of +how she was fonder than ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way +better than herself. In saying this Natasha was sincere in +acknowledging Mary's superiority, but at the same time by saying it +she made a demand on Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her +to Mary and to all other women, and that now, especially after +having seen many women in Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh. + +Pierre, answering Natasha's words, told her how intolerable it had +been for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg. + +"I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies," he said. "It was +simply dull. Besides, I was very busy." + +Natasha looked intently at him and went on: + +"Mary is so splendid," she said. "How she understands children! It +is as if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance, +Mitya was naughty..." + +"How like his father he is," Pierre interjected. + +Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya's likeness to Nicholas: the +recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and +he wanted to know what Natasha thought of it. + +"Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not +generally accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a +fresh line," said she, repeating words Pierre had once uttered. + +"No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are +an amusement- almost a pastime," said Pierre. "For instance, he is +collecting a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book till +he has read what he had already bought- Sismondi and Rousseau and +Montesquieu," he added with a smile. "You know how much I..." he began +to soften down what he had said; but Natasha interrupted him to show +that this was unnecessary. + +"So you say ideas are an amusement to him...." + +"Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg +I saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all +else is mere amusement." + +"Ah, I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you met the children," said +Natasha. "Which was most delighted? Lisa, I'm sure." + +"Yes," Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind. +"Nicholas says we ought not to think. But I can't help it. Besides, +when I was in Petersburg I felt (I can this to you) that the whole +affair would go to pieces without me- everyone was pulling his own +way. But I succeeded in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear +and simple. You see, I don't say that we ought to oppose this and +that. We may be mistaken. What I say is: 'Join hands, you who love the +right, and let there be but one banner- that of active virtue.' Prince +Sergey is a fine fellow and clever." + +Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre's +idea, but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and +necessary to society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She +wished to express this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether +he is really cleverer than all the others?" she asked herself, and +passed in review all those whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what +he had said there was no one he had respected so highly as Platon +Karataev. + +"Do you know what I am thinking about?" she asked. "About Platon +Karataev. Would he have approved of you now, do you think?" + +Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood +his wife's line of thought. + +"Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely +trying to imagine Karataev's opinion on the subject. "He would not +have understood... yet perhaps he would." + +"I love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully, awfully!" + +"No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after reflection. +"What he would have approved of is our family life. He was always so +anxious to find seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and +I should have been proud to let him see us. There now- you talk of +my absence, but you wouldn't believe what a special feeling I have for +you after a separation...." + +"Yes, I should think..." Natasha began. + +"No, it's not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn't +love more, but this is something special.... Yes, of course-" he did +not finish because their eyes meeting said the rest. + +"What nonsense it is," Natasha suddenly exclaimed, "about +honeymoons, and that the greatest happiness is at first! On the +contrary, now is the best of all. If only you did not go away! Do +you remember how we quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always +mine. And what we quarreled about- I don't even remember!" + +"Always about the same thing," said Pierre with a smile. "Jealo..." + +"Don't say it! I can't bear it!" Natasha cried, and her eyes +glittered coldly and vindictively. "Did you see her?" she added, after +a pause. + +"No, and if I had I shouldn't have recognized her." + +They were silent for a while. + +"Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was +looking at you," Natasha began, evidently anxious to disperse the +cloud that had come over them. "You are as like him as two peas- +like the boy." (She meant her little son.) "Oh, it's time to go to +him.... The milk's come.... But I'm sorry to leave you." + +They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one +another at the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with +self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a quiet, happy smile. +Having interrupted one another they both stopped to let the other +continue. + +"No. What did you say? Go on, go on." + +"No, you go on, I was talking nonsense," said Natasha. + +Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his +complacent reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it +seemed to him that he was chosen to give a new direction to the +whole of Russian society and to the whole world. + +"I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are +always simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people are united +and constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now +that's simple enough." + +"Yes." + +"And what were you going to say?" + +"I? Only nonsense." + +"But all the same?" + +"Oh nothing, only a trifle," said Natasha, smilingly still more +brightly. "I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today nurse was +coming to take him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung +to me. I'm sure he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now +he's crying. Well, good-by!" and she left the room. + +Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski's bedroom a +little lamp was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark +and they could not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four +pillows and his Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring. +Little Nicholas, who had just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat +up in bed and gazed before him with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from +a terrible dream. He had dreamed that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing +helmets such as were depicted in his Plutarch, were leading a huge +army. The army was made up of white slanting lines that filled the air +like the cobwebs that float about in autumn and which Dessalles called +les fils de la Vierge. In front was Glory, which was similar to +those threads but rather thicker. He and Pierre were borne along +lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their goal. Suddenly the +threads that moved them began to slacken and become entangled and it +grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before them in a +stern and threatening attitude. + +"Have you done this?" he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax +and pens. "I loved you, but I have orders from Arakcheev and will kill +the first of you who moves forward." Little Nicholas turned to look at +Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his father- +Prince Andrew- and his father had neither shape nor form, but he +existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with +love: he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father +caressed and pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer +to them. Terror seized young Nicholas and he awoke. + +"My father!" he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of +Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human +form.) "My father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of +me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it. +Mucius Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing +happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And I will learn. But +someday I shall have finished learning, and then I will do +something. I only pray God that something may happen to me such as +happened to Plutarch's men, and I will act as they did. I will do +better. Everyone shall know me, love me, and be delighted with me!" +And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry. + +"Are you ill?" he heard Dessalles' voice asking. + +"No," answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow. + +"He is good and kind and I am fond of him!" he thought of Dessalles. +"But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father? +Oh, Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he +would be satisfied...." + +SECOND EPILOGUE + +CHAPTER I + +History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put +into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a +single nation, appears impossible. + +The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to +describe and seize the apparently elusive- the life of a people. +They described the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and +regarded the activity of those men as representing the activity of the +whole nation. + +The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished +and by what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the +ancients met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations +to the will of a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so +as to accomplish ends that were predestined. + +For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the +direct participation of the Deity in human affairs. + +Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles. + +It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in +man's subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward +which nations are led, modern history should study not the +manifestations of power but the causes that produce it. But modern +history has not done this. Having in theory rejected the view held +by the ancients, it still follows them in practice. + +Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided +by the will of God, modern history has given us either heroes +endowed with extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of +very various kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. +Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or +Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the +progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- +the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its +highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in +general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a +small northwesterly portion of a large continent. + +Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without +replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has +obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the +divine authority of the kings and the "fate" of the ancients, to reach +the same conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations +guided by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to +which these nations and humanity at large are tending. + +At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon +to Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent +novelty of their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions. + +In the first place the historian describes the activity of +individuals who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian +considers only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men, +while another includes also orators, learned men, reformers, +philosophers, and poets). Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward +which humanity is being led is known to the historians: to one of them +this goal is the greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; +to another it is liberty, equality, and a certain kind of civilization +of a small corner of the world called Europe. + +In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is +expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it +moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east +westward. In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with +remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, +attracting to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of +middle Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point of +the first movement in the west- Paris- and subsides. + +During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left +untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions of +men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of +Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one +another. + +What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people +burn houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these +events? What force made men act so? These are the instinctive, +plain, and most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it +encounters the monuments and tradition of that period. + +For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns +to the science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity +to know themselves. + +If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have +said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and +directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that +reply, would have been clear and complete. One might believe or +disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone +believing in it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the +history of that period, nor would there have been any contradictions. + +But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit +the conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the +Deity in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other +answers. + +Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know +what this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced +these events? Then listen: + +"Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such +and such mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France +badly. His descendants were weak men and they too ruled France +badly. And they had such and such favorites and such and such +mistresses. Moreover, certain men wrote some books at that time. At +the end of the eighteenth century there were a couple of dozen men +in Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal. This +caused people all over France to begin to slash at and drown one +another. They killed the king and many other people. At that time +there was in France a man of genius- Napoleon. He conquered +everybody everywhere- that is, he killed many people because he was +a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and +killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he +returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all +obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill +people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he killed a great +many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to +restore order in Europe and therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807 +he suddenly made friends with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled +and again began killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand +men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from +Moscow, and the Emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and +others, united Europe to arm against the disturber of its peace. All +Napoleon's allies suddenly became his enemies and their forces +advanced against the fresh forces he raised. The Allies defeated +Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent him +to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and +showing him every respect, though five years before and one year later +they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII, +who till then had been the laughingstock both of the French and the +Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old +Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then the skillful +statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who managed to +sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and thereby extended +the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by these conversations +made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and +monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of again ordering +their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon arrived in +France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating him, +immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were angry +at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated +the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent +him to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the +beloved France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that +rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a +reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress +their subjects." + +It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic- a caricature +of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild +expression of the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions, +which all the historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the +histories of separate states to the writers of general histories and +the new histories of the culture of that period. + +The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact +that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has +asked. + +If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement +of humanity and of the peoples, the first question- in the absence +of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible- is: what is +the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously +replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was +very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books. + +All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it +is not what was asked. All that would be interesting if we +recognized a divine power based on itself and always consistently +directing its nations through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we +do not acknowledge such a power, and therefore before speaking about +Napoleons, Louis-es, and authors, we ought to be shown the +connection existing between these men and the movement of the nations. + +If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it +should be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole +interest of history lies precisely in that force. + +History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to +everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone +reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new +force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really +quite well known to everybody. + +CHAPTER II + +What force moves the nations? + +Biographical historians and historians of separate nations +understand this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In +their narration events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and +Alexander, or in general of the persons they describe. The answers +given by this kind of historian to the question of what force causes +events to happen are satisfactory only as long as there is but one +historian to each event. As soon as historians of different +nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same event, the +replies they give immediately lose all meaning, for this force is +understood by them all not only differently but often in quite +contradictory ways. One historian says that an event was produced by +Napoleon's power, another that it was produced by Alexander's, a third +that it was due to the power of some other person. Besides this, +historians of that kind contradict each other even in their +statement as to the force on which the authority of some particular +person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon's power +was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it was +based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians +of this class, by mutually destroying one another's positions, destroy +the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no +reply to history's essential question. + +Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to +recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians' view of the +force which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power +inherent in heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a +multiplicity of variously directed forces. In describing a war or +the subjugation of a people, a general historian looks for the cause +of the event not in the power of one man, but in the interaction of +many persons connected with the event. + +According to this view the power of historical personages, +represented as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would +seem, be regarded as a force that itself produces events. Yet in +most cases universal historians still employ the conception of power +as a force that itself produces events, and treat it as their cause. +In their exposition, an historic character is first the product of his +time, and his power only the resultant of various forces, and then his +power is itself a force producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and +others, for instance, at one time prove Napoleon to be a product of +the Revolution, of the ideas of 1789 and so forth, and at another +plainly say that the campaign of 1812 and other things they do not +like were simply the product of Napoleon's misdirected will, and +that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their development by +Napoleon's caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the general temper +of the age produced Napoleon's power. But Napoleon's power +suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of the +age. + +This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur +at every step, but the universal historians' accounts are all made +up of a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs +because after entering the field of analysis the universal +historians stop halfway. + +To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant +force, the sum of the components must equal the resultant. This +condition is never observed by the universal historians, and so to +explain the resultant forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to +the insufficient components, another unexplained force affecting the +resultant action. + +Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the +restoration of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were +produced by the will of Alexander. But the universal historian +Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the specialist historian, tries +to prove that the campaign of 1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons +were due to other things beside Alexander's will- such as the activity +of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte +Chateaubriand, and others. The historian evidently decomposes +Alexander's power into the components: Talleyrand, Chateaubriand, +and the rest- but the sum of the components, that is, the interactions +of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the others, +evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of +millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That +Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and others spoke certain words to +one another only affected their mutual relations but does not +account for the submission of millions. And therefore to explain how +from these relations of theirs the submission of millions of people +resulted- that is, how component forces equal to one A gave a +resultant equal to a thousand times A- the historian is again +obliged to fall back on power- the force he had denied- and to +recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he has to +admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is just +what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only +contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves. + +Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according +to whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the +clouds away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the +same way the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them +and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events, +and sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that +power produces events. + +A third class of historians- the so-called historians of culture- +following the path laid down by the universal historians who sometimes +accept writers and ladies as forces producing events- again take +that force to be something quite different. They see it in what is +called culture- in mental activity. + +The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their +progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical +events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one +another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that +such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense +number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these +historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that +this indication is the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove +that the cause of events lies in intellectual activity, only by a +great stretch can one admit that there is any connection between +intellectual activity and the movement of peoples, and in no case +can one admit that intellectual activity controls people's actions, +for that view is not confirmed by such facts as the very cruel murders +of the French Revolution resulting from the doctrine of the equality +of man, or the very cruel wars and executions resulting from the +preaching of love. + +But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments +with which these histories are filled- admitting that nations are +governed by some undefined force called an idea- history's essential +question still remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs +and to the influence of advisers and other people introduced by the +universal historians, another, newer force- the idea- is added, the +connection of which with the masses needs explanation. It is +possible to understand that Napoleon had power and so events occurred; +with some effort one may even conceive that Napoleon together with +other influences was the cause of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat +social, had the effect of making Frenchmen begin to drown one +another cannot be understood without an explanation of the causal +nexus of this new force with the event. + +Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live +contemporaneously, and so it is possible to find some connection +between the intellectual activity of men and their historical +movements, just as such a connection may be found between the +movements of humanity and commerce, handicraft, gardening, or anything +else you please. But why intellectual activity is considered by the +historians of culture to be the cause or expression of the whole +historical movement is hard to understand. Only the following +considerations can have led the historians to such a conclusion: (1) +that history is written by learned men, and so it is natural and +agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class +supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a +similar belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists, +and soldiers (if they do not express it, that is merely because +traders and soldiers do not write history), and (2) that spiritual +activity, enlightenment, civilization, culture, ideas, are all +indistinct, indefinite conceptions under whose banner it is very +easy to use words having a still less definite meaning, and which +can therefore be readily introduced into any theory. + +But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this +kind (which may possibly even be of use to someone for something) +the histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and +more to approximate, are significant from the fact that after +seriously and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and +political doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to +describe an actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for +instance, they involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise +of power- and say plainly that that was the result of Napoleon's will. +Speaking so, the historians of culture involuntarily contradict +themselves, and show that the new force they have devised does not +account for what happens in history, and that history can only be +explained by introducing a power which they apparently do not +recognize. + +CHAPTER III + +A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasant +says the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because +its wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement +lies in the smoke which the wind carries away. + +The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation. +To refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no +devil, or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is +not the devil but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as +a result of the contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong. +But the man who says that the movement of the wheels is the cause +refutes himself, for having once begun to analyze he ought to go on +and explain further why the wheels go round; and till he has reached +the ultimate cause of the movement of the locomotive in the pressure +of steam in the boiler, he has no right to stop in his search for +the cause. The man who explains the movement of the locomotive by +the smoke that is carried back has noticed that the wheels do not +supply an explanation and has taken the first sign that occurs to +him and in his turn has offered that as an explanation. + +The only conception that can explain the movement of the +locomotive is that of a force commensurate with the movement observed. + +The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples +is that of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the +peoples. + +Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of +different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement +observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the +peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force +resulting from several other forces, like the movement of the +wheels; others again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that +is blown away. + +So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether +Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories of +all, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quite +impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception +of a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain +end. And the only such conception known to historians is that of +power. + +This conception is the one handle by means of which the material +of history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone who +breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some other +method of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of the +one possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception +of power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated +by the universal historians and historians of culture themselves, +for they professedly reject that conception but inevitably have +recourse to it at every step. + +In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to now +is like money in circulation- paper money and coin. The biographies +and special national histories are like paper money. They can be +used and can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to +anyone and even advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the +security behind them. You need only forget to ask how the will of +heroes produces events, and such histories as Thiers' will be +interesting and instructive and may perhaps even possess a tinge of +poetry. But just as doubts of the real value of paper money arise +either because, being easy to make, too much of it gets made or +because people try to exchange it for gold, so also doubts +concerning the real value of such histories arise either because too +many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart someone +inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?- that is, wants to +exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual +comprehension. + +The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture are +like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to +substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific +gravity of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more +than that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is +deceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle. +As gold is gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange +but also for use, so universal historians will be valuable only when +they can reply to history's essential question: what is power? The +universal historians give contradictory replies to that question, +while the historians of culture evade it and answer something quite +different. And as counters of imitation gold can be used only among +a group of people who agree to accept them as gold, or among those who +do not know the nature of gold, so universal historians and historians +of culture, not answering humanity's essential question, serve as +currency for some purposes of their own, only in universities and +among the mass of readers who have a taste for what they call "serious +reading." + +CHAPTER IV + +Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine +subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the +subjection of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot without +contradictions take a single step till it has chosen one of two +things: either a return to the former belief in the direct +intervention of the Deity in human affairs or a definite explanation +of the meaning of the force producing historical events and termed +"power." + +A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been +destroyed; and so it is essential to explain what is meant by power. + +Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so +accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the +question: why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon +uttered certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and +so what he ordered was done. + +This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was +given him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes +essential to determine what is this power of one man over others. + +It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak +one- a domination based on the application or threat of physical +force, like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect +of moral force, as in their simplicity some historians think who say +that the leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted +with a special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power +cannot be based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to +mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions +differ widely, history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a +Metternich, who ruled over millions of people, had any particular +moral qualities, but on the contrary were generally morally weaker +than any of the millions they ruled over. + +If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral +qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for +elsewhere- in the relation to the people of the man who wields the +power. + +And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence, +that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history's +understanding of power for true gold. + +Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed +or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers. + +In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how +a state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that to +be arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history that +definition of power needs explanation. + +The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as the +ancients regarded fire- namely, as something existing absolutely. +But for history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just as for +modern physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon. + +From this fundamental difference between the view held by history +and that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell +minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what +power- existing immutably outside time- is, but to history's questions +about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer +nothing. + +If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their +ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? If +not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when +he was taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those +criminals whom he arrested? + +Do palace revolutions- in which sometimes only two or three people +take part- transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In +international relations, is the will of the people also transferred to +their conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine +transferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people +transferred to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the +French went to fight the Austrians? + +To these questions three answers are possible: + +Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always +unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen, +and that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle +against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as +an infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the +people is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite +and known conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and +even destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers +of the conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or +(3) that the will of the people is delegated to the rulers +conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and +that the appearance of several authorities, their struggles and +their falls, result solely from the greater or lesser fulfillment by +the rulers of these unknown conditions on which the will of the people +is transferred from some people to others. + +And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain +the relation of the people to their rulers. + +Some historians- those biographical and specialist historians +already referred to- in their simplicity failing to understand the +question of the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective +will of the people is unconditionally transferred to historical +persons, and therefore when describing some single state they assume +that particular power to be the one absolute and real power, and +that any other force opposing this is not a power but a violation of +power- mere violence. + +Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of +history, has the inconvenience- in application to complex and stormy +periods in the life of nations during which various powers arise +simultaneously and struggle with one another- that a Legitimist +historian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory, +and Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while a +Republican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Convention +and the other that the Empire was the real power, and that all the +others were violations of power. Evidently the explanations +furnished by these historians being mutually contradictory can only +satisfy young children. + +Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of +historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the +will of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have +power only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will +of the people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this +program consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they +continually contradict one another. + +Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation's +progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth, +freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country. +But not to mention the historians' contradictions as to the nature +of this program- or even admitting that some one general program of +these conditions exists- the facts of history almost always contradict +that theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted +consist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how +is it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reigns +tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are executed by their +people? To this question historians reply that Louis XIV's activity, +contrary to the program, reacted on Louis XVI. But why did it not +react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV- why should it react just on Louis +XVI? And what is the time limit for such reactions? To these questions +there are and can be no answers. Equally little does this view explain +why for several centuries the collective will is not withdrawn from +certain rulers and their heirs, and then suddenly during a period of +fifty years is transferred to the Convention, to the Directory, to +Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to +Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican government, and to +Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people's +will from from one individual to another, especially in view of +international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians +are obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal +delegations of the people's will but are accidents dependent on +cunning, on mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a +ruler, or a party leader. So that the greater part of the events of +history- civil wars, revolutions, and conquests- are presented by +these historians not as the results of free transferences of the +people's will, but as results of the ill-directed will of one or +more individuals, that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And so +these historians also see and admit historical events which are +exceptions to the theory. + +These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that some +plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that +all that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that the +palm, the mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growth +and no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory. + +Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people +is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the +conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have +power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has +been delegated to them. + +But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in the +historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have +those leaders? + +The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of the +people: the activity of the leaders represents the activity of the +people. + +But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the +leaders serves as an expression of the people's will or only some part +of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expression +of the people's will, as some historians suppose, then all the details +of the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or +a Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which is +evident nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the +activity of an historical leader which serves to express the +people's life, as other so-called "philosophical" historians +believe, then to determine which side of the activity of a leader +expresses the nation's life, we have first of all to know in what +the nation's life consists. + +Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most +obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all +conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of +humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by +almost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment, +progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization +as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study the +men of whom the greatest number of monuments have remained: kings, +ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to +the extent to which in their opinion these persons have promoted or +hindered that abstraction. But as it is in no way proved that the +aim of humanity does consist in freedom, equality, enlightenment, or +civilization, and as the connection of the people with the rulers +and enlighteners of humanity is only based on the arbitrary assumption +that the collective will of the people is always transferred to the +men whom we have noticed, it happens that the activity of the millions +who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture, and destroy one another +never is expressed in the account of the activity of some dozen people +who did not burn houses, practice agriculture, or slay their fellow +creatures. + +History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples +of the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive +eastward explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their +mistresses and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau, +Diderot, Beaumarchais, and others? + +Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and +Siberia expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the +Terrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski? + +Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained +by the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their +ladies? For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without +leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit, +remains incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the +cessation of that movement when a rational and sacred aim for the +Crusade- the deliverance of Jerusalem- had been clearly defined by +historic leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples to +free the Holy Land; but the people did not go, for the unknown cause +which had previously impelled them to go no longer existed. The +history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers can evidently not cover +the life of the peoples. And the history of the Godfreys and the +Minnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys and Minnesingers, +but the history of the life of the peoples and their impulses has +remained unknown. + +Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us +the life of the peoples. + +The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of +life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had a +hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was +suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why +after the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why +during the French Revolution they guillotined one another. + +If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newest +historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not +the history of the life of the peoples. + +CHAPTER V + +The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a few +men, for the connection between those men and the nations has not been +found. The theory that this connection is based on the transference of +the collective will of a people to certain historical personages is an +hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history. + +The theory of the transference of the collective will of the +people to historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of +jurisprudence and be essential for its purposes, but in its +application to history, as soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil +wars occur- that is, as soon as history begins- that theory explains +nothing. + +The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of transference of +the people's will cannot be verified, for it never occurred. + +Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head of affairs, the +theory can always say that such and such a person took the lead +because the collective will was transferred to him. + +The replies this theory gives to historical questions are like the +replies of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and +paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in +different parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman, +should attribute the direction the herd takes to what animal happens +to be at its head. + +"The herd goes in that direction because the animal in front leads +it and the collective will of all the other animals is vested in +that leader." This is what historians of the first class say- those +who assume the unconditional transference of the people's will. + +"If the animals leading the herd change, this happens because the +collective will of all the animals is transferred from one leader to +another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them +in the direction selected by the whole herd." Such is the reply +historians who assume that the collective will of the people is +delegated to rulers under conditions which they regard as known. (With +this method of observation it often happens that the observer, +influenced by the direction he himself prefers, regards those as +leaders who, owing to the people's change of direction, are no +longer in front, but on one side, or even in the rear.) + +"If the animals in front are continually changing and the +direction of the whole herd is constantly altered, this is because +in order to follow a given direction the animals transfer their will +to the animals that have attracted our attention, and to study the +movements of the herd we must watch the movements of all the prominent +animals moving on all sides of the herd." So say the third class of +historians who regard all historical persons, from monarchs to +journalists, as the expression of their age. + +The theory of the transference of the will of the people to historic +persons is merely a paraphrase- a restatement of the question in other +words. + +What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the +collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what +condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On +condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people. +That is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning +of which we do not understand. + +If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning, +then having subjected to criticism the explanation of "power" that +juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is +merely a word and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena +man has, besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies +his reflections. And experience tells us that power is not merely a +word but an actually existing phenomenon. + +Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective +activity of men can do without the conception of power, the +existence of power is proved both by history and by observing +contemporary events. + +Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear, by whose +will the event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree +and the French go to Mexico. The King of Prussia and Bismarck issue +decrees and an army enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and +an army enters Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French +submit to the Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever event occurs +it is always related to the will of one or of several men who have +decreed it. + +The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowledging divine +intervention in human affairs, want to see the cause of events in +the expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that +supposition is not confirmed either by reason or by experience. + +On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a man's +will- his words- are only part of the general activity expressed in an +event, as for instance in a war or a revolution, and so without +assuming an incomprehensible, supernatural force- a miracle- one +cannot admit that words can be the immediate cause of the movements of +millions of men. On the other hand, even if we admitted that words +could be the cause of events, history shows that the expression of the +will of historical personages does not in most cases produce any +effect, that is to say, their commands are often not executed, and +sometimes the very opposite of what they order occurs. + +Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity +we cannot regard "power" as the cause of events. + +Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation +that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution +of that will by others. + +To explain the conditions of that relationship we must first +establish a conception of the expression of will, referring it to +man and not to the Deity. + +If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as ancient +history tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time +and is not caused by anything, for the Divinity is not controlled by +an event. But speaking of commands that are the expression of the will +of men acting in time and in relation to one another, to explain the +connection of commands with events we must restore: (1) the +condition of all that takes place: the continuity of movement in +time both of the events and of the person who commands, and (2) the +inevitability of the connection between the person commanding and +those who execute his command. + +CHAPTER VI + +Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time, +can relate to a whole series of events occurring over a period of +years or centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can +by His sole will determine the direction of humanity's movement; but +man acts in time and himself takes part in what occurs. + +Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we see that +no command can be executed without some preceding order having been +given rendering the execution of the last command possible. + +No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole +series of occurrences; but each command follows from another, and +never refers to a whole series of events but always to one moment only +of an event. + +When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to go to +war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series of +consecutive commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have +commanded an invasion of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered +such and such papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to +Petersburg; tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army, the +fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so on- millions of commands, +which formed a whole series corresponding to a series of events +which brought the French armies into Russia. + +If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an +invasion of England and expended on no other undertaking so much +time and effort, and yet during his whole reign never once attempted +to execute that design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with +which country he considered it desirable to be in alliance (a +conviction he repeatedly expressed)- this came about because his +commands did not correspond to the course of events in the first case, +but did so correspond in the latter. + +For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that a man +should order what can be executed. But to know what can and what +cannot be executed is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon's +invasion of Russia in which millions participated, but even in the +simplest event, for in either case millions of obstacles may arise +to prevent its execution. Every order executed is always one of an +immense number unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with +the course of events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get +linked up with a consecutive series of commands corresponding to a +series of events, and are executed. + +Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which +precedes it is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and +out of thousands of others those few commands which were consistent +with that event have been executed, we forget about the others that +were not executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the +chief source of our error in this matter is due to the fact that in +the historical accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and +petty events, such for instance as all those which led the French +armies to Russia, is generalized into one event in accord with the +result produced by that series of events, and corresponding with +this generalization the whole series of commands is also generalized +into a single expression of will. + +We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In +reality in all Napoleon's activity we never find anything resembling +an expression of that wish, but find a series of orders, or +expressions of his will, very variously and indefinitely directed. +Amid a long series of unexecuted orders of Napoleon's one series, +for the campaign of 1812, was carried out- not because those orders +differed in any way from the other, unexecuted orders but because they +coincided with the course of events that led the French army into +Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes out not +because the color was laid on from this side or in that way, but +because it was laid on from all sides over the figure cut in the +stencil. + +So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the +events, we find that a command can never be the cause of the event, +but that a certain definite dependence exists between the two. + +To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to +reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not +from the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the +command himself takes part in + +This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what +is called power. This relation consists in the following: + +For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in +which regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common +action, the relation between those taking part in it is always the +same. + +Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations +toward one another that the larger number take a more direct share, +and the smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action +for which they have combined. + +Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one +of the most striking and definite examples is an army. + +Every army is composed of lower grades of the service- the rank +and file- of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next +higher military rank- corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom +there are fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are +still fewer, and so on to the highest military command which is +concentrated in one person. + +A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone, +of which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and +file; the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of +the next higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point +of which will represent the commander in chief. + +The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section +of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing, +hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for +these actions from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The +noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the +action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they already give +commands. An officer still less often acts directly himself, but +commands still more frequently. A general does nothing but command the +troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon +himself. The commander in chief never takes direct part in the +action itself, but only gives general orders concerning the movement +of the mass of the troops. A similar relation of people to one another +is seen in every combination of men for common activity- in +agriculture, trade, and every administration. + +And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of +a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in +any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to +the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action, +combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in +performing the action the less they can command and the more +numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the +action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them there +are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man at the top, +who takes the least direct share in the action and directs his +activity chiefly to commanding. + +This relation of the men who command to those they command is what +constitutes the essence of the conception called power. + +Having restored the condition of time under which all events +occur, find that a command is executed only when it is related to a +corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of +relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that +by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest +part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively +directed to commanding. + +CHAPTER VII + +When an event is taking place people express their opinions and +wishes about it, and as the event results from the collective activity +of many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure +to be fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions +expressed is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event +as a command preceding it. + +Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to +how and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens +that this is done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have +command and power in their primary form. The man who worked most +with his hands could not think so much about what he was doing, or +reflect on or command what would result from the common activity; +while the man who commanded more would evidently work less with his +hands on account of his greater verbal activity. + +When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a +common aim there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their +activity is given to directing and commanding, take less less part +in the direct work. + +When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections +which as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his +present activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just +the same is done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not +take a direct part in the activity to devise considerations, +justifications, and surmises concerning their collective activity. + +For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and +kill one another. And corresponding to the event its justification +appears in people's belief that this was necessary for the welfare +of France, for liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one +another, and this event was accompanied by its justification in the +necessity for a centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and +so on. Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow men, +and the event was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France, +the baseness of England, and so on. History shows us that these +justifications of the events have no common sense and are all +contradictory, as in the case of killing a man as the result of +recognizing his rights, and the killing of millions in Russia for +the humiliation of England. But these justifications have a very +necessary significance in their own day. + +These justifications release those who produce the events from moral +responsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front +of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they +clear men's moral responsibilities from their path. + +Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest +question that presents itself when examining each historical event. +How is it that millions of men commit collective crimes- make war, +commit murder, and so on? + +With the present complex forms of political and social life in +Europe can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered by +monarchs, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is +there any collective action which cannot find its justification in +political unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or in +civilization? So that every event that occurs inevitably coincides +with some expressed wish and, receiving a justification, presents +itself as the result of the will of one man or of several men. + +In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts +will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship +the movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion. + +Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that +flow and comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convince +ourselves that every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement +of the ship, and that we were led into error by the fact that we +ourselves were imperceptibly moving. + +We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement of +historical characters (that is, re-establish the inevitable +condition of all that occurs- the continuity of movement in time) +and do not lose sight of the essential connection of historical +persons with the masses. + +When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the same +wave ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it also +turns frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be the +wave anticipating its movement. + +Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen +and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neither +directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a +distance seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern the +ship's movement also. + +Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons +which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed +that the events depended on those commands. But examining the events +themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to +the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on +events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, however +many commands were issued, the event does not take place unless +there are other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs- be it +what it may- then out of all the continually expressed wishes of +different people some will always be found which by their meaning +and their time of utterance are related as commands to the events. + +Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positively +to these two essential questions of history: + +(1) What is power? + +(2) What force produces the movement of the nations? + +(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals, in +which the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, and +justifications of the collective action that is performed, the less is +his participation in that action. + +(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by +intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the two as +historians have supposed, but by the activity of all the people who +participate in the events, and who always combine in such a way that +those taking the largest direct share in the event take on +themselves the least responsibility and vice versa. + +Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event; +physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral +activity is inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event +is neither in the one nor in the other but in the union of the two. + +Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to +the phenomena we are examining. + +In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity- that final +limit to which in every domain of thought man's reason arrives if it +is not playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat +produces electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel one +another. + +Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we +cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is +inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law. +The same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we +do not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action, +people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and +we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in +other words that it is a law. + +CHAPTER VIII + +If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment +of this simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have +finished our argument. But the law of history relates to man. A +particle of matter cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of +attraction or repulsion and that that law is untrue, but man, who is +the subject of history, says plainly: I am free and am therefore not +subject to the law. + +The presence of the problem of man's free will, though +unexpressed, is felt at every step of history. + +All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered +this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and +the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the +lack of a solution of that question. + +If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act +as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected +incidents. + +If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely, +that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that +man's in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy +the possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of +humanity. + +If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will +cannot exist, for then man's will is subject to that law. + +In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most +ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most +ancient times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance. + +The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation from +whatever point of view- theological, historical, ethical, or +philosophic- we find a general law of necessity to which he (like +all that exists) is subject. But regarding him from within ourselves +as what we are conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free. + +This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart from +and independent of reason. Through his reason man observes himself, +but only through consciousness does he know himself. + +Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of +reason is conceivable. + +To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of +all be conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of +himself as a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is +conscious of his volition. But his will- which forms the essence of +his life- man recognizes (and can but recognize) as free. + +If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed +by one and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking +food, using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this +never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation +of it. Were it not free it could not be limited. A man's will seems to +him to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as +free. + +You say: I am not and am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let +it fall. Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an +irrefutable demonstration of freedom. + +That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not +subject to reason. + +If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and +independent source of self-consciousness it would be subject to +reasoning and to experience, but in fact such subjection does not +exist and is inconceivable. + +A series of experiments and arguments proves to every man that he, +as an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man +submits to them and never resists the laws of gravity or +impermeability once he has become acquainted with them. But the same +series of experiments and arguments proves to him that the complete +freedom of which he is conscious in himself is impossible, and that +his every action depends on his organization, his character, and the +motives acting upon him; yet man never submits to the deductions of +these experiments and arguments. Having learned from experiment and +argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this +and always expects the law that he has learned to be fulfilled. + +But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, +he does not and cannot believe this. + +However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the +same conditions and with the same character he will do the same +thing as before, yet when under the same conditions and with the +same character he approaches for the thousandth time the action that +always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before +the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or +sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him +that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in +precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational +conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot +imagine life. He feels that however impossible it may be, it is so, +for without this conception of freedom not only would he be unable +to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single +moment. + +He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to +life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame +and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, +health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion +and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of +freedom. + +A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of +life. + +If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a senseless +contradiction like the possibility of performing two actions at one +and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that +only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason. + +This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom, +uncontrolled by experiment or argument, recognized by all thinkers and +felt by everyone without exception, this consciousness without which +no conception of man is possible constitutes the other side of the +question. + +Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-seeing +God. What is sin, the conception of which arises from the +consciousness of man's freedom? That is a question for theology. + +The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws expressed +in statistics. What is man's responsibility to society, the conception +of which results from the conception of freedom? That is a question +for jurisprudence. + +Man's actions proceed from his innate character and the motives +acting upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and +wrong in actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom? +That is a question for ethics. + +Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears +subject to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from +that connection appears to free. How should the past life of nations +and of humanity be regarded- as the result of the free, or as the +result of the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for +history. + +Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of knowledge- +thanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the diffusion of +printed matter- has the question of the freedom of will been put on +a level on which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the +majority of so-called advanced people- that is, the crowd of +ignoramuses- have taken the work of the naturalists who deal with +one side of the question for a solution of the whole problem. + +They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist, +for the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular +movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul +and free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we +sprang from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that +thousands of years ago that same law of necessity which with such +ardor they are now trying to prove by physiology and comparative +zoology was not merely acknowledged by all the religions and all the +thinkers, but has never been denied. They do not see that the role +of the natural sciences in this matter is merely to serve as an +instrument for the illumination of one side of it. For the fact +that, from the point of view of observation, reason and the will are +merely secretions of the brain, and that man following the general law +may have developed from lower animals at some unknown period of +time, only explains from a fresh side the truth admitted thousands +of years ago by all the religious and philosophic theories- that +from the point of view of reason man is subject to the law of +necessity; but it does not advance by a hair's breadth the solution of +the question, which has another, opposite, side, based on the +consciousness of freedom. + +If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is +as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at +a certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is +the time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of +how man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of +necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative +physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can +observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe +consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity. + +The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this +question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls +of a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief +superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over +the windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should +be delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything +is now so smooth and regular. + +CHAPTER IX + +For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability, +history has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which +the question is dealt with, that for history this question does not +refer to the essence of man's free will but its manifestation in the +past and under certain conditions. + +In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences +as experimental science stands to abstract science. + +The subject for history is not man's will itself but our +presentation of it. + +And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the +incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it +does for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a +presentation of man's life in which the union of these two +contradictions has already taken place. + +In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very +clearly and definitely understood without any sense of +contradiction, although each event presents itself as partly free +and partly compulsory. + +To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined +and what constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the +philosophy of history can and should follow a path contrary to that +taken by other sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions +of freedom and inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the +phenomena of life under those definitions, history should deduce a +definition of the conception of freedom and inevitability themselves +from the immense quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and +that always appear dependent on these two elements. + +Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an +individual we may consider, we always regard it as the result partly +of man's free will and partly of the law of inevitability. + +Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the +incursions of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of +someone's action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of +several for his walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The +degree of freedom and inevitability governing the actions of these +people is clearly defined for us. + +Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to +differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but +every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom +and inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure +of freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more +freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive, +and the more inevitability the less freedom. + +The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases +according to the point of view from which the action is regarded, +but their relation is always one of inverse proportion. + +A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry +mother exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man +trained to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a +defenseless man- seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject +to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which +these people were placed, and more free to one who does not know +that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was hungry, that +the soldier was in the ranks, and so on. Similarly a man who committed +a murder twenty years ago and has since lived peaceably and harmlessly +in society seems less guilty and his action more due to the law of +inevitability, to someone who considers his action after twenty +years have elapsed than to one who examined it the day after it was +committed. And in the same way every action of an insane, intoxicated, +or highly excited man appears less free and more inevitable to one who +knows the mental condition of him who committed the action, and +seems more free and less inevitable to one who does not know it. In +all these cases the conception of freedom is increased or diminished +and the conception of compulsion is correspondingly decreased or +increased, according to the point of view from which the action is +regarded. So that the greater the conception of necessity the +smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa. + +Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence, +and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity +and freedom. + +All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and +necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations: + +(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the +deeds. + +(2) His relation to time. + +(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action. + +The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the +man's relation to the external world and the greater or lesser +clearness of our understanding of the definite position occupied by +the man in relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what +makes it evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject +to necessity than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the +actions of a man closely connected with others in a thickly +populated district, or of one bound by family, official, or business +duties, seem certainly less free and more subject to necessity than +those of a man living in solitude and seclusion. + +If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything +around him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his +relation to anything around him, if we see his connection with +anything whatever- with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads, +the work on which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or +the light that falls on the things about him- we see that each of +these circumstances has an influence on him and controls at least some +side of his activity. And the more we perceive of these influences the +more our conception of his freedom diminishes and the more our +conception of the necessity that weighs on him increases. + +The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation +of the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the +place the man's action occupies in time. That is the ground which +makes the fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the +human race, appear evidently less free than a man's entry into +marriage today. It is the reason why the life and activity of people +who lived centuries ago and are connected with me in time cannot +seem to me as free as the life of a contemporary, the consequences +of which are still unknown to me. + +The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends +in this respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the +performance of the action and our judgment of it. + +If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the +same circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me +undoubtedly free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago, +then being in different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing +that if that act had not been committed much that resulted from it- +good, agreeable, and even essential- would not have taken place. If +I reflect on an action still more remote, ten years ago or more, +then the consequences of my action are still plainer to me and I +find it hard to imagine what would have happened had that action not +been performed. The farther I go back in memory, or what is the same +thing the farther I go forward in my judgment, the more doubtful +becomes my belief in the freedom of my action. + +In history we find a very similar progress of conviction +concerning the part played by free will in the general affairs of +humanity. A contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing +of all the known participants, but with a more remote event we already +see its inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else +possible. And the farther we go back in examining events the less +arbitrary do they appear. + +The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of +the crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still +seem to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their +heroes' will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying +its definite place in history and without which we cannot imagine +the modern history of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the +Crusades that event appeared as merely due to the will of certain +people. In regard to the migration of the peoples it does not enter +anyone's head today to suppose that the renovation of the European +world depended on Attila's caprice. The farther back in history the +object of our observation lies, the more doubtful does the free will +of those concerned in the event become and the more manifest the law +of inevitability. + +The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that +endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which +each phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man's every action, must +have its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a +cause of what will follow. + +The better we are acquainted with the physiological, +psychological, and historical laws deduced by observation and by which +man is controlled, and the more correctly we perceive the +physiological, psychological, and historical causes of the action, and +the simpler the action we are observing and the less complex the +character and mind of the man in question, the more subject to +inevitability and the less free do our actions and those of others +appear. + +When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a +crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we +ascribe a greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we +most urgently demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of +a virtuous act we rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case +we recognize in it more individuality, originality, and +independence. But if even one of the innumerable causes of the act +is known to us we recognize a certain element of necessity and are +less insistent on punishment for the crime, or the acknowledgment of +the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom of the apparently +original action. That a criminal was reared among male factors +mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or +mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more +comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems +less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The +founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when +we know how or by what the way was prepared for his activity. If we +have a large range of examples, if our observation is constantly +directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in people's +actions, their actions appear to us more under compulsion and less +free the more correctly we connect the effects with the causes. If +we examined simple actions and had a vast number of such actions under +observation, our conception of their inevitability would be still +greater. The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the +misconduct of a woman who had fallen into bad company, a drunkard's +relapse into drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less +free the better we understand their cause. If the man whose actions we +are considering is on a very low stage of mental development, like a +child, a madman, or a simpleton- then, knowing the causes of the act +and the simplicity of the character and intelligence in question, we +see so large an element of necessity and so little free will that as +soon as we know the cause prompting the action we can foretell the +result. + +On these three considerations alone is based the conception of +irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted +by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less +according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in +which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according +to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of +the action and its investigation, and according to the greater or +lesser understanding of the causes that led to the action. + +CHAPTER X + +Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually +diminishes or increases according to the greater or lesser +connection with the external world, the greater or lesser remoteness +of time, and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in +relation to which we contemplate a man's life. + +So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the +external world is well known, where the time between the action and +its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are +most accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability +and a minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on +external conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the +causes of whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of +a minimum of inevitability and a maximum of freedom. + +In neither case- however we may change our point of view, however +plain we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and +the external world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long +or short the period of time, however intelligible or +incomprehensible the causes of the action may be- can we ever conceive +either complete freedom or complete necessity. + +(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the +influence of the external world, we never get a conception of +freedom in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what +surrounds him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My +action seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my +arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in +which there was least obstruction to that action either from things +around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out +of all the possible directions because in it there were fewest +obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it should +encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man being free we must +imagine him outside space, which is evidently impossible. + +(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time +of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I +examine an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it +as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which +it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself: +could I have abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has +already passed? To convince myself of this I do not lift it the next +moment. But I am not now abstaining from doing so at the first +moment when I asked the question. Time has gone by which I could not +detain, the arm I then lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now +refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which I lifted it the same +that now surrounds me. The moment in which the first movement was made +is irrevocable, and at that moment I could make only one movement, and +whatever movement I made would be the only one. That I did not lift my +arm a moment later does not prove that I could have abstained from +lifting it then. And since I could make only one movement at that +single moment of time, it could not have been any other. To imagine it +as free, it is necessary to imagine it in the present, on the boundary +between the past and the future- that is, outside time, which is +impossible. + +(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be +increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is, +an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of +the expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the +first demand of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause, +for without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to +perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish to perform +an action without a cause is the cause of my action. + +But even if- imagining a man quite exempt from all influences, +examining only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any +cause- we were to admit so infinitely small a remainder of +inevitability as equaled zero, we should even then not have arrived at +the conception of complete freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by +the external world, standing outside of time and independent of cause, +is no longer a man. + +In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite +devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability. + +(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space +in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for +the number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of +space. And therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men +are defined, there is no complete inevitability but a certain +measure of freedom remains. + +(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action +we are examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite, +while time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never +be absolute inevitability. + +(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any +action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and +so again we never reach absolute inevitability. + +But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of +freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given case- as for +instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot- complete +absence of freedom, by so doing we should destroy the very +conception of man in the case we are examining, for as soon as there +is no freedom there is also no man. And so the conception of the +action of a man subject solely to the law of inevitability without any +element of freedom is just as impossible as the conception of a +man's completely free action. + +And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of +inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of +an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of +time, and an infinite series of causes. + +To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of +inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond +time, and free from dependence on cause. + +In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom we +should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of +inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content. + +In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability +we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time, +and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and +unlimited would be nothing, or mere content without form. + +We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's +whole outlook on the universe is constructed- the incomprehensible +essence of life, and the laws defining that essence. + +Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it +visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time +is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable +otherwise. (3) The connection between cause and effect has no +beginning and can have no end. + +Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me, +consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the +fixed moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as +living, consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I +feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation of my life. + +Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. +Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom. + +Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's +consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its +three forms. + +Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines. +Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form. + +Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one +another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and +separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability. + +Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life. + +Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define +one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible. + +All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation +of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws +of reason. + +All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain +relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence +of life to the laws of reason. + +The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious +of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity, +animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life +in man and we call that freedom. + +But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but +felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which +we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the +first knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton's law), so +too the force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which +everyone is conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know +the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that +every man dies, up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and +historic laws). + +All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the +laws of reason. + +Man's free will differs from every other force in that man is +directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way +differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation, +electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one +another in that they are differently defined by reason. Just so the +force of man's free will is distinguished by reason from the other +forces of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom, +apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that +define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force +that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable +sensation of life. + +And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly +bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity, +or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of +astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the +same way does the force of free will form the content of history. +But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of +this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the +subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free +will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause +forms the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of +metaphysics. + +In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of +inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital +force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above +what we know of the essence of life. + +So also in history what is known to us we call laws of +inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for +history only an expression for the unknown remainder of what we know +about the laws of human life. + +CHAPTER XI + +History examines the manifestations of man's free will in connection +with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is, +it defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a +science only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws. + +The recognition of man's free will as something capable of +influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the +same for history as the recognition of a free force moving the +heavenly bodies would be for astronomy. + +That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of +laws, that is, of any science whatever. If there is even a single body +moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no +conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists. +If any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical +law can exist, nor any conception of historical events. + +For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end +of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a +consciousness of man's will in the present moves in space, time, and +dependence on cause. + +The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the +more evident are the laws of that movement. To discover and define +those laws is the problem of history. + +From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards +its subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events +in man's freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is +impossible, for however man's free will may be restricted, as soon +as we recognize it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law +becomes impossible. + +Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal, +that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we +convince ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes, +and then instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of +laws as its problem. + +The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of +thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously +with the self-destruction toward which- ever dissecting and dissecting +the causes of phenomena- the old method of history is moving. + +All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at +infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons +the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the +integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the +conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property +common to all unknown, infinitely small, elements. + +In another form but along the same path of reflection the other +sciences have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity +he did not say that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction; +he said that all bodies from the largest to the smallest have the +property of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the +question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he expressed +the property common to all bodies from the infinitely large to the +infinitely small. The same is done by the natural sciences: leaving +aside the question of cause, they seek for laws. History stands on the +same path. And if history has for its object the study of the movement +of the nations and of humanity and not the narration of episodes in +the lives of individuals, it too, setting aside the conception of +cause, should seek the laws common to all the inseparably +interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will. + +CHAPTER XII + +From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the +mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth +that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the +ancients. By disproving that law it might have been possible to retain +the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but without +disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying the +Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the discovery of the law of +Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time. + +From the time the first person said and proved that the number of +births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this +or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and +economic conditions, and that certain relations of population to +soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history +had been built were destroyed in their essence. + +By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have +been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to +continue studying historic events as the results of man's free will. +For if a certain mode of government was established or certain +migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such +geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will +of those individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of +government or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as +the cause. + +And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with +the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative +philology, and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions. + +The struggle between the old views and the new was long and +stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on +guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation. +But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as firmly +on the new foundation. + +Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding +between the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the +same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of +subverting revelation. + +In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes +passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret +for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the +other is the passion for destruction. + +To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical +philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would +destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the +miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of +Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the +laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of +gravitation as a weapon against religion. + +Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of +inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and +evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have been +built up on those conceptions. + +So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of +inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion, +though the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus +in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation +on which the institutions of state and church are erected. + +As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of +history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the +recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the +measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability +of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality- free +will. + +As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the +earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's +fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the +difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of +space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the +independence of one's own personality. But as in astronomy the new +view said: "It is true that we do not feel the movement of the +earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while +by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws," +so also in history the new view says: "It is true that we are not +conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we +arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external +world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws." + +In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness +of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did +not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce +a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of +which we are not conscious. + +% Notes: +% SiSU: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu +% SiSU markup for 0.16 and later +% SiSU markup: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/sample +% Output: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy +% Markup: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/sample/markup/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.sst +% Syntax: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/sample/syntax/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.sst.html diff --git a/markup/pod/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/media/text/en/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift.sst b/markup/pod/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/media/text/en/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift.sst index 27a0686..c26150c 100644 --- a/markup/pod/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/media/text/en/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift.sst +++ b/markup/pod/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/media/text/en/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift.sst @@ -28,7 +28,11 @@ links: [ make: doc_type: "book" - headings: "PART; none; none; CHAPTER;" + headings: + - PART + - none + - none + - CHAPTER breaks: "new=:B; break=1" A~ @title-author-date @@ -107,7 +111,7 @@ CHAPTER II. [The emperor of Lilliput, attended by several of the nobility, comes to see the author in his confinement. The emperor's person and habit described. Learned men appointed to teach the author their language. He gains favour by his mild disposition. His pockets are searched, and his sword and pistols taken from him.] -When I found myself on my feet, I looked about me, and must confess I never beheld a more entertaining prospect. The country around appeared like a continued garden, and the enclosed fields, which were generally forty feet square, resembled so many beds of flowers. These fields were intermingled with woods of half a stang,~^ and the tallest trees, as I could judge, appeared to be seven feet high. I viewed the town on my left hand, which looked like the painted scene of a city in a theatre. +When I found myself on my feet, I looked about me, and must confess I never beheld a more entertaining prospect. The country around appeared like a continued garden, and the enclosed fields, which were generally forty feet square, resembled so many beds of flowers. These fields were intermingled with woods of half a stang,~{ A stang is a pole or perch; sixteen feet and a half. }~ and the tallest trees, as I could judge, appeared to be seven feet high. I viewed the town on my left hand, which looked like the painted scene of a city in a theatre. I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of nature; which was no wonder, it being almost two days since I had last disburdened myself. I was under great difficulties between urgency and shame. The best expedient I could think of, was to creep into my house, which I accordingly did; and shutting the gate after me, I went as far as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my body of that uneasy load. But this was the only time I was ever guilty of so uncleanly an action; for which I cannot but hope the candid reader will give some allowance, after he has maturely and impartially considered my case, and the distress I was in. From this time my constant practice was, as soon as I rose, to perform that business in open air, at the full extent of my chain; and due care was taken every morning before company came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in wheel-barrows, by two servants appointed for that purpose. I would not have dwelt so long upon a circumstance that, perhaps, at first sight, may appear not very momentous, if I had not thought it necessary to justify my character, in point of cleanliness, to the world; which, I am told, some of my maligners have been pleased, upon this and other occasions, to call in question. @@ -225,7 +229,7 @@ They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they hold an op There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I should be tempted to say a little in their justification. It is only to be wished they were as well executed. The first I shall mention, relates to informers. All crimes against the state, are punished here with the utmost severity; but, if the person accused makes his innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favour, and proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city. -They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was once interceding with the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was heartily ashamed.~^ +They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was once interceding with the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was heartily ashamed.~{ An act of parliament has been since passed by which some breaches of trust have been made capital. }~ Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon which all government turns, yet I could never observe this maxim to be put in practice by any nation except that of Lilliput. Whoever can there bring sufficient proof, that he has strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons, has a claim to certain privileges, according to his quality or condition of life, with a proportionable sum of money out of a fund appropriated for that use: he likewise acquires the title of snilpall, or legal, which is added to his name, but does not descend to his posterity. And these people thought it a prodigious defect of policy among us, when I told them that our laws were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward. It is upon this account that the image of Justice, in their courts of judicature, is formed with six eyes, two before, as many behind, and on each side one, to signify circumspection; with a bag of gold open in her right hand, and a sword sheathed in her left, to show she is more disposed to reward than to punish. @@ -821,7 +825,7 @@ Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for discovering plots The whole discourse was written with great acuteness, containing many observations, both curious and useful for politicians; but, as I conceived, not altogether complete. This I ventured to tell the author, and offered, if he pleased, to supply him with some additions. He received my proposition with more compliance than is usual among writers, especially those of the projecting species, professing "he would be glad to receive further information." -I told him, "that in the kingdom of Tribnia,~^ by the natives called Langdon,~^ where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk of the people consist in a manner wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the colours, the conduct, and the pay of ministers of state, and their deputies. The plots, in that kingdom, are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures; and raise, or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then, effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists, very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables, and letters: for instance, they can discover a close stool, to signify a privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a general; a running sore, the administration.~^ +I told him, "that in the kingdom of Tribnia,~{ Britannia.--Sir W. Scott. }~ by the natives called Langdon,~{ London.--Sir W. Scott. }~ where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk of the people consist in a manner wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the colours, the conduct, and the pay of ministers of state, and their deputies. The plots, in that kingdom, are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures; and raise, or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then, effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists, very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables, and letters: for instance, they can discover a close stool, to signify a privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a general; a running sore, the administration.~{ This is the revised text adopted by Dr. Hawksworth (1766). The above paragraph in the original editions (1726) takes another form, commencing:- "I told him that should I happen to live in a kingdom where lots were in vogue," &c. The names Tribnia and Langdon an not mentioned, and the "close stool" and its signification do not occur. }~ "When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N, shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; L, a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party. So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend, 'Our brother Tom has just got the piles,' a skilful decipherer would discover, that the same letters which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the following words, 'Resist -, a plot is brought home--The tour.' And this is the anagrammatic method." @@ -1143,7 +1147,7 @@ He made me observe, "that among the Houyhnhnms, the white, the sorrel, and the i I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, "that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that, as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of money), whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride. -"Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted, repealed, or altered: and these nobles have likewise the decision of all our possessions, without appeal."~^ +"Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted, repealed, or altered: and these nobles have likewise the decision of all our possessions, without appeal."~{ This paragraph is not in the original editions. }~ CHAPTER VII. @@ -1325,7 +1329,7 @@ The captain had no wife, nor above three servants, none of which were suffered t In ten days, Don Pedro, to whom I had given some account of my domestic affairs, put it upon me, as a matter of honour and conscience, "that I ought to return to my native country, and live at home with my wife and children." He told me, "there was an English ship in the port just ready to sail, and he would furnish me with all things necessary." It would be tedious to repeat his arguments, and my contradictions. He said, "it was altogether impossible to find such a solitary island as I desired to live in; but I might command in my own house, and pass my time in a manner as recluse as I pleased." -I complied at last, finding I could not do better. I left Lisbon the 24th day of November, in an English merchantman, but who was the master I never inquired. Don Pedro accompanied me to the ship, and lent me twenty pounds. He took kind leave of me, and embraced me at parting, which I bore as well as I could. During this last voyage I had no commerce with the master or any of his men; but, pretending I was sick, kept close in my cabin. On the fifth of December, 1715, we cast anchor in the Downs, about nine in the morning, and at three in the afternoon I got safe to my house at Rotherhith.~^ +I complied at last, finding I could not do better. I left Lisbon the 24th day of November, in an English merchantman, but who was the master I never inquired. Don Pedro accompanied me to the ship, and lent me twenty pounds. He took kind leave of me, and embraced me at parting, which I bore as well as I could. During this last voyage I had no commerce with the master or any of his men; but, pretending I was sick, kept close in my cabin. On the fifth of December, 1715, we cast anchor in the Downs, about nine in the morning, and at three in the afternoon I got safe to my house at Rotherhith.~{ The original editions and Hawksworth's have Rotherhith here, though earlier in the work, Redriff is said to have been Gulliver's home in England. }~ My wife and family received me with great surprise and joy, because they concluded me certainly dead; but I must freely confess the sight of them filled me only with hatred, disgust, and contempt; and the more, by reflecting on the near alliance I had to them. For although, since my unfortunate exile from the Houyhnhnm country, I had compelled myself to tolerate the sight of Yahoos, and to converse with Don Pedro de Mendez, yet my memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those exalted Houyhnhnms. And when I began to consider that, by copulating with one of the Yahoo species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror. @@ -1365,16 +1369,3 @@ My reconcilement to the Yahoo kind in general might not be so difficult, if they But the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they possess, than I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm; which no man in his wits would boast of, although he must be miserable without them. I dwell the longer upon this subject from the desire I have to make the society of an English Yahoo by any means not insupportable; and therefore I here entreat those who have any tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not presume to come in my sight. -^~ A stang is a pole or perch; sixteen feet and a half. - -^~ An act of parliament has been since passed by which some breaches of trust have been made capital. - -^~ Britannia.--Sir W. Scott. - -^~ London.--Sir W. Scott. - -^~ This is the revised text adopted by Dr. Hawksworth (1766). The above paragraph in the original editions (1726) takes another form, commencing:- "I told him that should I happen to live in a kingdom where lots were in vogue," &c. The names Tribnia and Langdon an not mentioned, and the "close stool" and its signification do not occur. - -^~ This paragraph is not in the original editions. - -^~ The original editions and Hawksworth's have Rotherhith here, though earlier in the work, Redriff is said to have been Gulliver's home in England. diff --git a/markup/pod/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy/media/text/en/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.sst b/markup/pod/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy/media/text/en/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.sst index 260dc3e..d2bc3b8 100644 --- a/markup/pod/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy/media/text/en/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.sst +++ b/markup/pod/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy/media/text/en/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.sst @@ -64634,4 +64634,3 @@ which we are not conscious. % Markup: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/sample/markup/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.sst % Syntax: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/sample/syntax/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.sst.html - diff --git a/markup/sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/html/homepage.index.html b/markup/sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/html/homepage.index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..adf34f1 --- /dev/null +++ b/markup/sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/html/homepage.index.html @@ -0,0 +1,760 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html> +<head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/plain; charset=UTF-8" /> + <title>≅ SiSU project sisudoc.org</title> + <link href="./css/html_seg.css" rel="stylesheet" /> +</head> + +<body> + +<h1>≅ - SiSU for documents - structuring, publishing in multiple +formats & search</h1> + +<h2>ℹ - A short description</h2> + +<p> +SiSU is an object-centric, lightweight markup based, document structuring, +parser, publishing and search tool for document collections. It is command line +oriented and generates static content that is made searchable at an object level +through an SQL database. +</p> + +<p> +SiSU markup helps define (delineate) objects (primarily various types of text +block) which are tracked in sequence, substantive objects being numbered +sequentially by the program for object citation. Breaking document into numbered +objects provides interesting possibilities. These object numbers provide the +possibility of citing/locating text precisely across different document formats +and different languages (assuming the document has been translated). For search +it also makes it possible to identify precisely where within in each document +search criteria is met in the form of an index. Additionally the use of objects +(and that objects are numbered) frees the possibility to represent the document +in the manner considered most suitable to a specific document format (whilst +retaining its structural (and citation) integrity). +</p> + +<p> +Objects which include their inherent associated properties (which vary by type +of object), constitute building blocks of a document from which alternative +representations of a document can be (imagined and) built. +</p> + +<h2>Δ - SiSU project source</h2> + +<p> + <a href="./projects"> + Δ SiSU projects repo (git) + </a><br> + - <a href="https://git.sisudoc.org"> + https://git.sisudoc.org + </a><br> +</p> + +<h3>Δ - sisudoc-spine project source (programmed in D)</h3> + +<p> + <a href="./projects/sisudoc-spine"> + Δ SiSU (sisudoc-spine): document publishing (multiple formats + search) [D] + </a><br> + - <a href="https://git.sisudoc.org/sisudoc-spine"> + https://git.sisudoc.org/sisudoc-spine + </a><br> + git clone git://git.sisudoc.org/software/sisudoc-spine + <br> +</p> + +<p> + <a href="./projects/sisudoc-spine-search-cgi"> + Δ SiSU (sisudoc-spine search): a sample cgi sqlite search for sisudoc-spine [D] + </a><br> + - <a href="https://git.sisudoc.org/sisudoc-spine-search-cgi"> + https://git.sisudoc.org/sisudoc-spine-search-cgi + </a><br> + git clone git://git.sisudoc.org/software/sisudoc-spine-search-cgi + <br> +</p> + +<p> + <a href="./projects/sisudoc-spine-samples"> + Δ SiSU (sisudoc-spine markup): markup samples in document pods for sisudoc-spine + </a><br> + - <a href="https://git.sisudoc.org/sisudoc-spine-samples"> + https://git.sisudoc.org/sisudoc-spine-samples + </a><br> + git clone git://git.sisudoc.org/markup/sisudoc-spine-samples + <br> +</p> + +<h3>Δ - sisu scribe project source (programmed in Ruby)</h3> + +<p> + <a href="./projects/sisu"> + Δ SiSU (scribe): document publishing (multiple formats + search) [Ruby] + </a><br> + - <a href="https://git.sisudoc.org/sisu"> + https://git.sisudoc.org/sisu + </a><br> + git clone git://git.sisudoc.org/software/sisu + <br> +</p> + +<p> + <a href="./projects/sisu-markup"> + Δ SiSU markup samples in document pods for sisu (scribe) + </a><br> + - <a href="https://git.sisudoc.org/sisu-markup"> + https://git.sisudoc.org/sisu-markup + </a><br> + git clone git://git.sisudoc.org/markup/sisu-markup-samples + <br> +</p> + +<h2>⌘ - SiSU Spine markup sample output</h2> + +<p> +To give an idea of how this works here is a small collection of documents marked +up for and generated by the software. The curation of topics for a collection of +specialized related documents would benefit from a consistently applied bespoke +ontology or thesaurus. +<br> +The documents presented are documents that have been released under various +creative commons licences, in the public domain, or the author's work, with the +exception of one that is under GPL and the old abandoned Debian live-manual +</p> + +<p> + <a href="./authors.html"> + ⌘ Authors + </a> + (software curated from provided document header metadata)<br> + - <a href="./authors.html"> + https://sisudoc.org/spine/authors.html + </a> +</p> + +<p> + <a href="./topics.html"> + ⌘ Topics + </a> + (software curated from provided document header metadata)<br> + - <a href="./topics.html"> + https://sisudoc.org/spine/topics.html + </a> +</p> + +<h2>፨ - SiSU Spine search</h2> +<p> + <a href="./spine_search"> + ፨ Search + </a> + (granular search of text objects)<br> + - <a href="https://sisudoc.org/spine_search"> + https://sisudoc.org/spine_search + </a> +</p> + +<div class="p"> + <!-- SiSU Spine Search --> + <form action="https://sisudoc.org/spine_search" target="_top" method="POST" accept-charset="UTF-8" id="search"> + <input type="text" name="sf" size="24" maxlength="255"> + <input type="hidden" name="db" value="spine.search.db"> + <input type="hidden" name="sml" value="1000"> + <input type="hidden" name="ec" value="on"> + <input type="hidden" name="url" value="on"> + <button type="submit" form="search"> ㏈ ፨ </button> + </form> + <!-- SiSU Spine Search --> +</div> + +<h2>ℹ - SiSU description</h2> + +<p> +SiSU is an object-centric, lightweight markup based, document structuring, +parser, publishing and search tool for document collections. It is command line +oriented and generates static content that is currently made searchable at an +object level through an SQL database. +Markup helps define (delineate) objects (primarily various types of text block) +which are tracked in sequence, substantive objects being numbered sequentially +by the program for object citation. +</p> + +<p> +<b>Summary.</b> An object is a unit of text within a document the most common +being a paragraph. Objects include individual headings, paragraphs, tables, +grouped text of various types such as code blocks and within poems, verse. +Objects have properties and attributes, of particular significance are headings +and their levels which provide document structure. A heading is an object with a +heirarchical value, that conceptually contains other objects (such as paragraphs +and possibly sub-headings etc.). Objects are tracked sequentially as they relate +to each other object within a document and substantive objects are numbered +sequentially, for citation purposes. Notably footnotes are not objects in +themselves, rather belonging to the object from which they are referenced, and +following their own numbering sequence. From heading objects (linked) tables of +content may be generated, and if additional metadata is provided book type +indexes can be generated that link back to the objects to which they relate. +</p> + +<p> +<b>Unpacking this a bit further.</b> SiSU as a concept independent of its markup +language and the parsers that have been implemented, is based on the following +ideas: +</p> + +<p> +<b>Object-Centricity. On objects:</b> In SiSU objects are the fundamental unit +from which larger constructs within a document and the document itself is built. +Breaking the document into objects provides interesting possibilities. +</p> + +<p> +<b>Objects are fundamental building blocks:</b> Conceptually within SiSU, +objects are the building blocks or individual units of construction of a +document. Objects are usually blocks of text, the most common of which is the +paragraph, other examples include: individual headings, tables, grouped text of +various types which include code blocks and verse within poems, ... and as +mentioned an object could also, for example, be an image. Objects can be +formatted and placed as needed, providing flexibility and enabling multiple +types of representation across disperate formats and text recepticle, examples +including html, epub, latex (in the past mind-maps) and sql (populated at an +object level, and thereby providing search with that degree of granularity). +</p> + +<p> +<b>Sequential. Objects have sequence:</b> That objects have sequence, goes +largely without saying, this follows authorship, it is part of the definition of +a document and how a document is written to convey meaning. +</p> + +<p> +<b>Object Numbers & Citation. Substantive objects are numbered for citation +purposes:</b> Most objects within a document are meant by the author to be a +substantive part of the document. All such objects are numbered sequentially and +can be referenced thereby for citation purposes. +<br> +Object numbers provide the possibility of citing/locating text precisely across +different document formats and different languages (assuming the document has +been translated). For search it also makes it possible to identify precisely +where search criteria is met within in each document in the form of an index or +to view those precise text objects before deciding which documents are of +interest. Additionally the use of objects (and that objects are numbered) frees +the possibility to represent the document in the manner considered most suitable +to a specific document format wilst retaining its structural (and citation) +integrity). +</p> + +<p> +<b>Characteristics. Objects have properties and attributes:</b> Objects have +properties (and may have attributes). By properties I here refer to the +fundamental type of object, be it a heading, a paragraph, table, verse etc. +Attributes extend further and may include other things that one might wish to +associate with the object (examples not necessarily currently available/ +implemented in SiSU might include, formatting whether it is indented, or +metadata e.g. the associated language, or programming language for a code block) +</p> + +<p> +<b>Document structure. Heading objects hold documents structure:</b> Heading +objects hold documents structure through their heading level property. The types +of document of interest to SiSU have structure that is captured by the heading +level property. Headings are individual objects like any other with the +additional properties that (i) they may be regarded as containing the other +objects following them sequentially (until the next heading of a similar or +higher level), heading objects may include other headings (sub-headings), and +(ii) that they have a heirarchy, the root "heading" being the document +title. +<br> +A complication was intruduced to provide greater flexibility across document +output formats. Headings have two sets of levels, the level under which +substantive text occurs, this would be a chapter or segment level, and above +that in the heirarchy if needed are document section separators, book, section, +part. +</p> + +<p> +<b>Non-objects</b> Most but not all parts of a document are treated as objects. +Notably footnotes are not objects in themselves, rather belonging to the object +from which they are referenced, and following their own numbering sequence. From +heading objects (linked) tables of content may be generated, and if additional +metadata is provided book type indexes can be generated that link back to the +objects to which they relate. +</p> + +<p> +<b>The Document Header.</b> SiSU document have headers which contain document +metadata, at a minimum the document title and author. In addition the document +header may contain markup instruction (e.g. how to identify headings within the +document, in which case those headings need not be found and treated +accordingly) +</p> + +<p> +SiSU parsers have now been implemented in different programming paradigms and +languages a couple of times, the chosen markup has been left unchanged though +the document headers have been modified. +<br> +This is the core of sisu, beyond which there is more but largely in the form of +choices based on ... existing output formats and of implementation detail, +deciding what attributes of objects, or within objects should be supported, +extending markup to allow for the generation of book indexes from if tagging +provided. +</p> + +<h2>ℹ - SiSU Historical Descriptions</h2> + +<p> +Here is a description that has been used for the original sisu (scribe): +</p> + +<p> +With minimal preparation of a plain-text (UTF-8) file, using sisu markup syntax +in your text editor of choice, SiSU can generate various document formats, most +of which share a common object numbering system for locating content, including +plain text, HTML, XHTML, XML, EPUB, OpenDocument text (ODF:ODT), LaTeX, PDF +files, and populate an SQL database with objects (roughly paragraph-sized +chunks) so searches may be performed and matches returned with that degree of +granularity. Think of being able to finely match text in documents, using common +object numbers, across different output formats (same object identifier for pdf, +epub or html) and across languages if you have translations of the same document +(same object identifier across languages). For search, your criteria is met by +these documents at these locations within each document (equally relevant across +different output formats and languages). To be clear (if obvious) page numbers +provide none of this functionality. Object numbering is particularly suitable +for "published" works (finalized texts as opposed to works that are frequently +changed or updated) for which it provides a fixed means of reference of content. +Document outputs can also share provided semantic meta-data. +</p> + +<h3>...</h3> + +<p> +SiSU is less about document layout than it is about finding a way using little +markup to construct an abstract representation of a document that makes it +possible to produce multiple representations of it which may be rather different +from each other and used for different purposes, whether layout and publishing, +scrollworthy online viewing/ reading, or content search. To be able to take +advantage from its minimal preparation starting point of some of the strengths +of rather different established ways of representing documents for different +purposes, whether for search (relational database, or indexed flat files +generated for that purpose whether of complete documents, or say of files made +up of objects), online or other electronic viewing (e.g. html, xml, epub), or +paper publication (e.g. pdf via latex)... +</p> + +<p> +The solution arrived at is to extract structural information about the document +(document sections and headings within the document, available through pattern +matching or markup) and tracking objects (which primarily are defined units of +text such as paragraphs, headings, tables, verse, etc. but also images) which +can be reconstituted as the same documents with relevant object identification +numbers so text (objects) can be referenced across different output formats and +presentations. +</p> + +<p> +SiSU generates tables of content, and through its markup the means for metadata +to be provided for the generation of book style indexes for a document (that +again due to document object numbers are the same and equally relevant across +all document formats). Per document classifying/organizing metadata can also be +provided for automated document curation. +</p> + +<p> +... there have also been working experiments with sisu markup source, two way +conversion/representation of sisu document markup source in mind-mapping +(software kdissert was used for its strong focus on producing documents (now +apparently called semantik)); also po4a software for translators has been used +successfuly in its regular text mode for sisu markup in translation, (which is +more an attribute of po4a than of sisu, but) which is of interest due to +sisu/spine's object citation numbering being available across translations. Open +Document Format text (odf:odt), has been an output, but much more interesting +(and requested by potential users of sisu/spine) would be the ability of a word +processor to save text/a document in sisu markup, making alternative document +processing and presentations with sisu possible. +</p> + +<p> +also worth mention, in the relatively long history of this project, there has +been work done on extracting hash representations of each object, that could +hypothetically be shared to prove the content of a document without sharing its +content, or of identifying which objects change; these hashes can also be used +as unique identifiers in a database or as identifying filenames if individual +objects are saved. +</p> + +<p> +SiSU has evolved, the current implementation focuses on one primary use-case, +books and literary writings. However the concept on which it is based has wider +application. Here is a prevously posted souvenir from my encounter with an IBM +software evaluator in London June 2004 that came about through a chance +encounter with an IBM manager at a Linux Expo, who was curious about my interest +in Gnu/Linux with my legal background... on hearing that I also wrote software, +he suggested, maybe IBM should have a look at it. I was interested, the meeting +was set up... with an IBM, Software Innovations evaluator +<br> +His response after the meeting: +</p> + +<p> +"Ralph<br>Good to meet with you today, I was very impressed with your +software.<br><i>[colleague's name (also posted to an IBM colleague)]</i> - in +summary - Ralph has built an application that runs on linux and takes ASCII +documents and pulls them apart in to the smallest constituent parts, storing +them as XML, PDF and HTML, the HTML are hyperlinked up so the document can be +browsed in its full form. the format and text data created is stored in a +database.<br>This has potential in any place that needs the power of full text +search whilst holding the structural concepts of the document i.e. legal, +pharma, education, research.. which ones we need to figure out, ..." +</p> + +<p> +Special interest was expressed in the search implications of SiSU. To +paraphrase, the company has document management systems dealing with hundreds of +thousands of texts, these tell you which documents match your search criteria, +but cannot inform you where within a text these matches were found without +opening the documents. This is achieved through defining document objects and +making them the building block of the document, trackable document objects (that +can be placed back in the context of the document or corpus of documents if part +of a collection). SiSU's early design was to - abstract documents to their +structure, and identified objects, numbered in a citable way (as pointed out +document object hashes can be of use for the purpose). +</p> + +<h2>ℹ - SiSU Spine (sisudoc-spine)</h2> + +<p> +SiSU Spine is the new generator for documents prepared in sisu markup, written +in D as opposed to the original sisu which was first shared in Ruby. +</p> + +<p> +sisudoc spine code was shared publicly under the AGPLv3 2024-05-01 (after +considerable procrastination). (It should be fairly straightforward to have this +work on other OS platforms, I have only used linux since 1999.) +</p> + +<p> +As compared with the original sisu generator sisu spine: +</p> + +<p> +- Spine uses the same document markup for the document body, but uses yaml for +document headers (which contains document metadata and configuration details), +the original sisu has a bespoke markup for headers. +</p> + +<p> +- Spine (written in D) is considerably faster at generating native output than +sisu (written in Ruby), on last test at least 60 times faster (what took 1 +minute takes 1 second; 1 hour a minute :-) (admittedly some time ago, ruby has +been getting faster, hopefully this is not over over promising). +</p> + +<p> +- Spine produces fewer document outputs types than sisu (html, epub, (odt, +latex) and populates sql db for search) +</p> + +<p> +- As regards non-native output, so far Spine has greater separation of what it +does and largely leaves calling the external program to the user, e.g.: latex +output is a native output in the sense that it is generated directly by spine, +but the pdfs that can be produced from these are produced through use of an +external program xelatex, which produces fine output but is a very much slower +process. +</p> + +<p> +- (where both produce the same output type, generally) Spine generally produces +more up to date output format representations. +</p> + +<h2>ℹ - Some Observations</h2> + +<p> +SiSU is more suited to finalized/stratified/published writings (writings, +articles, books), that are to remain and be referenced as published, +representing a work or ideas, set at a given time. (As opposed to the +increasingly prevalent and important forms of fluid text). +</p> + +<p> +Trained AI likely could assist in the preparation of documents (with SiSU +markup), with resulting deterministic and reproducible outputs (for substantive +document objects). Caveats: Where text objects may be in blocks (or not) there +is some room for discretion and ambiguity in the markup with resulting +possibility of differences in the resulting presentation of a document. Book +indexes are another area that if desired is markup intensive and unless +following an already published index, can be prepared differently and possibly +improved over time, and for specialised collections on a subject area could +potentially be prepared against a thesaurus. +</p> + +<h2>ℹ - Thank You</h2> + +<p> +Thanks to all who help produce and maintain the software and libraries I am able +to use and have come to rely on. Reliable infrastructure so far. +</p> + +<hr> +<p class="tiny"><i> +ralph.amissah www since 1993 ;-) +</i></p> + +<hr> +<h2>Some external links of interest</h2> + +<h3>Development</h3> +<h4>Programming</h4> +<p> + [ <a href="https://dlang.org/"> + D - (dlang) general purpose, multi-paradigm, fast C like programming language + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://code.dlang.org/"> + dub - package registry + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://forum.dlang.org/group/general"> + community discussion (mail list frontend) + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/"> + Ruby + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://rubygems.org/"> + Gems + </a> ]<br> + [ <a href="https://crystal-lang.org/"> + Crystal + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<h4>SQL DB</h4> +<p> + [ <a href="https://sqlite.org/index.html"> + Sqlite - an sql database engine + </a> ]<br> + [ <a href="https://www.postgresql.org/"> + PostgreSQL + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<h4>Markup</h4> +<p> + [ <a href="https://www.w3.org/html/"> + HTML + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/"> + multipage current spec + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/"> + dom current spec + </a> ]<br> + [ <a href="https://www.w3.org/publishing/epub32/"> + Epub + </a> ]<br> + [ <a href="https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/"> + css - cascading style sheets + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://opendocumentformat.org/"> + OpenDocument Format + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://www.latex-project.org/get/"> + LaTeX + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://po4a.org/index.php.en"> + po4a - maintain translations + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<h4>Operating System Distributions</h4> +<p> + [ <a href="https://nixos.org/"> + NixOS - linux based operating system built on the Nix declarative, reproducible and reliable, build system + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs"> + nixpkgs (packages @ github) + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=unstable&from=0&size=100&sort=relevance&query="> + package search + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://discourse.nixos.org/"> + community discussion (discourse) + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-foundation-board-giving-power-to-the-community/44552/"> + NixOS Foundation board: Giving power to the community + </a> ]<br> +<!-- + [ <a href="https://aux.computer/"> + Aux - aux.computer - a community fork of nix (under deliberation), billed as "An alternative to the Nix ecosystem" + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://forum.aux.computer/"> + community discussion (discourse) + </a> ]<br> +--> + Gnu [ <a href="https://guix.gnu.org/"> + Guix + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://guix.gnu.org/en/packages/"> + packages + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://debian.org/"> + Debian - the universal operating system distribution + </a> ]<br> + [ <a href="https://www.devuan.org/"> + Devuan + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://archlinux.org/"> + Arch Linux + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/"> + Arch Wiki + </a> ]<br> +</p> + +<hr> + +<h2>Extraneous (external) links of personal interest</h2> + +<h4>Workspace</h4> + +<h5>Shell</h5> +<p> + [ <a href="https://www.zsh.org/"> + zsh + </a> ]<br> + [ <a href="https://starship.rs/"> + starship - customizable cross-shell prompt + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<h5>Terminal</h5> +<p> + [ <a href="https://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-web/"> + tilix + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://alacritty.org/"> + alacritty + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<h5>Terminal Multiplexer</h5> +<p> + [ <a href="https://github.com/tmux/tmux"> + tmux (github) + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/"> + screen + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<h5>Window Manager</h5> +<p> + [ <a href="https://i3wm.org/"> + i3wm + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://swaywm.org/"> + sway + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<h5>Text Editors</h5> +<p> + Gnu Emacs + [ <a href="https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs"> + Doom Emacs (github) + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://orgmode.org/"> + Org-Mode - your life in plain text & literate programming + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil"> + Evil-Mode + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://www.vim.org/"> + Vim + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://neovim.io/"> + NeoVim + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<h5>Source Control Manager</h5> +<p> + [ <a href="https://git-scm.com/"> + Git + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<h5>Browsers</h5> +<p> + [ <a href="https://vieb.dev/"> + vieb + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/"> + vimb + </a> ]<br> + [ <a href="https://brave.com/"> + brave + </a> ]<br> +</p> + +<h3>Search</h3> +<p> + [ <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/"> + DuckDuckGo + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://yubnub.org/"> + YubNub + </a> ]<br> +</p> + +<h3>eMail</h3> +<p> + [ <a href="https://www.migadu.com/"> + Migadu + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://notmuchmail.org/"> + NotmuchMail + </a> ]<br> +</p> + +<h3>Forges</h3> +<p> + [ <a href="https://sourcehut.org/"> + Sourcehut + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://codeberg.org/"> + CodeBerg + </a> ]<br> +</p> +<p> + [ <a href="https://github.com"> + GitHub + </a> ] + [ <a href="https://gitlab.com"> + GitLab + </a> ]<br> +</p> + +<h3>Software Archives</h3> +<p> + [ <a href="https://www.softwareheritage.org/"> + Software Heritage - the universal software archive + </a> ]<br> +</p> + +<hr> +<p class="tiny"><i> +ralph.amissah www since 1993 ;-) +</i></p> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/org/config_git.org b/org/config_git.org index 1279762..4d5dc6c 100644 --- a/org/config_git.org +++ b/org/config_git.org @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ #+FILETAGS: :spine:hub: #+AUTHOR: Ralph Amissah #+EMAIL: [[mailto:ralph.amissah@gmail.com][ralph.amissah@gmail.com]] -#+COPYRIGHT: Copyright (C) 2015 - 2023 Ralph Amissah +#+COPYRIGHT: Copyright (C) 2015 - 2024 Ralph Amissah #+LANGUAGE: en #+STARTUP: content hideblocks hidestars noindent entitiespretty #+PROPERTY: header-args :exports code @@ -34,12 +34,12 @@ !nixDevEnv.sh !.envrc !.envrc-local -!.envrc-local_ !.envrc-nix !.envrc-git-init !.env !.env/** !README +!README.md !COPYRIGHT !CHANGELOG !makefile @@ -81,6 +81,13 @@ !markup/pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/*.sst.po !markup/pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/*.ssm.po !markup/pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/*.ssi.po +!markup/non-pod-samples/ +!markup/non-pod-samples/*.sst +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/ +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/*.png +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/*.jpg +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/*.PNG +!markup/non-pod-samples/image/*.JPG !markup/sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/ !markup/sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/** .dub/** @@ -91,17 +98,110 @@ tmp/** ,*_.d ,*_.txt ,*_ +!.envrc-local_ ,*.swp ,*~ \#* ,*.\#* -!.envrc-local_ #!*/ #\#* #*.\#* #.reggae/** #+END_SRC +** markup/.gitignore (redundant) :gitignore: + +#+HEADER: :tangle "../markup/.gitignore" +#+BEGIN_SRC sh +# git ls-files --others --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude +# git check-ignore -v flake.lock +# git clean -ix +# find . -name "*_" | xargs rm -rf +# find . -name "*.o" | xargs rm -rf +,* +* +!.gitignore +!COPYRIGHT +!README +!README.md +!shell.nix +!packages.nix +!version.txt +!pod/ +!pod/.dr/config_local_site +# pod.manifest +!pod/*/ +!pod/*/pod.manifest +# conf/sisu_document_make +!pod/*/conf/ +!pod/*/conf/sisu_document_make +# media/text +!pod/*/media/ +!pod/*/media/text/ +!pod/*/media/text/*/ +!pod/*/media/text/*/*.sst +!pod/*/media/text/*/*.ssm +!pod/*/media/text/*/*.ssi +!pod/*/media/text/*/index.html.in +# media/image +!pod/*/media/image/ +!pod/*/media/image/*.png +!pod/*/media/image/*.jpg +!pod/*/media/image/*.PNG +!pod/*/media/image/*.JPG +# tools/po4a +!pod/*/tools/ +!pod/*/tools/Makefile +!pod/*/tools/bin/ +!pod/*/tools/bin/*.sh +!pod/*/tools/po4a/ +!pod/*/tools/po4a/pot/ +!pod/*/tools/po4a/pot/*.sst.pot +!pod/*/tools/po4a/pot/*.ssm.pot +!pod/*/tools/po4a/pot/*.ssi.pot +!pod/*/tools/po4a/pot/index.html.in.pot +!pod/*/tools/po4a/po/ +!pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/ +!pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/*.sst.po +!pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/*.ssm.po +!pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/*.ssi.po +!pod/*/tools/po4a/po/*/index.html.in.po +# separate from media/text use tools +!pod/*/media/text/Makefile +!pod/*/media/text/bin/ +!pod/*/media/text/bin/*.sh +!pod/*/media/text/pot/ +!pod/*/media/text/pot/*.sst.pot +!pod/*/media/text/pot/*.ssm.pot +!pod/*/media/text/pot/*.ssi.pot +!pod/*/media/text/pot/index.html.in.pot +!pod/*/media/text/po/ +!pod/*/media/text/po/*/ +!pod/*/media/text/po/*/*.sst.po +!pod/*/media/text/po/*/*.ssm.po +!pod/*/media/text/po/*/*.ssi.po +!pod/*/media/text/po/*/index.html.in.po +!non-pod-samples/ +!non-pod-samples/*.sst +!non-pod-samples/image/ +!non-pod-samples/image/*.png +!non-pod-samples/image/*.jpg +!non-pod-samples/image/*.PNG +!non-pod-samples/image/*.JPG +!sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/ +!sisudoc-spine-bespoke-output/** +# skip +.dub/** +tmp/** +,*_.org +,*_.d +,*_.txt +,*_ +,*~ +\#* +,*.\#* +#+END_SRC + ** .gitattributes :gitattributes: #+HEADER: :tangle "../.gitattributes" |
